Columnist Karen Rubin: Support education, vote for budget

The Island Now

This is Teacher Appreciation Week. Everyone can look to at least one teacher who had a dramatic impact on their lives. In my case, a fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Breyer, who turned me from an underachiever into an overachiever. I can even point to the exact moment of epiphany.

 I also can point to dozens of Great Neck teachers who guided my sons, who were blessed through their K-12 years (and even before, as pre-schoolers in CLASP), who achieved what a family and a society should most want for their children: that they achieve their full potential, whatever that is. I am frankly jealous of the education they received growing up in Great Neck, and the advantages it gave them going on to college and career.

An excellent expression of teacher appreciation comes from Charles M. Blow’s column, “Teaching Me About Teaching” (New York Times, May 4). Describing what his mother, a teacher, taught him, he says, “She wasn’t just teaching school lessons but life lessons. For her, it was about more than facts and figures. It was about the love of learning and the love of self. It was the great entangle, education in the grandest frame, what sticks with you when all else falls away. As Albert Einstein once said: ‘Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.’

“She showed me what a great teacher looked like: proud, exhausted, underpaid and overjoyed. For great teachers, the job is less a career than a calling. You don’t become a teacher to make a world of money. You become a teacher to make a world of difference. But hard work deserves a fair wage. “

And yet, in the perversity that is the prevailing politics of our time, people actually begrudge a teacher the wherewithal to afford a house, health care and a decent retirement (I actually heard an angry attorney call into Brian Lehrer’s show on NPR, to complain about this. Meanwhile, he probably takes home 10 times what a teacher makes without contributing the social benefit.

Which brings us to the next important date on the calendar: the school (and library) budget vote, on Tuesday, May 15.

Of all our taxes, schools and libraries are the only ones we get to vote on directly. That has made public education the brunt of anti-tax hysteria and hyperbole now for 30 years. The result of that national scorn is that 300,000 of the 600,000 public sector jobs slashed during the Great Recession have been teachers. That is not to say they were bad teachers; they were just “excessive” to the budget. They were saved in the first year of the Great Recession because of Obama’s American Recovery Act funding to the states, but then were goners when that money ran out (Congressional Republicans believe that tax cuts for the wealthiest and subsidies for oil companies are more important for the economy).

But through three decades of anti-public education and a decade of Bush’s No Child Left Behind, this nation has only fallen in standing among First World countries. I know this because an Exxon-Mobil “Let’s Solve This” campaign(www.exxonmobil.com/letssolvethis) cynically tells me so (itself a sick twist on Al Gore’s climate-change initiative, (WeCanSolveIt.org) while another gratuitous campaign from Chevron features its engineers declaring their appreciation for a teacher.

Great Neck has been under assault by these same forces. And yet, thanks to the masterful management of our school board and district administration, we have managed to stay focused on the mission: creating an environment in which every child, from the most needy to the most gifted and even those in between, can fulfill their potential. Even more, most leave school as life-long learners, empowered to pursue knowledge and solve problems.

I was reminded about this during a recent presentation to the school board which literally brought tears to my eyes – that is not actually unusual at school board meetings – as when I saw a presentation on this district’s extraordinary approach to mainstreaming special needs children, and the SEAL Academy which has literally rewritten the future for children who in other communities might have been written off.

This new program “Responsive Classroom,” that Great Neck teachers are giving up their free time to learn, is based on the premise is that children learn best and are most successful in school when they have strong academic and social emotional skills. 

That would seem a “no-brainer” and yet has to be regarded as “revolutionary” in this climate of slash-and-burn public education which regards students as widgets and teachers as leaches.

That has never been the case in Great Neck. 

Even with the Gordian knot of state mandates, our school administration found Solomon-like wisdom and problem-solving to keep our tax levy increase within New York State’s legal cap (which actually can exceed the arbitrary and Draconian 2 percent or CPI whichever is less, through a convoluted formula). They did not just do that this year, the first when it was a legal requirement without unleashing (horrors) the requirement for a supermajority vote (versus the more democratic 50 percent plus one), but last year, as well. The school board battled back critics who argued that it had cut too close to the bone, leaving virtually nothing to cut before having to cannibalize the educational program in future years. But this school board said it would only seek from taxpayers what it absolutely needed to run its educational program, and not a penny more.

“We have maintained every program that we had in the 2011-12 year going forward,” Trustee Don Ashkenase declared. But he adds that there were “favorable variances – 26 retirements worth $1.6 million  in personnel savings – that made it possible.

But that simply won’t be the case going forward – there are only so many “senior” teachers who will retire and these newbies will rise up the salary ladder. So then what? Where will the district go for budget cuts in order to make room for mandated increases and normal expense increases by a growing school population (there is no provision for increased enrollment in figuring the budget cap)?

That leaves pretty much nowhere to go in future years. At some point, the mathematics – tilted because the state Legislators refuse to do what they promised and relieve school districts of mandates – would force Great Neck to abandon its student-centered educational philosophy and do what just about every other school district has done across America – cut out everything except what is specifically required by the State. 

Around the country this has resulted in buildings shut and class sizes being increased to ridiculous sizes, and arts, music, theater, even cherished sports programs being cancelled. Think about how these programs make school a place our students want to be (rather than the prison that they have become for too many); how they help students who might not otherwise be academic stars, find another basis to boost self-esteem and self-confidence, or even just find a different way to process information, and ultimately, be more successful at school.

Being more successful at school actually benefits taxpayers, who otherwise would be mandated to spend more money turning at-risk or difficult students around.

Here are just a few examples of the pressure on school districts to divert money from actually educating students: the mandated increases in allocation for pensions and health care is one gigantic category, to be sure. But now look at what will happen when Nassau County’s new law making school districts responsible for paying off the tax certioraris that arise out of the mistakes Nassau County’s assessment makes that cannot be calculated in advance. Where will that money come from? Take next the new requirement for teacher evaluation systems. How much money and administration time will be diverted for that purpose?

The Great Neck Schools’ philosophy and management  prowess are on view at a uniquely Great Neck tradition, the annual budget review. This is a Saturday meeting where there is a line-by-line analysis of the proposed budget, when item and every penny is subject to scrutiny and discussion. This is a remarkable exercise, reviewing a half-inch thick compilation of “cards” representing each area of the budget, especially for those knee-jerk anti-government forces who suggest that zero-based budgeting is anathema to government. I challenge any private enterprise (charter schools, in particular) to do the same.

It only takes to Card No. 3 to get to one of the unfunded  mandates: this one add two or three layers auditor, a $163,358 item in the 2012-3 budget.

School board Trustee Lawrence Gross pointed to card No. 29, which shows that elementary teachers will be increased by six to 191.35. “It reflects our commitment to maintaining the program.. Our staff has been exceptionally understanding of the current environment and problems that exist and have been reasonable. We’re not going to compromise on education, so we will increase the number by six teachers, since it’s needed.”

On card No. 35 you see a $200,000 difference in academic intervention to $830,250 (actually, an amount comparable to 2010-11). Academic intervention is now a mandated expenditure, largely through No Child Left Behind. However, Great Neck schools have always had the tradition of providing academic assistance to struggling students, with the result that our graduation rates are astronomical. But under the Bush era No Child Left Behind, mandated academic intervention is triggered by test scores. This is one way in which testing is shaping the culture of public education (not to ironically, charter and for-profit schools are not under the same regimen, so that they can be “unfettered by bureaucratic meddling”), forcing diversion of resources into specific areas and tacitly if not overtly driving class time.

“Academic intervention services is an area where you don’t know during the year who is going to need the service,” commented board Vice President Fran Langsner. “A child takes a test midway through the year and shows a need. Last year, we spent what we budgeting this year [when only $630,000, or $200,000 less was allocated], so could be caught under-budgeting.” 

“The opportunity to move money around will be eroded because there is less money to move around,” trustee Don Ashkenase observed. 

Cards No. 40-41 refer to equipment purchases. Here, the state, in its wisdom, has removed the district’s ability to transfer an equipment code, so the district is locked in to what it says it will need. “Once the budget is locked in,” noted district Business Manager John Powell, “our ability to buy equipment on an emergency basis isn’t available.”  This is like government trying to do its best to show it cannot operate efficiency, or as flexibly, as private enterprise – a poison pill, as it were. 

Essentially, with such requirements as NCLB (Wicks Law is another), they are setting up public schools to fail.

And you have to wonder why that would be: why would government set the rules to make it likely for public entity to fail? The answer has to be because those government officials see some advantage in helping “friends” in private enterprise – the $7 billion, for example, that Pearson earns from privatizing test materials, training materials and now curriculum, and that e-educators will get with the Obama and Cuomo administrations’ zeal for replacing actual teachers with electronic and virtual ones, and the desire for some politicians to eliminate teachers unions.

In kindergarten through 12th grade, Eduventures figures this school year, public schools will spend $24.9 billion on services and supplies from private providers, including textbooks, tests and professional development. But private companies have an eye on the bigger prize: K-12 education is an $500 billion enterprise, according to Education writer Eleanor Chute of the Post-Gazette.

Don’t believe me? Look at what our district now has to allocate for purchasing tests and scoring:

Card No. 75 shows the amount of money to be spent on test purchasing and scoring from outside agencies, as mandated by APPR Legislation, will soar from 45,787 in 2010-11 to $200,000 for 2012-13. That’s $150,000 more – another unfunded mandate. 

APPR legislation, which just passed the Legislature, refers to the teacher evaluation system, but so far, the school districts do not know what will be required. 

“We will do everything we can do, short of destroying our school district,” North High Principal Bernard Kaplan boldly commented. “This pits teacher against teacher, administrator against administrator, and does not provide an adequate measure of competence. It is a threat to very fabric of public education if followed.  My belief is that this will be cycle of adjustments and changes – it will muddy the water for awhile. As currently proposed, it can’t possibly work.”

What is proposed to measure growth in student achievement, the basis for teacher evaluation, would involve testing 4-8 graders two to three times a year, expanding next year K-8. To test students to rate teachers – that’s what this is – will result in dramatic loss of instructional time. And not just from classroom teachers, but from TESL, reading teachers, specialty teachers, “any warm body” to proctor the tests because so many students need to take tests with modification.

But here’s another unintended consequence of the legislation, put into force by sloganeering state legislators who have no clue about public education:  the test to measure student achievement is computer based, which means that weeks of time will be taken away from students. “Computer classes have to be suspended for the tests to go on,” Mark Epstein, the district’s technology officer, told the board. 

“APPR testing on computer puts it out of whack, no longer a match. We either have to decrease the curriculum, which I don’t think was the intention, or increase the technology budget, which wasn’t anticipated in the APPR law.”

Where will the money come from? When Superintendent Dolan asked Commissioner of Education John B. King, “How can you expect us to make all these technology changes and maintain program? “ the Commissioner “assured us that the funding could be found in the personnel line – ‘Your people ‘ was his answer – the idea that teachers be replaced by more computers. That’s the direction that some people – who don’t teach – think that education should go.”

For those cynics who resent spending the dollars on public education (while most likely glad to have the help when their kids were going through school), I would suggest that, like preventive health measures, our investment saves us money outright – by reducing the mandated costs of having to help failing students – and even brings a healthy return on our investment in the future, in the form of high home values and high earnings that our children earn in their careers.

In fact, the anti-tax  rhetoric is merely a dodge for what is underlying the assault on public education (the weapon is starving public education of funding): diverting billions of public money to private and parochial schools, and undermining teacher unions (they tend to vote Democratic, after all).

The ones who have the right to be cynical, though, are those who support public education. 

There is a line that is becoming popular among teachers who have been bashed, mocked, and scapegoated: “Those who can, teach. Those who can’t, pass laws about teaching.”

Monique Bloom, president of Great Neck’s United Parent Teacher Council, reflecting on the mandates that force localities to divert money, said during the budget review, “There is a disincentive for high performing districts to be that, to strive for even more excellence.”

Indeed, what does “Race to the Top” mean when you are already at the top? How do you post year-over-year improvement when you are graduating over 98 percent of your students?  

“Everyone else should be emulating our model,” Langsner said. “This is what [public education] should be, and if only the people who enact this type of legislation would come and visit and spend some time with us, they would see what a community can do when invested in public education. They might learn something. They  might reflect and reevaluate what they are expecting other districts to do.”

Great Neck schools have been able to resist these anti-education forces, and as a result, continue to draw young families fleeing New York City (where homeowners do not actually pay school taxes or vote on school budgets), willing to pay a premium for houses. And while people regularly bitch about property taxes, if you look at the real estate section of the New York Times, at what houses sell for and what their taxes were, you realize we get a gigantic bargain for our school taxes.

I no longer have children in our schools, but I consider it my privilege to repay the debt I owe this community in the school taxes I pay, especially knowing that every dollar is well spent. If anything, it is like paying off a college loan – I calculate that the cost of educating two children through 12 years of school about $480,000 – impossible for a family to pay on a pay-as-you-go basis, but possible when the community pulls together.

Vote yes on the school and library budgets on Tuesday, May 15. A “yes” vote is a reaffirmation of the best in public education.

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