The District 150 Board of Education again listened to parents express their grievances about the decision to shorten the school day by 45 minutes. The school board should get used to hearing these comments; they can expect to hear them at every meeting until this ill-advised decision is rescinded.
Superintendent Ken Hinton had the first word as he informed the board he would be meeting with parents to talk about alternatives:
[audio:http://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/05192008-Hinton.mp3]That meeting will take place Thursday. Ideally, this would be all it takes to get the district to reverse the decision. If this does the trick, I’ll be ecstatic, presuming the shock doesn’t kill me.
Hinton is hanging his hat on the idea of providing a common prep period for teachers. The thing is, he never explains how or why that is tied to shortening the school day. It’s a red herring. I thought it was funny when he talked about the “highest producing countries” (presumably producing well-educated students) having “three important aspects” of their success. He only mentioned one: common prep time. What are the other two? Something tells me one of them is longer academic learning time.
Notable quotes from Hinton’s speech: “My mind is always open.” “I’m more than open.”
Here are some other comments from concerned parents and teachers:
Mimi McDonald:
[audio:http://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/05192008-McDonald.mp3]
Diane Vespa:
[audio:http://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/05192008-Vespa.mp3]
Terry Knapp:
[audio:http://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/05192008-Knapp.mp3]
Bill Luthy:
[audio:http://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/05192008-Luthy.mp3]
Hedy Elliott-Gardner:
[audio:http://peoriachronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/05192008-Elliott-Gardner.mp3]
My favorite quote of the night was from Elliott-Gardner, who is a teacher at Garfield school. After Superintendent Hinton’s big speech about the research-supported importance of common prep time for teachers, Elliott-Gardner reminded the board that Loucks-Edison has had common prep time for teachers for the past ten years, and the school board voted to close it.
As far as research goes, I’d like to submit this 2007 report from the American Educational Research Association for your consideration. Citing peer-reviewed, published studies, it has this to say:
Research on instructional time has consistently found that extended time has the most powerful impact on learning in schools serving low-performing students.
Don’t be fooled. Cutting the day by 45 minutes does not simply remove dead allocated time. It removes academic learning time. It reduces fine arts education. It’s a bad decision and needs to be reversed.
It was a great to watch so many people stand up to King Hinton. My disppointment was that they did not show his reactions as people spoke one after the other against this crazy idea of his. Granted, if I presently had a child in District 150 , I would be concerned about the child/teaching ratio. I know how important it is, but my main concern now is the unemployment of excellent educators. I was shocked when I heard Terry Knapp talk about the Manual teacher with two Masters in his subject who is now unemployed. My guess is there are many more to come down the pike and many we don’t know about who are afraid to speak out because of repercussions. We are not only losing valuable educational time, we are losing outstanding educators. Educators will be forced to move on to other school districts and we will lose their expertise forever.
Not only will this affect the quality of our children’s education, it will affect their quality of life. You think people were moving out of Peoria before this? My guess is you haven’t seen anything yet. Tax dollars will become even more scarce.
Also, it was brought to my attention last night that if you truly want the support of the black community on this matter, you will have to take another route besides e-mails and blogs. These people care deeply about their children, but are not sitting home with laptops. If you are able to get their support in numbers, I don’t see where King Hinton will have any choice but to reverse this recent mistake.
I commend all of you who were there last night and all of you who have worked so hard on reversing this decision.
CJ, I agree with you, it is a red herring. It’s about the money! I think Ken wants a new school built with his name on it!
I talked to a neighbor teacher today and she is baffled by the whole prep time argument. She said most principals had already worked out common prep times with existing schedules. It pre-exists. Those schools that didn’t have it… well maybe they don’t need it or maybe it is a reflection of that school’s administration.
Kudos to Ms. Hedy! I hope she is part of Diane’s group. She appears to have a clear understanding of what primary students need at District 150.
Newsweek ‘Smaller Schools Work Better’ http://www.newsweek.com/id/137547
She is.
ImaSwede – my guess is that it is less about a new “King Francis(Ken) Hinton School” than it is about some type of financial mistake they are now trying to fix (or cover up – take your pick). Just my opinion . . .
mahkno: did you notice only one central Illinois school is in the Illinois top 41? University Normal.
Yep and it is one of those ‘small’ schools.
Prairiecelt, I totally agree with you about it being some financial mistake they have made. But, I also think it is a combination of things including Hinton wanting another bonus, him wanting his name on a school, them making up for Prospect, Manual restructuring costing more than we were told and perhaps a big surprise we don’t even know about yet. They way things are going I wouldn’t doubt if there is a lawsuit coming down the pike that we are unaware of.
I totally agree with the parents regarding the shorter day, and when I look at how this will snowball into unemployment and people moving out of the city, and a bad (worse) name for schools, I am shocked that the BOE voted for this and stunned that Hinton would even suggest it.
But, of course, once again all the Realtors will get the blame in the JS for directing people to Dunlap and Washington. Get a clue !! Realtors don’t have to direct people anywhere! One just has to watch a board meeting!
Grrrrrrrrr!!!
Mahkno, what are you suggesting? We divide the city of Peoria into more than one school district? Or perhaps you live in Peoria and are willing to build new, smaller schools all over the city?
I went to PHS and had over 500 kids in my grade and over 2000 in the school! We didn’t have these problems! Oh, but we did have Harry Whitaker… oh joy, oh joy! He didn’t think Peoria would ever go past Willow Knolls Country Club… Dunlap made out on that one!
ImaSwede, no need to build new, smaller schools. We already have several smaller schools, conveniently located in the middle of existing neighborhoods. Unfortunately, the school board is closing them and consolidating the schools into new, centralized buildings, and making the district more and more dependent on busing.
PrairieCelt and ImaSwede,
About 9:15 Monday night at the school board meeting Cahill was answering some questions directed at him by Dr. Gorenz about “an audit” in process “that is expected to be completed later this month or early June.” He never mentioned any dollar amount and from what I could tell I didn’t see any board members fidget so they must know something the public doesn’t! Furthermore – and it’s on record and I even have the tape to prove it – that according to a direct response by Cahill in reply to Gorenz question he (Cahill) believes they have some non-reoccurring revenue to offset the anticipated pending audit adjustments so that FY 07-08 will still come in on budget.
Those kind of statements need to be clarified as for magnitude of these anticipated adjustments and offsetting revenue. I have heard rumors that the state auditors have been digging deep and have surfaced many problems throughout several departments at 150 so many employees are aware.
^oo^~
ImaSwede…. I was just dropping the link for other people to take a look at. It isn’t really relevant to the school hours debate but does have relevance in other Dist 150 issues. In the past there have been calls to close one of the high schools because they are getting depopulated. I says… where is the problem? I see the high schools getting smaller as a bonus and an opportunity to do things that you just can’t do with huge student body.
True, Mahkno! But we are also paying utilities and God knows what else on those schools…. I am a firm believer in smaller class size at younger ages, but by the time they get into high school, kids should be able to attend lectures as they do in college. By that time they should be able to accept some responsibility for learning on their own. It comes down to the fact that parents have to be involved with learning. We have children raising children.
Education is a gift. In other countries people are willing to put their lives at risk to achieve one. How do we get kids to want to go to school? How do we get kids to realize how important it is to succeed? Peoria is certainly not the only city with this problem. What cities have the most success? What are they doing right that we can model?
If smaller classroom size, smaller schools and incorporating whatever education is succeeding, let’s do it!
“kids should be able to attend lectures as they do in college.”
I would disagree with that. The lecture hall in college with 300 students was a poor medium of instruction. I only had one professor that could pull that sort of class off, the rest were just train wrecks.
What they are talking about in the Newsweek article isn’t so much class size but rather student population overall. They are saying that schools with 500 or so students are likely more successful than those with 2000 or more. With a small school you are a name, a person, versus being a number.
300 in a class at a Peoria high school would be outrageous; I wasn’t thinking that big. So, I agree with you there. I support about anything that would help improve the schools… but I don’t see where shorter days are going to cut it.
I hope the details of the “audit” become clear soon.
One feral kat: Do you have any data on the audits from previous years that had any type of shortfall? Did those budgets need ‘extra money’ to still come in on budget?
Karrie,
To understand the “audit” which was vaguely discussed Monday night and is the basis of rumors permit me to explain.
The ISBE annually sends in a team of auditors to each Illinois school district in order to verify state aid claims for attendance, transportation and funded programs. Attendance records are sought from several schools selected at random and teachers’ class attendance records are scrutinized. They are then traced from that source through the pupil accounting system to the final financial accounting in the claims.
Then in 150’s case because of the huge $10+ million Federal Title I aid they look at the propriety of charges made to those programs for the full gamut of salaries, benefits, materials and services purchased. They even check the building and subject assignments of staff and their teaching certificate qualifications charged to the Title programs. Depending on what they find and the seriousness of the errors and infractions they may dig deeper and even deeper. When they discover problematic issues between pupil accounting, financial accounting, payroll records, and what is called internal control issues those auditors have a reputation of being as tenacious as barnacles on a boat!
Then as for the source of non-reoccurring revenue to offset the adjustments I believe the public needs to know more about that as well! Could they have more rabbits to out of their hat which could have precluded this whole 45 minute fiasco for next year?
^oo^~
I have always heard that accountants use their personalities for birth control… Now I know why!!
An employee from D150 told me tonight that shortening the school day was not Ken Hinton’s idea at all, but that of Dr. Thom Simpson. Has anyone else heard this?
How refreshing to read the comments regarding expertise on the budget of PPS150! It is hard to believe that any board member could vote on this proposal with such a short notice and no genuine research. I have read the three pieces of research that were sent out under a FOIA. If I had been superintendent and my staff had used such shallow research I would be having real discussions. You can’t fool the public. And yet once again they counted on not one person caring. We are talking about 6,000 of our children being directly impacted….How many families, employees who have no idea that this will impact their lives. Yet one King Hinton administration and 6 non thinking followers took our children hostage.
It will be curious what takes place at the meeting tomorrow with the parent group and Dr. King Hinton. I find it very interesting and suspect that he will be meeting with the principals and the PTO presidents at 5:00PM on the same day. Very strange group for a superintendent. Would love to see the agenda of that one. He couldn’t prepare his own central administration staff let alone trying to convince principals that they should trade a common planning time for the instruction of 6,000 students. By the way has anyone thought about how unfair this proposal is for the targeted schools. The non-targeted schools will have the 45 minutes…Is this separate and unequal once again. The principals better be prepared with some key questions or their credibility is at risk also.
Whose idea was this originally? (Key Question) According to King Hinton it was not his because he stated that he was against it to begin with. (Journal Star)
Why did Dr. Simpson (A retired consultant brought back to be over the Strategic Plan present this to the board along with Cheryl Sanfilip?
What are their job descriptions and who evaluates them?
What administrator validated the research presented in their presentation?
Is not the superintendent ultimately responsible for any board presentations?
Did we have a discussion of all central administrators to scrutinize the proposal before presenting it to the board?
Board members are elected to represent those who live in their districts and represent their views. David Gorenz is not representing me but himself and his narrow mindedness that whatever King Hinton says is sacred…
I am so grateful to those parents, teachers, and adminstrators who see this recommendation for what it is…unequal and unfair for all children.
I’ve been thinking and while what I’m about to say may seem bizarre it really isn’t considering other hair-brained ideas cooked up at 3202 Wisconsin.
If you look at the 150 budget for FY07-08 you’ll see $58, 926,245 or 36.2% of their gross revenue comes from real estate taxes. Even if parents opt to send their children to private schools 150 still receives their pounds of flesh in taxes and they don’t have to spend it to educate those children! Furthermore at roughly $6,500 private tuition that most likely means taxpayers in the higher income professions and higher priced real estate. It’s a real win win for King Hinton! Furthermore, with those vocal people out of the picture Hinton can continue to beat down the other parents as he continues to dumb-down their children!
Another thought came to mind. Other than the African American gentleman who spoke passionately to the board Monday night where is the rest of the African American community? Even more direct of a question is why are Don Jackson and the NAACP so conspicuously both absent and silent on this issue? And don’t for one minute say it’s because Jackson and Hinton look alike! This isn’t a race issue – it’s a financial one being driven by the out of control Hinton!
^oo^~