Quote:
Originally Posted by Phocion
This process, while seemingly setup to be transparent, methodical and involving the community will still ultimately come down to being what the BOE wants it to be, but with, as you said, scapegoats in place. I will give it to them, they know how to cover themselves and their intentions.
Some of that Advisory Committee have close ties to the board though, so it should come as no surprise to them. I am sure they are just doing the boards bidding. I would say do a FOIA, but this group made their living on those, they will have done everything off the record.
|
My issue with the process is that options were limited from the start by the data Cropper was provided or not provided in some cases. A lot of questions from the Committee have gone unanswered in this process. It seems to me that the process can be manipulated by the Board or UCPS simply by failing to acknowledge issues and provide data. The Board can't just claim they can have no involvement until time for the final vote. The Committee and the community have a lot of questions that need to be addressed.
Some of mine are:
1. Why will the Board not adopt as policy a uniform method for calculating capacities?
2. Why are the school capacities not limited to the capacities of the core areas? Why is the focus only on classroom capacities? Did the Board vote on that?
3. Why does the core capacity of some cafeterias exceed the occupancy limits for those cafeterias?
4. Who came up with the idea to recalculate the cafeteria capacities using the four-lunch standard rather than the three-lunch standard recommended by DPI? Why do some of our schools have six lunches if capacity is based on four?
5. Why was no standard process used to calculate classroom capacities? Why are there so many footnotes to the capacity list indicating that rooms get included in the count at certain schools but not at others? Why do some schools have rooms excluded from capacity for special programs and others don't?
6. Why are undersized rooms of around 400 sf or less being included in classroom capacities at a certain elementary school when the minimum classroom size per DPI guidelines is 850 sf? Why when this was pointed out did UCPS and the BOE fail to correct the error?
7. Why is the Committee not being provided with the campus capacities (capacity available with mobile classrooms)? Is an unstated goal getting all students out of mobile classrooms in the first year which wouldn't even make sense at schools with rapidly declining populations?
8. How is UCPS going to address students being moved from year-round to traditional schools?
9. How is UCPS going to address students being moved from schools with special programs like Language Immersion to schools without those programs?
10. How is UCPS going to address the inequity in course offerings between schools when moving students to schools with fewer offerings?
11. How is UCPS going to address the lack of uniformity in instructional time among the middle schools leading to some students receiving almost 2 and 1/2 weeks less instructional time in core subject areas than students at certain other middle schools? For those not aware, this is a result of certain schools holding every student in a holding tank and wasting their time for a whole period so tutoring can occur during school hours whether or not a student needs tutoring. So, moving a student from one school to another could decrease a student's core instructional time by as much as 25 minutes per day. This also means students at schools with tutoring periods loose around 10 minutes of their already short lunch time.
12. Why will UCPS not disclose to the Committee the attendance zone for Benton Heights (encompasses Walter Bickett, East and part of Rock Rest and Rocky River districts but a map doesn't seem to officially exist)? What happens if Walter Bickett becomes part of the State's charter school district for failing schools? Students within the WB attendance area are currently allowed to choose between attending Benton Heights or Walter Bickett. Why is the Committee being told Benton Heights is outside their scope? Why did UCPS create a failing (moved up to a D) magnet school to start with? What is really going on here? Is it a relief valve for Monroe schools? Give people an option between the low-performing schools in the cluster so they don't transfer out into the other clusters?
13. Why is the BOE not modifying the scope of some of its bond projects based on the new capacity and population forecast data? Enrollment forecasts indicate that some of the classroom capacity additions simply aren't needed. The classroom capacities now show some schools have classroom capacities way over their core capacities and some middle school and high school pairs have a mismatch in capacity that won't allow for full utilization of classroom capacity at one member of the pair. Why add additional classroom capacity in those situations if it can't be utilized?
14. Why won't the BOE set a grandfathering policy? Are they backpedaling on that promise?