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Dr. David Hopson |
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October 16, 2006 As the November elections move ever closer I am again struck by the disconnect between promises made during political campaigns and the needs facing schools and our communities. While I admit that I do not follow each campaign (local, state, or national) closely, and that I get the majority of my information from the traditional media sources (newspapers, weekly magazines, TV news), it doesn’t appear that there are many grounded, well-thought out, and realistic approaches being offered to deal with the myriad problems facing education or the plight of rural towns. As just one example, I haven’t seen or heard anything in the governor’s race in Massachusetts regarding funding regional transportation at the 100% level that is written in law (but—subject to appropriations). As the district begins to put together the fiscal year 2008 budget for town ratification in the spring, we are again faced with the consistent problem of not knowing where state aid for education will fall. Several of our towns, with the backing of the school committee, have advocated changing town meeting dates to June. The reason behind this is that we might have a better idea of where state revenues (state education aid to schools, cherry sheet aid to the towns) will fall before committing to a set level of expenditures. While the state attorney general’s office originally granted some requests for postponing annual town meetings, they have since decided that the law doesn’t permit these changes. Thus we have to ask the legislature and governor to change the law, or do what some towns have done for years—hold the original meeting in May and postpone all financial decisions to June. The true reality is that these ‘stop gap’ measures are only needed because the state can’t determine it’s budget in a timely and appropriate manner so that cities, towns, and regional school districts have ‘real’ information in order to make decisions affecting every citizen, tax rates, and the education process. While we can only partly fathom the difficulty of putting together a state or federal budget, we never hear candidates talk about the necessity for streamlining the process (which would save every citizen angst, anxiety, and potentially money)—only about how the candidates would eliminate waste and provide more money for all. We also hear much about MCAS in Massachusetts and NCLB (No Child Left Behind) at the national level. Again we hear the polar extremes: it doesn’t work, isn’t funded, so should be eliminated, or—in the case of the Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings—renewed with minimum changes because NCLB is 99.9% on target and effective. As we try to balance the needs of students, the desires of parents, and the requirements of having well-rounded students graduate from high school with the reality of balancing a budget and meeting the under-funded mandates of NCLB, something eventually has to give. We see this throughout the country with reductions in Physical Education, Music, the Arts, other elective programs and an increasing emphasis on English Language Arts and Mathematics. We do all this to avoid state and federal sanctions based upon a test given once per year with test results compared to totally different students from prior years, and an overall goal that everyone agrees is impossible. I don’t hear anyone taking a serious look at these issues, using valid data from multiple sources to measure progress, and providing adequate funding to schools to ensure that they have the resources needed to make everything work. In Gateway, as in other districts, we are expected to provide accommodations for students with special needs to take the tests, yet don’t get any additional money to pay for these accommodations, or to provide extra help to students who don’t do well. It’s one thing to set high expectations and expect schools to close the achievement gap between subgroups on students (and most educators agree that we need to do this), and another to expect schools to do this without the additional resources needed to help students overcome their challenges. The bottom line is that the campaign slogans and ideas highlighted by the media seem to have little connection to the day to day problems facing citizens and that after the election very little will be changed. Therefore it’s up to us to work with our elected officials to ensure that the needs of our students, citizens, and communities are not overlooked in the greater scheme and, in Massachusetts, to ensure that adequate resources are provided for communities west of Route 128. ### |
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