Education TRACKer: Start educating yourself about Board candidates
You may have thought that last year was an “election year,” but for local public school children, decisions made in the ballot box this year may have a profound impact on the next few years.
The redistricting plan of 2008-09, resulting community groups formed to respond and former Board member Rosa Gill’s recent move to the State House (http://www.newsobserver.com/news/education/story/1565981.html) may change the landscape of various long-standing Board policies.
“Neighborhood schools” is a phrase that is widely bandied about, but a story out a few days ago in the News & Observer (http://www.newsobserver.com/news/education/wake/story/1575116.html) seems to suggest not many students are being bused.
All in all, it makes me wonder how much a large school system like Wake County’s can change. If we, as voters, educate ourselves about the candidates for the Board of Education, will the ones we choose make wise decisions or get bogged down in the bureaucracy of a large school system?
I have friends who are teachers and friends who are parents—no one seems to have a solid answer to the issues that confront the schools. But a good start for all of us is to get educated about the candidates for this fall’s election. Are you content? If not, what changes do you hope to see? Who represents those views, and what are you going to do to help them?
I’m curious: in a year of recession, with teachers and staff and budgets being slashed, what do you hope to come out of this year’s election?
The redistricting plan of 2008-09, resulting community groups formed to respond and former Board member Rosa Gill’s recent move to the State House (http://www.newsobserver.com/news/education/story/1565981.html) may change the landscape of various long-standing Board policies.
“Neighborhood schools” is a phrase that is widely bandied about, but a story out a few days ago in the News & Observer (http://www.newsobserver.com/news/education/wake/story/1575116.html) seems to suggest not many students are being bused.
All in all, it makes me wonder how much a large school system like Wake County’s can change. If we, as voters, educate ourselves about the candidates for the Board of Education, will the ones we choose make wise decisions or get bogged down in the bureaucracy of a large school system?
I have friends who are teachers and friends who are parents—no one seems to have a solid answer to the issues that confront the schools. But a good start for all of us is to get educated about the candidates for this fall’s election. Are you content? If not, what changes do you hope to see? Who represents those views, and what are you going to do to help them?
I’m curious: in a year of recession, with teachers and staff and budgets being slashed, what do you hope to come out of this year’s election?
Comment
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Comment by Angela on July 1, 2009 at 7:48am - http://www.wakesca.org/
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Comment by Angela on July 1, 2009 at 7:46am
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the "study" you mention is a farce.....here's a take on it from another N&O staffer
A lousy school lesson
BY MATTHEW EISLEY, Staff Writer
Do your kids fly to school?
Mine, either.
But in downplaying the length of school bus routes, leaders of Wake County's public school system pretend as if they do -- insulting students, parents and other taxpayers in the process.
Amid ongoing controversy about county school assignment and busing policies, district leaders sought to defuse a potent issue in an election year.
But I suspect that, in misleading the public, their public-relations maneuver will backfire.
According to their report, based on bus routes from three years ago, 86 percent of Wake students attend schools within five miles of their homes, and 99 percent live within 10 miles.
Measured, that is, in a straight-line distance as the crow flies.
Which, as far as I can tell, is how nobody gets to school.
"Buses don't travel in straight-line distances, and neither do the children who spend hours on them," noted Allison Backhouse, a leader of the Wake Schools Community Alliance, a group that opposes the district's student-assignment policies.
In this case, the school system's critics are right.
When the district deploys helicopters or doles out student jet packs, its distance report will be valid. Otherwise, the crow-flies measurements are bogus.
As the great former N&O watchdog Pat Stith liked to say: They're facts, but not the truth.
Suppose Wake students were asked on a test, "How far will our field trip to Charlotte be?"
The driving distance is about 170 miles from downtown Raleigh to uptown Charlotte.
If a student instead wrote 130 miles -- the flight distance -- wouldn't you expect the answer to be marked incorrect?
School officials say they used the straight-line measurements to produce "apples to apples" comparisons among homes. But that's true only in some abstract, utterly irrelevant sense.
The question is: How long are the bus rides to school? So Wake's answer is apples to pineapples.
Will school leaders admit that?
Maybe -- when pigs fly.
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