The best thing about the school property tax cap is that it
undermines the integrity of our balkanized, inefficient and anachronistic
education system. A system that separates kids based on illogical and
superficial political divisions established in an era when horses pulled
farmer’s carts home after market, and white men exercised a political and
economic monopoly. An educational system that supports an agricultural society
not a nano-technological one, because it limits the days devoted to book
learning to 180, or 49% of the year. All of these issues, and more, compound to
create a very dysfunctional K-12 educational system across this country, and in
fact, the problems are so dire that that the Council on Foreign Relations
recently concluded that they “constitute
a very grave national security threat facing this country”[1].
This country needs to modernize our education system by
eliminating antiquated structures and ensure that all students, regardless of
the wealth of the family that they were born into, have outstanding teachers,
campuses and resources. However, across New York
State
J. Borges.[2]
The Schenectady School Board is no exception, and while the Superintendent
and the Board stated that the budget overwhelmingly approved by the voters
“preserves the full range of instructional programs and services so critical to
the success of our students”[3],
they are being either disingenuous or dangerously naive about education.
First, the 2012-13 Schenectady School Budget will undercut
pre-k education by reducing funds for supplies and eliminating a teacher. Research
shows that intensive instruction for pre-k kids generates life long rewards for
the student and society, but neglecting early education decreases the nation’s
economic productivity and limits possibilities for children. The need is vast
for rigorous early education. For example, one study that found that the
vocabularies of kids from low-income families were 50% smaller than kids from
upper and middle-income families.[4] What the district saves in this budget cycle
on short-changing 4 year-olds will cost the school district and society many
times that amount in the future.
Second, the Board will destroy, for at least one year, one of
the true bright spots in the district when it reorganizes the Magnet schools.
K-8 schools are advantageous for many reasons: continuity for students,
collaboration amongst teachers, stable school culture, and a sense of community
for all.
By ripping away all of the kindergartens and putting them in
one place, away from other kids in the same developmental stage, the people
will save a few dollars. However, this is financially myopic and contrary to
best educational practice. Part of education is foreword looking, a sense of
transition, and the formation of possibilities. Without older students modeling
academic growth – and possibly tutoring them- the kindergartners will loose
valuable visions of development. Furthermore,
if the kindergarteners need advanced enrichment, where will they go?
The K-8 model will have the K removed and as a result, students
arriving as first graders will not have the benefit of having teachers know
them; they will not know the physical space, they will not know the culture and
possibilities possible at the school; the unnecessary transition to a new
environment will impede the education of many kids. First grade education,
which is the foundation for future growth, will suffer as a result.
The ratified 2012-13 budget will transfer 155 students into the
magnet schools, and this will effectively curtail the 1-8 into a 1-6. The introduction of masses of new students
into an established school will be destabilizing. Teachers will not know the
students, and students will not know the school and all of its characteristics.
These new students will be disoriented themselves and they will undermine the
educational balance of the established school community. The 7th and
8th grades, now weighted beyond their natural structural size, will
effectively be a mini-middle school.
This one-year budget will undermine so much of the stability
generating and community building enabled by public schools. The much-lauded
K-8 magnet schools will be dead, pre-schoolers will be stifled, and
kindergartners and some middle schoolers will not have a stable learning
community. We will be worse off as a result.
The vast majority of teacher slashing and education
depleting school budgets across NYS passed on May 15th, and this
summons the specter of an ‘educational insolvency’ that the State Education
Commissioner John King has raised[5].
Our country deserves better than austerity education for our children. However,
by undermining the current system perhaps people will reflect upon how artificially
fractured, unjust, antiquated and weak our education system is, and strive to
create a modern and dynamic structure that will enrich all children and make
our country safe and vibrant.
[4] I
read this paper a decade ago when I was studying for my MAT at Union
College
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