Evergreen State ping
FReepmail sionnsar if you want on or off this ping list.
Ping sionnsar if you see a Washington state related thread.
Posted on 01/30/2006 5:25:09 AM PST by Psycho_Bunny
Budget woes force Seattle board to act
School closures must become a reality by 2007 if Seattle Public Schools is to recover from its ongoing budget woes and improve academic performance, School Board members said Wednesday.
In announcing a six-month schedule for choosing which schools to close or consolidate, board President Brita Butler-Wall said the district "can no longer tolerate" educational inequalities around the city.
Mike Urban / P-I Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Raj Manhas fields reporters' questions at a news conference. With him are School Board members Michael DeBell and Mary Bass. "It's time for us to create a stronger, but smaller, district," she said.
To help get public buy-in, the board will appoint a 14-member citizens advisory committee to make recommendations and hire a consultant to help guide the process. Board members stressed no schools would be closed until fall 2007.
Reaction to the announcement was mixed. Some parents and principals who went through last year's aborted school closure process seemed resigned to the idea this time. Others still questioned whether such a drastic step was necessary.
District officials and an existing advisory committee studying the issue say projected budget shortfalls and declining enrollment make closures unavoidable. The 46,000-student district faces deficits of nearly $15 million in 2006-07 and $25 million the following year.
The district must show taxpayers that their money is being spent wisely, said newly elected board member Michael DeBell, chairman of the board's finance committee.
"Maintaining many half-empty school buildings does not measure up on that score," he said.
The advisory committee, appointed last summer by Superintendent Raj Manhas, recently issued a preliminary report in which it recommended eliminating 1 million to 1.5 million square feet of "excess" space in schools and other district buildings -- roughly equivalent to 15 elementary schools, one middle school and a high school.
Doing so could save the district between $6 million and $10 million a year, the report said.
The board has not yet specified how many schools would need to be closed, or how much money it hopes to save through closures. Those details, as well as what criteria will be used to select schools, are expected to be mapped out by the end of February.
The new committee would be appointed in March, with a series of hearings and community meetings scheduled for spring and early summer. Final recommendations and a board vote are slated for late July.
Closures are a "very emotional and difficult issue," Manhas said Wednesday. He pledged that the process will be different than last spring, when widespread public outrage led him to withdraw his original plan to shutter 10 schools.
"We learned a lot from that," he said.
This time, the district will let members of the citizens committee -- comprising three representatives from four district regions and two co-chairs -- come up with recommendations for closures or consolidations, or even suggest new programs.
"We're asking the community to create that list," Butler-Wall said. "That is 180 degrees from where we were last year."
An outside consultant would be hired to help with the process -- a cost Manhas estimated at between $200,000 and $250,000. The superintendent said he hopes private donations will pick up the tab.
Regardless of who is on the committee or what the final selection criteria are, Principal Barry Dorsey expects his school, Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary, to be on the closure list.
The Central District school was on the proposed closure list last spring, and enrollment has been declining for years. With just over 100 students, King enrollment is well under the 250 minimum the district would like to have at each elementary school.
But Dorsey said his teachers weren't dwelling on the possibility of the school closing. "You continue to have pride in your program, and let the chips fall where they may," he said.
Mike Moore, a community volunteer at King, said the district should look at paring its overhead costs and cutting staff from the central office before it considered closing schools. And he criticized the decision to form a committee and bring in an outside consultant.
"What a waste of time that will be," he said.
Alki Elementary parent Al Boss was more confident in his son's school's chances. Parents actively fought the West Seattle school's closure last year, and this year enrollment increased, he noted.
School quality should be the main consideration, he said, not the building's condition -- one of the categories that helped push Alki onto the first closure list.
The School Board should "look at the places where people are really demonstrating their commitment to public education, and those are the ones they should try to keep," he said.
At Montlake Elementary, where parents angrily protested the school's proposed closure last spring, there was little reaction to the latest announcement, Principal Claudia Allan said.
The announcement that academics will be considered is reassuring, she said, and the board's latest plan seems much more carefully thought out. "As hard as it is, I think it's going to be accepted as a viable solution to a difficult situation."
The board's announcement comes just weeks before the district's Community Advisory Committee on Investing for Educational Excellence is expected to release its final report.
That group, which includes a number of financial experts, was charged with coming up with solutions to the district's budget problems and offering suggestions to improve the quality of classroom education.
North Beach Elementary parent Alicia Edgar said she was surprised the board didn't wait until Feb. 10, when the existing advisory committee's report is due.
Still, it was encouraging to see the board members demonstrating leadership and appearing more united, she said.
Parents will appreciate the opportunity to weigh in before decisions are made, said Edgar, who helped found a districtwide parents group in the wake of the scuttled closure plan.
"It's a horrid thing to have to do, to make these choices," she said. "But I understand the need to do it. I just hope it happens right."
... When all public funding sources are included, the average cost per student for a public school education in Washington was $9,454 in the 2002-03 school year.
The average cost per student in Washington is $9,454. There are 180 school days. That's $52.52 per student, per day.
Assuming there are...20 BPC (Brats Per Class) that's $1,050.00 per class, per day.
$1,050.00 X 180 gives us $189,000.00 per class, per year.
By far, the largest cost is the teachers salary - averaging $45,000 per year in the State ($31.25 per hour...not bad!).
My question (really, I'm not being sarcastic) is where the f*ck is the $144,000 per class, per year going?
What the hell scam is this?
Great post
Look in the area of the School Administrators
I'll bet their books look very interesting
Close em all, and nationwide, not just in Seattle Washington. Any use there ever was in this country for public schools is far in the past.
I didn't read much past the names of the folks running this show--somehow, they struck me as funny: Brita Butler-Wall, board president, , Mike Urban, and Raj Manhas.
Nice work. To answer your question, though, you'd also have to include the school counselors, the school shrink, the umpteen layers of administration and I almost forgot...the school diversity co-ordinator.
Only one diversity co-ordinator? Surely there's a need for two!! Don't forget the self-esteem coach. :-)
Good news! The more public schools that close, the better our society would become. They've essentially become government funded day care in many places.
Visit the Auburn School district's admin office. Looks like something out of Vogue.
Didn't they loose something like $14 million a couple years ago. I mean lose it .... could not explain where the money went.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.