4 Important Issues Right Now
The top school concerns to focus on in a sea of noise
It's hard to know what to pay attention to when it comes to our public schools. We're all busy, right? And there's so much yelling sometimes, I think we can all be forgiven for wanting to just tune out. So let me try to help. Here are four specific issues I think we should all be paying attention to this fall when it comes to the East Penn School District:
#1: Safety & Security
This is probably the most common concern I hear raised by parents right now. Keeping our kids safe is always a #1 priority. It's reassuring to remember that our schools remain very safe and-- statistically speaking-- they are actually safer than virtually any other place that kids spend substantial time. Bet you didn't know that!
But this doesn't mean we can't do even better, or that we should ignore the safety concerns that still do exist. The East Penn school board has allocated $420,000 in new spending on safety and security this school year, though we still don't know how that money will be spent. The danger is that it will be wasted on well-meaning but ineffective and expensive attempts to put more armed police in the school. Research shows this is unlikely to help and may even make things worse. Look no farther than our own high school: we've been paying for a full-time police officer there for seven years now, and safety concerns have only grown larger in that time.
So ask yourself: what medium- and long-term strategies can we adopt for further increasing the safety and security of our schools, rather than falling once again into the trap of short-term fixes that history has shown don't work? And how can we talk about safety issues with fellow parents, neighbors, and school officials that don't contribute to further misperceptions about school security that are already widespread in the community?
#2: Aging Infrastructure
In many ways we are fortunate to have well-maintained school buildings across our district. A few years ago, a superintendent candidate told me they were the best maintained buildings he had ever seen in his career! But the reality is that many of our buildings are quite old, and old buildings are increasingly expensive to repair and maintain. There's also another issue: the increasing number of children with disabilities in the schools mean that we now need more space, even though the total number of students in the district overall isn't changing very much.
The good news is that the school board has been aware of this issue for several years now, and has been planning ahead by making sure to save money in a "capital reserve" account. This money is available to help pay for some of the improvements to our aging infrastructure. Their fiscal responsibility will help avoid extraordinary tax increases, as well as save taxpayer dollars overall by lowering the amount of money the district will need to borrow.
But these are big expenses-- millions or maybe tens of millions of dollars-- and so we should be asking ourselves questions like: What criteria should our board and administration be using to decide whether to renovate a school versus build a new school? What are the list of infrastructure improvements that are absolutely necessary versus those that are "wants" rather than "needs"? What type of schools (e.g. small neighborhood schools vs. large centralized schools) best reflect the values of the community?
#3: Censorship & Self-Censorship
Attempts to ban books and censor curriculum is at an all time high in schools nationwide. There are those who are no longer content with controlling what their own children read and learn; they want to also control what everyone else's children read and learn too. And they are convinced they know better than the professionally trained and experienced librarians and teachers we have always relied on to make these calls.
Part of the problem is that nobody owns up to the label of "censor" or "book banner" anymore; instead they use euphemisms that sound far more noble (like "protecting children"). Another part of the problem is that these censorship efforts have become so widespread, teachers and librarians are self-censoring themselves to avoid even the potential for controversy.
So ask yourself: what can we do to avoid East Penn falling victim to this nationwide trend toward censorship? And how can we support the teachers and staff in our schools in ways that will protect them from censorship attacks? How can we give them them the confidence in our district, and our community, that they don't fall prey to self-censorship?
#4: Changing Curricular Needs
We live in a society that has been transformed by the information revolution, and keeping up with those transformations in education can be challenging. In my daughter's beginning Spanish class, she was required to learn vocabulary like "floppy disk" and "mimeograph." But updating and changing what is taught in school is more complicated than it might appear.
One challenge is identifying good quality educational materials to use in curriculum updates. Selling curricular materials to public schools is big business, and so there are lots of options on the market that make big promises but don't actually work very well in practice. Another challenge is the need to increase the focus on subjects that may have seemed optional or less important in the past, but are increasingly essential to today's students. I'm thinking here of social studies, which is so vital to our democracy right now. And statistics, which is far more important and relevant than some algebra for today's students. Still a third challenge is the small but vocal minority in the community that wants to use school curriculum to push their particular ideology by controlling the facts and points of view our students are exposed to in school. These efforts threaten to poison the good faith work of educators to update curriculum and adapt it to the changing needs of our wide range of students.
So ask yourself: how can we ensure that we have experienced and qualified content experts making curriculum decisions in our schools? What subjects or topics should schools focus on less, in order to make room for the subjects and topics they need more of? How can we incorporate community and parent input into curriculum decisions without allowing those decisions to be held hostage by the loudest or most extreme voices?
There are certainly other issues worth some attention. But I think these four are the most pressing right now that can be effectively addressed at the level of our local East Penn schools. What do you think? What ideas do you have for how to address these issues? Or, what issues are important to you that I haven't mentioned here?
From the time when it was first approved, you've made it clear that you don't want money spent on school resource officers, saying here now that the security problems are getting worse, in spite of their use in EPSD.
How would you spend that money (and any additional money), instead?