In the past two years, innovators have been providing
technology to citizens of emerging countries that would help them connect with
their governments and give a voice to their ideas and desires. That’s probably
a strange concept to some Americans, after all we can send emails to government
leaders, attend meetings and testify, fill in their online surveys. All that
SHOULD give our ideas and demands weight with our elected leaders. It’s called democracy.
If any of this sounds familiar, than maybe you just attended
one of the Jeffco Board of Education’s community budget meetings, where you
submitted your ideas about spending priorities for the budget. You may have
gone to board meeting where you voiced your opinion. Maybe you were one of the
13,000 people who submitted a survey telling the board how you wanted your tax
dollars spent.
Overwhelmingly, the Board has heard from the public through
the survey and through public comment that these are their top ideas and
desires for budget priorities:
- Keep class sizes small (this will mean spending money to hire & retain teachers)
- Increase employee compensation (Jeffco staff have not had a raise since 2010)
- Maintain electives (again, the requires teachers and materials)
- Increase funding for full-day kindergarten (at least $700, 000 for 13 classes is needed)
To do all this will require some re-balancing of the district’s
budget.
-The Board's proposal of giving more than between $7 milion to charter schools
was not supported by the community
(NOTE: According to the board meeting notes and the board presentation, three members of the Board are proposing:
(NOTE: According to the board meeting notes and the board presentation, three members of the Board are proposing:
Equalizing mill levy override money to match what
neighborhood and option schools received. This would required between $6 to $8
million. It would not be given as loans to Charter School, but given outright.)
-The Boards' proposal of increasing funding for gifted and talented
students was not supported by the community.
Through a democratic process that represents the opinions of
Jeffco parents, students and staff, RIGHT NOW, not last November, a loud message
has been sent to the Board of Education about what their constituency wants.
All indications are that the Board of Education is going to
ignore democracy, ignore the majorities' voice and do what they damn well
please and support their cronies (watch who applies for the next charter school). History has shown what happens to
elected officials who take this course.
Unless its stopped:
- The Board will probably take
$700,000 from the budget that could go to neighborhood schools and give it to
charter schools.
- The Board may give teachers
(but not principals) a raise, but it will then be reduced by the board’s new
requirement that employees pay more for their retirement fund(they don’t get
Social Security). So, no real increase for teacher salaries.
-An increase in health
insurance costs for Jeffco employees has already been approved by the Board,
and Jeffco employees will receive no salary increase, or other means of
offsetting this increase. It looks like Jeffco salaries may actually go
backwards.
Tell the Board of Education that this is America not a third-world country and that democracy is alive. Keep making your voice heard.
The $7 million the board has earmarked for charter schools
should go into free full-day kindergarten, or to retain and hire teachers and
keep small classes and electives.
You can see summaries from each of the Budget Meetings at
the bottom of this page:
You can see summaries of the survey here:
"The $7 million the board has earmarked for charter schools should go into free full-day kindergarten, or to retain and hire teachers and keep small classes and electives."
ReplyDeleteIs the $7 million figure referring to Charter schools in error? If it refers to the "loans" to be made, then it is in error. If it is not, then the context in which it is discussed is in error.
Actually, in question #11 about expanding choice--a question that specifically included GT--a majority of the community supported it (70%). Expand choice (again, including GT) also received approximately 9,000 votes (see the cumulative summary), vs. expanding charter schools which only received 3,000 votes. The top-ranked choice received approximately 13,000--only 4k more than choice including GT, while GT received 6k more than charter schools. In fact, the choice/GT question received about the same amount of votes as the question regarding expanding free full-day kindergarten. You seem to ignore that here, though I'm not sure why. We have students who are very much in need of full-day kindergarten. We also have students who are wait-listed for GT programs who are not receiving adequate services in mainstream classrooms for a variety of reasons and their needs are also important. In either case, we're taking about a minority of Jeffco's students at various ends of the spectrum, but I don't think it's fair to privilege some learners over others while claiming that the community doesn't support GT.
ReplyDeleteWhat is true on the survey is that of the board's 5 stated goals, the one about GT ranked last. That could be for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the board's GT goal is not to expand programming to meet the district's need, but to focus on growth scores among the GT population (specifically, goal #2: The percentage of Advanced Learning Plan students who have growth measures over 50 will increase: in writing from 54 to 56, in math from 60 to 62, in reading from 57 to 59). As the parent of GT kids, I'm not a fan of the focus on test scores over making sure we're offering adequate resources for their educational development, so I also ranked other things higher. It is a huge mistake to misread choosing to rank some educational priorities higher than others as not supporting increasing funding for GT students. I would like to see a funding increase, primarily to expand GT programs, not to improve test scores. I hope the difference is clear, and that you will please avoid targeting a public school program and misreading the meaning behind a survey in the future.
What is clear is that there is very little support for increasing funding to charter schools. Even among charter school parents, it seems that there is a push to fund the charters that are succeeding rather than indiscriminately tossing money at all of them.
To clarify the GT info and the Charter School funding info - The waitlist for GT programs mentioned by realrellim, does not mean that GT students cannot get into a GT program, it only means they cannot get into a GT program of their choice. The comments from the approximate 500 people who attended the budget meetings also clearly show a lack of support for additional funding for GT programs. I have a GT student too, so I'm just stating the facts.
DeleteAbout the Charter School Equalization: Three members of the board have proposed equalizing mill levy override money to match what neighborhood and option schools received. This would require between $6 to $8 million that would be given, not loaned, to Charter Schools.Since Jeffco already has a tight budget, this money will have to come out of some other programs ,or from some other source.