Archive for November 13th, 2008
We’ve reported in this blog before how quality education institutions and an educated population are critical competents of future economic success. The TREO blueprint has identified education enrichment as one of our communities top 5 priorities. The recent Tucson Regional Town Hall listed education as a major area for requiring improvement. We all agree to be world class we must start with world class people.
T.U.S.D. continues to be our major school district with 59,000+ students enrolled in fiscal 2008. The district continues to be under fire recently for how it educates, how much it spends on administration and results they have been getting. With an $381.2 million annual budget paid for by you and me via property taxes (among other taxing mechanisms), people are starting to ask questions and demand better results before more money will be allocated.
Growing Role of Charter Schools
Charter schools have exploded in our community and in the state. Parents are choosing to exercise their free market choice and take their kids out of the district.
The charter schools receive $6600 per student from the the state. Those of us that send their kids to private schools pay out of pocket and don’t burden the state with having to educate our kids at all. Charter schools must pay for their facility, attract and train quality teachers and produce results. T.U.S.D. essentially collects close to $12k per student when you factor in the fact that they have no cost for building their schools and they can bond for capital improvements.
Proposition to increase TUSD funding failed at the ballot box
T.U.S.D was recently defeated on a proposition for increased school funding. This would have been a county only proposition and our way of telling the state that we believe spending more money is the answer. If the state won’t open the wallet we’ll tax ourselves. The proposition lost. From talking to people about the issue it wasn’t that voters didn’t believe their was a need for a greater investment in our children it was that people have lost faith in T.U.S.D.’s effectiveness in spending our money and producing results.
Enter a new Superintendent, Elizabeth Celania-Fagen. If there was ever a time for a leader now is it. Fagen is inheriting an ingrained bureaucracy, a culture that isn’t too keen on change and internal bickering that has paralyzed the district for years. As a former teacher she’ll be forced to make hard decisions that will certainly anger the teachers union. She must walk the tigh rope of parents, teachers, administrators and a newly constituted school board that each have their own agenda.
During her brief honeymoon as our new top teacher, I for one wish her luck. Our region depends on a quality education for our kids.
Read the Weekly article HERE.
But according to Pedersen, an annual Kids Count report shows that TUSD spends about $7,410 a year per child, lower than the national average of $8,973 but higher than the state average of $6,232.
Pedersen says the other work ahead for TUSS involves spreading the word about what they see as great programs and schools that are already part of TUSD, in an effort to help the district better compete against charter and private schools that are currently luring an estimated 11,000 students from TUSD schools.
In the end, the fate of TUSD schools may come down to survival of the fittest. Celania-Fagen says she anticipates the district will have a better understanding of what schools are meant to stick around–and those that are not–based on enrollment. She has asked school administrators to ask themselves, “What’s it like to learn here, and can you explain that to parents? Does it mean something beyond reading, writing and arithmetic?”
“(It becomes) a consumer-driven thing where we have students and families choosing certain schools, and no one choosing others, and there are probably reasons why no one is choosing that school. That makes the conversation different,” she says.
We better get this right, we have the children depending on us.
