There’s a crisis in our schools — and the budget’s a
distraction
When City Council votes on the Rochester school budget next
week, odds are it will do what Mayor Bill Johnson wants it to do: give the
district $7 million less than it has asked for.
One reason
is that the city has budget problems of its own. But just as important is the
continuing rancor between the city and the district. City officials don’t trust
the district’s budget process or its numbers. And they’re convinced that the
district wastes money.
Talking to
the two sides is like talking to people from two different cities. Each side is
convinced that it is right. But this drama has played out over and over again,
through successive city administrations, City Councils, superintendents, and
School Boards.
The
conclusion is inescapable: some way must be found to cut through the arguments
and mistrust and unite the two sides, for the sake of the district and its
students, for the sake of the city and its residents, for the sake of Monroe
County and the region.
That will
require a community-wide effort, and it must begin now. There is no greater
challenge facing the Rochester region.
Johnson’s proposed
budget inflicts considerable pain on the school district. His $7 million
combined with the cost of school nurses, which Monroe County has covered in the
past, means the district must cut an additional $11 million from next year’s
budget. Rather than expand programs for its neediest students, the district
will reduce them.
City
officials say that’s the district’s fault, that had district officials budgeted
wisely over the past few years, there would be plenty of money. They return,
repeatedly, to the fact that the district’s expenses have gone up while
enrollment has dropped. And indeed, that’s the case. Enrollment in city schools
since the school year 1999-2000 has gone down by 3218. In that same period, the
budget has increased by more than $120 million.
The
enrollment figures are a bit deceptive, however. For example, about 2000 of the
enrollment decline is due to students enrolled in charter schools, which began
operating in Rochester in 2000. City students who attend charter schools in
Rochester are not included in the district’s enrollment total. But the district
pays the tuition for those students, which exceeds the state aid that the
district gets for them.
The
district also pays for charter-school students’ textbooks. It pays for their
transportation. All of those costs are included
in the district’s budget.
A more
realistic comparison of the district’s enrollment and expenses would include
charter-school enrollment.
It would
also include the 2159 city children enrolled in pre-kindergarten programs,
which began in 1998-99. As with charter schools, those children are not
included in the district’s enrollment figures — but the costs of the pre-k programs are.
With the
inclusion of the children in those two programs, the district’s enrollment
shows a growth, not a decline.
In
addition, in 2001-02 the district began offering full-day kindergarten, which
in most schools previously had been a half-day program. One teacher had taught
two kindergarten classes: one morning, one afternoon. The practical effect of
that change: increasing the number of kindergarten classes and teachers — but
not the enrollment.
The purpose
of both pre-kindergarten and full-day kindergarten is to help prepare the
district’s poorest children for school: to try to compensate for the lack of
language and other skills that children from more affluent, better-educated
families have.
The
district has also faced extraordinary cost increases not under its control.
Like governments throughout the state, it has been hit with major increases in
contributions to employee pension funds. Like every employer, public and
private, it has faced major increases in health-insurance costs: $13.4 million,
59 percent, since 1999-2000. It has had major increases in transportation
costs, in utility costs. All of these increases have been well above the rate
of inflation.
Because of
its poverty rate, the district has a high percentage of children with physical
disabilities, some of whom need intensive assistance in order to attend school.
Some, in fact, need an adult aide with them in the classroom almost constantly.
The need for special assistance — one aide to five children, and in some
cases, one aide dedicated to one child — drives the district’s costs up and
the staff-pupil ratio down.
At the same
time, the district has added new instructional programs, seeking ways to
overcome students’ learning problems. It has added staff and launched programs
to rescue failing students. It has lowered class sizes.
None of these needs
will go away. The district’s costs will increase. And apparently, the
rancor between the district and City Hall won’t go away any time soon either.
City
officials can hardly contain their anger. They are convinced that the district
deliberately messes with its budget, changing its format every year so the
public, and city officials, can’t see what’s going on.
When the district
says that to hire qualified teachers, it must offer salaries competitive with
those in the suburbs, city officials say that teachers are already paid well,
that their salaries are competitive. When district officials say they are
having trouble hiring qualified teachers in math, science, special education,
bilingual education, and foreign languages, city officials say they’re lying.
(“A myth perpetrated by the teachers union,” insisted one official last week.)
An obvious
solution would be to have the district’s budget audited, and compared to those
of suburban districts, by a third party agreeable to district and city
officials. But that probably wouldn’t still the criticism. Clearly, the school
budget has increased dramatically in the past five years, and city officials
are convinced that the district can do what it needs to do on what it has.
The
arguments and the hostility are symptoms of stress on both parties. And that
stress will not be alleviated by tracking down every dollar in the school budget.
The district has made some serious mistakes, and several years ago there was a
serious lack of oversight. But those mistakes were not made out of malice or
personal greed. And if we could undo them, if we could reinvent the past, the
reality of the district would not change.
The reality
is that the district is responsible for educating more than 30,000 children,
most of whom are poor, many of whom are from poorly educated families with
multiple special needs.
The school
district cannot fulfill that responsibility by itself, but the community is
insisting that it do just that. It is important for the district to spend its
money wisely. And it’s important that the community trust that the district is
doing so. But the budget is a distraction from the real challenge.
The real
challenge is the education of the children of the City of Rochester, the hope
of the future of the Community of Monroe and of the region. The burden for
meeting that challenge is on the community. The community, however, is not convinced
of that.
For more
than 30 years, this newspaper has argued that the solution to the district’s
problems is school integration: breaking up the concentration of poverty in the
schools. That solution is light years away. In the meantime, Rochester children
need help.
And so,
this newspaper’s Call to Action.
Nearly 20
years ago, there was another Call to Action. In January 1985 a Rochester
leader, concerned about the low achievement of the city’s poorest children,
initiated a community-wide study of the problem, in a search for solutions. The
man who initiated that study is currently mayor of the City of Rochester.
Then, as
now, the conclusion was obvious: the school district could improve, but the
long-term answer was in broad community action. In March 1986, the task force
that conducted the study issued its report, “A Call to Action,” recommending
specific actions by every segment of the community.
Some
individual businesses and organizations answered the call. And many of the
initiatives the district has embarked on since then — lower class sizes,
extra help for teachers, expanded parent outreach — are mentioned
specifically in that 1986 Call.
But much of
the community has turned its attention away, finding it easier to blame the
school district than to step up to its own responsibility. A prime example: the
county’s cancellation of school-nurse funding. Nurses provide health care, not
education, and there is no logical reason for the school district to pay for
them.
That
shirking of responsibility can no longer continue. It is time to renew the Call
to Action of two decades ago, time for community leaders — preferably leaders
not associated with either the school district or City Hall — to initiate a
new community discussion.
This community
has leaders of conscience, talent, and wisdom. We urge them to step forward
now.
An earlier ‘Call’
Excerpts from the 1986
Call to Action:
There is a
crisis in our community. We are failing our young people, failing to adequately
prepare them to assume their roles, failing to prepare them to cope in the
society we have created.
Students
are graduating from city high schools with little or no job skills or further
education goals. Some graduate practically illiterate. Many more never graduate
at all. There are great costs to this, and greater costs to come if nothing is
done to change the situation. There will be increased expenses for public
assistance, for crime prevention, for drug rehabilitation, for jails and
prisons.
But the
costs in human life and human dignity will be even greater, as more and more of
our young people will be consigned to an unproductive and unfulfilling
existence. As a nation, we recently mourned the loss of seven astronauts. So
should we mourn the loss of so many lives being wasted in our own community
every day.
Be assured:
the problem belongs to all of us — not just to the Board of Education — not
just to the school administrators, principals, and teachers — not just to
parents. The problem belongs to all of us: businesses, unions, social service
agencies, churches and synagogues, governments at all levels, cultural
institutions, our colleges and universities, and the students themselves. All
of us share responsibility for the problem, and all of us can contribute to finding
solutions.
What is
required is a radical adjustment to traditional ways of thinking about the
responsibility for education. We need to come together and address the problem.
We need to bring energy, determination, and boldness with us. We must act out
of a sense of compassion, yes, but also out of a sense of justice, and out of a
sense of enlightened self-interest.
There is
hope in this crisis: it lies in this community’s history of resourcefulness in
solving problems. We can respond. We must respond. We cannot delay. We must
commit the required resources. We must do it now. We call upon our community to
rise to this new challenge.
We call
this community to action.
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This article appears in Jun 16-22, 2004.
