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.