The sudden decision last July by Hoover City Schools to eliminate school bus transportation in the 13,000 student district shocked the citizens of the Alabama city. The cut, due to start the following school year, was proposed by Superintendent Andy Craig as a way to save a purported $2.5 million a year. In August, before an overflow crowd of parents and community members in a local high school auditorium, Superintendent Craig and CFO Cathy Antee painted a picture of a school system in dire financial straits. Craig and Antee pointed to years of revenue reductions at the city, state and federal levels to explain why an apparently healthy suburban school system suddenly could no longer afford to transport most of its students to school. In the following months, parents, bus drivers and other interested citizens crowded into every school board and city council meeting to question the decision. Bus drivers began to leave the system for other jobs, assuming that they would be out of work by next May. However, on Monday, December 9, 2013, the Hoover School Board suddenly rescinded its July vote. Superintendent Craig said that the system would continue to operate bus transportation, but would attempt to develop a fee structure whereby families would pay for their children to ride to school and extracurricular events. But the citizens who had formed the Save the Hoover Buses grassroots group knew better than to relax and assume that all was well and they could return to business and lives as usual. While the board’s turnaround was greeted with cheers and relief by the system’s parents and bus drivers, the transportation controversy revealed a host of troubling issues. Continue reading
No answers as Hoover families face loss of school transportation
It has been four months since the Hoover school board voted 4-1 to eliminate school bus transportation for most students beginning in August, 2014. Parents have come before the board at every opportunity and asked for information about how their children will get to school. So far, little useful information has been forthcoming.
How are Hoover parents to plan for the next school year? Superintendent Andy Craig has been unable to answer questions about possible fee-based bus transportation. It is illegal in Alabama for a public school system to charge bus riders a direct fee for transportation to school. The alternative is a bus service run by a private contractor, with fees for rides being paid directly to the contractor by Hoover families. This arrangement raises obvious questions, none of which have been answered satisfactorily to give families a way to plan for the next school year. Continue reading
We need some Moral Mondays here in Hoover. Tuesdays through Sundays, too.
It is time for people of faith and people with good hearts full of compassion to get involved in this school busing mess and the misguided philosophy behind it.
Al.com reports this morning what we already suspected: that the elimination of regular school bus transportation next school year will disproportionately affect black children.
63% of black students were designated by their parents this year as “likely bus riders,” while 44% of white students were designated as “likely bus riders.” 55% of other races were so designated.
Turn that around. When regular (non-special needs) buses are eliminated next year, 63% of black students in Hoover City Schools will lose their way to school. In a city that covers over 40 square miles, with busy highways and few safe walking routes, a serious barrier will be placed in the way of their attending public school in the city in which they live.
Is this intentional? is there a nefarious intent on the part of the Superintendent and school board to reduce the number of black children in Hoover Schools? I don’t know, but I don’t think it matters. Certainly, there is a dismaying amount of oblivious evil in Hoover. Many of us are life-long ivory tower-dwellers. Some of our school board members have bought into the elitist mentality, born out of the white privilege of always having our voices heard. When the “we” and “they” pronouns are used in the way school board president Paulette Pearson did: “We provide…” and “They take advantage… ,” it indicates that our school board has lost the moral compass that should guide the heart of leadership.
The second step in this discriminatory plan is to offer bus service for a fee. I suspect that is the “solution” that the school system will offer. For those with the means to afford it, that will solve the problem. It will quiet a lot of the concerned voices. But what about the poorest families? What about those who are struggling to make ends meet already? What about the working parent who now has to choose for her child: transportation to school or baseball? Transportation or band? Transportation or a winter coat? What about those for whom there is simply no choice, no way?
I believe that Hoover is a community of caring, compassionate people. I have seen it in too many individual acts of kindness and generosity. I am baffled why we, as a community, seem incapable of showing the same open hearts and arms we show so often on a personal scale.
I believe it is time for our leaders of faith, and our leaders of conscience in the city to speak out and insist that the mayor, city council, Superintendent and school board do the right thing. I want the school board to rescind the vote to eliminate most buses and express determination to do what it takes to provide transportation to school for all students who need it. I want the city leaders to examine their priorities and realize that if the school system flounders, so does the city. Difficult cuts in city and education spending must be made, but they should not be placed on the backs of the poorest families. It is wrong, and it is not who we are in Hoover.
Posted by Liz Wallace Tuesday am.
Rich person with kids in private school explains to us how class size and per-student spending don’t matter
This is just one more thing M. Night Shyamalan needs to shut up about.
Actually, the beginning of the video is sort of adorable. His precious description of the two high schools he scouted for movie scenes in Philadelphia makes him sound as if he, a resident of Philadelphia, for pete’s sake, just made his first foray into a public school building EVER. He lives in Philadelphia. Seriously. Yet, he’s all, “OMG, the two schools were, like, so different. One was all light and the kids came out and wanted to be in my movie, and the other was all dark and the kids had their heads down and there were metal detectors!” Are you kidding me with this, M. Night?
Then he goes on to explain breathlessly how class size doesn’t matter AT ALL to educational achievement. Well no, not AT ALL, he says it makes about the same difference that having a pet has on one’s overall health, by which I think he means lowering class size is another of those gooey, feel-good measures that are silly. He says he’d rather his child be the 31st child in the classroom of a good teacher than the 11th child in the classroom of a mediocre teacher. And money doesn’t matter at all. AT ALL. NO EVIDENCE that per-student spending matters.
The interviewer doesn’t bother to ask him how you get that good teacher to teach 31 kids if money doesn’t matter. He doesn’t ask how many kids are in M. Night’s kids’ private school classes, or how much he pays in tuition.
I have not researched the schools Mr. Shyamalan’s children attend. Maybe they have an open-door policy. Maybe they have no enrollment cap and no waiting list, and they take all who come and the teachers simply adjust to 31, or 35, or 38 children in a classroom because they are just that dedicated and awesome. Maybe there is no test for admission, and maybe tuition is on a sliding scale where Mr. Shyamalan pays a lot and the poor kid from a bad neighborhood in Philly goes free. Maybe autistic and deaf and multi-handicapped kids can attend, also. Maybe homeless kids can show up and the school takes them, too. I don’t know.
M. Night Shyamalan, rich film director, now also apparently an expert on how money doesn’t matter to educational outcomes. These are the things that make you want to bang your head on the desk.
A deeper and smarter view of this topic, here.
Posted by Liz Wallace on Sunday am.
It’s always about the money.
Andrew Ujifusa writes in Education Week that state education budgets have not recovered from the Great Recession, something Hoover, Alabama residents understand quite painfully if they have children in public school and have been following the recent discussion of school system finances. (Thank you to @ALSchoolConnect for leading me to the EW article.)
“In the new CBPP report, “Most States Funding Schools Less Than Before the Recession,”authors Michael Leachman and Chris Mai state that “at least” 34 states are funding public schools at lower levels for the 2013-14 school year than they did for the 2007-8 school year, on a per-student basis and adjusted for inflation. And 13 states have cut per-student spending by more than 10 percent over that time—two states, Alabama and Oklahoma, have cut that spending by more than 20 percent since the financial crisis.” (emphasis mine)
When you are discussing education and someone says, “It’s not about the money,” it’s about the money. Educating a nation’s children is expensive. And just like keeping up a house, if you let it go for half a generation, it gets more expensive.
The national, state and local debates about public education are about money.
More later. In the meantime, listen to the interview with former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich on Democracy Now! and remember: an uneducated labor force is cheap and powerless.
Posted by Liz Wallace Saturday am.
Build the New 