schools – Page 2 – Hank Kalet

What if there were school districts that had no schools?

The logic of having a school board in a community without schools has always escaped me. Think about it: A district might have 60 or 70 kids, which it ships to another district, paying tuition and transportation. It has little say on how much any of this costs, but it still has to put its budget before the voters. None of this makes any sense, but then, this is New Jersey where the number of taxing entities — state, county, municipal, school, fire, other — numbers more than 1,400.

So, the bill signed by Gov. Jon Corzine the other day eliminating what are called “non-operating school districts” seems like a no-brainer. Unless, of course, you are one of the districts involved.

The legislation clarifies a process that began two years ago, but still has detractors — like Rocky Hill Mayor Ed Zimmerman or Frank Chilson, school board secretary for Rocky Hill and Millstone, two local districts facing extinction:

“It seems it would be very difficult for a Millstone or Rocky Hill resident to be elected to the receiving districts’ schools based on population,” said Frank Chilson, secretary for both school boards.

An injunction was expected to be filed Wednesday on behalf of the Rocky Hill and Millstone school boards in an attempt to stop the shut down, he said. Among its objections, the injunction states that the community was not given the opportunity to vote on the issue, he said.

“It’s really taxation without representation,” Mr. Chilson said.

Borough Mayor Ed Zimmerman said he also is concerned about the disenfranchisement of Rocky Hill voters.

“The biggest issue here is we’ve got nine months of an appointed person over there and then we’ll never have a say in education again, or taxes,” he said.

It is a legitimate concern, though the reality is that the boards in those districts have always had little say. And they have few alternatives.

Rocky Hill is bounded on three sides by Montgomery, with whom it will merge, and Franklin to its north. Milltsone is bounded by Hillsborough, with whom it will merge, and Franklin. The choices would seem to be to merge with one of their neighbors or build a school of their own — which would be absurd.

The reality is that this must be the first step in a longer process of reducing the number of government entities in the state, a process that should slash the number of school districts significantly, as well as the number of municipal governments and eliminate fire districts completely.

There are going to be a lot of angry municipal and school officials as we move forward, but I believe that, in the end, we’ll see tax savings and for some an increase in services.

Hurdles to participation

This move by the Mt. Olive school district, if approved tonight, presages a dangerous trend in public education.

Mount Olive High School students who play sports and some who join clubs will be forced to pay a participation fee next year to make up for budget shortfalls.

The Board of Education must come up with $91,000 in revenue from the fees, and preliminarily announced the fees will be $125 for a student to play an unlimited number of sports and $25 to join nonacademic, nonservice clubs, school board President Mark Werner said at a recent board meeting.

Thus, a student who plays multiple sports and is in multiple clubs would pay $150, the same as a student who plays one sport and is in one club.

“That’s what we’re looking at right now,” Werner said. “However we slice it, we have to come up with $91,000. That’s our mission — $91,000.”

On first blush, this might seem an innovative way to plug a hole in the school district’s budget. And it is difficult to criticize the district for exploring this avenue.

But seeking fees from students raises questions about access to programs, about the openness of participation in public school activities and whether such fees might pose, if not an impediment, then a disincentive to joining clubs or playing sports.

Granted, these activities are extras, but they have become a central part of the high school experience — and they are an important part of the college applicaton process. Colleges not only seek students with solid grades and high test scores, but those who participate in the school culture — in clubs and sports — because they want kids who are well rounded and interested in more than just books.

The fees, therefore, become not only a financial hurdle to high school participation but potentially create a drag on the ability of low- or moderate-income students to get into college.

Time to move on from Abbott

A state judge has ruled that Gov. Jon Corzine’s school funding reforms, which tie aid to students and not districts, are constitutional — a move that experts say could spell the end of special status for many of the state’s urban school districts.

The Record is reporting that Superior Court Judge Peter E. Doyne in Bergen County issued a 280-page opinion today that the state’s

new method of distributing state aid among New Jersey’s 600-plus school districts secures “the thorough and efficient education so desperately needed for the development of our youth.”

The new school funding formula “represents a thoughtful, progressive attempt to assist at-risk children throughout the State of New Jersey, and not only those who by happenstance reside in Abbott districts,” he wrote.

The decision appears sound, though I admit I have yet to read it (280 pages?!?), because it takes into account all students — giving smaller communities with large populations of poor students a leg up that they otherwise would not get.

That was what Gov. Jim Florio had attempted in 1990, when he pushed his massive income and sales tax increases. That plan included what seemed like a radical redistribution of school aid — not only into Trenton and Newark, but into Manville and other working-class districts, as well.

The decision is likely to create a showdown between advocates for urban districts and others with high concentrations of at-risk students, primarily because the state’s educational funding pie is too small, especially when you consider the non-school problems that urban educators face.

Consider: There is a higher concentration of homelessness and hunger in the state’s cities, a larger number of students who do not speak English, more pollution and crime. These may be outside the purview of the schools, but they have their impact in the classroom.

Rather than reducing aid to urban schools, a new formula should be targeted to address these issues and more general educational concerns. Plus, the pot of money available for school aid needs to grow significantly.

While the governor has increased aid to schools over the last two years, the reality is that the total amount the state spends — as opposed to what is raised locally — does not go far enough. If we are going to spread the money around to more districts, we need more money — money, of course, that does not exist at the moment.

The only way to do that is to shift the responsibility for school taxes from local property taxes to the state.

Obama’s school plan offers wrong reforms

American schools need help.

Once among the leaders in educational success, the United States generally falls in the middle of most educational rankings on math, science, graduation rates, etc., putting it behind such economic powers as Estonia, Liechtenstein and Slovenia.

It is a problem that demands attention — and a significant increase in spending.

The Obama administration has made education one of its three priorities (along with health care reform and the environment), including $46.7 billion in its proposed fiscal year 2010 spending plan for schooling, a $500 million increase. The stimulus plan also includes $81.1 billion for education to prevent teacher layoffs and help fund school construction projects, according to press reports.

That is a nice down payment, but doesn’t go nearly far enough to address the disparities that plague our educational system or the difficulty we have in attracting and retaining teachers.

The president, in a speech on Tuesday, reiterated his commitment to education, promising to increase spending on early-childhood schooling and teacher recruitment — which is good news for schools.

At the same time, however, President Obama bought into a dangerous fallacy, one that has been public policy for quite some time and that was enshrined in the failed No Child Left Behind legislation early in the Bush administration.

He said his administration plans to “finally make No Child Left Behind live up to its name by ensuring not only that teachers and principals get the funding that they need, but that the money is tied to results.”

I admit, the proclamation has a nice ring, but it really doesn’t move the reform ball down the field. Rather, it makes clear that the Obama administration is not ready to abandon the high-stakes testing that is at the center of current federal education law.

NCLB was sold to the American public as a way to heighten standards for students and accountability for teachers and administrators. The argument was that American schools were in decline because we no longer expected much from our students or staff.

The legislation required a massive testing regime and tied results to aid, with under performing schools being penalized and the most creative classroom work being replaced by what critics call a “drill and kill” approach to teaching.

Linda Darling-Hammond, an education professor Stanford University, writing an assessment of the law in The Nation magazine in May 2007, said the law “misdefined the problem.”

It assumes that what schools need is more carrots and sticks rather than fundamental changes.

She believes that, to effectively reform the educational system, we need to address “an educational debt that has accumulated over centuries of denied access to education and employment” that has “reinforced by deepening poverty and resource inequalities in schools.” Reform also would encourage creativity, rather than rote learning, and would return teachers and parents to the center of the educational process.

This not only will take money, but a commitment to restructuring schools — especially in a state like New Jersey, where the explosive growth in expensive suburban housing has created a de facto segregation based on race and class, with poor blacks and Latinos centered in the cities and older suburbs.

The newer suburbs, which also have attracted a lot of the corporate growth in recent years, tend to have larger tax bases and a greater ability to fund innovative programs and attract better teachers. City schools, lacking these ratables, are forced to rely on the state and often get by with the basics.

We can do as the president says and institute merit pay for teachers, raise expectations for students, test, test and test some more, but none of this will matter if we are unwilling to pump a significant amount of federal cash into our schools to address the core problems.

More testing

New Jersey schools are among the best and worst in the nation. Affluent districts tend to produce high-performing students, while poor schools produce failure and dejection — a result of massively unequal resource distribution.

How does the state plan to deal with it? More tests.

There is no doubt that tougher standards and higher expectations would help across the board but, as urban schools advocates say, more tests are not likely to produce the results desired.

“Some of our schools are just getting by now,” said LuElla McFadden, president of a parents group in Jersey City. “Now they’re going to add more tests they know the kids can’t pass. It’s going to increase the dropout rate and violence in schools from sheer frustration.”

Is this defeatist? Not necessarily. The reality is that you can’t expect performance to improve just by announcing a test or by saying that standards have been elevated. You have to improve teaching and provide better school environments — things that cost money. If the state wants to improve test scores, it has to find a way to recruit the best teachers to the worst schools and to replace decrepit buildings and improve safety. That is more likely to ge the job done that new tests.