KC closing half its schools--wow

[oldandslow]

This may need to go into DC...

still, I think this is an amazing and disturbing thing to happen.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/03/11/mis...html?hpt=T1CNN) -- The superintendent calls it the "Right-Size" plan," but many Kansas City, Missouri, residents say it's plain wrong.

Superintendent John Covington called for the closing or consolidation of almost half of the city's public schools. A divided Kansas City school board voted Wednesday to approve the downsizing.

A packed room of people watched the board make its historic move after weeks of debate and years of declining enrollment. Some parents voiced their anger, while some students cried.

"I have an 8-year-old and a 6-year-old that will be going to school with 12th graders. I find that very inappropriate. I don't feel my children will be safe," Deneicia Williams told CNN affiliate KSHB-TV.

"I feel like I have nothing, I have no high school legacy. I feel like I have nothing, nothing to go back to," said Prince Jones, a senior, who will be part of the final graduating class at Westport High School.

Covington proposed the "Right-Size" plan arguing that the financial future of the entire school district was at stake. The plan shutters 28 of Kansas City's 61 public schools, cuts 700 jobs and saves $50 million to help reduce a burgeoning deficit.

Some called Kansas City's measures draconian but school districts across America, hit hard by budget cuts, have been struggling to make ends meet.

They have had to make tough choices between closures, program cuts, bus route cancellations and layoffs of teachers and staff. Schools in at least 17 states have opted for four-day weeks.

Covington said the closures were the first phase of "right-sizing" a district where enrollments have plummeted from over 35,000 in the 1999-2000 school year to about 17,000 in 2009-10.

"Closing schools is hard - and it is tough on the community," Covington said recently in remarks posted on the superintendent's Web site.

"Closing schools and making the remaining schools much stronger academically is unquestionably the right thing to do for kids," he said. "Keeping all of the schools open with too few children in them is draining the resources we need to improve the education of all students."

But four of the nine board members disagreed with Covington.

"I deserve the right to make a rational decision based on facts, and we were never given facts about student achievement," Cokethea Hill, who voted against the closings, told KHSB.

Some members of the public showed up Wednesday to air their last-minute appeals.

"What I'm asking you today to do is to give our children justice," said Ron Hunt, a community activist.

Others worried that school closures would lead to deterioration of communities and drive residents out of the district.

"The blighting of the urban core is scandalous and shameful," said Sharon Sanders Brooks.

Covington is slated to discuss the school closings at a news conference Thursday morning.

[Titty Meat]

Originally Posted by Dartgod

So they were supposed to spend more money on the schools?

The city should have managed it's funds better.

[patteeu]

Originally Posted by billay

The city should have managed it's funds better.

The city and the school district are two different entities even though they share the trait of incompetence.

[Dartgod]

Originally Posted by billay

The city should have managed it's funds better.

I assume you mean the school district. You know, the ones who mismanaged billions of dollars since the mid 80's?

[Titty Meat]

Originally Posted by Dartgod

I assume you mean the school district. You know, the ones who mismanaged billions of dollars since the mid 80's?

Yes the school distrct but also the city as well. It's done a poor job at investing in it's infrastructure.

[patteeu]

Originally Posted by billay

Yes the school distrct but also the city as well. It's done a poor job at investing in it's infrastructure.

So what was funny about the time you criticized the city for it's involvement in the P&L while the school district was crumbling, again?

[Titty Meat]

Originally Posted by patteeu

So what was funny about the time you criticized the city for it's involvement in the P&L while the school district was crumbling, again?

Really? Ths isn't hard to figure out at all.

The city is falling apart instead of fixing communities they build a new bar distrct (even though it wasn't needed) to attract douchebags and lose money when they could have spent that money to fix communities around Kansas City. If the community is broken how is the school going to succeed?

[13and3]

Originally Posted by patteeu

The city and the school district are two different entities even though they share the trait of incompetence.

Totally, Lmao

[Dartgod]

Originally Posted by Donger

So, back in the 80s, they were able to afford the best teachers? If that is the case, what happened?

From the article that NewPhin linked:

Before the desegregation plan, the KCMSD could always argue that for more than 30 years it had not had the money to offer high enough salaries to attract a first-class teaching staff. But even after the desegregation money started rolling in, the district still didn't do anything to upgrade instructional personnel. It was less traumatic to concentrate on what Benson called the "easy expensive" things (new buildings, new equipment, busing plans) than to tackle the "difficult inexpensive" things that really make a difference in children's lives--appointing qualified principals, supervising instructional practices, developing a curriculum, providing incentives, hiring good teachers, and firing bad ones.

The result, education activist and gadfly Clinton Adams maintained, was that 50 percent or more of the teachers in the district were "not focused, rather vacuous, totally devoid of intellectual capacity, ill suited for the mission at hand."Benson, more tactful, argued that only 20 percent of the teachers were "totally incompetent" and that another 20 percent could be brought up to speed with retraining.

The biggest problem faced by KCMSD superintendents was that they didn't have a free hand when it came to personnel decisions. In Kansas City the two largest employers of middle-class blacks were the post office and the school district. Just the rumor of a dismissal sent tremors through the entire black community--there was no other place to go; the community needed the jobs. At the same time, school district employees were the mainstay of the black churches. (Kansas City mayor Emanuel Cleaver, a Methodist minister, had 200 teachers in his parish.)The black preachers closely monitored the district's hiring and promotion practices, with the result that the district essentially couldn't fire anyone.

Since it could do nothing about inadequate teachers, the district sidestepped the matter by simply raising everyone's (including cafeteria workers' and janitors') salary 40 percent.But that didn't so much attract better teachers as convince poor teachers to stick with the district as long as they could because they were getting salaries they couldn't get anywhere else.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-298.html

[teedubya]

Good thing Congress bailed out the banks... and not the public education system... you know... the future of America? Yeah, **** them. Go banks!!

[kchero]

Originally Posted by Valiant

Sorry those idiots need to get over it.. The schools were half capacity of what they were built for. They need to be consolidated and should have been before the money issue..

And I would still feel the same if it were my old HS..

This!

My old High School (Hickman Mills) had this happen to them this year. There is no way in the private sector it would have taken this long for these changes to occur. The KCMO district had no other options and like Valiant said these schools were already and 1/2 capacity and were already running which is a problem to begin with.

[patteeu]

Originally Posted by billay

Really? Ths isn't hard to figure out at all.

The city is falling apart instead of fixing communities they build a new bar distrct (even though it wasn't needed) to attract douchebags and lose money when they could have spent that money to fix communities around Kansas City. If the community is broken how is the school going to succeed?

The P&L advocates would argue that they're investing in the city to bring commerce and residents back to the city core, thereby reversing trends that have contributed to the decay of the school district (by dropping enrollment and reducing the tax base, for example).

Sorry, I don't see much connection between your P&L criticism and the problems of the school district. Not enough to make your referenced posts "the funny thing about this" in any event.

[Garcia Bronco]

Originally Posted by KC Fish

Yeah...

Then it makes sense to shut them down and consolidate.

[13and3]

If they shut down all the schools, think of how much money they could save then.

[13and3]

Hell, I was thinking we could just wall off the whole of kansas city area. Build bridges on 71 highway and bump the speed up to about 125 mph. Of course there would be a little knook cut out for Arrowhead stadium, but we could leave the Royals in there. Then all our problems would be out of sight and out of mind. All we have to do is throw a few can goods, basketballs, and lil wayne cds over the wall every once in a while and they wouldn't even know the difference.

[Valiant]

I do like lil Wayne..