Current Events
The National Problem of School Overcrowding is Victimizing Our Children: Whose Lies Do YOU Believe? by Betsy Combier
The politico-educational complex is stuffing children into closet size classrooms, lying about it, and paying the media to support their false claims. The Neighborhood Capital Budget Group takes a look at this issue in their report, "Rebuilding Our Schools Brick By Brick". When was the last time you asked for the specs on your child's school? Betsy Combier
Belmont. The name, to many Californians, means corruption, fraud, or incompetence. We at The E-Accountability Foundation have given the Belmont disaster an award, "F For Fraud". How could much money be spent on a school built on a toxic site? We ask, "how much money was paid under the table, and to whom?"
Throughout America our public schools are not succeeding in teaching our children. There are many reasons, of course, and all the lobbyists, media, members of the legal industry, legislators, and representatives hired to work in any department or office of the politico-educational complex will blame anyone but themselves. Many, if not all, blame the children, the victims of this "pass the buck because I say so" mentality that succeeds because we, the public, buy the false claims made in our national media. Making children the perpetrators of the failure of public school education - rather than the victims - must stop.
New York City is an excellent example of this "I didn't do it" mentality:
Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City public school system, Carmen Farina, Deputy Chancellor, Dennis Walcott, Deputy Mayor, and all the highest level administrators in the Mayor's office and inside the NYCBOE, including General Counsel Michael Best, do not have contracts (Michael Best told this to Betsy Combier on August 3, 2005). All serve at the will of the Mayor, Michael Bloomberg. We asked Mr. Best how the public could hold anyone without a contract - and therefore without employment responsibilities - accountable for anything, and he told us "look at the Chancellor's Regulations, and you will see what they are supposed to be doing, then you can hold them accountable for not doing what is listed there". In other words, if you are trying to hold anyone at the NYCBOE accountable for anything, good luck. In fact, whenever anyone tries to expose what is going on, he/she is punished. This retaliation can stop only if we persevere in our quest to stop the false claims being made not only about our children, but about the system. So we will, at great personal expense.
One issue that is worrying parents throughout America and that is currently being falsely reported by school boards and the media, is school overcrowding. We suggest that if you want a clear picture of what is going on in terms of overcrowding, you go to the nearest big school in the nearest city and ask to take a tour (while classes are in session, of course).
Currently, massive overcrowding of schools and the increasing harassment and termination of good teachers in favor of "dumbing down the curriculum and tests" (see Mathematically Correct) is speeding up the hiring of ineffective and/or simply bad teachers, the policing of our schools, and the suspensions of innocent children. School administrators are being forced by supervisors get rid of kids, and they are using the school suspension process as the mechanism to lower class size. Across America, legislation to lower class size is not happening due to the block set up by the legislators, school boards, and media, who insist that "everything is being taken care of" by the Powers That Be. This is debatable.
The problem of overcrowding is not simple, nor is it solvable by simply lowering class size. There are many political lobbyists who will fight for their interests which are peripheral to class size yet vital to the problem of school overcrowding:
Class Size Matters, Maybe, But Check Before Raising Taxes
Metro schools should first cut nonacademic spending and determine if smaller classes are worth the extra cost
Editorial, The Detroit News, April 27, 2004
LINK
Metro Detroit parents and taxpayers should be wary of throwing more money at public schools to reduce class size. The complex issue of student performance can't be fixed with money alone.
Educators still debate whether smaller class sizes are worth the extra cost, especially when budgets are tight.
Some local districts have a lot of budget cutting to do before laying off teachers. Trims should first come in nonacademic areas, such as administration, transportation and recreation.
If times are tough, then all the more reason to stick to the core mission and put the money into instruction first.
By way of promoting millages, some districts threaten larger class sizes.
However, before voters bite on such tactics, they should ask some hard questions about a district's total pattern of spending.
In Southfield, for example, a 2002 Standard & Poor's analysis raised flags:
* Transportation. Expenditures in Southfield were $598 per student and "exceptionally above" the state average of $343. Only 3.4 percent of Michigan's school districts spend more per student on transportation than does Southfield.
* Administration. Spending of $1,286 per student is "well above" the state average of $956, though the district is credited with holding the line as others went up.
* Operations and maintenance. Spending of $1,307 per student was "exceptionally above" the state average of $775.
Before pouring more money into Southfield or raising class size parents might want to look at the current overall budget.
Nationally, some educators question the importance of class size.
"Class size is only one factor in the complex matrix that educators must consider as they determine how best to allocate their resources to improve student achievement," says U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige. "I truly believe we will be making a mistake if we assume that simply reducing class size will solve achievement problems in schools."
Student-teacher ratios have declined in recent years. That is, for every teacher on the payroll there were fewer students. But the number is not synonymous with class size because some teachers in special classes, often mandated by state or federal law, only have a handful of students.
And even when class size is reduced, it might not mean much. California spent $8 billion to reduce its class size average to 20 from 28 students. But after six years of reform, the Golden State found no significant change in test scores.
Transferring knowledge in large class settings is possible, even though developing (or copying) techniques may be a challenge.
Overall, the structure of U.S. public education is stuck in the late 19th century. It's yearly schedule, for example, is geared to accommodate a farming society that no longer exists. Reforms have been, at best, incremental.
The bottom line has two themes. Class size is one of many issues facing public education. But don't assume that higher taxes and smaller classes will automatically improve education.
__________________________________________________
A brief surfing of the internet brings up the fact that schools mostly populated with minority children are over-subscribed, and school boards and local governments are not doing anything about it, or are deliberately not doing the right thing, as we have seen in the case of Belmont, the LOVE CANAL school.
California is finally doing something about school overcrowding...or are they?
From Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF):
Over a million California schoolchildrenpredominantly from low-income families and communities of colorattend severely overcrowded schools. Lunchrooms, libraries, and an assortment of other spaces are used as classrooms and attempts are made to alleviate overcrowding by such temporary measures as reorganizingeven shorteningschool years, busing children to other neighborhoods, and using portable classrooms. But the fact remains that children who attend overcrowded schools are less able to learn, feel socially inferior and alienated, and are more exposed to health and safety hazards.
Though promising developments in Californiaincluding legislation focused on critically overcrowded schools, voter-approved bond measures for school construction, and landmark educational equity lawsuitshave paved the way toward addressing overcrowding in a meaningful, lasting way, structural barriers continue to undermine effective, equitable funding for new school construction.
Ending School Overcrowding in California: Building Quality Schools for All Children, a joint report from PolicyLink and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), illustrates California's school overcrowding crisis, analyzes the state's New Construction and Critically Overcrowded Schools programs, discusses structural barriers to addressing school overcrowding, and outlines policy recommendations for more equitable distribution of school construction funds.
LINK
High school overcrowding moot in Montana Schools
By T.J. GILLES, Billings News
LINK
The overcrowding crisis that prompted the School District 2 board's proposal to build a new school already has blown over, trustees were told Monday night. A 13-member panel that has studied school facilities needs has recommended that renovation and refocus not new construction are keys to success.
Last year, two-thirds of the district's voters rejected a levy proposal that would have raised $37 million to build a new high school west of town at 48th Street West and Monad Road. Also attached to the proposal were renovation costs for other high schools and the Career Center.
The 20-Year Facilities Planning Committee said those renovations and improvements still need to be made - at a cost of around $51 million, more than half of that to be spent at 67-year-old Senior High School near downtown.
John Eisen, co-chairman of the study group and a school-design consultant, said "high school enrollment is declining while the population at large is continuing to increase" as people beyond child-rearing age move to Billings.
In other words, Mr. Eisen said, the group's projections show that demographics have "solved all of the problems that the additional high school was proposed to solve."
Indeed, some facilities such as the Career Center on 38th Street West and Central Avenue and the Lincoln Center downtown are underutilized by the school system, he said. The committee recommended increased use of these two buildings and more emphasis on career education rather than the current college-prep emphasis which is of immediate benefit to only about 40 percent of high-school graduates going directly into college.
The committee's executive summary said expanding career education has extreme benefits of training for good jobs available in Billings and the region and "helping lower-income students develop job skills they can use to earn money to pay for higher education."
The Montana State University-Billings College of Technology recently added two-year courses in such areas as plant (electrical or refinery) processing and construction. The executive summary suggested that in those fields and in such areas as paralegal or allied health, students utilizing Career Center programs might be able to get their associate's degrees from the COT in one year instead of two and enter the better-paying job market earlier.
Using the downtown Lincoln Center (which now has an entire floor of empty classrooms) might help link students to careers in the nearby medical corridor, legal system, MSU-Billings' main and satellite campuses and the downtown arts community, the report suggested.
"Where a new high school might be located is really up in the air at this point," Mr. Eisen said. "At this point in time, we don't think a new high school is needed at all," and probably needn't even be considered until about 2020. Within three or four years, the committee's report said, the city's three public high schools will have a combined enrollment decrease of around 400 students, with Billings West experiencing the heaviest decline.
As a temporary response to overcrowding, freshmen at both Senior and West spent half-days off the main campus at smaller-sized "freshman academy" classes at Lincoln and the Career Center. The report endorsed the concept of these smaller, transitional classroom settings and suggested they be incorporated into sites of existing schools as time goes on.
For a long list of reasons, the school board's proposed school on a 40-acre plot outside of the city limits was a bad idea, the report said, and the district might considering selling that land and resist the temptation to build.
Committee member Matt Brosovich told a packed house of more than 100 people Monday night that the location is wrong for short-term or long-term school needs and goes against the current of city and county planning and economic development plans.
"The fastest way to create urban sprawl is build a school outside the city limits," Mr. Brosovich said. As unbridled development is unleashed, he added, taxpayers end up paying for catch-up infrastructure such as sewers and traffic.
"This group has to realize how important it is to work with city-county development authorities," he said. One of the group's stronger recommendations was that a board member or district official attend each meeting involving development and planning. In addition to not flouting years of planning and preparation as the 48th Street West location might have school officials will remain abreast of locations and plans of new subdivisions, apartment complexes and industries.
The committee noted that school facilities planning "has historically been an intermittent and problem-driven process" and would be improved by becoming an ongoing meeting at least twice a year.
The executive summary and full report are available from the Billings Public Schools website or by contacting the district at 247-3781.
Email response to this information:
by Taxpayer at 2005/07/16 12:49:10 GMT-6
Did I read that correctly? Our august Schoool Board tried to raise 37 million dollars last year to build a high school that isnt needed?
High School Overcrowding
KULR-8, Montana, Keagan Harsha
USA - JULY 25, BILLINGS - School board trustees will discuss what to do about overcrowding at Billings Public High Schools during their meeting Monday evening.The district has a surplus of about 800 students. Ninth grade academies have helped relieve some of the overcrowding... But trustees say the academies weren't intended to be long term solutions to the problem. Proposed solutions to the overcrowding problem include an addition to the career center, building onto the current high schools, or building a new school or two smaller schools.
Schools Overcrowding - Chicago
LINK
Overcrowding in the Chicago Public Schools remains a large problem. Overcrowded classrooms lead to huge class sizes and poor conditions for learning. In Chicago, while we have built 15 new schools and 30 additions since 1997, it is clear that CPS has not been able to keep up with many of our booming neighborhoods leading to overcrowded schools. In fact, 31% of our elementary schools are overcrowded, and 22% of our high schools are overcrowded. This means that approximately 161,419 Chicago students are attending overcrowded schools (37% of the total student body)! The Chicago Public Schools have already spent over $2.4 billion for school construction and repairs, but despite these record accomplishments, overcrowding remains a problem at both the high school and elementary school levels.
The Chicago Public Schools determines whether a school is overcrowded by dividing the number of students in a school (the enrollment) by the number of students that school can hold (the design capacity). An elementary school is considered overcrowded if its enrollment is 80 percent or more of the design capacity.
Elementary School Overcrowding
During the 2001-2002 school year, 152 Chicago elementary schools were overcrowded (31%). In other words 128,198 elementary school students had to learn in overcrowded schools. Of these 152 overcrowded schools, 54 elementary schools were severely overcrowded, meaning that they operated at more than 100% of their design capacity, and 98 were overcrowded. See a list of overcrowded elementary schools.
More elementary schools are overcrowded than ever before in Chicago. After elementary school enrollment has declined for four years since the 1996-97 school year (when 155 elementary schools were overcrowded), overcrowding is now soaring to record levels. Despite investments in more classroom space, CPS is not keeping up with rising enrollment. In fact, new additions are filling up almost as soon as they open their doors. Of the 45 new schools or additions that have been built since 1997, 27% (12 schools) are already overcrowded again.
Many of the overcrowding trends are geographical. 56 overcrowded elementary schools are on the City's Southwest side, 32 on the Northwest side, and 18 on the South side, the same regions where high school overcrowding is most prevalent. In fact, the Southwest side has 3 times as many overcrowded buildings as the South side.
10 Most Overcrowded Elementary Schools School % Overcrowded Geographic Region
Lenart Center 177% Southwest
Twain 167% Southwest
Shields 158% Southwest
Marsh 147% Far South
Reilly 146% Northwest
Hurley 146% Southwest
Field 139% North
Seward 136% Southwest
Peck 136% Southwest
Avondale 136% Northwest
High School Overcrowding
During the 2001-2002 school year, 19 Chicago high schools were overcrowded (22%). This means that 33,221 high school students had to learn in overcrowded schools. After declining steadily since 1996, high school enrollments are beginning to rise again. In the past, NCBG suspected that enrollments were dropping due to factors that influence high school enrollments from year to year (such as lower birthrates, dropouts, people moving out of the City or switching to private schools, etc.). Judging by the recent increase in overcrowding, it appears those suspicions were true. If new construction was decreasing overcrowding, overcrowding should be even lower. However, the number of overcrowded high schools has inched up 4% from the 2000-2001 school year, and that's after building 3 new high schools, and completing 2 additions since 1996. See a list of overcrowded high schools
Many of the overcrowding trends are geographical. 8overcrowded high schools are on the City's Southwest side and 6 on the Northwest Side, the same regions where elementary overcrowding is most prevalent. The Southwest side has 8 times as many overcrowded high schools than the West, South, and Far South sides. Although CPS offers schools of choice and specialty programs, many high schools continue to cater to neighborhood schools. Since neighborhood trends and demographics often influence the school population, NCBG encourages CPS to be better planners so that, for example, funding will be available to build enough new schools to relieve the overcrowding in these neighborhoods.
10 Most Overcrowded High Schools School % Overcrowded Geographic Region
Kelly HS 174% Southwest
Mather HS 131% North
Foreman HS 122% Northwest
Bogan Tech HS 122% Southwest
Kelvyn Park HS 121% Northwest
Gage Park HS 118% Southwest
Steinmetz HS 118% Northwest
Amundsen HS 117% North
Kennedy HS 117% Southwest
Roosevelt HS 110% Northwest
Read NCBG's 1999 Report, Rebuilding Our Schools Brick By Brick.
Is Your School Overcrowded?
Parents, teachers, and community members need and have a right to know whether their school is overcrowded, and, if so, how overcrowded it is. (The terminology can be confusing. An annex is a freestanding building containing fewer than 12 classrooms. An addition is a connected building that generally contains more than 12 rooms. A modular unit is a temporary building to provide a short-term fix to overcrowding.) CPS has stopped building new annexes.
You can determine if your child's school is overcrowded by asking your principal, Local School Council member, or CPS regional office for the "design capacity" of your school building (the number of students that the building was meant to hold) and the current enrollment. Then, divide the enrollment by the design capacity. For example, if your school's enrollment is 900 students, and the design capacity is 1000, your school is operating at 90 percent of its design capacity. Generally, CPS considers a school to be overcrowded if it is operating at 80 percent or more of its intended design.
Overcrowded Chicago elementary schools
Overcrowded Chicago high schools
No Vacancy
The school district's space crunch is much worse than you know. And no one has a plan that will fix it.
by Howard Blume
LINK
FORGET MATH AND READING PROGRAMS. Forget teacher accountability. Forget social promotion. The Los Angeles Unified School District faces a more basic looming catastrophe: space. The school system is about to put out a no-vacancy sign, with thousands of children waiting at the door. And the space race is all but lost.
Over the next 10 years, the already overcrowded school district is expected to grow from 711,000 students to well over 800,000. That increase will require L.A. Unified to build from scratch the equivalent of a school district larger than Long Beach Unified, which itself is the state's third largest.
So, how many schools does LAUSD currently have under construction? None.
How many new school projects are likely to receive state funding in the next year? One, a small primary center.
And how many completed applications has the district filed requesting state funding? One, for the same primary center.
As for the district's most acute need -- new high schools -- how many potential high school sites has the school system acquired over the past 30 years? The answer to this question used to be two. But the school system recently canceled both those projects -- the Belmont Learning Complex and a proposed high school in South Gate -- after spending some $250 million. So again the answer is zero.
When it comes to building schools, L.A. Unified has suffered from unending missteps, bad luck, state-funding inequities and a general paralysis of incomprehensible proportions. For 20 years, the school system has known that this overcrowding was approaching. And the crisis arrived, right on schedule, some 10 years ago. It's gotten steadily worse every year since, and the worst of all is yet to come -- despite the recent arrival of a qualified team of real estate professionals who have labored creatively and shrewdly.
Over the next five years, every high school in the LAUSD will gradually succumb to a multitrack year-round calendar -- which increases a school's capacity by 50 percent, but trashes academic programs. And then, even with a pervasive busing plan, more than 22,000 students will need seats that currently exist nowhere. If the district happens to lower its staggering dropout rate, the challenge to find space increases accordingly. Meanwhile, district officials estimate that five years -- the same five years -- is the minimum time needed to build a high school, presuming that you have somewhere to build one.
Consider this: It has taken Long Beach Unified some 100 years to build its 60 elementary schools, 15 middle schools and seven high schools. Los Angeles will have to do better than that in just 10 years, in a dense urbanscape, where the district must compete with private developers and battle recalcitrant property owners over whatever prime space can be found. If history is any guide, the school district is going to fail. Over the last 25 years, L.A. Unified has built eight small primary centers, about a dozen elementary schools, three specialized magnet schools, one middle school and zero comprehensive high schools.
And there's more bad news. It would take at least $6 billion to get all students off both the buses and the district's educationally perverted year-round schedule. Instead, L.A. will start with $900 million from the local school-bond measure passed in 1997. And while these funds could be matched, dollar for dollar, with state money, nearly all of this state money is likely to go to other school districts. As it stands now, L.A. Unified would get about 1 percent of the rapidly vanishing pot of state school-construction money -- even though the district has 12 percent of the state's enrollment, a third of the state's students on year-round schedules, and one of the highest rates of enrollment growth.
Considerable fault lies with the way the state awards construction funds -- and, in desperation, L.A. Unified and activist organizations have sued over the matter. But then, too, the district's own construction program has been a disaster, both in terms of putting projects together and obtaining state money to pay for them. District efforts have been distinguished by a combination of ill-conceived ideas, or abandoned ones, abetted by school boards that occasionally overreach, but more often capitulated to outside political pressures, at the direct expense of students.
More recently, the facilities division has hardly existed at all, because the school board elected to clean house in the wake of the Belmont Learning Complex fiasco. Assembling the newcomers took months, and they're still learning the territory. It didn't help that new Chief Operating Officer Howard Miller managed to repeat some mistakes of the past, while also authoring some innovative miscues of his own. And this chaos could be repeated; Miller, as well as certain key interim managers, could depart within months during the transition into the administration of Roy Romer, the former Colorado governor who was chosen this week to be the school district's new superintendent.
But it doesn't necessarily matter who is calling the shots. This calamity, which was years in the making, is now larger than L.A. Unified. There is simply no solution to the morass, or at least none that is within the reach of the district alone. If fixing the school system matters -- and every politician claims to champion the cause -- addressing the facilities crisis will require the intense, unremitting participation of every civic leader in town, especially Mayor Richard Riordan and whoever becomes the next mayor.
THE SPACE RACE
IT MAKES FOR GRIM READING, THE STORIES of how the children of Los Angeles suffer from a shortage of classroom space.
Kindergartner Andres Daza goes to school in a ramshackle collection of temporary buildings set down on a South Gate city park. There's no cafeteria, auditorium or computer lab. On rainy days, he gets drenched crossing an open field to get to the portable bathrooms.
At Monte Vista Elementary, near downtown, fourth-grader Frances Rosenberg Jaramillo is in school for a month, then out for a month, back for two months, then off for a month, and so on -- all part of her school's crazy-quilt, multitrack year-round schedule. Her teacher has to pack up and unpack her classroom as often as five times a year, costing valuable instruction time.
Space is so short at Washington Prep High School in South-Central that Shannon Egans can't get the classes she needs to graduate. So she takes courses out of sequence, or during her vacations. Other students are forced to take adult-school classes in the evening.
They all are victims of the school district's coping strategies: About 77,000 students are yoked to a year-round schedule that shortens the academic year for individual students by a month. Some 15,000 students ride the bus against their will, even though district research indicates that these students fare the worst on academic-achievement measures.
In a sworn declaration, Assistant Superintendent Gordon Wohlers conceded that for years L.A. school officials have, in effect, perpetrated a fraud on the children of Los Angeles. Year-round education is not, in fact, a swell way to keep kids learning all year, as district officials originally claimed. Instead, the schedule, as practiced here, has hurt students badly, declared Wohlers.
Besides cheating children of a month of instruction, the schedule robs the school of downtime for maintenance, and of space in which to offer extra help to struggling students. "When we started the program many years ago, we hoped that we could make up with longer class periods for the 17 instructional days a year that children on these calendars lose," Wohlers stated. "It has not worked out that way. The intense calendars make for tired students and tired teachers."
Not only that, he added, but district officials have made only halfhearted attempts to prevent students from dropping out -- because there's no room for these students anyway. The district has elected to "dispense with or weaken retrieval efforts for students [who] drop out of schools or are at high risk of dropping out."
Wohlers' declaration appears in a lawsuit against the state that was filed in March -- by civil rights attorneys, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center. The attorneys are nominally representing a group of specific students, families and teachers, but the litigation was prepared in close coordination with the school district itself. Documentation in the suit demonstrates how, for years, L.A. Unified has not received anything close to its fair share of school-construction money. The heart of the problem is that the State Allocation Board, which distributes the funding, operates on a first-come, first-served basis. Eligible projects that clear regulatory hurdles get funded in order of arrival until the money runs out. Consideration for who needs the money the most has not been a fundamental factor.
Therefore, the state's traditional retort to L.A. Unified is: The rules are the same for you as for everyone else. And in fact, right now, LAUSD has only one completed application for funds on file with the state. Without question, the district would have received many millions of dollars if it had only managed to ask for the money in the standard, pro forma way. For this, the school district deserves some of the derision regularly expressed by state officials. But the case is not as simple as that.
It has always taken longer to acquire land in a dense urban area than in a suburban enclave, and now potential locations have to go through an environmental review by the st
Throughout America our public schools are not succeeding in teaching our children. There are many reasons, of course, and all the lobbyists, media, members of the legal industry, legislators, and representatives hired to work in any department or office of the politico-educational complex will blame anyone but themselves. Many, if not all, blame the children, the victims of this "pass the buck because I say so" mentality that succeeds because we, the public, buy the false claims made in our national media. Making children the perpetrators of the failure of public school education - rather than the victims - must stop.
New York City is an excellent example of this "I didn't do it" mentality:
Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City public school system, Carmen Farina, Deputy Chancellor, Dennis Walcott, Deputy Mayor, and all the highest level administrators in the Mayor's office and inside the NYCBOE, including General Counsel Michael Best, do not have contracts (Michael Best told this to Betsy Combier on August 3, 2005). All serve at the will of the Mayor, Michael Bloomberg. We asked Mr. Best how the public could hold anyone without a contract - and therefore without employment responsibilities - accountable for anything, and he told us "look at the Chancellor's Regulations, and you will see what they are supposed to be doing, then you can hold them accountable for not doing what is listed there". In other words, if you are trying to hold anyone at the NYCBOE accountable for anything, good luck. In fact, whenever anyone tries to expose what is going on, he/she is punished. This retaliation can stop only if we persevere in our quest to stop the false claims being made not only about our children, but about the system. So we will, at great personal expense.
One issue that is worrying parents throughout America and that is currently being falsely reported by school boards and the media, is school overcrowding. We suggest that if you want a clear picture of what is going on in terms of overcrowding, you go to the nearest big school in the nearest city and ask to take a tour (while classes are in session, of course).
Currently, massive overcrowding of schools and the increasing harassment and termination of good teachers in favor of "dumbing down the curriculum and tests" (see Mathematically Correct) is speeding up the hiring of ineffective and/or simply bad teachers, the policing of our schools, and the suspensions of innocent children. School administrators are being forced by supervisors get rid of kids, and they are using the school suspension process as the mechanism to lower class size. Across America, legislation to lower class size is not happening due to the block set up by the legislators, school boards, and media, who insist that "everything is being taken care of" by the Powers That Be. This is debatable.
The problem of overcrowding is not simple, nor is it solvable by simply lowering class size. There are many political lobbyists who will fight for their interests which are peripheral to class size yet vital to the problem of school overcrowding:
Class Size Matters, Maybe, But Check Before Raising Taxes
Metro schools should first cut nonacademic spending and determine if smaller classes are worth the extra cost
Editorial, The Detroit News, April 27, 2004
LINK
Metro Detroit parents and taxpayers should be wary of throwing more money at public schools to reduce class size. The complex issue of student performance can't be fixed with money alone.
Educators still debate whether smaller class sizes are worth the extra cost, especially when budgets are tight.
Some local districts have a lot of budget cutting to do before laying off teachers. Trims should first come in nonacademic areas, such as administration, transportation and recreation.
If times are tough, then all the more reason to stick to the core mission and put the money into instruction first.
By way of promoting millages, some districts threaten larger class sizes.
However, before voters bite on such tactics, they should ask some hard questions about a district's total pattern of spending.
In Southfield, for example, a 2002 Standard & Poor's analysis raised flags:
* Transportation. Expenditures in Southfield were $598 per student and "exceptionally above" the state average of $343. Only 3.4 percent of Michigan's school districts spend more per student on transportation than does Southfield.
* Administration. Spending of $1,286 per student is "well above" the state average of $956, though the district is credited with holding the line as others went up.
* Operations and maintenance. Spending of $1,307 per student was "exceptionally above" the state average of $775.
Before pouring more money into Southfield or raising class size parents might want to look at the current overall budget.
Nationally, some educators question the importance of class size.
"Class size is only one factor in the complex matrix that educators must consider as they determine how best to allocate their resources to improve student achievement," says U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige. "I truly believe we will be making a mistake if we assume that simply reducing class size will solve achievement problems in schools."
Student-teacher ratios have declined in recent years. That is, for every teacher on the payroll there were fewer students. But the number is not synonymous with class size because some teachers in special classes, often mandated by state or federal law, only have a handful of students.
And even when class size is reduced, it might not mean much. California spent $8 billion to reduce its class size average to 20 from 28 students. But after six years of reform, the Golden State found no significant change in test scores.
Transferring knowledge in large class settings is possible, even though developing (or copying) techniques may be a challenge.
Overall, the structure of U.S. public education is stuck in the late 19th century. It's yearly schedule, for example, is geared to accommodate a farming society that no longer exists. Reforms have been, at best, incremental.
The bottom line has two themes. Class size is one of many issues facing public education. But don't assume that higher taxes and smaller classes will automatically improve education.
__________________________________________________
A brief surfing of the internet brings up the fact that schools mostly populated with minority children are over-subscribed, and school boards and local governments are not doing anything about it, or are deliberately not doing the right thing, as we have seen in the case of Belmont, the LOVE CANAL school.
California is finally doing something about school overcrowding...or are they?
From Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF):
Over a million California schoolchildrenpredominantly from low-income families and communities of colorattend severely overcrowded schools. Lunchrooms, libraries, and an assortment of other spaces are used as classrooms and attempts are made to alleviate overcrowding by such temporary measures as reorganizingeven shorteningschool years, busing children to other neighborhoods, and using portable classrooms. But the fact remains that children who attend overcrowded schools are less able to learn, feel socially inferior and alienated, and are more exposed to health and safety hazards.
Though promising developments in Californiaincluding legislation focused on critically overcrowded schools, voter-approved bond measures for school construction, and landmark educational equity lawsuitshave paved the way toward addressing overcrowding in a meaningful, lasting way, structural barriers continue to undermine effective, equitable funding for new school construction.
Ending School Overcrowding in California: Building Quality Schools for All Children, a joint report from PolicyLink and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), illustrates California's school overcrowding crisis, analyzes the state's New Construction and Critically Overcrowded Schools programs, discusses structural barriers to addressing school overcrowding, and outlines policy recommendations for more equitable distribution of school construction funds.
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High school overcrowding moot in Montana Schools
By T.J. GILLES, Billings News
LINK
The overcrowding crisis that prompted the School District 2 board's proposal to build a new school already has blown over, trustees were told Monday night. A 13-member panel that has studied school facilities needs has recommended that renovation and refocus not new construction are keys to success.
Last year, two-thirds of the district's voters rejected a levy proposal that would have raised $37 million to build a new high school west of town at 48th Street West and Monad Road. Also attached to the proposal were renovation costs for other high schools and the Career Center.
The 20-Year Facilities Planning Committee said those renovations and improvements still need to be made - at a cost of around $51 million, more than half of that to be spent at 67-year-old Senior High School near downtown.
John Eisen, co-chairman of the study group and a school-design consultant, said "high school enrollment is declining while the population at large is continuing to increase" as people beyond child-rearing age move to Billings.
In other words, Mr. Eisen said, the group's projections show that demographics have "solved all of the problems that the additional high school was proposed to solve."
Indeed, some facilities such as the Career Center on 38th Street West and Central Avenue and the Lincoln Center downtown are underutilized by the school system, he said. The committee recommended increased use of these two buildings and more emphasis on career education rather than the current college-prep emphasis which is of immediate benefit to only about 40 percent of high-school graduates going directly into college.
The committee's executive summary said expanding career education has extreme benefits of training for good jobs available in Billings and the region and "helping lower-income students develop job skills they can use to earn money to pay for higher education."
The Montana State University-Billings College of Technology recently added two-year courses in such areas as plant (electrical or refinery) processing and construction. The executive summary suggested that in those fields and in such areas as paralegal or allied health, students utilizing Career Center programs might be able to get their associate's degrees from the COT in one year instead of two and enter the better-paying job market earlier.
Using the downtown Lincoln Center (which now has an entire floor of empty classrooms) might help link students to careers in the nearby medical corridor, legal system, MSU-Billings' main and satellite campuses and the downtown arts community, the report suggested.
"Where a new high school might be located is really up in the air at this point," Mr. Eisen said. "At this point in time, we don't think a new high school is needed at all," and probably needn't even be considered until about 2020. Within three or four years, the committee's report said, the city's three public high schools will have a combined enrollment decrease of around 400 students, with Billings West experiencing the heaviest decline.
As a temporary response to overcrowding, freshmen at both Senior and West spent half-days off the main campus at smaller-sized "freshman academy" classes at Lincoln and the Career Center. The report endorsed the concept of these smaller, transitional classroom settings and suggested they be incorporated into sites of existing schools as time goes on.
For a long list of reasons, the school board's proposed school on a 40-acre plot outside of the city limits was a bad idea, the report said, and the district might considering selling that land and resist the temptation to build.
Committee member Matt Brosovich told a packed house of more than 100 people Monday night that the location is wrong for short-term or long-term school needs and goes against the current of city and county planning and economic development plans.
"The fastest way to create urban sprawl is build a school outside the city limits," Mr. Brosovich said. As unbridled development is unleashed, he added, taxpayers end up paying for catch-up infrastructure such as sewers and traffic.
"This group has to realize how important it is to work with city-county development authorities," he said. One of the group's stronger recommendations was that a board member or district official attend each meeting involving development and planning. In addition to not flouting years of planning and preparation as the 48th Street West location might have school officials will remain abreast of locations and plans of new subdivisions, apartment complexes and industries.
The committee noted that school facilities planning "has historically been an intermittent and problem-driven process" and would be improved by becoming an ongoing meeting at least twice a year.
The executive summary and full report are available from the Billings Public Schools website or by contacting the district at 247-3781.
Email response to this information:
by Taxpayer at 2005/07/16 12:49:10 GMT-6
Did I read that correctly? Our august Schoool Board tried to raise 37 million dollars last year to build a high school that isnt needed?
High School Overcrowding
KULR-8, Montana, Keagan Harsha
USA - JULY 25, BILLINGS - School board trustees will discuss what to do about overcrowding at Billings Public High Schools during their meeting Monday evening.The district has a surplus of about 800 students. Ninth grade academies have helped relieve some of the overcrowding... But trustees say the academies weren't intended to be long term solutions to the problem. Proposed solutions to the overcrowding problem include an addition to the career center, building onto the current high schools, or building a new school or two smaller schools.
Schools Overcrowding - Chicago
LINK
Overcrowding in the Chicago Public Schools remains a large problem. Overcrowded classrooms lead to huge class sizes and poor conditions for learning. In Chicago, while we have built 15 new schools and 30 additions since 1997, it is clear that CPS has not been able to keep up with many of our booming neighborhoods leading to overcrowded schools. In fact, 31% of our elementary schools are overcrowded, and 22% of our high schools are overcrowded. This means that approximately 161,419 Chicago students are attending overcrowded schools (37% of the total student body)! The Chicago Public Schools have already spent over $2.4 billion for school construction and repairs, but despite these record accomplishments, overcrowding remains a problem at both the high school and elementary school levels.
The Chicago Public Schools determines whether a school is overcrowded by dividing the number of students in a school (the enrollment) by the number of students that school can hold (the design capacity). An elementary school is considered overcrowded if its enrollment is 80 percent or more of the design capacity.
Elementary School Overcrowding
During the 2001-2002 school year, 152 Chicago elementary schools were overcrowded (31%). In other words 128,198 elementary school students had to learn in overcrowded schools. Of these 152 overcrowded schools, 54 elementary schools were severely overcrowded, meaning that they operated at more than 100% of their design capacity, and 98 were overcrowded. See a list of overcrowded elementary schools.
More elementary schools are overcrowded than ever before in Chicago. After elementary school enrollment has declined for four years since the 1996-97 school year (when 155 elementary schools were overcrowded), overcrowding is now soaring to record levels. Despite investments in more classroom space, CPS is not keeping up with rising enrollment. In fact, new additions are filling up almost as soon as they open their doors. Of the 45 new schools or additions that have been built since 1997, 27% (12 schools) are already overcrowded again.
Many of the overcrowding trends are geographical. 56 overcrowded elementary schools are on the City's Southwest side, 32 on the Northwest side, and 18 on the South side, the same regions where high school overcrowding is most prevalent. In fact, the Southwest side has 3 times as many overcrowded buildings as the South side.
10 Most Overcrowded Elementary Schools School % Overcrowded Geographic Region
Lenart Center 177% Southwest
Twain 167% Southwest
Shields 158% Southwest
Marsh 147% Far South
Reilly 146% Northwest
Hurley 146% Southwest
Field 139% North
Seward 136% Southwest
Peck 136% Southwest
Avondale 136% Northwest
High School Overcrowding
During the 2001-2002 school year, 19 Chicago high schools were overcrowded (22%). This means that 33,221 high school students had to learn in overcrowded schools. After declining steadily since 1996, high school enrollments are beginning to rise again. In the past, NCBG suspected that enrollments were dropping due to factors that influence high school enrollments from year to year (such as lower birthrates, dropouts, people moving out of the City or switching to private schools, etc.). Judging by the recent increase in overcrowding, it appears those suspicions were true. If new construction was decreasing overcrowding, overcrowding should be even lower. However, the number of overcrowded high schools has inched up 4% from the 2000-2001 school year, and that's after building 3 new high schools, and completing 2 additions since 1996. See a list of overcrowded high schools
Many of the overcrowding trends are geographical. 8overcrowded high schools are on the City's Southwest side and 6 on the Northwest Side, the same regions where elementary overcrowding is most prevalent. The Southwest side has 8 times as many overcrowded high schools than the West, South, and Far South sides. Although CPS offers schools of choice and specialty programs, many high schools continue to cater to neighborhood schools. Since neighborhood trends and demographics often influence the school population, NCBG encourages CPS to be better planners so that, for example, funding will be available to build enough new schools to relieve the overcrowding in these neighborhoods.
10 Most Overcrowded High Schools School % Overcrowded Geographic Region
Kelly HS 174% Southwest
Mather HS 131% North
Foreman HS 122% Northwest
Bogan Tech HS 122% Southwest
Kelvyn Park HS 121% Northwest
Gage Park HS 118% Southwest
Steinmetz HS 118% Northwest
Amundsen HS 117% North
Kennedy HS 117% Southwest
Roosevelt HS 110% Northwest
Read NCBG's 1999 Report, Rebuilding Our Schools Brick By Brick.
Is Your School Overcrowded?
Parents, teachers, and community members need and have a right to know whether their school is overcrowded, and, if so, how overcrowded it is. (The terminology can be confusing. An annex is a freestanding building containing fewer than 12 classrooms. An addition is a connected building that generally contains more than 12 rooms. A modular unit is a temporary building to provide a short-term fix to overcrowding.) CPS has stopped building new annexes.
You can determine if your child's school is overcrowded by asking your principal, Local School Council member, or CPS regional office for the "design capacity" of your school building (the number of students that the building was meant to hold) and the current enrollment. Then, divide the enrollment by the design capacity. For example, if your school's enrollment is 900 students, and the design capacity is 1000, your school is operating at 90 percent of its design capacity. Generally, CPS considers a school to be overcrowded if it is operating at 80 percent or more of its intended design.
Overcrowded Chicago elementary schools
Overcrowded Chicago high schools
No Vacancy
The school district's space crunch is much worse than you know. And no one has a plan that will fix it.
by Howard Blume
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FORGET MATH AND READING PROGRAMS. Forget teacher accountability. Forget social promotion. The Los Angeles Unified School District faces a more basic looming catastrophe: space. The school system is about to put out a no-vacancy sign, with thousands of children waiting at the door. And the space race is all but lost.
Over the next 10 years, the already overcrowded school district is expected to grow from 711,000 students to well over 800,000. That increase will require L.A. Unified to build from scratch the equivalent of a school district larger than Long Beach Unified, which itself is the state's third largest.
So, how many schools does LAUSD currently have under construction? None.
How many new school projects are likely to receive state funding in the next year? One, a small primary center.
And how many completed applications has the district filed requesting state funding? One, for the same primary center.
As for the district's most acute need -- new high schools -- how many potential high school sites has the school system acquired over the past 30 years? The answer to this question used to be two. But the school system recently canceled both those projects -- the Belmont Learning Complex and a proposed high school in South Gate -- after spending some $250 million. So again the answer is zero.
When it comes to building schools, L.A. Unified has suffered from unending missteps, bad luck, state-funding inequities and a general paralysis of incomprehensible proportions. For 20 years, the school system has known that this overcrowding was approaching. And the crisis arrived, right on schedule, some 10 years ago. It's gotten steadily worse every year since, and the worst of all is yet to come -- despite the recent arrival of a qualified team of real estate professionals who have labored creatively and shrewdly.
Over the next five years, every high school in the LAUSD will gradually succumb to a multitrack year-round calendar -- which increases a school's capacity by 50 percent, but trashes academic programs. And then, even with a pervasive busing plan, more than 22,000 students will need seats that currently exist nowhere. If the district happens to lower its staggering dropout rate, the challenge to find space increases accordingly. Meanwhile, district officials estimate that five years -- the same five years -- is the minimum time needed to build a high school, presuming that you have somewhere to build one.
Consider this: It has taken Long Beach Unified some 100 years to build its 60 elementary schools, 15 middle schools and seven high schools. Los Angeles will have to do better than that in just 10 years, in a dense urbanscape, where the district must compete with private developers and battle recalcitrant property owners over whatever prime space can be found. If history is any guide, the school district is going to fail. Over the last 25 years, L.A. Unified has built eight small primary centers, about a dozen elementary schools, three specialized magnet schools, one middle school and zero comprehensive high schools.
And there's more bad news. It would take at least $6 billion to get all students off both the buses and the district's educationally perverted year-round schedule. Instead, L.A. will start with $900 million from the local school-bond measure passed in 1997. And while these funds could be matched, dollar for dollar, with state money, nearly all of this state money is likely to go to other school districts. As it stands now, L.A. Unified would get about 1 percent of the rapidly vanishing pot of state school-construction money -- even though the district has 12 percent of the state's enrollment, a third of the state's students on year-round schedules, and one of the highest rates of enrollment growth.
Considerable fault lies with the way the state awards construction funds -- and, in desperation, L.A. Unified and activist organizations have sued over the matter. But then, too, the district's own construction program has been a disaster, both in terms of putting projects together and obtaining state money to pay for them. District efforts have been distinguished by a combination of ill-conceived ideas, or abandoned ones, abetted by school boards that occasionally overreach, but more often capitulated to outside political pressures, at the direct expense of students.
More recently, the facilities division has hardly existed at all, because the school board elected to clean house in the wake of the Belmont Learning Complex fiasco. Assembling the newcomers took months, and they're still learning the territory. It didn't help that new Chief Operating Officer Howard Miller managed to repeat some mistakes of the past, while also authoring some innovative miscues of his own. And this chaos could be repeated; Miller, as well as certain key interim managers, could depart within months during the transition into the administration of Roy Romer, the former Colorado governor who was chosen this week to be the school district's new superintendent.
But it doesn't necessarily matter who is calling the shots. This calamity, which was years in the making, is now larger than L.A. Unified. There is simply no solution to the morass, or at least none that is within the reach of the district alone. If fixing the school system matters -- and every politician claims to champion the cause -- addressing the facilities crisis will require the intense, unremitting participation of every civic leader in town, especially Mayor Richard Riordan and whoever becomes the next mayor.
THE SPACE RACE
IT MAKES FOR GRIM READING, THE STORIES of how the children of Los Angeles suffer from a shortage of classroom space.
Kindergartner Andres Daza goes to school in a ramshackle collection of temporary buildings set down on a South Gate city park. There's no cafeteria, auditorium or computer lab. On rainy days, he gets drenched crossing an open field to get to the portable bathrooms.
At Monte Vista Elementary, near downtown, fourth-grader Frances Rosenberg Jaramillo is in school for a month, then out for a month, back for two months, then off for a month, and so on -- all part of her school's crazy-quilt, multitrack year-round schedule. Her teacher has to pack up and unpack her classroom as often as five times a year, costing valuable instruction time.
Space is so short at Washington Prep High School in South-Central that Shannon Egans can't get the classes she needs to graduate. So she takes courses out of sequence, or during her vacations. Other students are forced to take adult-school classes in the evening.
They all are victims of the school district's coping strategies: About 77,000 students are yoked to a year-round schedule that shortens the academic year for individual students by a month. Some 15,000 students ride the bus against their will, even though district research indicates that these students fare the worst on academic-achievement measures.
In a sworn declaration, Assistant Superintendent Gordon Wohlers conceded that for years L.A. school officials have, in effect, perpetrated a fraud on the children of Los Angeles. Year-round education is not, in fact, a swell way to keep kids learning all year, as district officials originally claimed. Instead, the schedule, as practiced here, has hurt students badly, declared Wohlers.
Besides cheating children of a month of instruction, the schedule robs the school of downtime for maintenance, and of space in which to offer extra help to struggling students. "When we started the program many years ago, we hoped that we could make up with longer class periods for the 17 instructional days a year that children on these calendars lose," Wohlers stated. "It has not worked out that way. The intense calendars make for tired students and tired teachers."
Not only that, he added, but district officials have made only halfhearted attempts to prevent students from dropping out -- because there's no room for these students anyway. The district has elected to "dispense with or weaken retrieval efforts for students [who] drop out of schools or are at high risk of dropping out."
Wohlers' declaration appears in a lawsuit against the state that was filed in March -- by civil rights attorneys, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center. The attorneys are nominally representing a group of specific students, families and teachers, but the litigation was prepared in close coordination with the school district itself. Documentation in the suit demonstrates how, for years, L.A. Unified has not received anything close to its fair share of school-construction money. The heart of the problem is that the State Allocation Board, which distributes the funding, operates on a first-come, first-served basis. Eligible projects that clear regulatory hurdles get funded in order of arrival until the money runs out. Consideration for who needs the money the most has not been a fundamental factor.
Therefore, the state's traditional retort to L.A. Unified is: The rules are the same for you as for everyone else. And in fact, right now, LAUSD has only one completed application for funds on file with the state. Without question, the district would have received many millions of dollars if it had only managed to ask for the money in the standard, pro forma way. For this, the school district deserves some of the derision regularly expressed by state officials. But the case is not as simple as that.
It has always taken longer to acquire land in a dense urban area than in a suburban enclave, and now potential locations have to go through an environmental review by the st