Rope-a-Dope School Board Budget Hearing
A student from East Meck gave the board a first-hand view of how bigger class sizes would adversely impact student achievement, creating classroom environments where it was harder for teachers to control students and for students to receive individual academic assistance from teachers.
Other speakers vented their anger and concern over cuts Gorman has proposed that would eliminate neighborhood bus stops for middle and high school magnet programs. The proposal, part of an effort to save $5 million in transportation costs, would impact about 6,000 students and nearly a dozen schools. Parents would have to drive their children, in many cases, to so-called shuttle stops, where they would catch a bus to their school. Critics have argued the plan would be particularly detrimental to low-income families.
“Are we making magnet programs a privilege only for those who can afford it?” one parent asked board members. Another parent told how it would nearly impossible for her to drive her children to their proposed shuttle stops and still make it to and from work on time.
Gorman’s plan to shrink the number of learning community area offices from seven to five, and in the process create one large central area to serve all the district’s high-poverty schools, was roundly panned by speakers. As on previous occasions, critics said the plan would create a segregated school system and wrongly stigmatize the high-poverty schools lumped into a single zone.
Criticism, however, wasn’t the only call of the night. In many cases, speakers offered proactive solutions to help save money and stave off potential cuts, and not all of them involved hiking taxes. Some, for example, called for CMS to eliminate all of the district’s pricey learning community area offices, along with their high-salaried administrative staffs. Others encouraged the public to contact state legislators and lobby for authority for CMS to use furloughs as a cost-saving measure to prevent wholesale teacher layoffs.
Saving teacher jobs, in fact, was the central rallying theme of the night’s public hearing, not surprising considering many of the speakers were teachers.
“The teachers are the ones who are pulling the weight of this school system. The teachers are the ones who are pulling up grades,” said Judy Kidd, president of the Classroom Teachers Association. “We need teachers in those classrooms. We don’t need other things. I don’t know how many people watch CMS TV, but I don’t need any more PR, either.”
The school board is slated to vote on Gorman’s recommended budget May 11, with the superintendent presenting the approved version to commissioners on May 25.
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