By Charles Sutherland
Campaigning together, after years of “experience” School Board members Messrs. Albrecht and Bushnell want Manassas citizens to give them ‘four more years’ because, they told ‘Patch’, they have “already started addressing some of the challenges facing the city’s schools.” “We are already taking action…”
“Already started addressing”? “Already taking action…”? “Already”…? What have they been doing for the past twelve years?
Well, that’s easy to answer: they have been driving the school system over a cliff. Along with fellow incumbents seeking re-election, Messrs. Magee and Dance, they have transformed the Manassas school system into an expensive bi-lingual welfare program, which now has an annual cost of $101 Million, over $14,000 per student, nearly the highest in the US.
Mr. Albrecht says, “It takes many years to learn how to be a successful school board member.” Is that the number of years it took him and Gail Pope to destroy the City’s education system? “Many years to learn how…”? Why hasn’t he been applying the business management and ‘experience’ he claimed to have when he first sought his role on the School Board, and which he now claims again that he has?
Despite broad criticism from teachers, parents, and the education community, the School Board supported superintendent Gail Pope (and her $200,000 annual compensation package) to the bitter end. Now they continue to support her inept and overpaid hierarchy— including voting 5-2 NOT to terminate DWI-arrested Special Ed Director Beth Dunman-Jones, and NOT taking steps to terminate Deputy Superintendent Michaelene Meyer, regarded by teachers, parents, and educators as a principal source of the school system’s problems and costs.
The Education Forward Committee, which they tout as a paradigm of didactic sagacity, has achieved NOTHING. It is merely a joint School Board and City Council ‘blame-spreading device’ designed to deceive the public into thinking that the City Council is actively monitoring the $101 Million annual cost of this school system. (Wish it were true!)
Albrecht calls himself a “fiscal conservative.” Please… I didn’t notice any apoplexy from him or his ‘yes man’ Mr. Magee at the March 6 School Board meeting when Kermit Dance endorsed giving away $83,000 of free food this summer, “to anyone, not just students”?
“Fiscal conservative”? Neither he nor his ‘yes man Magee’ expressed any qualms regarding the issue of providing free lunches and breakfasts to over 60% of the entire student body. They said nothing when a school official remarked that “we don’t have time to audit more than 1% or so” of the ‘financial need’ applications. (The cost of Food Services for next year is estimated to be $3, 454,808.) Don’t fiscal conservatives do accounting?
Their cosmetic solutions may look good to the uninitiated, but are fatuous and false:
Reducing student-teacher ratio to 22:1? This is only productive if there are good teachers, a good curriculum, and good student behavior. The latter two are lacking. Indeed, discipline and truancy are major issues which would distract even if there were only 10 students in a class.
Paying to have “…an additional 1,000 students taking AP tests.” Instead of generating public relations statistics, how about ‘educating’ more students to ‘pass’ the AP tests? Try that approach! Meanwhile, what happens to the self-esteem of those unprepared students who fail these national tests?
What about 41% of the students having Limited English Proficiency (LEP)? Oh, they propose hiring one reading specialist … for 7,000 students. That should do it! And, by the way…. reading specialist’? Often, these have just been re-assigned teachers.
And haven’t they heard that the Special Ed Department has been missing a teacher for over a year, and the bureaucracy ignores the woeful cries for help by parents who have kids with special needs?
And, how do they deal with Osbourn High School’s loss of accreditation? Answer: switch organizations that review accreditation issues in order to get a better result. Fortunately, OHS’s indolent former principal voluntarily resigned, allowing OHS to have a strong new principal and an exceptional freshman counselor who is addressing the problems.
Has the pompous School Board ever condescended to have discussions with teachers regarding their exclusion from curriculum decisions and the plethora of tests imposed upon them? (Of course, we know that at an open meeting one School Board member, Kermit Dance, expressed his disdain for the opinion of teachers – those “old dogs who can be taught new tricks.”) Aren’t teachers the quintessential component in an education system? Not according to the School Board.
Regarding capital investments and the CIP program: Does Mr. Albrecht agree with Mr. Dance, who was recently quoted in ‘Patch’ as saying, “… he [Dance] calculated that two and a quarter years of learning is taken away from a Baldwin student’s time in elementary school (kindergarten through fourth grade) because they can’t focus due to all the noise that occurs with the facility’s utilities and when it rains”? That’s 45% of a student’s total education over 5 years lost because of noise and rain? Is he serious? My goodness! Is that the same mental math (or mental something…) that Mr. Dance applies to his estimated costs of building that new school he wants, presumably to be named after him? (Let’s hope Mr. Dance gets voted off the Board before he becomes involved in the math/science programs.)
The current School Board has done nothing to reduce the overpaid and incompetent hierarchy of the school administration; have not terminated Deputy Superintendent Meyer; have done nothing to resolve the lamentable needs of the Special Ed Department; have done nothing to foster the dedicated professionalism of the teachers and involve them in the curriculum; have done nothing to improve the English language and reading programs; have done nothing to enforce birth certificate laws; have done nothing to improve discipline and reduce truancy; have done nothing to foster parental involvement; have done nothing to reduce the budget; have openly declined to audit the financial claims of over 60% of the students who receive free lunches and breakfasts; and, have done nothing to improve academic content – instead they have set their academic/political priorities by focusing on developing misleading statistics for the Washington Post’s Matthews Index in order to create good public relations for the tourist department.
The “challenges” to which they refer are ones which they and this School Board created! If you want more of “nothing,” or more “challenges” created, then you should keep them and Messrs. Magee and Dance in office and pretend that these “experienced” emperors are wearing new clothes.
Charles Sutherland is a Candidate for the Manassas City School Board in the May 1st election.
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