The item on the agenda was:
APPROVAL OF THE PEORIA CHARTER SCHOOL INITIATIVE
Proposed Action: That the charter school proposal submitted by Peoria Charter School Initiative dated October 1, 2009 and amended on December 23, 2009 is approved, subject to the negotiation of the terms of a contract between the Board of Education and Peoria Charter School Initiative as required by the Illinois School Code.
And it passed 6-1, which is no surprise. The only dissenting vote was Laura Petelle.
You’ve got to love the Journal Star Editorial Board. Only they could make a cogent case against something, then endorse it, defying all reason. That they would endorse the proposed charter school was a foregone conclusion. One is hard-pressed to think of any project supported by Caterpillar and/or the Chamber of Commerce that they’ve opposed.
After seven paragraphs outlining all the problems with charter schools (most don’t live up to their hype, the district is broke, private funding is unlikely to be sustained, etc.), they take all of two paragraphs to say, basically, “oh, hang the problems, let’s do it anyway!”
Nonetheless, we’re inclined to support this charter school, if not as enthusiastically as some would like. First, the investment is relatively small on a $140 million-plus budget. Second, this is an experiment worth trying, to see if charter school proponents can accomplish more for less cost-per-pupil, as they claim. Third, while some have noted the contradiction in opening a new school just after closing others, arguably this isn’t just a new building but a different approach.
Ultimately, we just can’t discount the frustration of parents who want to stay in the city but not at the expense of their kids’ future success. In many ways Peoria lives or dies on District 150. The locals have lost faith. Something must be done.
A relatively small investment? District 150 ended its last fiscal year $8.9 million in the red. $6.5 million of that deficit came from the education fund. With overspending that serious, the district should be looking at more cuts, not new expenditures. And make no mistake: the charter school is a new expenditure. Even ardent charter school proponents admit that the first few years will end up costing the school district until the district can consolidate and close another middle school.
Forgotten, it seems, is the fact that the charter school is not only a middle school. It’s planned to be a high school also. When it’s fully functional, it would serve grades 5 through 12. It would start in year one with grades 5 through 7, then add one grade each year. When the high school grades are added, how will the district recoup the federal and state money they lose? Close another high school? If so, that should be planned now, not reacted to later.
But reaction is District 150’s M.O., and charter school proponents know it. So they’re putting tremendous pressure on the school board to make another all-too-common hasty decision, before the board can fully consider the ramifications. They’ve contrived a crisis: “The Caterpillar grant is contingent on the District 150 Board of Education awarding the charter for the 2010-2011 school year at its first meeting in January.” Peoria’s mayor has met with the Secretary of Education, and now dangles the carrot of federal “Race to the Top” money for districts who have established charter schools. Ominously, this money is not guaranteed. A media blitz has touted the messianic nature of charter schools and implored citizens to demand one from the school board. No doubt many citizens, believing the ads implicitly, have complied — the same way they complied with requests from the same group to raise their own sales taxes one quarter of a percent during a recession.
There are good reasons the charter school proponents would want this decided now, and not next year. First, there’s the fact that property tax bills have not come out yet. After the electorate suffers the shock of seeing this year’s property taxes spike due to District 150’s seven-percent increase, they might not be as eager to demand the district spend money it doesn’t have. Second, a new, permanent superintendent will be hired by next year, and who knows what he or she may think of the charter school initiative?
Don’t get me wrong. I believe that charter school proponents have the best of intentions. I believe they want to see the school district improved and children better educated, and I believe they think this is the best way to do it. But good intentions don’t make their plan wise or their tactics justifiable, nor does popular support make their plan more affordable.
In the end, the school board needs to make a prudent decision based on cold, hard facts and harsh, fiscal realities. The district can’t afford another impulsive decision based on flimsy reasoning like that of the Journal Star’s editorial board.
From a press release:
City crews have completed final plowing and salting operations on primary streets during the night. Motorists can expect primary streets to be slushy and wet during the morning rush.
Plowing on residential streets was delayed due to additional snow during the night. Residential streets are 95% complete, with the expectation of being 100% by 10:00 a.m. this morning. Crews will begin alley plowing this morning and hope to have them completed by late afternoon.
On WEEK’s screen crawl tonight, it says the “Spook River Public Library Dist.” will be closed tomorrow. I guess the folks in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, haven’t read any Edgar Lee Masters lately.
UPDATE: They got it fixed by the time Jimmy Fallon aired. Still funny, though.
According to the venerable New York Times, Jay Leno is tanking at 9:00, so the network is punishing Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon.
The network has a plan in the works to restore Jay Leno to his old spot at 11:35 [10:35 CT] each weeknight for a half-hour, while pushing the man who replaced him, Conan O’Brien, to a starting time of 12:05 a.m. [11:05 p.m. CT] Mr. O’Brien would then have a full hour. […] The third NBC late-night star, Jimmy Fallon, has shown some promising ratings with younger viewers. He would then begin his show at 1:05 a.m. [12:05 a.m. CT], the executives said.
Conan’s show would still be called “The Tonight Show,” thus avoiding a breach-of-contract penalty for NBC. The stupidest thing is their reasoning:
Mr. O’Brien, meanwhile, has had his ratings suffer on “The Tonight Show.” He has trailed the “Late Night With David Letterman” on CBS by about two million viewers a night; Mr. Leno had easily been the winner in that time period previously.
Well, it’s amazing what 15 years does for your ratings. A better comparison would be to see how well Leno did his first year on the job. Answer: third place — behind Letterman and Nightline. This is a knee-jerk reaction to top all knee-jerk reactions, and will result in even more viewers being lost.
On the PBS Newshour Wednesday, they did a segment on Rocco Landesman, National Endowment for the Arts chair. You may remember that he made some disparaging remarks about Peoria, then visited Peoria last November. During the PBS news segment, there’s footage from his Peoria visit as well as his explanation/apology for the disparaging comments he had made earlier:
JEFFREY BROWN: You created a stir early on with the Peoria comment. And it sounded as though you were saying that money should go to places with proven merit, as opposed to the more traditional sort of distribution geographically. That’s the way it sounded.
ROCCO LANDESMAN: Well, Peoria was really a figure of speech. I’m a Broadway guy, and there is that great old Vaudeville expression, will it play in Peoria? I didn’t mean anything personal to Peoria. And what I was trying to say was really that art that’s going to be supported by the NEA is going to be on the basis of merit and quality, not just because it exists in a certain place. And we’re going to be wherever it is.
So there you have it: Peoria’s national reputation has been restored. Who could ask for anything more?
Radio station WOAM (AM 1350), which went off the air in 2008 then popped back on unannounced in the fall of 2009 without commercials or disk jockeys, has once again gone off the air. WOAM is owned by Kelly Communications, which is trying to sell the station. According to published reports, the station had to temporarily resume broadcasting to keep its FCC license.
While I was on hiatus last month, a letter appeared in the Journal Star from Mayor Jim Ardis promoting the Peoria Charter School Initiative (PCSI). It lays out his argument for supporting a new charter school in Peoria, and concludes with a call to the public to write or call their school board members, asking them to approve PCSI’s application. According to another Journal Star article, that approval would come with a price: “$1.7 million, or 70 percent, of the initial costs.”
In this post, I’ll respond to each of his three arguments:
1. Proven model argument
First, this charter school will follow a proven model that produces outstanding results in urban districts. A similar school in Chicago, the Chicago Math & Science Academy, is rated one of the top three charter schools and non-selective high schools in that city. CMSA graduated its first senior class in 2009. Every graduate was accepted into college (some into multiple schools), and 100 percent entered college this fall. These are exactly the results we want for students in Peoria, and we shouldn’t accept any less.
Yes, they follow a proven model, but it’s not a secret recipe like Kentucky Fried Chicken or Coca-Cola. The model includes all of the usual ingredients for improved student performance: longer school day, smaller class sizes, individualized instruction, parental involvement, highly-qualified teachers, challenging curriculum, community support, etc. Why is it that these things can only be provided by third-party companies like Edison Schools or Concept Schools, Inc. (at considerable cost), but can’t be provided by Peoria Public Schools district-wide? If this model produces “exactly the results we want for students in Peoria,” then why should it be implemented at only one school? Why should only some students benefit?
Keep in mind that the board of the PCSI has made it quite clear that they expect the demographics of the charter school to mirror the demographics of the district at large. So one cannot argue that this method doesn’t work for poor, minority, ELL, or special needs children. According to PCSI, it does. It works for everyone and lifts everyone’s scores. Since the model is no secret, and is universally effective, why the need to bring in Concept Schools, Inc.? Why doesn’t the district just implement the model across the district themselves? Is it lack of money? Political will? Teacher/union cooperation?
The charter school, just like Edison schools, is an attempt to alleviate the symptoms of a deeper problem instead of getting to the root issue. If District 150 education is terrible — and based on test scores, it is for many — shouldn’t our focus be on fixing that problem at the root level and not just trying to provide an escape hatch for some lucky children who (literally) win the lottery to get out of their failing school?
2. School choice argument
Second, District 150 parents want and deserve choice: a high-quality education, a longer school day and year, and more opportunities for their children to be successful. Parents know it is critical for their children to have solid skills in math, science and technology to be prepared for college and career. They’re asking for options, and our School Board must be responsive to those requests.
I expected this argument to be advocating choice between a school with a math and science emphasis and a school with another emphasis, such as fine arts or vocational training. But instead, it appears the choice he’s talking about is between things like a poor education and a high-quality education, or a shorter and a longer school day. What kind of choice is that? Who opts for fewer opportunities for their children to be successful?
District 150 parents want and deserve and have been asking for a high-quality education at every District 150 school. The Board must be responsive to that request first and foremost.
3. Federal funding argument
Third, President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are calling for education reform and emphasizing charter schools as a key component. They’ve seen firsthand the success of charter school students. Establishing a charter school in Peoria increases the possibility of additional federal funding for District 150. Without a charter school, we’ll have a much harder time accessing Race to the Top funding.
It’s funny that politicians see “the success of charter school students” when a recent Stanford University National Charter School Study found that 17 percent of 2403 charter schools showed more growth than their traditional public school peers, 46 percent had performance that was “indistinguishable” from traditional public schools, and 37 percent of charter schools were actually worse. But never mind that.
Here’s the carrot for District 150 to say “yes” to spending $1.7 million on PCSI: more federal funding. If you want to get access to “Race to the Top” funding, you first have to race to establish a charter school. Of course, there’s no guarantee you’ll actually get much, if any, “Race to the Top” funding. It just “increases the possibility.” It’s a gamble. Spend $1.7 million on a charter school, spin the wheel, and hope Arne Duncan remembers what a grand time he had with the mayor when he starts writing checks.
The conclusion
I don’t often agree with school board president Debbie Wolfmeyer, but I do in this case: How can the district seriously consider opening a new school for $1.7 million after they just closed Woodruff to save $1.5 million? How can a group like the Chamber of Commerce, who just got through advocating that we close numerous schools — including a high school — because we have excess capacity and need to save money, turn around and say we need to fund a new charter school that includes middle and high school grades?
I share everyone’s desire for District 150 to offer a better education, but I don’t believe the charter school is the answer. I believe it will only exacerbate District 150’s problems the same way Edison has. Because of the money we’re paying to maintain Edison’s contract, cuts have been made in the traditional schools, including a shortened school day for primary school students.
There needs to be a comprehensive solution that improves public school education for all students district-wide. A charter school with limited enrollment in a failing school district is not much of a draw.
Heritage Bank of Central Illinois entered into a consent agreement with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation on November 2, 2009.
Regulators charged the bank with “unsafe or unsound banking practices,” including “[o]perating with an inadequate level of capital protection for the kind and quality of assets held,” “[o]perating in a manner which has resulted in inadequate earnings and losses to the institution,” “[e]ngaging in hazardous lending and lax collection practices,” and “[o]perating with an inadequate loan policy.” Heritage Bank neither admitted nor denied the charges, but did agree to modify its practices as outlined in the consent agreement.
I asked Heritage Bank for their comment and received an e-mail from president M. Scott Hedden (reprinted at the end of this post). It basically says that regulations have been tightened on all lending institutions in the aftermath of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, even though most of the sub-prime loans came from non-bank lenders. These “onerous” regulations are making it harder for the bank to help their loan customers resolve “financial challenges and hardships” brought on by the “current economic climate.”
In other words, what the bank calls “helping customers resolve financial challenges,” regulators call “hazardous lending and lax collection practices.” To use the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” as a metaphor, Heritage Bank is George Bailey and the regulators are Mr. Potter. Remember this exchange?
MR. POTTER: Have you put any real pressure on these people of yours to pay those mortgages?
PETER BAILEY: Times are bad, Mr. Potter. A lot of these people are out of work.
POTTER: Then foreclose!
BAILEY: I can’t do that. These families have children.
POTTER: They’re not my children.
BAILEY: But they’re somebody’s children, Mr. Potter.
POTTER: Are you running a business or a charity ward?
No doubt the truth is somewhere in between. There are probably some banking practices that really do need to be improved at Heritage Bank, while at the same time it’s true that regulators often get carried away, especially in times of crisis (witness the security excesses at airports these days).
The bottom line is that improvements are being made. Mr. Hedden says “the bank has already implemented and achieved many of the requirements contained in the Agreement. Most significantly, the bank has already met and exceeded the capital requirements set forth in the Agreement by raising capital through private, local investors.”
Continue reading Heritage Bank complying with FDIC agreement
According to the Journal Star’s “Word on the Street” column, Second District Council Member Barbara Van Auken “wants Main to be considered a priority again.” While I welcome efforts to move Main Street back onto the priority list, I have to wonder what is meant by “priority.” The same amount of money for Main Street improvements has been budgeted in 2010 as was budgeted in 2009: $0. Lack of funding was the reason given for moving Main off the priority list in the first place back in November 2008.
The article goes on to explain that, specifically, she’d like to see additional parking and property redevelopment along the stretch from University to Methodist. “[Additional parking is] an inexpensive thing we can do on the short term and hopefully slow the traffic down, making (exceptions) for the so-called rush hours in the morning and afternoons.” I presume she’s talking about on-street parking, given that only on-street parking would have a traffic calming effect. I agree that adding parking on Main is relatively inexpensive and easy to do (plus it would make Main more pedestrian-friendly and offer easier access to businesses). But why then was it not done last year? Why did she support the addition of off-street surface lots in the West Main form district instead?
“‘I’m trying to work with all of those property owners to the maximum extent possible to redevelop that entire block and look at some of the parking issues and some (improvements) of the facades and that sort of thing,’ Van Auken added.” Great, but facade improvement and property redevelopment are private investments, not public ones. In fact, several businesses have already improved their Main Street facades. When is the city going to do its part in improving the streetscape?
Public Works Director Dave Barber was also interviewed for the article. Notably, the paper said he “estimates it will cost $12 million” to make “a considerable impact on Main.” The figure includes the cost to “reduce the street’s lanes, landscape it and make it more pedestrian friendly.” In November 2008, the estimate for this same work was $10 million. So the estimated costs have risen 20% in 14 months. The longer we wait, the more expensive it becomes.
I appreciate the pro-revitalizing-Main-Street rhetoric, but frankly I’m tired of talk. All we’ve done is talk for seven years. Let’s see some action. Let’s see some money appropriated for it. Let’s see an RFP go out to perform the work. And don’t tell me we don’t have the money. Any city that can afford to give $39.3 million to a hotel developer (downtown Marriott), lease its prime real estate for $1 per year for 99 years (Sears block), tear up its railroad infrastructure (Kellar Branch), and turn its industrial park into a greenfield for low-wage big-box stores (Pioneer Park) obviously has money to burn.
When it comes to priorities in Peoria, actions speak much louder than words.