Some Observations about the Clinton County School System for consideration by the school superintendent, members of the school board, and any other interested citizens. By Duane Bristow, Parent, taxpayer, citizen, and product of the school system. October 14, 1990 Our local school system seems to have problems; has had for years. We need to fix that. I guess (hope?) we are already making progress. But we need more progress and we need it faster. These observations are just some preliminary thoughts that, it is hoped, will stimulate public thought and awareness toward that end. There has been a lot of controversy lately about increased taxes. Although these thoughts are mine alone, I suspect that most of the local taxpayers would agree with much of what I have to say. I do not object to higher taxes per se. As an analysis of the numbers will indicate, the local taxes that go toward our school expenses are very low even though a high percentage of state revenues go toward education. What I do object to is paying higher taxes without feeling that I am getting my money's worth. In other words, do I get the best possible use of my money by paying it in taxes? I do only if I get services in return that are of more value than any alternate use of my money. One of the major goals of most parents is to provide a good education for their children. Most citizens see education of future generations as a major goal of government. School taxes are fine as long as they are efficiently used to provide a very high quality education. Many people do not perceive that this is the case. Effective use of taxes means using the least money possible to produce the highest possible quality of education. This means that proper business management methods must be used by leaders and administrators trained to provide an educational environment staffed by the best possible educators. This requires, above all, leadership and business management ability. Unfortunately, we tend to promote our best educators to positions which primarily are management positions for which they have little training, background, or experience. Thus we lose two ways. We lose good educators and we may gain mediocre administrators. A good school system will be lead by forceful goal oriented leaders with imagination and vision. It will have at its heart a staff of dedicated and capable educators. They will be supported by a staff of trained and competent administrators and an experienced and stable body of cooks, janitors, bus drivers, etc. Teacher's pay is one hot topic. For the function they fulfill in society and for the high degree of competence of many of them, I think teachers have historically been underpaid. However, we also have a few teachers and administrators who think they have a part time job from 8:00 to 2:40 nine months out of the year. These people consider themselves farmers or businessmen who also teach. As far as I am concerned give all money which becomes available for teacher's pay raises to the best 60% of the teachers, take some money away from the worst 10% and give it to the top 10% as a bonus for good work and hope the bottom 10% will quit. With any luck at all we can replace them with better. The very best teachers should be paid higher than anyone else in the school system, even higher than all but a very few in the county due to the importance of their function in society. The school environment is of primary importance. I have one son who graduated from the Clinton County school system two years ago and another who is still in the system at the elementary level. My younger son has complained about the school bus environment for at least three years, but I, being a busy parent and also being slow to catch on, did not listen. He has been cursed, hit, and had objects thrown at him and around the school bus in general. My complaints were listened to and acted upon in specific instances but the overall environment did not change. I finally realized that the local school system is incapable of providing a decent transportation system in my area of the county, so I took him off the bus and am trying to get him to school in the mornings and back in the evenings. This is difficult because I, like most parents, have to work to make a living and unfortunately most of my jobs last past 2:40 in the afternoon. However, since I have done this he has been much happier with school, studies better, and I think, is beginning to develop a real interest in his studies. He certainly comes home in a better mood to tackle his homework. I recently talked to a young woman who had just started her oldest child in kindergarten or first grade. She was concerned to learn that there was no soap provided the children in the bath rooms. She told me that she is trying to raise her children to be responsible civilized human beings and that one thing she had always taught them was to wash their hands with soap after using the bathroom. She wonders, if the school system does not teach that soap in the bathroom is important, what other commonly accepted facets of civilized behavior will her children also learn is of little importance? When asked about this a school official told me that if they put soap dispensers in the bathroom, they would be destroyed by the children within two days. These two incidents indicate to me that we are allowing unruly children who do not conform to fundamental rules of civilized behavior to go to school along with the children of most of our citizens who expect better both from their own and from other's children. I submit that if a child consistently acts in an anti social manner, he should be banned from the school system until he cleans up his act. The fact that children like this are in the school system indicates either that school officials do not give this problem the priority that I do or that they do not have adequate disciplinary authority to remedy the situation. Besides violence toward others, destruction of property, and lack of respect for the school system, I would label drug or alcohol abuse and any behavior which would be criminal in an adult as behavior requiring suspension of the student. Any child can be forgiven for an occasional lapse in behavior but there can be no excuse for repeated behavior of this type. Although these children obviously need help, we cannot allow disruption of the education of all the other children and condoning such behavior is no help to them or anyone. If we are to provide transportation to the schools for all students then we must provide safe and decent transportation. I suspect that, although we have many excellent school bus drivers, they are underpaid, undertrained, and under supervised. To get drivers to whom we can entrust our children's lives, we must pay for competent responsible people. We must train them so that they know what is expected of them and we must supervise them to see that they are performing their job properly. Either they must be capable of driving safely and maintaining order at the same time or they must have an assistant to help them maintain order. The supervisor of the bus drivers should ride on the route with each driver occasionally and with new drivers often, both to observe, to train, and to assist the driver with handling problems, either with the children or the route. If he is not doing this then the bus drivers are not being properly supervised. A few years ago the Little League organization began using the old school football field for little league games in the summer. When I attended these games, I found that the wooden seats were rotten and that anyone who sat on them was likely to fall through. To anyone trained in business management this is a sign that perhaps elementary asset maintenance procedures are not being followed. I then began to notice other things in the school system that did not work. There were light bulbs out, plumbing fixtures which did not operate, lack of paint, leaking roofs, etc. The school system has a lot of money tied up in capital assets. Prudent business management would dictate that these assets be maintained or eliminated. A proper maintenance system requires that each asset have a written schedule of maintenance procedures with a specific maintenance person assigned the responsibility for carrying out these procedures on a regular basis, signing that this was done, and this work checked by his supervisor. Is this being done? This is especially important in regard to school buses. Is there a record of the dates, mileages, and person responsible for every procedure in the manufacturer's recommended maintenance procedures. If a driver says his brakes are not acting right, is the bus immediately replaced with a substitute or is he told that things are hectic now, but it will be looked at in a day or two? Does anyone actually check to see that each bus is safe or do we just load it with children and hope for the best? School cafeterias and food! Is it wholesome, nutritious, and adequate for growing boys and girls or is it just cheap and easy to fix? I don't know, but I hope someone in the school system does. Snacks! Why do we provide soft drinks and candy for the kids to buy? Is this a way for the school to bring in some more money? If snacks and drinks are to be available why not fruit juice, gator aid, water, fruits, nuts, cheese and other wholesome food and drink? When I was in elementary school, I was allowed one soft drink a week except on very special occasions. That was usually consumed on Saturday night. I may be wrong but I don't think several carbonated, sugared, caffinated soft drinks, and as many candy bars per day are really necessary for children's growth. Fund raising! My older son attended a school system in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky for his first three years. That system was a very poor system and the schools needed more money than was available from the state and county to provide a decent education. The main method of raising money was a halloween carnival in late October each year. All the parents and families and others from the community came to the school on a weekend night and had a combination carnival and community yard sale. Admission was charged for a home made spook house staffed by the teachers, parents and students. There were kissing booths, ring tosses, raffles, etc. People contributed all the old clothes, appliances, canned food, and assorted junk of more or less value to the school and it was sold to raise money. Nobody complained about high prices because everyone knew the object was to have a little fun while donating to the school. The point is that no student sold anything in the community door to door, and none of the money went to any outside company or agency. 100% went directly to the school and the officials accounted to the teachers and parents for all the money showing how it was spent. If additional money was needed the need was explained to the community and everyone was asked to donate additional money. We seem to have a tradition here of waiting for a representative of some company selling something to approach school officials explaining how the schools can make money by helping that company to sell their junk door to door and the students compete to see which one can make that particular company richer while getting a small amount for the school. The business of the school is education not selling. Even though my son has participated through school projects in raising money for the American Heart Association and other projects which I consider worthy, I still consider this exploitation of school children and I think it has no place in the schools. The only exceptions I can see to a no selling policy would be school pictures, school annuals, and money being raised for their own projects outside school hours by various clubs at the high school. These projects though should be at the initiative of the club members and the projects, the fund raising, and the money raised should be completely under their control with guidance from a faculty member who is a club sponsor. I'm sure there are a few other exceptions I have overlooked but I hope there would be very few. When my older son went to college he found that many kids from other school systems were much better prepared than he was even though he had been an A student in high school. He found that he had been taught less and graded easier than many other students. As a result he feels that our local educational system has failed him. I hope that each principal in each of our schools is fully aware of the type of teaching job being done by each teacher. I hope they are commending and recommending higher pay for the best ones and I hope they are helping and counseling the worst ones. I hope they are analyzing the grades given by each teacher. If a teacher is giving a lot of A's, I hope it is because they are teaching a subject at which our students naturally excel like tobacco stripping or pot culture and if they are giving a lot of F's I hope it is because the subject is advanced brain surgery or astrophysics IV and not because the teacher is too strict. As far as I know a C is still an average grade and nothing of which to be ashamed. Neither A's nor F's should be a common grade. The two most important things a teacher can do are to motivate the student to learn and to give him the study skills to do so. Our schools were criticized several years ago because our scores on statewide achievement tests were so low. Since then I think I have noticed a disturbing tendency to emphasize tests and test taking, perhaps at the expense of learning the subject material. I submit that memorizing facts in order to pass a multiple choice or true false test is not the same thing as becoming a master of subject material. We would probably do better to emphasize hands on, small group research projects, simulations, essays and papers, essay type tests, outlining, thinking, problem solving, and grades based more on daily evidence of mastery of the subject material rather than tests. I am afraid we are in danger of graduating students who know full well who wrote the Declaration of Independence and when he did it but have not the foggiest notion of why the heck he did it nor of its significance. Of course, being a Clinton County citizen, I know why we cannot improve our schools. We have heard the reasons often enough that we all know them by heart. There is not enough money. Officials are too limited by State and Federal rules and regulations. Many people think that Clinton County citizens want a school system run on low taxes with the goals of employing as many as possible, baby sitting our kids, and entertaining us with sports. I submit that most citizens in Clinton County want their children to gain the tools and knowledge from our school system that will make them able to hold their own in schools and jobs with any other kids from any place both now and throughout their lives. Not enough money? First let's make sure we are managing it properly, accounting for it properly, and collecting it properly. Then let's decide how much we can really afford. Then let's set some educational goals and decide what we have money for and what we don't. Do we have complete, accurate, financial reports including balance sheets, and P & L statements available for scrutiny on a monthly basis and are they being analyzed monthly to assure compliance with a set of predefined goals. If not then we probably don't know whether there is money available for our priority items. If we really don't have and can't get all the money we need to allow our schools to do everything we want to do, then let's decide what our priorities are and finance those. Can we afford a school bus system or should we require all parents to take their kids to school and pick them up? Can we afford a school lunch program or should all kids take their lunches? Can we afford a basketball program or should our people watch TV instead? Can we afford to use the schools as an employment agency or must we hope some of our people can find work elsewhere? Can we afford to quit using our kids as fund raisers and can we afford to give them a safe and decent environment in which to obtain a high quality education and be motivated to achieve their full potential in life? Can we afford not to do these things? As for rules and regulations, we in a democratic society, hire clerks to follow rules and elect officials to be leaders and to make and modify, if necessary, the rules and regulations. If we clearly define our goals and how we can achieve them, then if the bureaucracy stands in the way, let's change it or get rid of it. We should expect our elected leaders to lead the way in doing this and to enlist and expect public support in doing so. If they cannot do this then we should hire clerks.