There’s some psycho-babble term for having to know who you are before you can have sound mental health. And there is a business corollary that follows the same process… when it comes to solving a problem.
OK – we’re talking education here… and Thursday night’s hearing at the high school on school consolidation… and most educators have their own proprietary process that is written in some book that tells them all the solutions. And the solution of the moment to solve our local educational problems is consolidating the middle schools into one to be located in Chestertown… and open a new elementary school in Galena in the soon to be old middle school… and move the Rock Hall Elementary School to the soon to be old middle school. Still to be decided is where to house the central office and the alternative school, but it appears a given that those locations will be in the soon to be old Rock Hall Elementary School building.
So… the well-intended solution that is being offered will allow the 6th, 7th and 8th graders access to the arts, Spanish and geometry… plus allow for better teacher collaboration. Sounds simple enough… until you start thinking about the real problem… and all its facets.
The real problem is that the County of Kent is small and we have a small public school system that is shrinking each year. Dr. Michael Harvey, Board of Education president, has done a terrific job of creating numerous Nimble Nine (the smallest counties in Maryland) statistical comparisons. I’m a numbers freak and I love this stuff, but it points out dramatically how small we really are in total population, school population and funding opportunities.
But… small is what we are… and hopefully our slice of paradise will retain its relative smallness. However, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be embracing who we are. Hence, the solution doesn’t fit the real problem… nor does it even acknowledge that our smallness has some distinct advantages.
After listening to Dr. Barbara Wheeler, Superintendent, and her staff present their numbers, watching a packaged video handed down from the education-on-high folks… AND nineteen citizens, I’m convinced that if we had been expending all our efforts to make the small rural school system model work, we would be coming up with the real solution that would be preserving our community identity and highlighting the benefits of small schools.
That’s why I’m even more convinced that Proposal #7 is not only a better solution… it will provide us with the real solution. Nineteen folks proved that to me last night.
Robert “Warrior Bob” Kramer
Proposal #7
(Submitted by Bob Kramer, January 29, 2010)
1. Keep all schools open.
2. Extend all elementary schools to K through 5th grade.
3. Move the Alternative School to the High School (or Chestertown Middle School)
4. Relocate the Central Office to Chestertown Middle School (or the High School). Invest the proceeds from the sale of the 215 Washington Avenue building into one-time educational opportunities so as to not create any tag along operational expenses in future years. There also should be an opportunity to move several Central Office positions to other schools that would create an embedded co-joined sense of involvement in the day to day operations of the individual schools.
5. Create a strategic Blue Ribbon panel to include parents, educators and citizens (as representatives of the taxpayers) to review:
A. The state school funding formula. It’s not enough to keep saying that this formula is unfair to our small system. We should present what we feel are the necessary changes that would include a base allocation of funds for every system that would eliminate the economy of scale discrepancies between the large and small systems.
B. Evaluate the budget prospects for the next three fiscal years and what operational changes would need to be made to operate within those confines.
C. Delineate what would need to be done to meet all state curriculum requirements within the next three years.
D. Review all school consolidation possibilities.
E. Recommend a permanent location for the central office.
F. Invent the future of KCPS based on a thorough analysis of how the dynamics of STEM, 21st Century, Charter School and Magnet School initiatives can synergized.
G. Provide a continuous feedback at each BOE meeting… with a final report and recommendations due at the January or February 2011 BOE meeting.
MD Eastern Shore says
Here’s Proposal 8:
1) Eliminate all administrative positions. Hire Queen Anne’s or Cecil County to run the schools. They could hardly do worse and they can probably do it cheaper.
2) Eliminate all touchy feely classes. Focus on Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, History, and Science… you know, things a kid can use to get a job. Get rid of art, gym, social studies, music, all that optional stuff which is great when times are good but useless when times are tough.
3) Build a jail cell in the high school and put fighters and other lawbreakers in jail promptly. No TV, no video games, no cigarettes, no booze, no drugs. Let them sit there and be bored until their parents come to collect them. This will create an environment conducive to learning for those who don’t break the law.
4) Follow the people with money as they drive their children to private school in Wilmington every day. Find out what they like about those schools and copy it.
How hard is this?
Warrior Bob Kramer says
To: MD Eastern Shore
Obviously the local education big heads don’t agree with us. Some good people had a great opportunity to make a great decision for the right reasons… but they made an ordinary decision for the wrong reasons. I’ll leave it at that… for now.