Blogwork

Bitter situation in city schools?

Ouch.

In one corner, we have York City School District. They are losing middle and high school students like water through a sieve. Most of it is to charter schools - New Hope Academy has gained several hundred students in just its few years of existence - and some are to York County School of Technology. Untold more are families leaving the city for greener academic pastures elsewhere in the county.

And that led to an announcement, featured in a Dispatch story today, that the administration is strongly considering laying off (via furloughs) dozens of teachers and staff at the secondary level. Considering we’re just a month and a half away from the start of the school year, it’s a drastic step. It’d be a drastic step if they announced this in January. Why this is being considered now and not months ago hasn’t been revealed, but it’ll be a topic of discussion at future board meetings.
The district believes, according to its recent statement, that the loss of about 26 percent of its secondary enrollment in the past five years precludes them from keeping the same size staff.

In the other corner, we have York City Education Association. Its attorney, Clinton Gibbs, said teachers are frustrated with the whole situation. How can the district afford other things, such as expensive building renovations, but not afford teachers, he said.

What further exacerbates the situation is the two sides haven’t finalized a new contract, even though mediation terms were agreed upon in April. Gibbs said the district is “dragging its feet” by trying to go back and get some terms clarified in their favor, in particular trying to make sure the contract isn’t retroactive to last summer. The district’s attorney hasn’t returned phone calls.
So this means teachers have no contract and some of them will lose their jobs. And yet, the district is looking around the county and thinking, as board president Sam Beard put it, it doesn’t make sense for the high school in particular to have such small class sizes when no one else seems to have it that way.

There’s an argument that could be made that the underperforming district could use all the extra staff and small class sizes it could get. But Beard says research shows small class size doesn’t really work at the secondary level; I’ve heard much the same, although I don’t know if it applies to an urban environment.

No one is saying yet which teachers would be furloughed, for how long, and how, exactly, this all works with a union involved. The move would save the district money - if it’s 40 staff members, as Gibbs believes, that’s probably upwards of $1 million or more saved through salary and benefits a year.

But what’s the real cost? That, we will see.

Remembering Tom Foust

Newspaper reporters need sources for stories; sources (sometimes) need us to get the story out.

And so we often try to rely on people who are consistent, available and reliable. Those are the people we go back to, again and again, because they have made themselves into an advocate, into an expert, or into a passionate debater, with any of those qualities making for a very useful source.

York City School Board member Tom Foust, who died at age 63 after a courageous fight with cancer, had all of those qualities.

Tom would have been the first person to say he had his share of enemies in the city, and that’s partly because he wasn’t afraid to say where he stood on a subject, always ready to back it up with his exhaustive research. As board President Samuel Beard put it at Wednesday’s meeting, soon after Tom had died, there was no use getting into a debate with Tom unless the person was ready to defend themselves.

There was no questioning Tom’s commitment. I saw him come to meeting after meeting even when he couldn’t talk because of treatment for cancer in his throat, even when he felt exhausted by it all.

Tom was moved to tears when Dollars for Scholars and several of Tom’s friends held a benefit dinner for him in April, basically a farewell send-off of Mr. Holland’s Opus proportions. I couldn’t make it that night - it was a surprise event so secret even most of the media weren’t aware of it in advance - but in talking to Tom afterward about it, you could tell there was an immense amount of pride there.

In the two-plus years I’ve been covering city schools as the education beat reporter, I’ve gone to more school board meetings than I care to say, and Tom did his part in making those meetings longer than I care to say, always wanting to add juusssssttt one more question.

But, as former board member Barbara Krier told me in remembering Tom’s qualities, it was good that Tom asked the extra question, because he made sure people didn’t get away with anything. He didn’t take a vote without knowing what he was getting into, she said.

And now the city school board will have to figure out how to proceed without one of the district’s biggest champions.

Tom’s funeral will be held at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, July 3, at the Etzweiler Funeral Home, 1111 E. Market St., York, with burial at Greenmount Cemetery. A viewing will be held from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday, July 2, also at Etzweiler. Instead of flowers, his family is asking for donations to Dollars for Scholars or the York Chapter of the American Cancer Society; contact the funeral home for details.

Special ed funding could go up- but where’s the funding?

Special education funding has always been a sore spot for school districts. I hear it all the time at school board meetings, as administrators bemoan a lack of adequate funding for one of the most expensive areas of their budget.

You have to understand, districts are required to provide - for free - any needed services to a special needs student, whether that’s a classroom aide up to a one-to-one assistant at a specialized school across the country. I’ve heard of students who cost near six-figures or even more, per year.

So there has been some palpable enthusiasm by educators, especially at a district such as York City, with its relatively high percentage of special education students, upon hearing about special education funding reform.

The Senate is now considering a bill (HB 704) that would base funding on the number of special-education students they have, as well as on factors such as district poverty level. School districts have been getting special education funding based on the assumption each district has 16 percent of its total enrollment in special education, which sounds ridiculous, considering the percent varies widely by district and means there is over- and under-funding going on left and right.

As noted in the story, a district can’t have its funding decreased as a result of the bill — there’s a measure to prevent that, even if the district has less than 16 percent of students enrolled in special education.

The General Assembly would decide in each year’s budget how much to appropriate for special education, and the new formula would be used to figure out how much districts get.

But here’s the question: If the state says it’s broke and is debating if it can even increase its level of funding for basic education funding, how can it afford giving more money to special education on top of that? There has been no costing out study of this, from what I’ve been told, but if no one is going to receive less and some will receive more, obviously it will mean more money.

Will that come to the detriment of basic education funding? It could be robbing Peter to pay Paul, except the ones who really will feel robbed are taxpayers who will have to make up the deficit.

West Shore not only district considering pay-to-play

A Birdsboro, Pa., school district in Berks County is strongly considering a policy that I suspect would draw pitchforks and torches in parts of York County if introduced locally.
According to the Pottstown Mercury, Daniel Boone School Board is considering this:

“A committee formed to examine the activity fee issue recommended on June 14 to charge $60 for athletics, band and winter guard in the high school and middle school and $10 for extracurricular clubs.”

Often, this is called “pay-to-play,” although in this case, it’s not just sports. West Shore School Board is doing some initial research* on the same topic, but isn’t this far along. (* The article is in our archives)

The reason it’s brought up at all is that some districts don’t feel they can continue to offer a litany of extracurriculars for, essentially, free, considering all the costs that go into it - coaches/advisers, equipment, travel, et. al. Makes sense in theory: You want to participate in something outside the classroom, you pay for it.

But it comes with a lot of issues:

• Charging may go against the principle of a free public education.
• Are extracurriculars, from band to football, part of the learning experience? Or just fun extras?
• Beyond that, would charging prohibit poorer students from participating? If the district supplements it for those students, won’t that negate some of the cost savings wanted in the first place?
• And would parents demand playing time for their less-than-athletic child, for example, if the coach benched them? “I’m not paying $60 for my kid to sit,” etc.
• What about a high school with pay-to-play competing against “free” high schools? That just seems like there would be some kind of inequities.
• And one other point, mentioned in the article: “Superintendent Gary L. Otto said the revenue projection from adopting an activity fee policy is $60,000.” … That’s not that much money in a $50 million budget. But on the other hand, it’s $60,000 that could be used to keep a teacher, for example.

What do you think? Should York County districts consider it as a money-raising venture? Or leave it the way it is?