Friday, May 08, 2009

Part Two

...Continued from yesterday

While the sub-committee of the sub-committee of the Plan for Excellence committee was busy looking into district configurations, the rabble-rousers were looking into school district business as well. And eureka! A discovery was made. The problem wasn’t the evil troll misappropriating district funds. It was the holiest of all objects in the districts possession. Silver Lake Elementary. It seems that the school district I trust my children to, lied to me. Actually they lied to all of Cuyahoga Falls. To justify building closures, the district presented a cost benefit type report to the people. In fact to a packed auditorium. They showed us building enrollment numbers. You can’t argue with cold, hard numbers.

Problem is, when the school district reported those same enrollment numbers to the state of Ohio for funding purposes, they weren’t the same numbers. Want to guess where the anomalies were? Save your breath, I’ll tell you. Newberry, Sill, and Silver Lake. I am going forward from here assuming that the enrollment numbers reported to the state are the accurate enrollment numbers. That means that the community presentation was not accurate. I had to ask myself why the school district would lead Cuyahoga Falls to believe that Newberry had fewer students than it actually did and Silver Lake had more.

So the rabble-rousers dug deeper. Administrators said the extra money spent at Silver Lake was because salaries were so much higher there. The rabble-rousers had two arguments for this response. Number one that would mean it had most if not all highly qualified experienced teachers. Not true and shame on them if it were. Number two- according to the Ohio Department of Education the real reason for spending disparities most years was in supplies and materials. You know-stuff. Not salaries, not benefits, not maintenance. Stuff. But they will tell you that any of the cool stuff in that building, is courtesy of the PTO. No I did not have a typo. I said PTO. You see if they were a part of the PTA, like the rest of Cuyahoga Falls City Schools, they would have to share stuff.

Anyway, the Ohio Department of Education numbers don’t lie. Money was being spent on supplies and materials. They are also high cost in the purchased services department. For all normal people out there, think utilities. For some reason government cannot call things what they actually are. All accountants, please shut up. You are a very small portion of the population.

Rabble-rousers started getting a little public about this apparent protection that was going on. The school district wasn’t making decisions with responsible financial impact. It was implementing “recovery plans” and “curtailment plans” and proposing levies. It was closing schools in Cuyahoga Falls and telling me my kids were resilient and could handle a change fine. They don’t even know my kids.

OK Sherman, one more time in the Wayback Machine, except this time we’re only going back to February 20, 2007.

The sub-committee of the sub-committee of the Plan for Excellence committee has come to a board meeting to make their recommendations. Drum roll please....

“Reaffirm and celebrate the district’s commitment to its neighborhood schools in the existing configuration ofK-5, 6-8, and 9-12.”

Wow. What a let down. Two years of work so we can do nothing. Typical. Just like the bus committee. Oh, you didn’t know we had a bus committee? That’s because they did nothing either. See that’s how we work in this district.

Run out of money, get the community riled, form a committee, have committee decide that nothing should change, ask for a levy.

Repeat cycle for 40 years. BTW- Got the levy renewal schedule from the treasurer today. Good timing.

Thursday, May 07, 2009

Déjà vu

It looks as if the district boundary lines will stay the same. For now. Everyone seems to be happy about it.

What is that old saying? Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it?

We have been down this path before. We have a problem, form a committee, and do nothing.

The bus committee touted the other night is a perfect example. Last year the board president put together a committee to study bussing. They pulled employees from their regular duties for hours on end to study and supposedly revamp district bussing. Make it more efficient, you know. In the end, they did nothing.

But we have also traveled this same redistricting road too. So today, I dug through the garage and found the Wayback Machine. Mr. Peabody is on his way over.

To understand what is going on, you need to understand the dynamics of the Cuyahoga Falls City School District. We used to be teeming with children. The neighborhood school I attended was K-6 with 4 classrooms per grade. That same school today is K-5, 3 classrooms per grade and encompasses 2 additional school building districts. That’s a huge decrease in enrollment over 25 years.

Ah, Mr. Peabody has arrived. Let’s go. We’ll set the dials for 1982.

I was mere babe. I heard some talk of lower enrollment than in years past and the next thing you knew, three Cuyahoga Falls schools were closed. My dad said kids were consolidated. I felt like a product. Little did I know it then, but I was. And just like in private industry, the cost of the product had to be kept down. But for different reasons. Dad said the same thing was happening at GM. They might close his plant and consolidate too. Times were gettin’ tough.

Shortly after this, Stow faced a similar crisis. But they had some forward thinking people on their school board. They knew that this declining enrollment thing wasn’t a fad. It was a steady measurable thing. So they tore down buildings, built some new buildings, and reconfigured their entire district. They set up grade leveled buildings. They rightly assumed that as enrollment fluctuated across the city, it could be easily adjusted for by adding or eliminating classrooms per grade level. Since then Stow has seen a boom in new housing. But I haven’t seen any major school realignments in Stow.

In fact if you notice the two districts that seem to be constantly moving students, realigning boundaries and closing buildings are two of the three that are still in neighbor school configurations in Summit County. Akron and Cuyahoga Falls. Barberton is the other. The rest of Summit County school districts are grade level configured, or a close hybrid. Coincidently, they are also the three out of five districts in Summit County that are in the “needs improvement” status academically.

4 years ago we were told that there was a financial crisis. The students of Newberry and Sill paid the price. There are some that will tell you that everyone paid a price, but I’m here to tell you that no one suffered like the kids that went to these schools did. It was a smack in the face to everyone that paid taxes in this neighborhood; I mean once again we were being asked to close our school. But the emotional toll on the kids’ that were fed the “love your school” propaganda for years was immeasurable. These were their schools, their teachers, their principal.

That’s why I find this quote in today’s Akron Beacon Journal so insulting. “Board Vice President Therese Dunphy acknowledged that Falls residents have an affection for their neighborhood schools. ''There's a sense of community with the building they're in,'' she said.” Really? This from a woman that has had 3 years to offer a solution to the spending and class size disparities and has offered nothing but lip service.

9 months ago the administration indicated a need to make cuts and make drastic changes due to the possible mandate of all day kindergarten. They asked the board to decide what was important, what should be looked at to cut, to save, basically what were our priorities and focus. I offered my idea. No one else did.

Then they asked the same of the community a month later. 5 forums were held and suggestions were offered. The administration took what they had to work with and presented the findings. Now the board, that sat back and did nothing, wants to do something. They don’t like what was offered from the people they pay to do this work. Now they want to form a committee. I’m disgusted.

Why? Because we just had this proposed redistricting committee.

Get back in the Wayback Machine, Sherman. Set the dial for 2004. Remember the 2nd set of building closings I mentioned above? Well it started here in 2004. We are all tip toeing through the daisies until one day we are told an evil troll has destroyed our finances. It is dire. Much will have to be sacrificed to the Holy document known as “The Five-Year Forecast”. And of course, the district will form a committee. It shall be called- “The Plan for Excellence Committee”. Of course there are always those that can’t conform to the status quo. They are commonly called rabble-rousers by administrators. The rabble-rousers formed their own committee and did some home work.

This is getting long, so I’ll leave you with this ‘til tomorrow. While the rabble-rousers were toiling over our cauldrons, the school district was busy forming committees, sub-committees and focus groups. All of which I’ve come to despise but I accept them as it is all these people know. One of the sub-committees formed was the reconfiguration committee. Oddly enough it was co-chaired by two Silver Lake residents. The rabble-rousers raised a fuss and the district reluctantly allowed one Cuyahoga Falls resident to join. I couldn’t wait to see what he outcome of redistricting would be....

Tomorrow... The Recommendations from the Reconfiguration Committee.