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John's comments on the proposed 2001-02 school budget led to an email exchange with Karen, who asked that we leave her last name off here:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Karen [deleted]" <k[deleted]@earthlink.net>
To: <%20JohnRButcher@attbi.com%20>
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2001 11:46 AM
Subject: sol'sJohn Butcher,
This is in response to your letter to Mark Emblidge, that was posted on the Bellevue web site. Although I do agree that Richmond does spend most of it's money carelessly and there needs to be something done about the red tape. I am concerned that you are not seeing the entire picture.
I don't know if you have children in the public school system, but I do. My children attend William Fox Elementary. And although Fox is a model that the system should copy, there are problems that the schools cannot handle. Children in Richmond, especially from the "projects" and lower economic levels of society, come to school completely unprepared to learn.
Many don't get enough to eat, their parents don't or can't read to them , Most do not get homework help. There are quite a few "crack babies" coming to school now. Many children come from broken homes and have little or no stability in their lives. I know of one child who sleeps at school because she gets no sleep in the homeless shelter she lives in.
Teachers are dealing with all these problems with little or no back up. They are told to raise the test scores. It's difficult if not impossible to raise the test score of a child who is not prepared and has no backup at home to become prepared. Many of these children are not only ill prepared they are discipline problems in the classroom. It's hard to teach a class when you have 3 or 4 problem children in one class.
Now many of these issues are at Fox, but in a smaller percentage than say at Holton or Carver, but they do exist. And Richmond does need the money that is spent. The problem is comparing the money to the outcome of these bogus SOL tests is just wrong. Because it does not take into account what is going on in the schools.
I agree 100% that the money is grossly mismanaged. I tried to call the Head of the school board and was put through to her secretary's assistant. I mean what's up with that? Since when do secretaries need assistants? Also, before we can compare money with test scores the tests need to come more in line with what the children are capable of learning at a particular time. When my son took the sol's in 3rd grade, last year, the city of Richmond school board, determined when a subject needed to be taught, for how long and in what order. They had the 3rd graders in the city learning fractions before they had mastered multiplication and division! It was poorly micromanaged.
I'm not trying to say that the children did poorly because of all the above. There are teachers who should not be teaching, but who is going to take that person's place? Richmond needs to take some of that money and hire new teachers and give the good teachers raises. Plus there are parents who will not take responsibility for their children, who expect the schools to provide "free day care". It's just a real mess!
I know you and I are probably on the same side, wanting to improve the school system. But you did not seem to have the whole story. Schools are not charts and children are not numbers, we need to remember that.
Sincerely, Karen [deleted]
[header deleted]
Karen,
I don't have any kids to speak of but I get to be an irritated taxpayer.
I'd love to argue with you about this some time although I think we largely agree.
Blaming the kids is the system's basic excuse. It is a cop out. Norfolk has very nearly the same percentage of "poor" kids according to the census and is doing greatly better than we are. Think what you will of the SOLs, the Stanford 9 scores tell the same story. That test is nationally normed and it says the state average is improving and Richmond is declining.
Aside from how tough the student population is to deal with, the system is squandering money on things that demonstrably don't work and sustaining a huge, unproductive, growing bureaucracy.
Holton is a paradigm here: A principal who by all reports is first rate, a brand new school, a balanced population of kids, and scores slightly worse than the City average. I'm hoping they will improve but the start is not auspicious.
If you are reading Funky Winkerbean, you know that the First Step is to admit you have a problem. They are not even that far along. They are concealing their failure.
[header deleted]
Dear John,
I appreciate your responding.
Yes, we do agree on major points. And I too am an angry taxpayer. The city is trying to micromanage these sol tests. That's where Richmond is going wrong. They have political "appointees" who are not teachers, or not very good teachers, just those who can brown nose real well, telling teachers who know how to teach, who have gotten good results, how and when to teach certain subject, what should be covered in what amount of time, and then requiring an incredible amount of paper work that would make a sane person go insane!
You are right the bureaucracy in Richmond is unbelievable, and I had no idea how unbelievable until I became involved in the school system through my children. If Richmond would put their money into the students instead of into paper work, maybe we would see improvements in the scores. But until someone has the guts to go into the School board and actually change things, nothing is going to get done.
One thing I don't agree on though, is a balanced population of children at Holton. There is nothing balanced about Holton. They filled it up with a lot of kids from Gilpin Court and Blackwell. Apparently by the end of the year the Blackwell kids will leave, because they are supposed to be getting a new school built, their's was torn down to build a new one. Still, a lot of promises were made regarding the Holton zone that were later changed. (Since when is Gilpin Court part of our neighborhood) They promised a neighborhood school, but we haven't got one in Holton.
My son was already in Fox and I did not trust the school board to follow through on their promises, nor did I trust the principal there at the school. (met her once and was not impressed) Luckily I followed my instincts and keep my son at Fox, and it was a good thing. Most of the children in the neighborhood who wanted to give Holton a try came "running back" to Fox or Mumford within a month of school starting. The discipline problems in that school are unbeliveable. Maybe within a year or two this school will be up to Fox and Mumford.
Yes, it is a very nice building, but a building does not make a school it's what's inside that makes a school. Holton has a better than most chance of becoming a great school, but the principal is leaving/retiring (she knew she would before she took the job) and who replaces her will determine how the school does. But as long as the PTA is strong within the school it has a great chance of succeeding.
Sincerely, Karen [deleted]
[header deleted]
Karen,
My sister, the Brat, teaches secondary science education at Radford so she is up and down I-81. She points out the good, the bad, and the ugly high schools. All of them serve basically the same clientele. The reason for the (large) differences in performance is the principals, she says. I expect she is right.
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