by Dennis Green
Alameda Superintendent of Schools Kirsten Vital says that the new Master Plan is the result of “…eight community workshops, 25 meetings held by community volunteers and 30 school-site meetings led by principals and surveys.” And I believe her.
Why is it then that the resulting Master Plan is a series of agendas by special interest groups cobbled together by the spin doctors of a political public relations consulting firm? These agendas make it obvious that the whole process was hijacked by the usual suspects.
The most familiar agenda is “ maintaining neighborhood schools” — keeping under-enrolled schools open rather than merging students from, say, the Gold Coast’s Franklin School with a different ethnic and socio-economic population in the West End. Code language for “separate but equal,” or de facto segregation.
Another agenda, promoted by the teachers unions, is “maintaining reduced class size,” which means keeping more teachers employed in a market with declining enrollments. As the demographics have changed nationwide, the trend toward smaller classes is the only thing standing between thousands of public school teachers and pink slips.
A third agenda in the Master Plan is the scheme to bring in students from outside the district to “optimize enrollment.” That serves a similar purpose as class size reduction, but brings in less ADA money than it costs to educate the students. A small but vocal minority of Alameda parents believes that bringing in, hopefully, more “Asian” students from Oakland will raise test scores and teaching standards.
Another familiar theme is “strengthening enrichment programs,” which simply means hiring extra counselors and teacher’s aides, as well as hiring P.E., art and music teachers for elementary school kids! And converting classrooms to “flexible learning spaces.” Such programs add considerably to the cost of basic education.
Parents, alumni and other supporters of Encinal High got their agenda into the Master Plan as well, keeping it open as a “magnet school,” rather than merging the two high schools. In reality, if only one high school were kept open, it would be Encinal, which has far greater acreage for future expansion. But that would mean closing Alameda High, an even more sacred cow serving the Gold Coast and the East Enders.
Finally, to convince the voters that economies have been made, there is a reference to “redesigning the central office,” which means things like eliminating intra-campus student mail delivery, and also to “building partnerships with non-profits, businesses and philanthropic organizations.” I would assume this would not include all those smaller businesses and maritime industries hit hardest by the upcoming parcel tax structure, and forever alienated from Alameda schools.
Furthermore, this partnering has been attempted in the past, by development directors and by the Alameda Education Foundation. And the monies raised have fallen far short of what is needed, or even what this Master Plan anticipates in the way of revenue.
So the AUSD Master Plan, after all those meetings and all that hard work, is just a compilation of the same old ideas that have been kicking around in this town for many years. The agendas of various special interest groups — from parents to teachers to administrators — who will all be outvoted in the June election by those of us who don’t buy into their agendas.
In California, 35% of mortgage holders are “underwater,” and even more are defaulting on their credit card debt. Such an economy does not encourage higher taxes, and most of us have seen enough bailouts to last us a lifetime.
©2010 Dennis Green
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