2002-11-15 - 10:18 a.m.
Here is the entry for 11/14/02. Once again, I missed out on computer time because I was very busy and children had a lot of homework. I�m beginning to think we may need a costly solution to this problem. Sigh.
THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE
In the musical �Evita� a group of Argentinian generals sing of �Politics, the art of the possible.� I disagree. Politics is about getting and keeping power. As a result, politics is the art of suggesting the impossible. Governing, not politics, is about making run. Governing is the art of the possible. Vision is fine and helpful but pragmatism keeps the kids and teachers in the classrooms from day to day.
Politics, the art of catering to the belief in at least six impossible things before breakfast, has suggested that we can have low taxes and truly excellent schools. Reconciling these goals is, according to the pandering pundits,* just a matter of creativity. We are sold what we want to believe and, without noticing, we are destroying the excellent public schools. When those rose-colored glasses slip down our noses, we still may not see the incompatibility of our goals. We�ll just blame it on mismanagement.
My local elementary and middle school are and have been excellent school. While the school board of which I am a member has spent a lot per pupil to produce excellence, we know that money alone is insufficient to produce excellence. How you spend the money is critical. The failure to spend money well is what allows some to deny money to public schools on the grounds that money won�t solve the problems. They are correct that money alone won�t solve the problems but then neither will great ideas without the money to implement them.
Our district has poured that money into small classes at all levels but particularly at the lower grades and into extensive prevention/intervention services. We have said we want all our kids reading at grade level or above by third grade, we have meant it, and, with the occasional exception of a child or two here or there, we have achieved it even for our children with mild learning disabilities.
But enrollment in our district is falling. We lack land for new development and birthrates are dropping. We are in the part of the housing cycle where many families with children have older children. Their children are in high school or college and, because we are in a union high school district, neither the high schoolers nor the college kids are in our district. We have approximately eighty outgoing eighth graders and project having approximately 31 incoming kindergarteners. That pattern has remained constant for quite a few years�and Day-Hay, who is in seventh grade, is in the last class of eighty.
Here in Wisconsin, school districts are under spending caps (although we call them revenue caps.) The caps are tied to the number of children in school. For every child �lost� on the rolls, the ability to spend a particular amount of money disappears. (The amount that disappears differs from district to district based upon a complex calculation.) For any district, but particularly for a district our size, the loss of a child only rarely translates into a real reduction in costs.
Even the loss of fifteen children may not result in the reduction of costs. The incoming kindergarten, for example, would require two classes, two aides, and two teachers just as a class of forty children would. It will require the same number of buses and the heating of the same number of classrooms. It will require the same gym teacher, music teacher, and art teacher time and the same number of books in the library. (Worse, we will have to spend at least 3.8% more on each of the teachers even though our spending cap drops.)
Because salary and benefit costs are approximately 75-85% of our budget, reducing paper usage will not save us. We are facing more than a $200,000 deficit for next year and we have been cutting for years. We no longer have a technology teacher. The middle school teachers have a schedule of six classes instead of five classes and an advisory section. We have refinanced debt and bid out repair projects that we decided we could not do. We have reduced monies for activities and raised fees for them. We are looking at the configuration of our music program. We no longer have a Dean of Students, a situation which has given our middle school principal a job that must make her feel like Sisyphus.
So what is left? What can we do? We looked to research�and the research on the payoff of small classes, particularly in upper grades, is far from definitive. Then we gulped. We debated, we discussed, we bemoaned for two board meetings and will do it for a third. We looked at our class size guidelines (and they are only guidelines even though some parents have tried to turn them into a contract) and we increased the sizes.
And this week I voted for that. I did not want to. Even my littlest toe rebels. But I see no better option.
The choice was between politics and governing. I could have stood on principle. I could have said that I was unalterably opposed to increasing class size. I could have grandstanded. I would have pleased many but that would have been politics. I would have been making promises that I knew could not be kept. My intransigence would have been morally satisfying but it might have lulled parents into false sense of security and kept them from realizing the need to fight at the state level.
So, instead, I chose governing. I chose to keep the guidelines as low as I thought we could and still be honest and responsible. I chose to agree to do what the state forced us into doing.
The federal and state folks can speak glowingly of low taxes and excellent schools. They, after all, are politicians. Me, I�m just an elected citizen serving as best I can on a local school board. I�ll govern�and hate myself in the morning for what I had to do.
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* When I looked over this entry for typos, I was seized with a fear of turning into Spiro Agnew. I checked myself over. I�m not Spiro Agnew. (Whew!) I just play him for a brief moment.
LAST YEAR: Family Dinners
LAST FIVE ENTRIES:
Not a Tragedy
Watching Out for Missions
Making Kool-aid
What Parents Think
Not Keeping Up With the Cohens
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Copyright 2006 by Ellen |
