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| Cincinnati Schools Hear Wolf Knocking |
CINCINNATI (TDB) -- While details are not final, the fact is clear that significant downsizing will be announced by Spring. A decade of reform and progress now appears at risk of swirling down the drain. In documents being circulated among school officials, the numbers are described as "big, big hits" on every school and "devastating to the fundamental integrity and functioning" of programs put in place before the great recession. Teacher jobs are on the line and more than 200 could be axed. Insiders have been told to brace for cuts approaching at least $30 million, which is more than 3 times the $8.6 million trimmed last year. This round of whacking is seen as causing serious damage to Ohio's third-largest public school district and could reverse student achievement gains that have made Cincinnati's schools the best among the state's big cities. A slide would unravel years of effort to push test scores higher and dropout rates lower -- and while the city schools are far from perfect they are not the snakepits of yore. An e-mail sent to The Daily Bellwether describes the budget planning process now taking place in schools across the city: "It's a dicey situation and we have spoken at length about this in both ILT and LSDMC meetings. Since every school is taking big, big hits to cover the 30 mil deficit . . . let's keep talking. It's a tough time."
Any setback in school quality would be sure to have negative economic impact on the city as a whole. If residents can't trust the schools, they move. Businesses look elsewhere. And corporations have a tough time recruiting talent if the talent can find a better community to educate its kids. Cincinnati's public schools have climbed off the bottom of the heap. Will they head back down?
These cuts are coming even though the teacher's union has agreed to freeze base salaries through 2012. There is a reopener this year, but school officials have forecast that "given the looming deficit situation, it is assumed that base salary increases will not be negotiated." In other words, the union has cooperated in holding down costs. Currrently, the school district is spending about $459 million, with 31% going for wages and benefits to all employees from administrators to janitors. This year's budget data is available by clicking here.
So far, there has been little discussion beyond school insiders abut the impact of budget cutting now being done quietly as spending plans are being drafted. The central office has circulated a template to city principals to prepare a budget for each school. The templates then are submitted to Supt. Mary Ronan's office who compiles the general fund budget. Last year, the district put out a press release that outlined the budgeting process. This year, there has been dead silence on the topic. But this is what some insiders are saying in internal documents:
"It is clear that the proposed cuts for the 2012-13 school year are devastating to the fundamental integrity and functioning of our program. Reductions in staffing beyond this call for a complete program overhaul and compromise our services to students and families drastically. [Our school] functions as one continuous effort to offer our students what it takes to get them into college and to lead a successful life. Regardless of the students’ immediate family and socio-economic situation – and we service the whole spectrum – we want to remain capable of fulfilling this mission."
I want to blame John Kasich. We have a governor who doesn't care about public schools. To him all problems are caused by teachers, none by politicians like John Kasich. We spend trillions on warfare and can't find money for kids.
ReplyDeleteOf course, it's easier to blame Governor Kasich than to blame the people who actually run CPS. And btw, Kasich has no input on how the federal government spends it's military dollars, nor on the stimulus dollars that ran out.
ReplyDeleteWe spent shiploads on Iraqi and Afghan schools. Kasich had no input, I know. Could he ask Iraq to send oil money to Cincinnati for our schools?
DeleteLet's save money and make poor inner city kids work as janitors in the CPS. Newt has a solution for our problems and it does not cost a penny.
DeleteWhy would anybody in their right mind send their kids to a Cincinnati Public School? You have options with parchial and suburban schools without the problems. I say good riddance if CPS disappears.
ReplyDeleteIf CPS "disappears," the thousands of children who have no money to go to a private or parochial school – or whose families may not want them to go there because of differing religious beliefs— will end up robbing YOU, burglarizing YOUR house, making YOUR streets less safe, and going to prison paid for with YOUR tax dollars, which costs many times more annually than a decent education. Very short-sighted.
Delete"Parchial?" What's a parchial school.
ReplyDeleteParochial.
Must have learned spelling there.
SchoolMarm, you are evidence number one of a public educated individual. You exhibit terrible sentence structure and punctuation.
DeleteCPS has cut 1,350 jobs since 2003. It starts the budget process early to provide more planning time for decision-makers. Costs have gone up and state funding has gone down. Result is a pinch.
ReplyDeleteThe invention of public schools is one of this country's greatest; one we should all take pride in, not hope it goes away. Look at countries where free education does not exist, or where it is not easily accessible and you will see major problems. Access to a free, strong education enables people to get jobs and live productive lives. We are in this society and life together, so we all lose if some of us are not educated. We all benefit if we are all educated.
ReplyDeleteI consider myself conservative but I appreciate your argument regarding the general benefits of a public education system. I can also see the benefits of eliminating the drag on our economy caused by poorly performing schools. If we had better schools, we would be more competitive in the global economy. To me, the question about schools is over the value of putting more money in them when you cannot improve the unenlightened and often uncaring attitude of the people who attend them.
DeleteYes, we all benefit if we are all educated. But you must agree to become educated.
If we are going to eliminate so-called "poorly performing" schools, let's start with charters. In fact, if there's not enough money to fund decent public schools, there is clearly not enough money for for-profit charters. They should be banned. In addition, we must make sure that we are not closing wholesale underfunded, over-challenged inner city schools to make those already struggling kids travel farther and make constant changes in their schooling, thus assuring their ultimate failure.
DeleteIt wouldn't have to be so bad, except that the voters in their infinite wisdom rejected the common-sense health and pension cost-sharing measures in SB5 at the polls. That's hardly Kasich's fault.
ReplyDeleteI don't know the figures, but since about 90% of public workers already met or exceeded the "common-sense health and pension sharing measures" in SB 5, and since a bill in the legislature that was superceded by SB 5 and negotiated WITH the unions would have had them paying MORE than SB 5 unilaterally demanded, SB 5 would have had no economic impact. It was never about saving money at all; it was about eliminating unions so that there was no source of political power to respond to the floods of corporate and SuperPAC money. The budget took away; SB 5 would not have given back.
DeleteWhile I have opinions about schools, money, and education (like teaching critical thinking skills vs. teaching to a test), I'd rather point to a study about the effectivness of teachers, even though it contradicts my own notions about teaching to a test. (Let's be open minded about something this important else we end up spouting one-liners or "all you have to know"-isms like some campaigning politician of here.
DeleteNew Study Gauges Teachers Impact on Students' Lifetime Earnings
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/jan-june12/teachers_01-06.html