Update: Helayne Jones will be sending me the data she based her op-ed on ASAP. As soon as I get it I will post it up here. My guess is they cherry-picked but if it's legit then I owe her an apology on my summation of her claim below.
Lets start with the management of BVSD, we have this article by Chris King and Helayne Jones where they claim:
We disagree with petition advocates' assertion that BVSD has made no progress over the past decade in closing the academic achievement gap between minority and majority students or between students in poverty and more well-off students. When CSAP scores are examined from the first date at which the testing program was near to its present configuration, clear evidence of closing the gap in BVSD exists. Much work remains to be done in narrowing the achievement gap, but BVSD has made demonstrable progress.
Now a simple review of the data shows the above statement to be totally false. So Chris & Helayne are either stupid or are lying to us. I've met Chris several times and he's not stupid. I'm willing to give Helayne the benefit of the doubt and say she also knows what's actually going on. So they're lying to us.
The existing BVSD administration has also made it clear they have no respect for the constitutional rights of their students. How on earth can they teach our children to protect our freedoms when they are so quick to trammel them? (And to this day, the promised statement from BVSD has never been forthcoming.)
I could go on but what's the point? None of this is a surprise to any of us. A district that has shown no improvement, management pretending that they are effecting improvement, teaching students the wrong lessons in their actions. Yes the BVSD board & administration is an incompetent disaster. Yes they need to be replaced.
The proposed BVSD split is not the answer.
Why? Two reasons. First the simple one - this is from a group unhappy with how the district is handling old school buildings. This is not the big problem we face and forcing an election because of some buildings being torn down diverts efforts from the key problems rather than addressing them.
But the major reason is this - a mechanism exists to resolve these issues. It's called the school board election. The district can be improved by electing a competent board. Yet there has been no effort to do so.
Lets say we split the district in two. Ok, then we then face electing a competent board in both new districts. If the people behind this effort cannot stir themselves to put forth a slate for one board election, how on earth will they do so for two?
This proposal is not about improving the district. It's about punishing the existing district for selling Washington School and tearing down Louisville Middle School. When it's all over, if the election succeeds, we have the same people, the same problems, the same system.
Now if there is an effort to elect a competent slate to BVSD at that slate is well supported in the Eastern half of the district while the Western half wants to continue with the present Nimrods, then there's a good argument for splitting.
But first let's see if this group is willing to do the difficult essential part of trying to get a competent slate elected to the board. I'm not saying they have to succeed, but let's at least see a credible effort. That's step 1.
