IF YOU GOT IT, SPEND IT!

About forty years ago I first attended school at Hall Elementary on the southwest side of town.  There's even a yellowed newspaper article with a photo of me attending the area's first Head Start class to prove it.  (So, you see, my liberal friends, I actually owe everything that I am today to LBJ and the Great Society. ;)  At the time the school was almost new, built nine years earlier to accommodate the post-war baby boom.  So now, with only a half-century's wear-and-tear on the building, the Grand Rapids Board of Education voted on Monday to tear it down and construct a brand spanking new school.

Why?  Because the school district has money to burn.  Sure, the operational budget is out of control, and no doubt that problem will eventually sink the district into bankruptcy.  However, some years back the voters approved a $165 million bond issue for new bricks and mortar to repair or replace dilapidated school buildings.  It seems that the district got that job done under budget, even with funding new construction that was not truly needed.  So there's $11.5 million left from the bond.  Let's give the local educrats a pat on the back for that.

Now let's give them a kick in the shins for board's decision this week regarding Hall Elementary.  Apparently it's inconceivable that the Grand Rapids public school district should return the $11.5 million to the taxpayers (plus saving the interest expense on top of that).  Because the educrats got the money, they've got to spend it.  (And don't even get me started on the soccer field included in the site plan!  Where's the baseball diamond?)  Hall Elementary did not need to be knocked down and replaced before these funds were known to be available (which is why it was NOT on the district's original list of infrastructure priorities).  It's only after the money showed up as a surplus did the district now need to do something about Hall Elementary.

There's a lesson in this for the voters.  They should only approve bond issues to fund specific projects.

Comments

[Tommy Times]

Oh, come on. GRPS has many more infrastructure needs than their last bond issue could cover. They spent less money on the first round of projects, so they are going to the next priority on the list. Doesn't that make more sense than giving the money back, then going back to the voters to fund the additional needs, with the cost of an election, selling new bonds, and paying a higher interest rate?

It may be true that Hall St. school is only 50 years old, and I certainly appreciate mid century modern schools, having attended them (boy, I loved walking outside in michigan winters to change classes on our six building campus), but there are some things they are likely to be missing, having been designed for a culture with different expectations from schools. Smaller schools in walkable neighborhoods are wonderful, but the baby boom is over, and neighborhoods do not have the density of kids to support pure neighborhood schools that are efficient to operate.

The school district cannot operate with the philosophy that 'this is what we can afford, if the suburbs can afford more, good for them.' They have to compete for students with the suburbs, because they lose dollars with every student. Education quality should be the number one point of competition, but the reality of keeping and attracting people to the district is that you have to have buildings that are competitive with the burbs. EGR and Forest Hills have plenty of 50 year old buildings, but they have also had much higher building millages to maintain and enhance their buildings.

[The Executive Director]

Hi, Tommy.

Your argument is based upon a contradiction.

You say: "Smaller schools in walkable neighborhoods are wonderful, but the baby boom is over, and neighborhoods do not have the density of kids to support pure neighborhood schools that are efficient to operate."

If that were true, then fewer students means less infrastructure needed. For example, on the northeast side of town where I lived as a kid 30-40 years ago, there were six elementary schools (Huff, Aberdeen, Riverside, Crestview, Wellerwood, and North Park). Now there will be only one servicing the same area.

That should translate into a considerable reduction in infrastructure expense, both capital and operational. Indeed, the sale of those unneeded facilities would provide more than enough capital to renovate and maintain the remaining school. So fewer students is hardly a rationale for dunning the taxpayers to cover more infrastructure spending.

However, what you say isn't true. They're about as many kids living within the Grand Rapids public school district as there were when I was kid. The reason the GRPS student body has shrunk is because it now faces competition from suburban and charter schools. A large fraction of families living with the GRPS district have jumped at the chance to send their kids somewhere other than the neighborhood schools.

Why? Do you seriously think it is because the school buildings aren't brand-spanking new? Are parents these days that superficial? No. The problem is the lousy education provided and even worse, the undisciplined environment, even in elementary schools, that has been tolerated in the city schools. I know this from personal experience. It is a wretched situation that is INEXCUSABLE, period.

The discipline that produces the civility and decency needed for a good learning environment doesn't require another dime from the taxpayers. What is does require is the will of the GRPS superintendent and board to make clear policies on discipline, back up the principals and teachers who enforce discipline in the classroom, take no crap from rabble-rousing parents who claim their little darlings do no wrong, and ultimately expel those students who will not get with the program.

Absent that will to make city schools decent places for kids to learn, throwing taxpayer dollars at new infrastructure is like putting lipstick on the pig. Pretty new buildings won't fool the parents who have made the decision to send their children to a charter or suburban school. Indeed, that lesson should've already been learn last fall when the brand new schools the GRPS opened did not add any new students to the district's roster. In fact, I think Superintendent Taylor has learned that lesson, which is why it is now his policy to hold hostage as many kids as possible who live in within the district by restricting their release to suburban districts.

The bottom line for me, Tommy, is that the GRPS has to address its fundamental failures to retain students before hitting up the taxpayers for new capital expenditures.

Regards, Bill