Comments On Community Schools

Last night I attended a meeting at the J.T. Barber Elementary School. The Craven County Board of Education requested a special meeting at the school to discuss future plans for the school. The meeting illustrated the need for community schools. The meeting was well-attended and the people of the community made it clear that they wanted their school to remain open. The members of the Board also noted that the school needed an academic plan moving forward that would allow the school to progress. The Board voted unanimously to keep the school open.

I am glad the school will remain open–it is needed by the people in the community. However, the school enrollment in Craven County is dropping, and at some point, possibly in the near future, we are going to have to look at the demographics and the locations of our schools and consider school closings. The situation is difficult because of the geographical layout of the County–Craven County is a large county with two rivers separating various areas of the County. Both of these facts need to be considered. I don’t want to insult North Carolina drivers, but you occasionally have snow or sleet in New Bern, and I wouldn’t want my children driving across one of the bridges in inclement weather.

A friend who was also at the meeting mentioned to me that the community spirit at that meeting would also be present at any meeting regarding a school closing in Craven County. That is probably true.

The School Board will have some difficult decisions to make in the future. I hope the County will support them in their decisions, and I hope that the Board will listen to the parents of the children in the County as they make those decisions.

Public Input On Craven County Schools

At the School Board meetings in Craven County, there is an opportunity for public comment. Some people do a lot of research before speaking before the School Board. Below is one example of a public comment that needs to be shared. I have omitted the name of the person making the comment out of respect for their privacy.

Here is the comment:

I am concerned that there are many, many discussions on classroom sizes and as a tax payer the county is paying for 25 public school buildings, when there are only enough students to fill 20.

In 2019 there was a study purchased by the Craven County School system to look at all the schools and recommend closing some of them. The study was done by professional contractors that looked at the physical conditions of the school. The study has been put on hold. There has been no discussion about upgrading this study. Some have said this study is still accurate which cannot be true based on budget actions to improve the physical conditions.
For example, some schools have replaced HVAC systems, put fences in, and other upgrades so it is imperative this study be updated. We heard on Tuesday many upgrades to several buildings using ESSER funding is occurring, further showing the study needs to be updated to reflect the
current physical state of the schools. Additionally, there are new security concerns, both process and physical, not just physical, that need to be considered as part of an upgraded study. Finally, this study needs to incorporate the county population changes with new communities appearing such as those in Carolina Colors. People are moving and where the students are and the current schools are is shifting.

Since closing of even one school will affect the entire district, I am recommending closing at least 3 schools to put the county tax money to better use for the school system. Since the closing of even one school will affect the entire county, I am further recommending all three be done at the same time and a complete redistricting plan be put in place based on these items:  current physical state of the schools, additional changes to schools needed, and future anticipated population. Updating this study is a fast, costeffective manner towards obtaining this end goal. It is understood that there may be more than 3 schools closed with the building of one or two new schools so all schools are in an acceptable physical state but the net
closure will be at least 3.

I am hoping to see in the budget submission this study upgrade occurring over the next year, so that actual closure can be considered for the 20242025 school year or the 20252026 school year depending how much redistricting is needed and time to work with the county planners is needed. Without this study, there is no firm basis of fact to have the hard discussion of school closure and the redistricting that will result out of this action. There will be no basis of fact to discuss the physical states of the school, except by opinion, no basis of fact to discuss the population centers, except by opinion, and same for security.

A Good Question For The Craven County Board Of Education

A very logical article sent to me by a friend. The school system in question is the Craven County North Carolina School System:

Instead of constantly looking at only the micro budgeting issues for the school system – let’s look at the macro. I had an accountant teach me this while running the IT Budgeting system for a large Agency – yes, the whole thing – over a billion dollars. What I learned is only looking at the micro causes you to miss the big picture and that there are funds available – just not being used properly. BTW when I started applying this trick with a few other engineers in the budget shop with me – we were mysteriously transferred out and told to stop. Why – because we were finding the money and demonstrating there was more than ample money – the issue was not needing more money – the issue was getting proper oversight of the expenditure of the money!

I will use only the Board of Education published data. Source 1: https://www.publicschoolreview.com/north-carolina/craven-county-schools-school-district/3703310-school-district
Assume equal distribution of students – I know not right but we are doing a macro picture, not micro so it is okay. So 13,895 across 25 schools in the macro picture is 555.8 students per school. This source says there are 16:1 student ratio – that is pretty good!!! So more teachers are not needed – you could go to a 20:1 ratio and still be great. So let’s take the argument away and say that a decent classroom size is 23-25 at the high school level and 16 at the elementary level. Let’s say middle school is also 16. That means half the population needs 1 teacher per 16 students and the other half needs a 1 teacher per 23 students – I get to needing 736 teachers which gives me 152 teachers to augment the needed teachers as see fit (and note the 152 is far less than the number of vacancies). Notice I am not disputing the 889 number – just trying to figure out how we are using them and what they are doing as an investigative question since the main complaint is the retention rate is so low and we are seriously short of teachers.

Next source: https://www.publicschoolreview.com/north-carolina/craven-county-schools-school-district/3703310-school-district?fbclid=IwAR0m-kWR84RLSzLKrJ63kzQCLBRdRKg0x3g1a2Mkd1scoHCPmgiZjilDwpU
Again doing the math: 13985 divided by 889 teachers, I get a 15:1 ratio, not the 16:1 ratio – so the two sources are obviously using the same database and are synchronized with each other and is on par with the State as you can see in the chart right next to it. Now go further down in this source to fiscal comparison. Where is the money going? The graphs are showing the dollars per student is far less for 2021 – okay – but how did you get there – that is not shown. The graphs together do NOT make sense. If the school system as a whole is spending more than the state norm (significantly more), and the school system is spending less per student than the state norm – where is the money going? Look at the graphs together – it does not make sense. If you are looking at the macro picture it says some reprogramming of where the money is going is needed? Where are those requests?

Teachers are saying it is more like a 26:1 ratio in reality and that these numbers are not true and is the basis for a lot of teacher complaints. We are hearing from school board members that there is a serious vacancy rate of teachers and from at least one that it is not teachers but staff members – again these statements are not tracking with the published numbers.

The point – the point is the micro and macro pictures do not go together – what is the bottom line? The cry teachers need more money could be satisfied looking at the macro picture. The cry that the student-teacher ratio is too high is not supported by the macro picture and in fact the macro picture now begs the question – where is the money going? Worse when submitting the budget for the last two years it is obvious that not all schools count the same making the budget even harder to figure out. For example, one school could count a librarian as a teacher but another does not.
Look at the spending curve – Craven County is receiving more money than the norm for schools yet is among one of the counties paying the lowest teacher salaries. Why? That is an interesting question to tackle.

Good budgeting is reconciling the macro and the micro views – not just asking for money. Right now we have a disparity between the macro (a 16:1 student/teacher ratio) and the micro (somewhere above 23:1 student/teacher ratio). Further we have a $7M reserve fund in the school system – why? That is exceptionally high – that is money just sitting there not being used. No county department has that high of a reserve fund.
I get the budgeting is hard – there is county, state, and federal dollars to account for. The county dollars pay for essentially the infrastructure (this includes the computers and software that each student has) and additional money for staff (this includes teachers if so desired). State pays primarily for staff, curriculum, books (which are basically non-existent in the classrooms I’ve visited – there was one book to be shared among the teacher’s 6 classes). Feds are paying for the rest. County is about 25% of the budget, State is about 66% of the budget, which leaves the Feds about 10%. Again, perhaps the proportions need adjusting if this isn’t working – has anyone tried to get that done?

We, citizens that own property in the state, are just asking to spend more tax dollars and pour more money into the system – we can do that – but it won’t fix the issue of lack of proper oversight of the resources. I get the complications – for example asking a history teacher to teach chemistry is not good – but in the macro sense, we just need to move assets around (or as I showed there are 152 extras that this could be accounting for). I also get that if we have a great history teacher and are one too many – that we don’t want to get rid of the history teacher, perhaps want to do it through attrition and maybe the ratio will change to something else when it comes time for that history teacher to leave (which will happen – either by retirement, quitting, or death – eventually that teacher will leave – its just a question of the time period – but are we carrying 152 teachers hoping for the larger class sizes?). But the bottom line as the one accountant taught me, the micro and macro pictures are not matching – they aren’t even in the same universe. Could you imagine having a household budget of $40,000 with a $100,000 reserve, and expenses of $35,000 saying that you can’t make it? That is what we are being told. Oversight is needed – where is it? In government all decisions are documented – again where is the oversight – please provide the documentation that it exists.

 

Political Parties Have Platforms

Political parties have platforms. The people who belong to a political party generally have some agreement with that platform. When you are voting for someone to fill a political office, it is helpful to know what party they belong to in order to understand some of their basic beliefs. Recently, in the part of North Carolina where I live, some of our elected officials have changed political parties because they felt that they could no longer support a political party’s platform. However, there is still one election in our county (Craven County) where voters have no idea what party the candidates belong to–that is our Board of Education election. It would be very helpful for the voters to know what party candidates for the Board of Election belong to.

A friend sent me a list of seven reasons why it would be helpful to know the party affiliation of candidates running for the Board of Education.

  1.  All other races on the ballot require party affiliation to be specified, including most recently, judges.
  2.  All voters should have access to as much information about a candidate as is reasonably possible.
  3.  Knowledge of a candidate’s political party affiliation is an excellent way for voters to have sufficient information to make an informed decision between candidates.
  4. The two main political parties are increasingly different in values, beliefs, and guiding principles that have a direct impact on the decisions made by the Board of Education members.
  5.  In the most recent election, there were approximately 10,000 voters who voted for candidates in other races on the ballot who failed to vote for any candidate for the Board of Education.
  6.  Interviews with voters at the polls strongly indicated that many did not have enough information about the candidates for the Board of Education to make an informed decision.
  7.  The notion that Board of Education members should be above politics in making decisions about the education of our children has increasingly been shown to be wishful thinking and not consistent with reality,

If you are in agreement with the above statements and live in Craven County, please let your County Commissioner know how you feel. The only way to get political parties put in the ballot in the Board of Education elections is to have the County Commissioners ask the State Legislators to move on the issue. The State Legislators will not move on the issue unless the County Commissioners initiate it.

A Local Election That Got Ugly Fast

Local politicians tend to get entrenched. It seems as if once they get elected, they are there for life. This is definitely the case with the Craven County Board of Education. Carr Ipock, the chairman, has served as chairman since 1994. Although the biographies listed on the Board website do not specify how long the other members have served, it seems as if most of them have been there for at least four years. This year three of the Board members are running for re-election; one member is retiring from the Board. There will be four openings to be filled on the Board of Education in November. There are primary elections on March 15th for two of those openings. In the primary elections, candidates run in their own districts. In November, all the candidates that made it through the primary election will vie for the four contested seats on the Board. Among the candidates running for the Board of Education are four candidates that are running on a “Back to Basics” slate. These candidates want to end Common Core in our schools, bring transparency to the Board of Education, and encourage more cooperation between the Board of Education and parents and teachers.  This is the backdrop of the story I am about to tell.

The New Bern Sun Journal posted an editorial today about some recent problems in the Craven County schools. Recently there was an issue with a student being injured by a teacher restraining him. The Board of Education attempted to use legal means to block a parent from viewing a videotape of the incident. There was also an incident of losing a large amount of federal money due to an incorrectly filled-out form. These are incidents which have begun to undermine the basic confidence in the Board of Education. Now there is another incident which further damages their image.

The editorial in the Sun Journal reports:

Now the Craven County Board of Education, of which some members are running for re-election, wants the city of New Bern to intervene on their behalf and remove campaign signs from the vicinity of the school district headquarters.

Here’s the complaint, sent by the school district’s diretor of communications, Jennifer Wagner:

“Under the direction of the Board of Education, I am submitting a formal complaint regarding the campaign signs placed in front of the Board of Education located at 3600 Trent Road.

“These signs are a violation of Board Policy as well as City Ordinance 15-324 (b)Temporary signs cannot be located within street rights-of-way or public property unless approved by the board of aldermen or its designee.

“The Board of Education requests that these signs be removed immediately and requests that the public property located at 3600 Trent Road be free of all political campaign signs so it does not appear that the Board of Education is endorsing any candidates.”

Either the Board of Education must think voters are pretty stupid, or it is using the “endorsing any candidates” ruse as an excuse to have the campaign signs removed.

Either way, school board members are trying to get the city of New Bern to act as their stooge.

No one believes that campaign signs in public rights-of-way indicate endorsement by businesses or organizations that happen to be nearby.

 The obvious solution to the problem would be for the candidates on the Board to add their signs to the side of the road. Early voting begins on March 3rd, and the primary election is on March 15th. After that, all this silliness will suspend until October. I really think the Craven County Board of Education is setting a horrible example for the children they are elected to serve.

 

Why Local Elections Matter

It is a given that parents care about the education of their children. Currently, North Carolina has an Academic Standards Review Commission (ASRC) which is looking at the Common Core standards to see if they are appropriate for North Carolina. The ASRC has heard testimony from people who support Common Core and from people who oppose it. I have attended a number of the ASRC meetings, and have listened to both sides of the story. I have learned that even the teachers who like Common Core talk about the difficulties in implementing it. I have also learned that two of the people involved in the creation of Common Core have refused to sign off on the program because it did not do what it was supposedly intended to do. I have also learned that there is some information gathering included in Common Core that makes the NSA look like amateurs. Common Core is a copyrighted program, making it difficult to alter, that includes millions of dollars in unfunded liabilities because of the software licensing and computers needed to meet the testing requirements of the program. These are just a few of the issues. On September 21, 2013, (according to The Washington Post), Bill Gates stated, “It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.” Just for the record, The Daily Caller reported in March 2014 that the children of Bill Gates attend a private school that does not use Common Core standards. Common Core for thee, but not for me.

So where am I going with this? I am looking at the way local school boards are not looking out for the students in their districts. On September 19, 2015, The New Bern Sun Journal posted a story about the Craven County Board of Education. The state has recently released the test scores for area schools for last year. Common Core has been in North Carolina since the 2012-2-13 school year, so these scores reflect the success (or failure) of Common Core.

The article mentioned that across North Carolina, 72.2 percent of traditional public schools received grades of C or better. The article also notes that in 2014-2015, the period covered by the grades, there is a 15-point scale used in the grading process. That means that a C is from a 55 to a 69. Meanwhile, the students are on a different grade scale–a scale which would consider those numbers as failing grades. What we have here is a different standard for the school than for the students. How convenient. Note that this shows that more than one fourth of the schools scored below a 55. Wow.

There is a very viable option to Common Core–it is called the North Carolina Education Plan, and is based on a successful program previously used in Greensboro. This is the website.

If you are a parent, there are a number of things you can do to protect your child’s education. You can begin attending Board of Education Meetings and speaking out when those in charge try to tell you that a failing grade is not a failing grade. You can also seek out people to run for the local Board of Education who will look out for your child’s education and not simply go along with what the state bureaucracy tells them. You have a voice in your child’s education. You have the option of speaking out or remaining silent and paying the consequences.