Most of the teachers in any given state work for the public school systems in those states. Therefore most of the money paid to teachers happens in the form of tax dollars raised through property and other local taxes, state taxes and fees (fees are just another form of tax) and our federal income taxes. So the majority of the union dues paid to the teacher’s unions to which teachers must belong as a condition of their employment comes from our tax money.
As taxpayers we are required then to support the teacher’s unions and they in turn use this money to lobby our government. As a labor union they are negotiating on the premise of doing what’s best for their members as any labor union should – but they are doing it at the cost of the education system and the children trapped within it. They are also doing it with public money.
I’ve lately come to really resent sending my children to school. I have no choice – I must educate them according to law. I could send them to a private school but I’ve not found one that meets my educational philosophy. I could home school them but that presents other challenges and denies them certain opportunities as there is sometimes a social stigma attached to home schooling. The balance I’ve struck is to send them to our local school system but to be aware of what they are learning and to supplement and amend the curriculum in our home to meet my personal education requirements.
Then I read articles like this: The Long Reach of Teachers Unions.
The largest political campaign spender in America is not a megacorporation, such as Wal-Mart, Microsoft, or ExxonMobil. It isn’t an industry association, like the American Bankers Association or the National Association of Realtors. It’s not even a labor federation, like the AFL-CIO. If you combine the campaign spending of all those entities it does not match the amount spent by the National Education Association, the public-sector labor union that represents some 2.3 million K–12 public school teachers and nearly a million education support workers (bus drivers, custodians, food service employees), retirees, and college student members. NEA members alone make up more than half of union members working for local governments, by far the most unionized segment of the U.S. economy.
So if you think you don’t spend money on political campaigns – think again. For Massachusetts, the amount spent per teacher on politics is $81.24. Total spending for the year $5.7 million dollars. Millions of dollars spent to advocate for a broken system dedicated to maintaining the status quo.
Look at one of the big ticket items they spent these funds to support:
Two very large donations concerned a noneducation issue on which NEA has been active: health care. The union contributed $450,000 to Health Care for America Now (AFT chipped in another $125,000) and $275,000 to the National Coalition on Health Care (AFT, $10,000). Last year, NEA president Dennis Van Roekel was part of the labor coalition that persuaded the White House to delay the implementation of the “Cadillac” excise tax on health care coverage, but only when it applied to union members.
No wonder the local teacher’s union won’t negotiate health care concessions. They’ve got a few extra years before those unwieldy “Cadillac plans” come into the penalty phase. Once that happens then they will negotiate just enough to avoid the excise tax. And we, the taxpayer, get to pay both bills.
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!
Massachusetts is looking to reapply for education grants provided through President Obama’s “Race to the Top” program. I can’t say getting the grant funding would be a bad thing but I have no confidence that getting the money will result in a net benefit to municipalities. I’m reasonably sure based on the last round of stimulus funding that Massachusetts will cut plenty of other things because stimulus funding will cover it.
Race to the Top is part of the education portion of the ARRA Stimulus that guarantees the children educated under this farce will inherit more debt than ever before imagined. I had thought nothing could be worse than NCLB – sadly our government proves me wrong yet again!
Apparently these stimulus packages are a 21st century version of the New Deal. Our government has decided it can save us through extraordinary debt if they can just word it correctly:
It is an unprecedented effort to jumpstart our economy, create or save millions of jobs, and put a down payment on addressing long-neglected challenges so our country can thrive in the 21st century. The Act is an extraordinary response to a crisis unlike any since the Great Depression, and includes measures to modernize our nation’s infrastructure, enhance energy independence, expand educational opportunities, preserve and improve affordable health care, provide tax relief, and protect those in greatest need.
A down payment on addressing long-neglected challenges that comes with a very large mortgage added to the previous mortgages already on our futures for a current total of $12 trillion.
I didn’t really want to discuss the economy no matter how much it alternately terrifies and infuriates me. I want to discuss Race to the Top and how this will not benefit our students one whit.
First, the President doesn’t understand the concept of having a race with winners and therefore losers. He makes a very impassioned speech about only rewarding the most innovative states with much needed cash – thereby leaving the rest of the states to follow these “trendsetters” and somehow implement the same programs without funding; then he discusses opening opportunity evenly and equitably across the nation. From his remarks at Graham Road Elementary School:
And here’s how Race to the Top works. Last year, we set aside more than $4 billion to improve our schools — one of the largest investments in reform in our nation’s history. But we didn’t just hand this money out to states that wanted it; we challenged them to compete for it. And it’s the competitive nature of this initiative that we believe helps make it so effective. We laid out a few key criteria and said if you meet these tests, we’ll reward you by helping you reform your schools.
(snip)
We’ll open up opportunity — evenly and equitably — across our education system. We’ll develop a culture of innovation and excellence in our public schools. And we’ll reward success, and replicate it across the country. These are some of the principles that drive Race to the Top. These are some of the principles that will drive my forthcoming budget.
So which is it Mr President? Are we giving everyone across our nation the opportunity to earn a top quality education or only those who live in the most competitive districts across our country? Should we all move to Tennessee and Delaware to get our children into a winning system?
Second, I read the reviewer’s comments on the proposal Massachusetts laid out for the Race to the Top grants. Even if Massachusetts succeeds in winning grant money they have indicated to reviewers that it will be spent to: invest in the data systems and technology necessary to support the Pre K -12 teaching and learning system, strengthen and expand educator training and supports for data use, and make state longitudinal data available to researchers through the EDW. (from page 3 of the above linked pdf) Don’t count on textbooks or teachers or innovative programs or technology or tutoring – we will instead receive new data to describe how little our children are actually learning and instruction for our teachers in how to interpret and use that data.
The application submitted by Governor Patrick waxes more eloquently on the matter but at the top of page 13 they cut to the chase and say that all of their achievement “hinges on the development of a robust state data and information infrastructure. Through RTTT we will transform our data systems so that they can efficiently deliver comprehensive, accessible, actionable and timely data to all Massachusetts K-12 educators and key stakeholders; invest in technology to support the preK-12 teaching and learning system and associated assessments an a more effective educator workforce; and strengthen and expand training and supports so that educators can use data effectively to inform instructional decisions.” Considering the amount of time our teachers already spend doing non-instructional tasks I can’t see this additional layer of data entry and evaluation as a bonus to education anywhere. Will we be designing an extra prep period for all of our teachers so they can interpret data daily? I get that data is important for evaluation purposes but we cannot supplant our children’s education with it.
Third, the hoops aren’t always worth jumping through. Massachusetts has spent a lot of time and money working on plans and proposals and in negotiations with the various unions affected by the Race to the Top guidelines. This is grant money with very hefty strings attached over how the money can be used and whether we’ve met the criteria to get the rest of the money. Some states have already given up. Those who haven’t given up are frantically trying to up their scores by pandering to the sections of the application worth the most points instead of truly assessing the educational needs of their districts. I found an interesting evaluation of the assessment system used for Race to the Top here. (that pdf links from here) Massachusetts is examined on page 7 and the writer brings up an interesting point. The “common standards” being adopted by a consortium of states may be lower than our own in state standards – and we were docked points based on the state’s willingness to allow its people to decide whether or not we wanted to lessen our standards to be more in line with the nation. How exactly is dumbing down our curriculum considered education reform?
Finally, I cringe whenever we discuss MCAS and testing and data driven evaluations. We’ve taken to relying too much on two subjects, Math and English, and how the results in these two subjects are portrayed in our MCAS results. We’ve forgotten as a nation (as is evidenced by Race to the Top) that our education is based on more than regurgitating our math facts and answering essay questions based on story snippets. We’ve cut the budgets so far that we’ve eliminated any programs which would give our students the opportunity to stretch their creative learning styles. We’ve gimped them globally by slashing foreign language lessons. We’ve hindered their ability to pursue careers in anything other than Math and English by offering an ever dwindling variety of courses.
Our children need a quality education today. They can’t wait for us to argue over reform and beg for stimulus money that may never come. We need our children to get a quality education today. We can’t shake them in 12 years like an etch a sketch and start their educations over when something better comes along. We need to get out of our communities and speak louder than the politicians and get government out of the education process. Perhaps our legislators need to go back to school to remember what education truly is about?
A few days ago I discussed school choice and why I made the decision to keep my kids here in Haverhill and fight to make the School Department here stronger. In reading today’s news I wanted to followup on some of the items from the other post.
Groveland did not pass the override to provide $350k in funding to the Pentucket Regional School District. I’m not surprised. Parents make up a small fraction of the voter pool. People like to forget that their own education, or their children’s education or their grandchildren’s education was funded by people who did not have children currently in the system either.
I hear a lot around town about the HHS renovation. I hear much also about the lack of funds for a roof at Tilton, flaking paint, poor landscaping, lockers that need painting, and fences that need fixing. Generally I don’t hear about the other town’s problems. I found the comment on the above linked article to be telling: Part of the buzz around Groveland is that they don’t want to spend money on capital school improvements either. “Memo to all those folks who want to build an $8 million addition to the Bagnall School by taxing the Groveland citiziens with a huge override: take a look at Monday’s vote, it won’t pass!” (I quoted Sachemmon – the spelling and grammar are hers)
Now that the override has failed – Merrimac also said no to the override; West Newbury was the only town to support extra taxes – what will the Pentucket Regional School District do? The options are limited and are the same ones we’ve debated in budget meetings here in Haverhill. Pentucket plans to lay off teachers and support staff. Course offerings have been lessened and enrollment numbers are being watched at the elementary level to see if any cuts can be made there. Unfortunately, the upper grade levels will probably feel the greatest loss from these cuts. I find the comment by “Gone Fishin” interesting as the points he makes are ones I hear over and over about Haverhill: Failure abounds in the school’s leadership, the town’s government, the teacher’s union and society as a whole.
While Haverhill’s School Department budget crunch is just beginning – North Andover’s seems to be winding down. When the dust clears they will have lost: “Under the Finance Committee’s proposal, Hottel said School Department layoffs will include a part-time special education teacher, roughly seven classroom aides and one social worker. Hottel said there will be no major cuts to educational programs and no layoffs of classroom teachers under the Finance Committee recommendation. Fee schedules also will remain in place, he said.” Nine jobs lost, no major cuts to educational programs – I have to wonder what that means … major is really determined by those who won’t have programs to go to in the fall, and fee schedules will remain – Is the DESE criticizing North Andover as it does Haverhill for charging fees to students for programs? I guess even affluent towns are feeling the recession!
Methuen’s mayor has decided to turn funding of the a new high school into Methuen’s very own Hale Debt Fiasco. He’s taking the tax increases from building three grammar schools that the people are already paying and extending them out beyond the 2018 end date to some as yet unnamed date. I had to double check the article to make sure they weren’t discussing HHS when they quote Manzi saying: “The chief complaints about the high school are the open concept, outdated science labs, and parts of the building that are not up to code. Failing to fix the building will threaten the school’s accreditation, Manzi warned.” Of course this all hinges on not having budget shortfalls that cost Methuen public safety. Councilors are hearing the city will lay off police officers and firefighters as it deals with budget cuts, “so I don’t know where we’re going to get money to put into the (high school) stabilization fund,” Cronin said. Its like deja vu all over again!
Lastly, lets check the grass in Andover, where a former Superintendent laments about how that town is handling its budget woes. He also mentions the need for a strategic plan for the schools – something we hear about at our own School Committee Meetings. In his call for a strategic plan, Ken Siefert even speaks to the need to conduct an audit! We’ve heard much about audits during the last few School Committee meetings as well.
Life is similar all around the Merrimack Valley; and I’m going to guess that other than the weather, life is similar throughout much of the United States. Certainly we can do better here in Haverhill – I believe in the city even when it doesn’t believe in itself. But do not assume we’re an anomaly of budget woes and school department issues and tax burdens for those items fertilize the lawns of our surrounding towns too!
I believe in health care reform. I believe everyone should have access to medical care – especially the sick people. I believe preventative medicine is an important part of overall good health. I don’t believe in the bill currently headed to President Obama’s desk.
First, the bill lacks reform. So lets be accurate in our naming please. This is health care legislature voted in to make President Obama look like he succeeded where President Clinton left off. This vote is the political version of two little boys on the playground fighting over whose father is the toughest. Nothing about this bill will bring meaningful improvement to anyone’s health care.
Second, I love how they are paying for the legislation:
Third, I don’t know a single person who wants this legislature passed. Voters spoke in MA and supposedly this landmark vote was a warning shot Washington did not heed. When you have the Senate Seat of the most outspoken and fervently Pro Health Care Reform Democrat – Ted Kennedy – up for replacement and the State of Massachusetts votes in a young Republican; the pendulum is shifting!
So we come to what the vote was really about. Can Obama finally get something done? He hasn’t fixed NCLB – I think he might actually have made it worse and I wasn’t sure that was even possible. He certainly hasn’t brought any troops home – I think we have more of them overseas than before; he’s just beefed up forces in Afghanistan instead of Iraq while leaving all the other troops where they were. The Stimulus Packages have done nothing but put us further in debt in this one year span than all of the other presidents combined over the history of the United States. All that stimulates is frustration and desperation. Unemployment is still double digit. This leaves health care. In an attempt to rally support for his Presidency and not make the Democratic Party look ineffective this bill is being rammed through Congress before the November election backlash brings a Republican majority with it. The hope is that all of the good feelings from “getting something done” will erase in the voting public’s minds the betrayal at being ignored in their wishes to not have this bill pass.
If the politicians thought the vote for Obama was historic – wait for November! There’s never been a better time to dust off that voter registration card and submit it and take back our democratic process from the poorly named Democrats!
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.
In a front page article in Friday’s Eagle Tribune the headline reads “Governor Patrick Promises Full School Funding.” In reading the article you soon discover that is wishful thinking.
What the Governor has said is that Chapter 70 Funding will be left uncut, this round, at the $4 billion dollar mark. Sounds great right? He hasn’t promised anything and the house and senate could still make cuts. Too bad they couldn’t tap into some of that un-budgeted cash the State spends every year. Thank you Kamal Jain for giving me new directions to look in to follow the money trails.
If only Chapter 70 funding were the only funding stream for education. The cuts to Circuit Breaker funding are anticipated to be deep and painful and will leave many School Systems struggling even with level funding of Chapter 70 monies.
Level funding is a joke anyway because level funding does not mean you will have level services from year to year. If you fund the teachers at say $10 million in 2009 – their contractual raises and the ever increasing costs in health care and pensions will guarantee that same $10 million in 2010 will not buy as many teachers. So the Governor gets to look good by saying he’s level funding a system when in fact that system still needs to make cuts because those same dollars don’t buy as much. If I just level funded my grocery budget from week to week since 2005 for example – well we would only be able to feed our family for a fraction of the days each week here in 2010.
The paper sums up some of my issues with level funding in this article about the impact of the Governor’s “Promises” and there’s a notation about how the cuts in circuit breaker funding have hurt North Andover. If these cuts are hurting an affluent town like North Andover – imagine how they are decimating an urban district like Haverhill.
Then there is the Stimulus Money that really wasn’t. For Haverhill, once you factored in the cuts made to education funding from all sources, the net stimulus gain for the town was about 10% of the dollars the State meted out. This stimulus funding is a short term burst of cash meant to boost local economies and instead the state used the money to replace funding streams – hardly a stimulus! The stimulus money also came with strings attached as to how it needed to be spent. If those strings kept the towns from spending the money to cover needs created when the cuts happened… no one at the state level cared. They could report that dollars went to your district and that’s where their concern ended.
So thank you Mr Patrick for telling us we’re still not going to get the funding needed to run our towns and schools but hide those facts behind terms like “Level Funding” and “Full Funding” and “Stimulus Money” when in reality its politics as usual. I can only hope Massachusetts’ voting proclivities include ousting our current Governor in November!
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!
Two years ago, if I had received an invitation for an event to meet a political candidate, I would most certainly have rolled my eyes and declined the invitation. Even to meet the President. Really. I absolutely would not have arranged childcare and extended the invitation to others. Nor would I have stayed past the end time of the event – leaving only because I needed to retrieve my children from aforementioned childcare before they were perhaps sold or otherwise disposed.
Much has happened in the intervening time to change my attitude towards politics. Being a candidate for office myself certainly gave me new insights and respect for the work, expense and red tape involved. But what made me decide to run for office? I always voted – in every election since my 18th birthday I have gone to the polls and made some not always educated choices about the candidates listed. But I never felt my vote did much. I’ve also never felt I was choosing a great candidate for the position. I always chose the person I felt would do the least damage while in office. The catalyst for me happened while sitting in the audience during one of the budget meetings hosted by our illustrious School Committee. Apathy. The entire country suffers from an extreme case of apathy. If no one ever breaks this cycle we will go through 2000 more years of the same. I decided I could not simply vote but I needed to be involved. I needed to stop talking about what I hoped my elected officials would accomplish and to start working towards those hopes myself.
But what does this have to do with coffee? Or with Kamal Jain? Well, Kamal Jain is running for Auditor in the State of Massachusetts. He spoke to a small group over coffee Sunday afternoon about Transparency in government spending. He spoke about wasteful spending by the state with what is essentially our money. He also spoke about Total Spending. I learned the number the state bandies around and fights over publicly is the budgeted number. That number is only 55% of the total dollars spent by Beacon Hill. What do they do with the other 45%? This is part of what Kamal Jain is looking to expose as auditor. Total state spending in 2009 was 51.8 Billion dollars – approximately one billion dollars each week – despite being in a recession state spending did not drop from previous years!
After meeting Kamal Jain, I was impressed with his eloquence and knowledge on the issues we discussed. He gave us interesting information and the direction to do our own due diligence. Expect to hear more about this man – and not just from me. Kamal Jain for Auditor – remember this when casting your vote in November 2010.
