Such is the strategy behind the elimination of “encore” teacher Arthur Bakopolus. After searching far and wide for a teacher capable of teaching a wide variety of instruments who was willing to work part time (read: without benefits) for the Haverhill Public Schools in order to cobble together the barest of feeder programs in the middle schools – the position doesn’t last past its pilot year.
I learned of this cut and others from this article in the Haverhill Gazette. I hope the School Committee and the administration and our citizens remember this cut when no new children are looking to join the Haverhill High School Marching Band. Of course, we haven’t had a band in years – so what’s one more year? Haverhill’s lack of a band is just one more mark against an already struggling system.
I hope the parents who purchased instruments for their children to take lessons with Mr Bakopulos saved their receipts or can find another place for their children to take lessons.
Other cuts and fee changes listed in the article were:
“eight special education aides and four high school teachers in the areas of art, science, foreign language and language arts.
An adjustment counselor’s position was left unfilled.
Another 109 teachers who received layoff notices in the spring have been called back to work this fall, said interim Superintendent James Scully.
At Haverhill High School, students are going to be asked to pay a fee to participate in school clubs, including yearbook, drama and band. The fees will cover the stipends for teachers to act as advisers to the programs. Stipends range from $1,500 to $4,000, said Kara Kosmes, assistant superintendent for finance and operations.”
I do fear that by the time my children reach Haverhill High School there will be nothing left.
Not with a bang but with a vote. A vote that ensures none of the students in the Haverhill Public Schools will get a quality education. A vote for a budget that on the surface looks to preserve the arts and the variety of classes currently at HHS but underneath has so decimated the programs that is really isn’t worth offering them at all.
We all have in our minds what a music class looks like. I remember my elementary school music classes very well. I remember singing endless songs based on the seasons. I remember tapping the triangle in time to the teacher’s baton, running scales on a xylophone, desperately trying to blow more than buzzing out of a recorder and finally mastering one small piece of Yankee Doodle on the piano. Did I become a world class musician? No. But I did learn a lot from my music classes. These classes also provided variety and relief in a very long day of sitting at a desk attempting to absorb and regurgitate all the lessons provided each day.
Again I think of my art classes and I remember the budget hitting art particularly hard when I was a child. Music was somewhat protected by the fact that I could bang a drum or play the piano or sing without consuming the instruments we used. Art cannot be created without consumption of paper, paint, crayons, markers, charcoals, pastels, pencils, cardboard, glue, feathers, buttons, cotton balls, and a million other things a child might imagine as medium for expression. I would never be exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art but I did make it into many art shows at the Westgate Mall and once I was fortunate enough to perform on stage at the Fuller Craft Museum. I also have a book as a permanent reminder of two wonderful weeks spent working with people from the Fuller Museum – a book where the poems and drawings of all of my classmates were published.
Now I want to look at the current offerings for Art and Music in Haverhill. As I said in public comment on May 20th:
As much as I favor the encore programs as important in providing real world application for the skills we require our students to master in math, science and language I have noticed that while technically we still have all of the offerings of gym, art and music at the elementary level the courses are cut so drastically that I don’t understand why we kept them at all.
For example if one looks on page two of the budget the fy11 request for art supplies and divide those dollar amounts by the total children in the enrollment projection this means we spend per child in elementary $4.10, in middle school $2.50 and at the high school $5.98 for an entire year of art supplies. What kind of art are they doing for under $6 a year?
I challenge everyone reading this to take a walk past the art supplies when next they are in Target or Staples or AC Moore or wherever you might shop. I challenge you to find $6.00 worth of supplies that will allow a child to create art for an entire school year. Using the 2010-2011 calendar and the five day schedule with art on a Wednesday for the purpose of my math, each student would have art 37 times over the year. This means that for an elementary school child every class the teacher has 11 cents to spend on that child. For a middle school child they have 6 and 1/2 cents. And for our high school students who could very well be working on a portfolio to show colleges there is a whopping 16 cents in supplies available each class.
Now one could argue that these are “just the encore programs” and surely the funding streams for the core subjects are more solid. One could not be more wrong.
Take page 12 – the Foreign Language section – and check the numbers. Since Foreign Language is only offered at Haverhill High School, and not all students will take 4 years of a Foreign Language; I am going to assume half of the students at HHS are currently looking to take these classes. The 900 students would then divide the supplies and textbooks totals to get $1.89 and $15 respectively. Adding to this the $1.13 in AV supplies per student and the total supply expense to teach students a second language at the high school level is $18.02 per child for the year.
Examining Math on page 21 we get the following: For Math at HHS (where all 1800 students take math for four years) we get these lackluster numbers. For supplies they’ve budgeted $10.04 per student and for textbooks $11.11 per student. I’m assuming the AP students purchase their own textbooks and from what I remember of buying my own AP Physics books and years of college texts – Math and Science books are the most expensive texts out there.
Lastly, I want to examine Science on page 29. We find the science supplies and the science textbooks budgeted at $15,171 and $5,500 respectively. From what I understand from the Massachusetts DOE materials, science is a core subject everyone needs to take 3 years of a lab based science. Assuming the 1800 kids at Haverhill High School are distributed evenly over the four grades this means we have about 450 students in each grade. So 1,350 students are taking a lab based science at any one time with $11.23 spent in materials per child for the full year. I’m not sure what lab based sciences are able to function on that kind of supply fee ( frogs go for about $4 each!) and there aren’t a lot of textbooks to be purchased for $4.07 per student.
Again I implore the members of the School Committee to harness the energy of parents who are willing to work to help our students. Give us direction and leadership. Send us to Beacon Hill. Present information clearly and honestly. Don’t give us any more pithy rhetoric about doing more with less in this economy. Stop being politicians and start being people, citizens, parents, leaders!
I’ve said time and again that when Zero Tolerance is used Zero Thought is applied. NCLB is the Education version of Zero Tolerance. Neither of these policies make sense on their own merits and when combined as they are within our schools the results are disastrous.
For example: I understand and support the HHS policy banning cell phone usage in school. There is far too much distraction and opportunity for cheating to allow phones to be used. I also hope that should an incident arise where a child walks out of the school bathroom sobbing hysterically with a cellphone in hand because she’s just received news that someone in her family is in some kind of peril – that day the phone usage by that student would be forgotten in the wave of support she would receive in dealing with her crisis.
What I can’t understand or support is any policy which negates the ability of those in charge of enforcement to make a judgment call regarding the situation before them nor can I abide by those who hide behind the policy when making poor decisions. Was it truly necessary to have a 12 year old girl taken from school in handcuffs because she wrote on a desk? What happened to the days of detention and having the offender wash all the desks?
Of course those who make the policy on a national level do so as a knee jerk reaction to widely publicized incidents instead of actual data! “The truth is that there is no comprehensive, mandatory federal school crime reporting and tracking of actual school crime incidents for K-12 schools. Federal school crime and violence data consists primarily of a hodgepodge collection of over a half-dozen academic surveys and research studies. This data is often mistakenly perceived by policymakers, the media, and others as a reflection of the number of actual crime and violence incidents, and as credible trend indicators of school crime and violence occurring in our schools.” So why should we expect our local policy makers to act differently? This is mirrored by the recent actions of the local School Committee in making immediate changes in their transportation policy in response to one incident which made the local TV news despite the repeated success of their previous policy on a daily basis.
Then I read this article about the relationship between the Zero Tolerance legislation and the NCLB legislation and the combined effects on our students. You’re going to want some time before you open that link as the pdf is 56 pages. The pdf report made, much more eloquently than I ever would, many of the points I’ve tried to discuss since I’ve been learning about our education system. Here is one such point: “Rather than viewing schools as places where young people should be nurtured, supported and developed to their full potential, zero tolerance treats students as adversaries or threats to be suppressed or even discarded in the quest for good schools. High-stakes testing regards our youth as products to be tested, measured and made more uniform. Each of these policies has too often been inappropriately substituted for meaningful education reform.”
As a society, we have allowed our fear to overwhelm us. Our schools are slowly turning into miniature prison like environments complete with security cameras and metal detectors and we are expecting our children to respond positively to this! Then we add more rigorous and more frequent standardized testing with ever higher penalties for failure for both the student and the school and we expect our children to respond positively to this as well!
Again from the pdf report: “The impact of high-stakes testing on the classroom has been well-documented. Test-driven reforms have had a significant narrowing effect on school curricula, leading to untested subjects like science, social studies, art and physical education being excluded or de-emphasized. Because so much is riding on the outcome of standardized tests, meaningful instruction that supports the development of higher order skills like critical thinking is suffocated and often replaced by “drill and kill” techniques, rote memorization exercises and teaching to the test.” We’ve seen this locally with the budget discussions where the “encore” programs (Gym, Art and Music) are reduced and Social Studies textbooks are pushed to the bottom of the priority list every year because “Social Studies is not yet on the test.”
When you thrust groups of students into an environment which gets more confining and allows less interaction and expression and then bore them with curriculum which has taken the discovery enthusiasm out of learning you are setting students up for failure. Look at private sector employment – think of the “water cooler” moments where adults are allowed to get up and stretch and socialize. Consider how much of one’s day involves taking a minute for a personal email or checking out a favorite blog or shopping site or facebook. Now look at a student’s day and think about how cooped up and stir crazy our children must feel with less opportunity for those “water cooler” moments like recess or art or gym in addition to the immense pressure of grades and testing. Imagine if at the end of every week your boss administered a two hour exam to determine if you were going to get the paycheck you worked all week for!
And how has all of this impacted graduation rates? Have we achieved increased proficiency? Are we really doing right by our students? No. Graduation rates are falling and more people are choosing to obtain a GED instead of a High School Diploma. Again from the pdf report with additional links: “recently-released data show that the nation’s graduation rate in 2006 – 69% - was the lowest it has been since before NCLB was passed. Of particular concern is that the rates for Black and Latino students – 51% and 55%, respectively – dropped significantly from 2005 to 2006. Additionally, in 2008, the number of persons taking the GED test was at its highest level since before NCLB.” Can we please stop legislating our children’s education into the abyss and enact some education reform that is perhaps actual reform and includes actual education?
I spent Friday evening at the Golden Hill Talent show and really want to thank the kids who took their acts to the stage and gave it their all. We have some wonderfully talented students over at Golden Hill! Go Eagles.
The acts were as varied as the students. Kids from k-4 performed in the show. They sang, danced hip hop, ballet, jazz, and even did some break dancing. They did magic, karate, acted out skits, played guitar, piano and recorder. They told jokes and even broke boards.
Ticket sales and the bake sale were to raise money for the music programs run by Mrs Chipman. With the cuts to all of our encore programs city wide this local support is the lifeblood that sustains the programs which bring much joy to our students. I was overjoyed to see so many people come out on such a cold night and cheer for our students and open their wallets to support our students and our school.
I even fired up the oven for a bit to support their bake sale. Its been a while since I’ve gotten to bake pretty things for a good cause and I’ve missed it greatly. If you bought something wrapped in valentine hearts I hope you found it tasty.
Listening to the last meeting of the School Committee I was frustrated by Mr Magliocchetti’s need for us to rehash all that was awful about last years budget discussions. As the discussion went on I began to wonder why so much focus on an item in the budget that is relatively cheap. $3 million sounds like a lot of money to me but only represents 5% of the School Department’s overall yearly budget.
Lets think about that for a moment. We have 39 teachers who teach these three subjects. The bulk of the $3 million goes towards their salaries and health benefits. Each teacher makes approximately $65,000 which for someone with a secondary degree and years of experience and the yearly training required to keep up with current certifications in MA is hardly exorbitant. The $9800 in benefit costs could be lessened should joining the GIC work the way everyone promises but certainly not eliminated.
Now I want to look at the number that has me flabbergasted. $82,018. That $82,018 represents the budget for the supplies for those 39 teachers to run classes for the 7,500 kids in the Haverhill Public School System. Doing the math – that represents $11 per child for supplies for gym, art AND music.
This is why parents across the city attend talent shows to raise money to buy instruments. Why parents pack backpacks full of extra glue sticks, crayons, scissors, paper, stickers, yarn, markers, buttons, jump ropes, tissues, and all the other little things the kids need to complete their projects. Why we bake brownies, cookies, cupcakes and whoopie pies for bake sales. Why we then manage the bake sales while our children perform. Why we sit in the cold bleachers watching games and spending money on tickets for entry and raffle tickets for items we don’t need or even want.
I find it amazing that anything gets done at all for $11 per child per year. If we’re looking for places to save money this well has run dry. And those 39 teachers? Sounds like a lot of teachers doesn’t it? I’m sure some people are thinking that we can’t possibly need all 39 of them. They teach 3 subjects between them. If we divide the subject matter up 13 art and 13 music and 13 gym teachers – then each teacher is responsible for 580 children. At the average class size of 28 kids per class they would teach 21 classes of students. Since we use a six day rotation where children in elementary and middle school get each encore class twice each rotation so by those horrid estimates the elementary and middle school encore teachers average seven sessions during each six hour school day. Is this the best way to deliver these services to our children? Absolutely not. How can any child receive the fine arts in twice weekly sessions for less than an hour each session with a whopping $11 per year in materials? While I recognize the economy means we will not get the funding to give children the instruction they deserve – I think the public and the members of our school committee need to understand the amazing value provided by our encore teachers.
I went to the School Committee Meeting cautiously optimistic. The meeting started wonderfully; Tilton School Principal, Mary Beth Maranto, announced a grant from Cabot Corporation for $10,000 in science materials for the school. The Employees of Cabot also held a crayon drive and donated boxes of crayons, markers and pencils to the children. Thank you people of Cabot Corporation – I had to Google the company when I returned home as I always equate the brand name of Cabot with cheese!
The donation was met with applause and the usual pandering by the members of the committee to the organization. I realize everyone is appreciative of these gifts to our children but perhaps the School Committee President can speak on behalf of all of the members of the committee and say thank you instead of each individual member speaking for 5 minutes and making the meetings unnecessarily long.
Moving forward with the agenda, School Committee President Scott Wood stepped down as president and the committee elected Shaun Toohey to replace him. Mr. Toohey’s first act as president was to preside over the election of his Vice President, Joeseph Bevilacqua. I must admit to cringing every time Mr. Magliocchetti referred to Mr. Bevilacqua as “Joey.”
Right about here the meeting turned less into a School Committee Meeting and more into the Paul Magliocchetti Show. The paper has lauded him as an instrument of reason and change within the School Committee but I do not believe this to be true. Let us look at the six items he placed on the agenda for this meeting:
1) Budget Breakdown. Mr. Magliocchetti requested a “brief” breakdown of funding from the City, State, Federal and Private sources by percentage. Nothing about the funding of schools is brief which he could have learned at the Parent Academy Presentation: How Schools are Funded. He could also have met with Dr Buchanan and Kara Kosmes to receive an in depth education on this matter. Having it as an agenda item served only to make him look busier.
2) Improvement of District Student Achievement. Again this is not something that can be briefly summarized. Perhaps in his research he could have attended some of the meetings where this issue has been beaten to death? The Superintendant had a meeting with his Principals to discuss this issue at Mr. Magliocchetti’s request – perhaps he could have attended that meeting instead of asking all of the Principals to come out yet again to rehash the discussion.
3) Status Report on Athletic Program at HHS by Garin Veris. I could have given Ms Danehy’s report about the goals Mr. Veris has for our Athletics Department. Indeed I mentioned many of the items in my Meet the Administrator: Garin Veris post just days ago! Perhaps in his zeal to become as up to date as possible on issues facing the School Committee, Mr. Magliocchetti could have attended the sub committee meeting himself? These meetings are posted and open to the public!
4) Superintendant’s Plan for Coordination of District-wide Middle and High School Athletic Program. I don’t see why number 4 is separated out from number three. I have to assume that Dr Buchanan is working with Garin Veris on a regular basis to ensure that both men are on the same page going forward with the plan to involve the HHS athletes and coaches at our Middle Schools to spur interest in our many athletic offerings.
5) Superintendant’s Plan for Viable District Band Program. Yes, we need a marching band. Many people equate our lack of a marching band with a lack of a music program in general. We have a Jazz Band. Unfortunately the children in Haverhill don’t want to play the clarinet or the flute – they want to play the drums and the guitar. They also prefer Jazz over standard marching band fare. We need someone to get these kids excited and interested in playing for the marching band. I understand this is an important issue and an embarrassing one. I too want to see it rectified. Who will the charismatic leader who resurrects the band be?
6) Report from the Superintendant on District Class Sizes. Why again is this a separate line item? Could we not have batched this up with number 2 earlier than mid meeting? I know the class size data is readily available from the administration and has been provided at many prior meetings. For someone looking to “hit the ground running” maybe he should have run over to City Hall and picked up a copy. The class size debate held much of the 2009-2010 budgeting discussion as we listened to the impact of cuts on class sizes and many trade offs were made with programs on one side of the seesaw and class size on the other. I am concerned with some comments about if we did lower class size we would not have physical classroom space for the extra classes. Many of our schools are full!
Now that we have the tutorial portion of the meeting out of the way I would like to address a couple of other issues. The School Department is looking to have the SPED portion of the budget audited by an independent company. According to the company: If we do not save you money you do not have to pay! I look forward to the results of this but fear we won’t save as much as is expected due to the increasing number of unfunded mandates and decreasing reimbursement funding.
The Textbook Project is a wonderful resource for our students. I am thankful to the gentleman who donated $20,000 in memory of his late wife. I am thankful to everyone who donates even $1 to this worthy cause. I doubt any of them want their money to pay interest fees. Mr. Bevilacqua likes to expound about how his idea to bond textbooks was fiscally responsible for the taxpayers here in Haverhill. I need to question how incurring unnecessary finance charges is fiscally responsible for the taxpayers. I also need to question how for textbooks Mr. Bevilacqua feels bonds are appropriate and yet later in the budget portion of the meeting he demands stricter budgeting and “living within our means.” Can we please support Dr Buchanan’s plan to use this money for the $135k in math textbooks the department needs to purchase next year? Can we also appreciate that the donations recently received have placed the value of the Textbook Project account significantly higher than it usually is and that no one is hiding funding in the Textbook Project Account? May we also please note that $75,000 is approximately $10 per child currently in the HPS and that $10 will not buy a book for anyone? I was saddened to hear that the $20,000 donation would only purchase approximately 300 books!
The next item up for discussion is that items do get sent to Sub Committee to die. And the School Committee did indeed drop the ball on having sent the Janitorial issue to subcommittee and then having nothing happen. Considering one of the members of the sub committee never learned he was on the committee I am not surprised. Of course if the minutes of the meeting had been properly reviewed by the member in question perhaps he could have seen he was elected to a sub committee and followed up properly. Much like students missing a day of school have to make up missed work – members missing a meeting must also catch up! This resulted in a long talk about policy which I will not rehash here. You can thank me later.
Dr Buchanan announced Haverhill’s submission to be considered for the Race to the Top initiative and everyone thanked the Union for its support of this program. Apparently other cities are unable to participate because their Teacher’s Union would not sign the paperwork. This is an opportunity for a large influx of money and resources to come to our district for our students. We are currently a level 3 district and I am ashamed that Mr. Toohey needed to ask this question of Dr Buchanan at the meeting. I mentioned this lack in knowledge to Mr. Toohey as we were leaving and he cited a lack of communication. Communication is a two way street and I have a difficult time believing that as a parent I have greater access to information about our school district than a member of our School Committee.
In closing, I would like to thank Mayor Fiorentini for reminding us that while we do focus a lot on the cuts and on the programs we wish we could have – we need to spend more time on the great programs and achievements we do have. To that end I encourage everyone to attend the upcoming Parent Academy: Enrichment Activities for Students and see for yourselves some of the great programs available in our schools today.
Have a great weekend!
At the December 10th School Committee Meeting we had some long awaited good news. The Band Parents Association task-force found the funding for a before and after school Instrument Program for Haverhill Middle School Students. They also presented the School Department with a very large yellow check for $3000 to jump start the program. I applaud these parents for their efforts. I especially liked how they rose up and met the challenge before them. One of the presenters spoke about the initial meeting they had with Dr Buchanan. Many parents were unhappy and questioned the Superintendent’s decision to cut the Instrumental Program in the Middle Schools. His response was simple – the cuts have been made; now find a way to work around them. They did!
I went to watch my daughter sing in her Holiday Concert at Golden Hill on Tuesday, December 8th. The third graders put on a country and western themed Christmas performance after the Chorus, Maniac Mallets, and Bell Choir treated us to samplings of their works. I enjoyed listening to the kids and there were plenty of parents in attendance. During the between act breaks Mrs Chipman was our announcer. She took this time to explain to parents how the music programs were “axed” and that she needed everyone’s support when they “axe” more this year. She also stated that instrumental instruction was “axed” and that she didn’t know if it would ever be brought back. Apparently she hasn’t been informed about the new Instrumental Program starting in 2010. I am puzzled as to how Mrs Chipman, who is deeply involved in the music programs offered at Elementary Schools around our city, and who runs the Maniac Mallet Program, Chorus and Bell Choir at Golden Hill Elementary could have heard nothing of the return of the Middle School Instrumental Program.
There is so much to be angry with about the current budget constraints… lets focus our energies on supporting the good things that are happening or fighting for things we desperately need… not on complaining about a program that is currently being restored!
At the forum on September 30th one of the questions posed to the candidates was: Sports Fees have reached the level where they have become a barrier to some students participating. Would you vote to reduce them? Why or Why Not?
The question is silly to me, no one wants sport fees. No one on the current School Committee wants sports fees. No one in the Athletic Department wants sports fees. In a Utopian society there would be no sports fees. You can vote to reduce them but where does the money come from? Do we fire a teacher? Incur a lawsuit because a Sped mandate is ignored? A better question would have been: In light of the economy requiring the Athletic Department to charge sports fees how would you help students overcome this hurdle to expand their participation in sports. I found the candidate responses disheartening.
Mr Deroche doesn’t want sports fees because he didn’t have to pay any when he played sports in High School. There were a lot of things that were different when we were in High School. That’s not a basis for how things need to be done today, in today’s economy and reflecting today’s needs.
Mr Sierpina wishes there were a split between what the student pays and what the school pays. This split already exists. In sitting at the budget meetings I listened to former Athletic Director Peter Shanahan discuss how he needed to use the sports fees to close the gap in his budget between what it costs to run the athletics program and what he receives in dollars from the School Department.
Ms Hetel wants the fees to be affordable. She sited a young man who complained about paying $800 to play hockey. That $800 is misleading. Hockey is the most expensive sport to play that is available for our students but the maximum in sports fees he could pay for that sport is $525 – expensive but far less than the $800 stated. Individual sport fees for sports that require busing are $275 with an additional $250 possible for hockey because of the exorbitant cost of rink fees. The city charges the school department a reduced rate for ice time. I’m sure that young man mentioned above has had to purchase equipment for himself along the way but the equipment is then his to keep.
Sports fees are also reduced or eliminated for students who qualify. There is a form available on the HHS website and I am sure they have print forms as well. The various booster clubs host fundraisers already to reduce sports fees for the students. A concert over the summer at Haverhill Stadium is just one recent example of the community working for our students.
A comment was made about students who play multiple sports. There is a per child max sports fee for the year of $600 and a per family max of $800. This is explained on the parent permission form all students must have completed before they can play any sport.
We talk a lot about sports fees and how unfair they are but the reality is playing any sport is expensive. When you factor in maintenance of the playing area, equipment, uniforms, coaches and busing the price tag rises quickly. What I’ve often wondered is why it took so long to institute these fees in the first place! We forget that every extracurricular activity the students undertake costs money. Band kids have been paying fees for years. They own or rent their instruments at their own expense, band also requires uniforms and travel expenses. Being a member of the National Honor Society requires dues be paid. Theatre students scour yard sales and thrift shops to make their own costumes and props. Unfortunately these students are often overlooked because society considers sports a right of passage for young people but other extracurricular activities as a privilege. Sports fees are merely leveling the playing field of financial burden.
