Unfortunately I did not listen to or summarize the December, 2008 School Board meetings. Sorry, but December was a busy month. Here are the minutes of the December 3rd and the December 17th meetings.
Author’s note: PWC School Division’s website is oddly integrated. The school division does not make it easy for bloggers to link directly to documents on their website. So if you are interested in more details, you will have to find the document yourself. Fortunately, that is relatively easy. To find out more details about the last school board meeting, go here and look for the topic under the Electronic Agenda (January 7th).
Note that a video of the School Board’s meetings is available here.
Blessing
Pastor Bill Roberts of Christ Chapel, Woodbridge, VA, provided the blessing. Pastor Roberts asked the Lord to help the School Board and school officials to manage the school division well and to provide good leadership through troubling financial difficulties.
Annual Organization Meeting
The School Board begins each year by organizing itself. Since board members get along well, this event is a largely ceremonial legal requirement. The most obvious outcome is the appointment of the Vice Chair. This year the board selected Denita Ramirez as the Vice Chair. The board also made some other appointments and established its schedule. Note that all future School Board meetings will be held at the new administration building.
Citizen Comments
Several subjects came up. Commenters included parents advocating the 11th high school, parents advocating their position on the proposed boundary plan for Yorkshire Elementary, parents advocating traditional math, and a representative of the teacher’s union.
- Because the board planned to vote on funding the 11th high school at this meeting, several parents showed up to advocate the need for the new school.
- Because the board planned to receive an information briefing on the boundary plan for Yorkshire Elementary, two parents showed up to comment on the proposal. They advocated plan 2a. They expressed traffic concerns related to Route 28 and one said the boundary committee did no represent the entire community.
- Six parents showed up to advocate traditional math and complain about the Math Investigations (MI) program. They gave examples to demonstrate their belief that the MI program dumbs down math instruction. One parent noted that in the future the MI program could be extended through high school. Another explained that she is so dissatisfied that she is now homeschooling her child.
- Bonnie Klakowicz, the President of the Prince William Education Association, came speak about the school budget and advocate spending more for education (That is, after all, what teacher’s union reps do.). She is concerned about Governor Kaine’s budget plans, and she wants citizen’s to express their concerns to their elected officials. See here for her side of the issue.
Resolution Honoring Carolyn M. Custard
The School Board honored Carolyn M. Custard, principal of C.D. Hylton High School. Custard was named 2008 Outstanding High School Principal of Virginia and one of three finalists for the National Association of Secondary School Principals/MetLife 2009 High School Principal of the Year.
Yorkshire Elementary School Boundary Planning Committee Report
The School Board received a briefing on the boundary plan (See here for the briefing.). The committee made only one recommendation. What was interesting was the questions the School Board had about the plan. Most of the question and answer period was used to discuss the issue of diversity. Ramirez seemed especially concerned about this. The presenter for boundary committee stressed that plan 1a provided a good demographic balance between Yorkshire Elementary and Signal Hill Elementary. Johns seemed puzzled by the length of that discussion. He made the point that although diversity is important it should not as a rule be the primary criteria in deciding school boundary plans.
Contract Award – 11th High School
The School Board voted unanimously for the 11th High School. In spite of the unanimous vote, the School Board made its uneasiness over the vote apparent. Several stressed that Superintendent Walts assured them that the money is available.
The following is from the school division’s website.
The Prince William County School Board on Wednesday awarded a construction contract of $70.7 million to Hess Construction to build the School Division’s 11th high school. The vote was 7–0, with one member absent. Due to current market conditions and other factors, the winning bid came in $11.3 million under the projected costs. The School Division’s approved Capital Improvements Plan allowed for $95.4 million for the overall project, with $82 million of this amount projected for the construction award. The project will be paid for with bonds over the next 20 years with the impact on next year’s budget being $1.4 million.
The new high school will be built near the intersection of Kettle Run and Vint Hill Roads in the Linton Hall area. The building will provide much needed classroom relief to high schools in the western area of the county, several of which have student enrollments over their current building capacity.
Hess Construction is not unfamiliar with PWCS, having built Freedom High School, which opened in 2004. Construction is scheduled to begin in February and the building will take 26 months to complete. The facility will open to students for the 2011–12 school year. An announcement will be forthcoming regarding a formal groundbreaking ceremony in the near future. (from here)
Undoubtedly, the low bid helped to decide the issue in favor of building the new school.
Board Time
Grant Lattin decided to respond to the citizen comments on Math Investigations (MI). Lattin obviously feels strongly about this issue. He started off by stating that the MI program is needed because this method does a better job of teaching math concepts and better inspires children to love math. Latten stressed his expertise and personal experience as teacher. He has used MI methods to teach children math.
Lattin also noted that more people have spoken before the board in favor of the MI program and that parent nights for the MI program have been well attended. He said most of the opposition has come from six families and these people have spoken repeatedly at board meetings, sometimes providing misinformation.
Lattin added that he cannot think of any way the school division can give parents an option to have their children take traditional math instead of the MI program. It would cause too much confusion.
Richardson and Otaigbe also spoke on this issue. Richardson emphasized that every decision the board makes will not be popular. The best the board can do is come up with decisions that satisfy the needs of the greatest number of people. Otaigbe also supported Lattin. He reminded people that the current math instruction program blends the MI program with tradition math and that the school division is still working on the correct balance
Author’s note: I do not have the expertise to say whether traditional math or the MI program is the better approach. What concerns me is the politics.
When Lattin says he that he cannot think of any way the school division can give parents an option to have their children take traditional math instead of the MI program, he is right. Trying to offer parents a choice would confront the School Board with the basic problem presented by any socialist system. Socialist systems, and the public school system clearly is an example of socialism, have a hard time offering customers a choice. The reason is basic. Every human being has a limited management span-of-control.
The PWC school division has over 70,000 students. In order to manage the school system efficiently, the superintendent and the School Board have to standardize the curriculum across the schools. Whenever they depart from this standard, it creates more work for the management. To assure quality control, the superintendent and the School Board have to have some familiarity with how each program is run. In such a large system, that means personalized service almost out of the question.
Capitalist systems get around the management span-of-control with decentralized decision-making. That is why every private school can be unique. The people who own and operate the school can make their own decision about what they want to teach and how. They just have to keep their customers happy. When they don’t, their customers leave.
Education is a personal endeavor. Parents want to pass their own values onto their children. Each child learns differently, and teachers have their own strengths, weaknesses, and preferences. Unless the government outlaws school choice, the personal choices parents have every right to make will allow private schools to remain viable and drive some parents to homeschool their children.
