Galesburg District 205 to amend budget

Tonight, the Galesburg District 205 Board of Education is expected to approve an amended fiscal year 2009 budget, adding roughly $1.8 million for a critical asbestos abatement project at Galesburg High School.

According to Assistant Superintendent for Finance and Operations Paul Woehlke, the asbestos project in the learning center wing has been on the district’s life-safety list for some time now, but its completion wasn’t expected for a few years. Recent water damage to many of the floor and ceiling tiles has compromised the wing, moving the project forward.

The money needed for the project will somewhat be offset (though not directly) by an expected $1 million revenue increase thanks to a bump in the state’s foundation level per pupil.

This year’s budget is already about $1.1 million bigger than last year’s, mainly due to inflation.

Also on the agenda:

• Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Joel Estes will give a presentation of the district’s sixth-day enrollment numbers, which dropped about 15 students from last year. That puts the district around 4,500 students.
• The board should approve adding Henderson Street as a hazardous transportation area, as students attending Churchill Junior High School have to cross the busy street. They will instead be bused from a central location on one side of Henderson to Churchill.

Summer lunch program

The State of Illinois passed a law in February saying that all school districts hosting a summer school program and who have at least half their students qualifying for free or reduced lunches must provide free lunches for all community members under the age of 18. Here in the local district, summer school started today and so did the program.

Back when the program was announced, administrators around here had several concerns. One was, obviously — and especially in a state which can’t pay its bills on time — funding of the program. In talking to the assistant superintendent for finance on Friday, he said that the intent of the program was to be fully-funded, especially if the district sticks with a fairly modest cold lunch, so that’s looking as if it was settled.

Another concern was logistics in feeding both the students at summer school (which serves kids from first through fifth grades who are in danger of not meeting grade equivalency) and members of the general community. Administrators worried about mixing the younger students (and the younger members of the general public) with the older kids, who could get rowdy. So, the solution was to give the summer school students their lunches in the classroom (making it a working lunch so as not to lose instruction time) and give the general public the multi-purpose room. I’ll check up on how this is going in a week or so, once people settle into a routine.

I believe in this program, because kids shouldn’t have to suffer if their parents can’t provide, and anything is better than the McDonald’s processed food they can pick up within walking distance of almost any home in this city. But, I also think it puts an unfair burden on our schools to provide extra services on their already strapped budgets. Luckily, it’s looking as if this will be fully-funded, but that has yet to be seen.

I just hope this can remain under the control of state funding and the state doesn’t dump any more of its financial problems on the districts.

Give up the fight?

There is a small group of people in this community (quietly) trying to save an 80-odd-year-old gymnasium located next to the middle school here in town. This building is in pretty bad shape and would take A LOT of money (which the district does not have) to renovate to get it simply back up to codes, let alone making it nice and shiny.

Therefore, the district has received permission from the state to use life-safety funds to re-build the functionality of the building. In other words, since the building was used as a locker room, the district can use its life-safety funding to re-build locker rooms on the middle school campus. As a result, the district can no longer, in any way, shape or form, use the building for any purpose whatsoever. It will just sit there.

Enter regional superintendent. She was asked to write a letter of condemnation to the state board of education allowing the district to use funds to knock down the current building. She stalled and stalled, eventually only sending in a two-line letter saying she wasn’t going to give her permission. She says it’s because the district could have done more to preserve the building in the past.

That all touched off a slight uproar in the community, of people wanting to save the building. That’s all well and good, if the building weren’t about 100 feet from the school building. That means there is NO WAY, from a liability standpoint, that the district can legally share use of the building with the community at large. It’s just too much of a potential problem for them to incur.

While this has been explained over and over again, there is still a small group fighting for this building. Now, I’m all for community activism, but community activism with a potential return. There’s no point in fighting for something if it’s never going to happen.

What’s even worse, though, is the fact that the person spearheading the campaign is employed by a newspaper in a town about 50 miles away. He’s the correspondent for this county to that newspaper. That means he covers school board issues in that newspaper. That creates a conflict of interest, especially when he writes letters to the editor in a local weekly newspaper on this issue and, as he just did, speak at the school board meeting while he’s technically covering it for the newspaper.

Again, I’m all for saving historic buildings and this one’s pretty cool from the outside (the inside’s pretty bad), but not at the cost of compromising journalistic integrity.

UPDATE: One of the board members mentioned — for the umpteenth time since I took over the beat — that this building was slated for demolition nearly 10 years ago and, up until a few months ago, no one had come forward with a workable solution. He referenced window replacements in a 50-year-old junior high building this summer, saying he would much rather see district money put into buildings which are still being used by students than go toward buildings which are not used and cannot be used for their intended purposes.

The board is currently (at 9:27 p.m.) in executive session to discuss real estate sale or purchase. This could (not likely, though) relate to this particular building. I will update this if anything happens.

UPDATE 2 (6/10/08, 7:15 p.m.): The assistant superintendent told me today that the district will form a task force (headed by previously-mentioned correspondent) for the purpose of “finding a use and the financial support for that use” of the old gym. The committee will have six months to come up with a solution, if there’s one out there.

A (thankfully) quiet graduation

After last year’s national media frenzy surrounding the five diplomas withheld at Galesburg High School’s graduation, this year’s graduation was quite a bit less controversial.
Five students were denied their diplomas following the May 27, 2007, graduation ceremony because administrators said there was too much noise from the crowd when their names were called. The students and their parents had signed a behavior contract saying they wouldn’t hoot and holler.
The students and their families, though, claimed it was racist to withhold their diplomas, as they were all black (Well, four of them. One was of mixed race), and there was a lot of noise also made for white students. They threatened to sue, getting a lawyer from Jay Janssen’s firm in Peoria.
It touched off a firestorm rained down upon the heads of District 205 administrators, with the ACLU jumping on board. Death threats were launched, blogs lit up and calls were received from CNN, the New York Times and several other national news outlets.
There’s a whole lot of other back story here (Just Google “Galesburg graduation” and it’ll pop up) that I don’t want to get into. As a result, though, the district created a committee to evaluate commencement policies. This committee was comprised of teachers, parents, administrators, students and community members, and they worked for several months, looking at all aspects and surveying the community.
In April, they came back with their decision. People would be allowed to “respectfully applaud” after each graduate’s name, but excessive noise was punishable by removal from the auditorium. Students would only be held accountable for their own actions, and their diplomas would be mailed at a later date.
The message seemed to reach the ears of people attending Sunday’s ceremony, as the packed house simply applauded (with a few minor exceptions) for the graduates. Once all names were read, the place erupted.
Of course, the fact that the audience was read the list of rules inserted in the programs couldn’t have hurt.
One of the neatest moments, though, was when a disabled student was wheeled across the stage. When his name was called, every single person in the auditorium — at least, it sounded like every person — applauded.
All I have to say is, I’m glad I don’t have to share my sources with the major news outlets.

Education vs. sports

Around here, we’ve had a lot of sports controversy lately.

One school district fired a boys basketball coach, then hired another about a month later. Another school district fired both the boys and girls basketball coaches, and will be hiring new ones this week.

School board meetings for both these firings lasted far longer than normal. Executive sessions averaged 2 hours, topping out at 3.5 for one district.

Our paper had major stories on all of these firings/hirings which drew dozens (sometimes hundreds) of comments and hundreds (or thousands) of hits.

But when a teacher is fired/disciplined/hired, I don’t know about it until I get a pages-long personnel agenda. They approve them all in one lump consent item, rarely pulling specific pieces out to be discussed in executive sessions. While I would support giving press to all of the hirings and firings and retirements, I simply don’t have time or space to do so. People don’t cry out to hear about these, and the stories I do publish – normally about superintendent and principal changes – warrant few hits and even fewer comments.

This is a subject of much discussion in our newsroom. The sports guys, obviously, like covering these things because they rarely get controversy. Many of us on the news side wish the public didn’t want these stories so often and paid more attention to the people actually educating their children.

But, alas, sports are more high-profile than academics on a more regular basis. People discuss sports with much more passion than they discuss their children’s education, until something goes wrong. Then, they rail against educators, administrators and school board members for things they could have known all along if they had been paying proper attention.

What do you think? Why is there so much attention given to sports in schools and so little to educational matters?

Random comments of the day

Sometimes, my job just makes me smile. Especially when I get to talk to sources who will tell me random things.

For example, in working with the Moffitt story today, I had one superintendent tell me he was “tired of getting jerked around by the legislature.” This is not surprising to me, coming from his mouth and some of the humorous things he’s told me before, but it’s something which makes me giggle.

I also had a college president today tell me his institution focuses more on finding commencement speakers who will inspire the graduates and not serve as, basically, a publicity opportunity for the college. If you know anything about my coverage area, you know that we have two private colleges of comparable size within 15 miles of one another, and there is a longtime rival between the two.

The college officials try to play all nice, but when something ripping on the other college in a veiled manner (College A is having a state senator as a commencement speaker; College B is having a very powerful woman in national and international politics and had a former president last year) comes from the highest person at the institution, I smile.

For all the frustrations I put up with thanks to my job, it’s the little things which count.