NEW BUILDINGS WILL NOT BRING NEW STUDENTS INTO CITY SCHOOLS

A reader, Tommy Times, disagreed with our "If You Got It, Spend It!" article in which we opined that the Grand Rapids Public School District should return to the taxpayers the excess funds from an infrastructure bond rather than spend it on a new elementary school building.  The inestimable Mr. Times commented:

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.

Although I have already responded to Mr. Times in the comments section of that article, I'd like to post a more complete response here ...

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 within 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 the board of education to lay down 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.  What is does not require is multicultural sensitivity training of administrators, teachers, and students that operates on the premise that a kid's skin color makes him or her any more or less capable of decent behavior.  Black, brown, yellow, or white, kids are kids, and it is a nasty brand of crypto-racism that the educrats are pushing to avoid dealing with their lack of will to make every student behave properly while at school.

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, but in the wrong way, 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 Tingley, Executive Director L.A.W.

Comments

[Brandon]

Bill,

You know from my past comments on this topic that you and I are in agreement virtually 100%, and as such, I don’t really have anything with which to take issue. But there’s a chicken/egg question underlying the main issue that I’ve often wondered about.

I, too, am a product of the GRPS system, and I graduated from a high school that, nowadays, I wouldn’t subject my worst enemy to. At the time of my attendance (late ‘80s) there was definitely a certain element – a seed, if you will – of the mass lack of safety and discipline that you see today, but it was kept in check by a strong contingent of families who, by virtue of their own children’s attendance in the schools, wouldn’t allow it to spread. The bad element, in other words, was more or less properly marginalized, and if you, as a student, wanted to run with that crowd, you pretty much had to seek it out; it didn’t automatically come looking for you.

My question, though, is simply this: Did families begin patronizing other school districts because the bad element got the upper hand, or did the bad element get the upper hand because people started patronizing other school districts?

I don’t propose the question to in any way excuse or justify the lack of action from the school system or parents for the city schools’ current problems. But in the back of my mind, I guess there’s something that bothers me about enabling a system whereby you can choose to live in one district but send your kids to school in another. Actually moving to a different district and becoming a part of that community’s tax base is one thing, but the current set up seems to allow for a certain kind of stratification that I think might be one aspect of the problem.

Many of the people I went to school with still live in the same neighborhoods where we all grew up, but most of them find ways to send their kids to school in other outlying districts. If they were forced to send their kids to school in the districts where they actually live, I often wonder if things wouldn’t swing back toward the direction of keeping that dubious element marginalized once again.

Just thinking out loud.

[The Executive Director]

Hi, Brandon.

You raise the question that goes to the heart of the matter. It is my firm belief that bad kids are the result of bad parenting. I also believe that bad parenting can countered by institutional and social pressures that maintain discipline. So the answer to your chicken-and-egg question is both.

The social pressures applied by families who insisted upon an orderly classroom environment are important in keeping the educrats on their toes in applying the institutional pressure of the school system to maintain discipline. When they begin leaving the district, that social pressure is lessened on the educrats, and they in turn lessen the institutional pressure. Discipline erodes and other families begin leaving the system.

Of course, there is more to the story than this, but I believe that's the basic dynamic. Once the troublemakers are marginalized, as you say, things will improve. However, that effort will require vision and backbone by the educrats or a group of strong-willed parents staking out a claim to the school system and pioneering an improved environment.

Regards, Bill

[Tyler]

Bill,

You hit this right on the head. The one thing that I would expound on is your comment about discipline.

The GRPS are afraid to discipline students in the way that I was brought up. I had the fear of God instilled in me from a loving set of married parents who brought me up to respect authority (not unquestionably accept it, but respect it.) Students get away with more disrpespect and trouble making than is acceptable and parents should be willing to accept responsibility for this and not neuter the schools. Strike three and your out should be the norm as it is in the National Heritage Academies charter schools. The parents of these children understand it and accept it.

If a student is expelled because of problems, it is NOT the school districts problem, it is the parents/students problem.

Tyler

[B Post]

One other issue that raises its head here is historically what happened as part of the process of voting in the bond issue. The politics of situations like this tend to get lost within just a few years of the actual events. If you remember, Patricia Newby attempted to get a huge bond issue passed that would have renovated every school within the GRPS system. If I recall correctly, that was a monster $500 million proposal. That was soundly defeated. Immediately afterward, GRPS suddenly announced that they would begin closing many of the schools that they would have renovated because suddenly they did not have enough enrollment to keep those schools open. So Mr. Times' statement about infrastructure needs rings hollow primarily because the statements of need by school officials has not been credible in the past. Most of this "need" seems to be more like "want" historically. And I still have a problem with the so-called building standards that people feel are necessary today compared to the standards I grew up with. Have we become so wealthy as a society that our kids need posh surroundings or they will be incapable of learning? And to the point here, will a brand new building really promote better learning than a 50 year old building? If this is the way we're looking to find the answers to our education problems I think you can write off our school systems right now.

[The Executive Director]

Hi, Tyler.

Excellent point. While I think compassion is always in order, schools do not have to keep students who refuse to behave. I agree with you that a problem child is first and foremost his parents' problem and not the school district's.

Hi, B.

Thanks the reminder about the last bond issue. It completely slipped my mind that the GRPS had at first made an outrageous request and had to come back to the voters with a more modest proposal.

Of course, schools have to be maintained, but I don't know about this mania for renovation and rebuilding. I spent most of my school years in buildings more than a half-century old and it never occurred to me to think I was being deprived of a good learning environment. Heck, I managed to endure all fourteen years (not held back, folks, that includes Headstart) in schools without A/C, carpeting, swimming pools, multi-media labs, and whatnot. (But then, maybe that explains my dyspeptic disposition!)

Regards, Bill

[Tommy Times]

I agree that having schools that are well disciplined are essential. I also think that you will have more discipline problems in schools that serve less wealthy neighborhoods. That is not an excuse, you still have to maintain a good learning environment.

I am skeptical that there are as many kids in GR now as there were during the baby boom.

I was not trying to say that new schools are essential to attracting and keeping students. I think you can be compentitive by modernizing and adding facilities that are common among other schools, as GR and suburban schools have done. I tried to make this point in the original post. Also, I am not saying that buildings are the only or even the most important factor, but I think the reality is that they are a factor.

Even after the latest bond issue, Grand Rapids schools capital millage rates are much lower than surrounding districts. I would guess that GRPS will have ongoing capital needs for which the current millage rate would be not be excessive. To me, that justifies using the money to address the district's capital priorities.

I don't have an opinion on whether building new is better or worse than remodelling.

Just as an anecdote, my child's elementary school in the suburbs has over 500 students, and one principal. My older child attended elementary school in an urban school district in another city. That school had 400 students, one principal, one staff member who dealt just with discipline issues, and one staff member who worked with students with a difficult home situation. I suspect that establishing a good learning environment requires a few dimes, not just principals who have banished crypto-racism from their hearts.

[The Executive Director]

Hi, Tommy.

Having read your last comment, it looks like we're mostly in agreement as to what is fundamentally important in giving kids a good education. I suppose the real difference lies in how to effect it. I am strongly opposed to any capital expenditures, except for that which is necessary to keep the basic infrastructure of the GRPS in good order, until the school district sorts out its grave operational problems. I suspect you may think this minimalist infrastructure policy I would like to see implemented is draconian and maybe even counter-productive in its extremity.

I don't think so. As a businessman I understand that sound operations are critical to the success of an organization. For example, all the grand office parks the dot-com ventures built with the crazy amounts of capital they raised were swell, but the nice digs didn't help one bit in making them profitable business. So once they burned through all their capital and did not have good operations kicking out a decent cash flow to replace it, they collapsed. While this doesn't make an exact analogy for public schools, I think you can see why I believe good operations and not nice buildings must come first.

Now one could argue that this is not an either-or issue -- i.e., the GRPS can improve operations while building a few new schools. In principle I wouldn't disagree, but I think we need to consider the track record of the bureaucrats running the school district. I don't think my lack of confidence in them doing both is unwarranted. Quite frankly I distrust them to focus on improving operations so that the city once again has schools that bring residents INTO Grand Rapids while they have the opportunity to play around with taxpayer dollars to build new facilities for themselves.

Regards, Bill