POSTED ON BEHALF OF DOUG

After a certain premier amalgamated the boards because there were going to be HUGE savings that never materialized a level of alienation also entered the TDSB as one example.

Even on the former TBE I would say all of the old trustees had had some cause to be in every school in the board over the years, not just their own ward schools. They knew the schools well. Trustees are today voting to close schools that they could not pick out of a lineup. Principals, trustees, leading parents, union leaders all called one another by first names.

That whole system is totally formalized, Director Smith… Trustee Jones…

The smaller the board there greater the “working together” happened. The larger the board the more “I fight for my tribe” becomes the way.

When I taught at Rosedale Heights I considered it a perfect sized HS at 600 kids. Some HSs were up to 2000 at the time and the level of alienation is greater… each kid just does not seem as important. You are almost forced to turn your discussion from individuals to groups.

The USA has experimented off and on saying well, if big is bad small must be good. Not that easy.

I have come to believe that there is such a thing as an “appropriate” size for a school. In elementary it is at least one full class at each grade level + maybe 2 at one level because kids come in bunches. That would get you about 160-180 in a K-8 school. For HS 500-600 kids spread over 4 grades.

Of course Toronto has a subway ripping EW and NS through it which allows for HS kids to easily attend other schools if their neighbourhood school is not a good fit.

Detroit’s problem has been the lost of their taxpayers’ base. A list below on Bankrupt Cities, Municipalities List and Map
http://www.governing.com/gov-data/municipal-cities-counties-bankruptcies-and-defaults.html

This is a good read as well - 8 U.S. Cities That Went Bankrupt
http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/8-u-s-cities-that-went-bankrupt.html/?a=viewall

Now unto school districts - Record number of school districts in state face bankruptcy
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/05/school-districts-bankruptcy.html

“An eight million dollar payment made on Friday means an end to more than decades of debt for a California school district. The lump sum was the last of about $47 million West Contra Costa Unified School District paid to California for a loan taken out more than two decades ago.”
http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/04/once-bankrupt-school-district-now-debt-free/

Another state trying to avoid bankruptcy, by going the charter and voucher route.
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/03/pennsylvania_state_education_a_2.html

A 2004 article on Education Next - Mounting DebtEducation Next Issue CoverThe long economic boom enabled school districts nationwide to fund expensive reforms and hefty pay raises.

It still rings true today, and no doubt is applicable to the Canadian situation.

“Four general factors can interact to create financial instability. First, the dynamics of public funding and the budgeting process encourage school districts to spend their entire funding allocation, creating a cost structure that is difficult to adjust down when revenue drops or fails to grow at an expected rate. Second, districts are constrained in how they can spend money and in the financial engineering options open to them. Third, the lack of attention afforded to the nuts and bolts of financial management in K-12 public education can result in naïve oversight and inadequate management-information systems that can delay appropriate responses to emerging financial crises. Finally, school district finances are lodged within a larger political environment. Politicians and state officials may find ways to help push districts over the financial edge in order to accomplish their own purposes.”
http://educationnext.org/mountingdebt/

Moving to the Toronto School District Board - the big banana with the largest student population but mired in financial difficulties. “Ontario education minister calls for forensic audit of Toronto school board after financial irregularities uncovered”
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/06/27/ontario-education-minister-calls-for-forensic-audit-of-toronto-school-board-after-financial-irregularities-uncovered/

At the same time, the city of Toronto is also suffering a loss of middle-class taxpayers, and they are fleeing to the suburbs in search of cheaper accommodations and a little green space for their children.

However, if you think the Toronto School District Board is having financial troubles, and are longing for the days of the smaller board, over in NL, the provincial government has moved to one super board for all of the province. The legislation won’t go through until the fall of 2013, but no matter the education ministry has plowed through, closing the 4 English boards into one. The Toronto School district has a little over 250,000 students and the NL mega school board has according to the 2012 -2013 stats - 65,165.Both boards have suffered declining enrollment.

Toronto, is going the route of recruiting foreign students to populate the Toronto schools and NL has gone the route of one super mega school board, over a very large land mass. The latter will probably end in disaster and the former, will further drive the middle-class out of Toronto.

Yes, smaller school boards are much easier to manage, but the four factors as cited by the Mounting Debt article in Education Next can be reduced to manageable problems. That is if the fourth factor, political factors does not torpedo the manageable financial problems and morphed them into a financial crisis. What Toronto and NL shared is solving the education financials based on the political considerations, and never based on what is in the best interests of the students and their education.  The doors are left wide open for Mr. Corruption and Mr. Incompetence to walk in, and they don’t like sharing the power and authority with the likes of schools and school board trustees.

POSTED ON BEHALF OF DOUG

While it is always necessary for us to have poets, I love them, and people who dream about ideal schools under ideal conditions, most of the rest of us, parents, students, teachers, support staff, bureaucrats, unions, need to turn our attention to the daily grind of making systems which are really large compromises, function.

A Wisconsin professor name Herb Kliebard wrote a book about the American school system which really rang bells with me. He described the shape size and function of the American school and school system as a great compromise, often in the form of a temporary truce as all the warring factions with an interest in the school system duke it out over an almost 150 year period form Horace Mann to them and Ryerson to us.

The power struggle involved religious vs secular, business vs labour, femanism vs patriarchy, black vs white, urban vs rural, environmentalist vs polluter, democracy vs technocracy vs bureaucracy, state vs federal vs local, traditional vs progressive, and so on.

The schools and school system are a site of wrenching political struggle because all recognize the new society is being, to some extent, formed in the schools and all want it formed in THEIR image.

These forces fight each other to a draw,or until they are exhausted. Then their is a truce for a few years until new people form up possibly see an advantage like a friendly SR government and the struggle begins again in earnest.

Dreamy dreams about ideal schools under ideal conditions often seem naive in this world.

Each parent or group that does not like the system as it is, scratches their head and says “why do they do that the way they do? It is not the way I like it. They need to realize that there is an equally earnest group that believes the exact opposite than you do and they may be equally strong and perhaps even stronger.

When York University asked me to teach a course for them it was explained to me that the young teachers would ask the profs “why don’t the schools just do what is right and discontinue doing what is wrong?

If you like what is happening you call it democracy in action. If you don’t like it you call it politics in action.

Democracy in action, eh? Does that mean, all LD children and other children with reading difficulties that are not part of the minority of children with near perfect cognitive processes, sit at the bottom of the achievement charts, while the so called experts within decide which future doors are sealed and shut, and which future pathways - the ones to prison? The ones to drugs and alcohol?  The ones to dead end jobs?

This is on top of what new society? The new society that was dreamed up by the 19th century education gurus and in 2013, the education stakeholders are still pushing some dystopian Utopia upon the students, the parents and the rest of the public?

Get real - a truce? The conditions were set once parents accepted the condition that school was compulsory until the age of 16 or 18 in some districts. However, the social contract has been broken a long time ago, when the public education system and its stakeholders refuses to educate all children to their full potential. Its not a democracy, and never has been. Its called government run schools according to the best interests of the education stakeholders.

Finland people!

An education system that has kicked the rest of us around the block.  They deliver on every measurable marker.  Why?

Teachers are hired based on mastery of their subject matter.  Teachers are then given full discretion to share the mastery/passion for their discipline with their students.

No middle managers no chorus off stage lamenting the predictable.  Just educators, properly schooled, no distractions with coaching silly teams (why have a master of History waste time with a volleyball game?). Well educated professionals demonstrating the wonder and power of their particular field of study. 

Finland….. let’s get that done and everyone here can retire to a dock on the side of a nice quiet lake. 

cheers, Mirka