Tilting at windmills.

If you ever want to get depressed, angry, and frustrated, all you really need to do is sit through an LSRT meeting at budget time. For those who don't know, LSRT stands for "Local School Restructuring Team" and these exist in every DCPS-run public school. They are composed of parents, teachers, the principal, and community members, and they decide how the school will spend its money, arrange its classes, etc. Within the limits of DCPS overall policy, the LSRT has quite a bit of power. However, the LSRT can only work with the budget handed to it by DCPS.

Every year since I've been involved in the school, this budget has been cut. Two years ago, we lost two positions, including the librarian. Last year, we lost two more. This year, we're looking at six positions lost. The staff currently consists of 18 teachers and aides. Like other public schools in the District, our school is being slowly choked to death by unrealistic instructional budget cuts. This point, by the way, is where depression, anger, and frustration come in.

Even more amazing is that while DCPS spends roughly $10K per pupil, which seems luxurious, the local schools are being put on austerity plans (Parents United for the DC Public Schools has an excellent explanation of "per pupil funding" and why it's so difficult to compare numbers with other school districts). So where's the money? I'm not sure anyone in DC can answer that question with any authority. According to Parents United, DCPS spends less on instruction (teacher training, curricular review, instructional review) than surrounding districts and significantly more on security. Again, Parents United claim that "DCPS spends $243 per pupil compared to $33 in Arlington, $63 in Montgomery, and $18 in Fairfax" on security.

Unreal. We're cutting teaching positions because some asswad in the central office has a buddy who runs a security firm and gives him one of those sweet contracts that the District is known for.

OK. I'm getting a bit worked up, so rather than launch into a longwinded detailed analysis of DCPS's disfunctionality, I'll cut to the chase: Superintendent Janey wants to improve the schools. He wants students to do better. Yet he's offering the schools budgets that effectively make it impossible for them to improve.

When faced with budget cuts, the first thing to go will be enrichment items: field trips, new books, jump ropes, soccer balls, board games, etc. The second thing to go will be enrichment instructors: art, music, phys ed teachers. These enrichment courses by the way are the things most parents ask about during open houses. So let's cut them out and turn even more parents away from the public schools. Finally, the grade-level instructional staff, whether through losing an ESL position or combining grades, will be cut. Again, a brilliant way to ensure enrollment decreases even further is to make it apparent to the parents that you are effectively running a ghost ship with a skeleton crew.

Of course, we won't accept this budget without a fight. We will petition the school board, Janey himself, and councilmembers to stave off cuts to our instructional staff. In the past we've managed to get some cuts reinstated. If you ask me, Janey needs to spend more time looking around the central offices before he guts the local schools.

p.s. it would take an awful long time to discuss the importance of DCPS declining enrollment, which is Janey's main justification for cutting instructional staff, and I don't have the energy for that today.