Ain't talkin 'bout guns: "Understanding Safety at Neighborhood Schools."

Did any of the school board candidates discuss this?

Don Sakel, maybe?

I trust Strong Towns will forgive me for reprinting this piece in its entirety, which I seldom do, but it strikes me as precisely the sort of thinking that isn't ever considered locally.

Ever.

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Understanding Safety at Neighborhood Schools, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

Earlier this year, I was part of an unsuccessful effort to keep my local school district from tearing down an historic structure—a 1930s-era elementary school—as part of an effort to create two square blocks of parking in my city’s core downtown. Our efforts were called “disingenuous” by school officials who wrongly assumed we were anti-school, anti-education, or anti-taxes.

No, we’re just anti-destroying the city.

Geographically, the school district is enormous. Most of the people who voted do not live in one of the city’s core neighborhoods. Advocates for the school district had few misgivings with sacrificing an historic structure for more convenient parking. Most voters experience Brainerd as a place to drive through to get to a destination. For them, there will never be too much parking; trying to save the building was merely misplaced nostalgia.

Even so, there was controversy in the district’s discernment process over proposals to convert playgrounds into parking lots. Early site drawings showed off-street parking in the existing playground areas. In the months before the vote, this parking was removed from the drawings, and a note was added indicating parking would be built, with the location to be determined at a later date. I’m not suggesting anything sinister at this point; district officials said their drawings were creating confusion, that they had not intended to put the parking in the playground, and so they removed the parking from the drawings. It just also happened to be a convenient omission from the public conversation.

Now that the district has voter approval and is moving ahead with its plans, the full extent of the damage to my city’s core neighborhoods is becoming more widely understood. While they have yet to release schematics, the list of properties they are seeking through eminent domain suggests they are going to convert multiple blocks of residential dwellings into surface parking. It’s a double tragedy in that (1) it will permanently damage these struggling neighborhoods, and (2) few who are involved with the district or as advocates for the school’s plans seem to care.

In fact, in very predictable fashion, the people promoting the off-street parking are adamantly claiming that their motivation is safety. Specifically, safety for the children.

Safety First, or Driver Convenience First?
Call me cynical. I’ve read the school district’s documentation where faculty indicated that more convenient parking was one of the “top five priorities.” I’ve been in many of these schools, and while I’m sure there are staff members who live in the neighborhoods surrounding the schools, the vast majority do not. These neighborhoods tend to be poor and struggle with disinvestment. While education is not a lucrative career, it is a solidly middle-class career here in Minnesota. Most middle-class people live outside these neighborhoods and drive in. It’s understandable why, come February in Minnesota, people driving to their place of employment would want their parking to be more convenient.

It’s also easy to understand why a school board and senior administration—none of whom live in these neighborhoods, all of whom drive in—would be intuitively sympathetic to the convenience argument.

As psychologists have taught us, humans tend to reach conclusions based on their intuition and then use reasoning to justify those conclusions after-the-fact. We’re going to build parking lots to increase convenience, but we’re going to justify it based on safety for children. Alright, so let’s talk safety.

The Difference Between Urban and Suburban Environments
The vision for safety that the school district espouses comes from a misapplication of suburban design standards to an urban neighborhood. In a sense, what the district is proposing to do is to convert an urban neighborhood school into as close a facsimile as possible of a suburban campus. In that environment, safety is then addressed in standard suburban ways: separating conflicting uses, increasing traffic flow, and managing points of conflict.

In terms of safety for an urban neighborhood, this approach is an absolute disaster. Let me explain why.

Separating conflicting uses means keeping kids who are walking away from traffic. The theory is that, if we keep them separated, there will be no chance of any accidents occurring. The bus lane, pickup lanes, and surface parking departure lanes are all designated and kept away from where kids will be walking. Everyone in their place.

I find this approach suspect in suburban schools, but at least there the expectation is that most students will be driven in a car or bus to and from the site. For each of our neighborhood schools, the school district’s policy is to provide no busing for students living within a mile of the school. They are all expected to walk, bike or be driven by someone to school. As the school is in a poor neighborhood with a lot of working families, a high percentage of students walk, and they will be walking in every which direction. Compared to a suburban campus, walking patterns around urban schools are more random and chaotic.

That randomness conflicts directly with the second aspect of the district’s safety strategy: to increase traffic flow. Suburban schools channel personal vehicles and buses into their own designated lanes to help traffic flow more smoothly. This is accomplished by removing conflicts, by giving drivers a sense of security that potential conflict points have been managed. If we don’t expect turning cars, stopping traffic, wandering kids and the like, we feel more confident driving faster. A.k.a.: increase traffic flow.

Again, I’m not sold on this as a general concept even in a suburban setting, but in an urban neighborhood, it is an obscene level of negligence. These are random environments by their nature. Students are all over the place, like they should be in a good, urban neighborhood. Doing things that artificially speed up traffic, or give drivers a heightened sense of security, makes the environment vastly more dangerous for a child on foot.

The best thing that can happen for the safety of students is counter-intuitive for those who prioritize convenience of parking and driving: people driving through a school zone should be so terrified of hitting someone or something that they drive very slow and with an extreme level of caution. In other words, the exact opposite of what is being designed.

The third aspect of this misapplied suburban safety strategy relates to managing points of conflict: how we handle instances where children walking or biking must cross areas where buses or cars are driving. This is where we get the greatest insight as to the true motivation of the design, because designers are forced to prioritize one group over the other.

Let’s guess which one gets prioritized for safety purposes. Come February in the dead cold of winter, will the flow of traffic for parents picking up their kids, or faculty leaving the off-street parking lot, be halted so that students on foot can cross the street and get on their way? Or will students be expected to wait on the corner while those in their heated cars and on the bus are provided the opportunity to improve traffic flow?

Designers, in the name of safety, will attempt to channel kids on foot to designated locations where they will be collected and then, at intervals that don’t excessively interfere with traffic, be allowed to cross. In these situations, the design relies on everyone to follow the rules—or to put it another way, to mindlessly follow the rules, and be more obedient than attentive—and stay in their designated place.

Predictably, this creates the perfect excuse for the well-intentioned when tragedy strikes: “They weren’t following the rules.”

Not: “We should have anticipated that kids don’t always follow rules.” Not: “This is a complex and random urban neighborhood where unpredictable things happen, despite our planning and design.” Not: “We shouldn’t have given everyone a false sense of security.” None of the above.

And all of this reasoning applies merely to the roughly 75 minutes per day people are entering and exiting the school site. For the remainder of the time, and through all evenings and weekends and the three months of summer, this over-engineered design approach leaves a doughnut of desolation around each school, an inducement to drive even faster through this area where we know slower speeds are the key to safety.

From a pure safety standpoint, imposing a suburban design on an urban school is a disaster in the making. School officials who argue that this must be done for the safety of the students do not have the proper sense of how to create a safe environment in an urban setting. For the well-being of our students, and the health of our neighborhoods, we need a different vision for how to implement the will of the voters.

Fortunately, the city council in my hometown has the capacity to stop this. At its last meeting, the Planning Commission—which I am part of— recommended a moratorium on tearing down structures for conversion to surface parking. The council has the capacity to approve this time-out at any point, without any further public notice.

Such a time out would give city officials the opportunity to meet with the school district and work out the details in a way that is respectful to the neighborhood and truly safe for students. And if common ground could not be reached, the city has the capability to act unilaterally to require an implementation strategy that doesn’t damage the neighborhood where these students live.

I don’t think it will come to that, however. School district officials are smart and our city council has some very good leadership. And despite different concepts of convenience and safety, everyone involved does seem to want what is best for the students. I’m optimistic we can find a way to have a great neighborhood school while still having a neighborhood.

Our big fat Hibbardendum (3): City voters, take note, because just as in 2015, the NA-FC bond referendum is a "driving oriented, suburban school model."

Originally published on April 6, 2015. 

The "yes" arguments favoring the 2016 variant of the school corporation's bond referendum are essentially the same as before, when it was defeated by voters during the 2015 primary election. Perhaps unsurprisingly, so are the "no" arguments. Here is one of them. See also:

Our big fat Hibbardendum (1): Follow the PAC-besotted usual suspects' beak wetting in the $87 million schools referendum. 

Our big fat Hibbardendum (2): The more things stay the same, or our school bond referendum, 2016.

ON THE AVENUES: It’s our big fat Hibbardendum, and Jeff Gahan is carrying the superintendent across the threshold as Metro United Way tosses rice and One Southern Indiana steals all the liquor.

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Unctuous, thy name is Bruce Hibbard.

Back in February, when the reigning superintendent of the NA-FC schools appeared at a city council work session along with Brad "Actually Earns HIS Pay" Snyder to tout the May referendum, at-large councilman John Gonder cut straight to the chase and said aloud what everyone in the room should have been thinking.

Gonder said school officials didn’t actively lobby the public in support of Silver Street Elementary School when it was on the chopping block.

Now the system is wanting to build larger facilities while a school that children once could walk to has been closed, Gonder added.

“I do think that the school corporation has a strong responsibility to neighborhoods in the city,” he said.

Of course, "neighborhoods in the city" have tended to be the last thing on the school corporation's mind, apart from demolishing houses near existing schools (does Dan Coffey get a cut of that CCE action, too?), but if we were expecting introspection from Hibbard, it wasn't happening.

The decision to close those schools — which was made almost five years ago — was in reaction to state funding cuts and other issues facing the system at the time, Hibbard said.

“When we closed those four schools, we didn’t need those four schools,” Hibbard said. “It was really about efficiency for the district so we could survive.”

In short: The school corporation, without which Hibbard's pay packet is rerouted to a tar paper-lined sewer ditch on West 9th Street, must live even if our neighborhoods die.

A subsequent suggestion that "efficiencies" in school administration might include periodic examinations of past policy failures and current golden parachutes was greeted with disingenuousness in the form of Hibbard's gurgling sounds and palpable condescension; apparently Snyder is quite accustomed to dual duty as primary plan presenter and bucket o'sawdust-bearing cleaner of his boss's puke piles.

As the referendum's primary slot draws nearer, let's fast forward to last week's NAC post about the built-in lies of America's transportation system.

Marohn on transportation funding: "Facing the Unknown with Courage."

... We’re locked into a transportation system that requires us to lie to ourselves about what we can know about the future and then spend huge amounts to support that lie. When we underestimate our needs, it confirms our bias for building more. When we overestimate, we can explain it away – if we are ever asked to, which we hardly ever are – by citing factors beyond our control (oil price, recession, fickle humans, etc…). This is a dumb system.

JeffG, from whom the link was borrowed, then used Marohn's main point as a mirror, and held it up to the school corporation.

(Marohn's point) pretty well sums up the upcoming school referendum, too, in which the school corporation seeks to solidify its commitment to a driving oriented, suburban school model for the foreseeable future.

NA-FC buses already drive enough to circle the globe multiple times in less than a week. We know that's extremely costly and not sustainable. We know that children, neighborhoods, and our biosphere do better with walkable, neighborhood schools. But, when I suggest refocusing efforts on such walkable schools, I'm told I'm rehashing previous decisions.

The truth is, the current $120 million plan is the one looking backward, extending and exacerbating the misguided trends of the 50s and 60s while ignoring current and future reality. We can't afford the vehicles, roads, and fuel usage we have now, so what's the school plan? To use what's being called a rare financial opportunity to make sure we keep it that way for as long as possible.

We've often made the argument that the single worst aspect of New Albany's archaic one-way street grid is the way it incessantly rows in the opposite direction, 24 hours each day, negating all expenditures and well-intentioned efforts to revitalize urban neighborhoods. The school corporation often functions in similar fashion. It would be easier to support this referendum if it might somehow be a part of a deal to bring Hibbard to the table, to improve the school corporation as a participating stakeholder in the process of civic improvement, rather than an entity seemingly always pursuing autonomous agendas. Pie in the sky, perhaps.

Meanwhile ...

From what can be seen on-line and in social media, pending corrections, the only two May primary candidates to make public their views on the referendum are Al Knable (at-large council) and Cliff Staten (6th district council), both in favor.

There doesn't seem to be an organized anti-referendum effort, although the comments appended to two posts from January in the Floyd County IN, GOP group at Facebook, most of them by former Floyd County Republican Party chairman Dave Matthews, amply summarize the opposition from a "no new taxes" perspective.

First one
Second one

The pro-referendum case is made on Facebook at Families for Floyd County (the group's web site is here).

A final link: Referendum tax rate slightly higher than estimated for NA-FC Schools (Jerod Clapp, News and Tribune).

 ... (Snyder) said the district’s reasoning with the .1937 rate was to anticipate some growth in the assessed valuation of properties across the county.

The DLGF came back and told them to avoid assuming any growth in the values and keep them essentially flat, slightly raising the estimated rate.

Let's avoid the TIF discussion for now, shall we? It's only Monday morning, and we're already exhausted.

Letter to the editor: "I've spent a lot of time thinking about the school referendum."

Submitted.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about the school referendum - years, now -- and I could never come up with any reasonable justification. The "reasons" never made sense. I've been in those buildings and they are certainly fine and have the requisite amenities.

For a 10-year period, tech could have been a reason, since building out fiber-optic and/or ethernet would have required new builds. But we are well past that interregnum. Tech is such now that we are more likely to let everyone stay home and be tele-taught.

It finally dawned on me that to assume good faith on the part of the promoters was my mistake. The default mode for the promoters is to tell a pretty lie and rely on the fact that the children their system educated will be too stoopid to see through it.

They are lying. They have a REAL reason, but as is so very often seen in these environs, they refuse to state it. Call it Gahanism.

Here's the skinny, in my estimation: Now that public tax money follows the student, NA-FCCSC has to be consumer-driven. Like Northside Church, which offers exercise classes and a gym to draw lapsed Catholics into their fold, the school system feels they have to build amusement parks to draw students. The artificial-turf football fields are but one example. Trust me, that is not common where football is actually a serious sport. Yet, our schools people complained that every 5A school but ours had one.

If they would just say "We don't like it, but your education tax dollars are being sucked away by religious and partisan charter schools with entirely different agendas and methods from ours. Practically NONE of your local tax dollars are being spent on education. Those tax dollars are spent on buses, administrators, and buildings. But with tax caps and a city that TIFs everything under the sun, including wasteful things like a lazy river and wading pool, we can't compete.

"Yes, charter schools can't tax you for their buildings. But unless we close and rapidly sell off our neighborhood schools, the law requires us to sell them to our competition for nothing. That's why we sold Silver Street School. If we hadn't, a charter school could have just taken it and started - wait for it - a public neighborhood school. That's why we sold it for $100,000 instead of the millions it would have earned if marketed. A charter school could have come in and taken it, so we pre-sold it to a church incapable of starting a school.

"So to compete in this new marketplace, we simply must build palaces."

If they had come right out and said that, I might have been inclined to accept the tax increase to help public schools compete against "public" schools. I still might have supported them if they had been honest.

We old fuckers are still stuck in the pre-privatization days where there was a ban on paying private tuitions. The Daniels-Pence putsch has still not sunken into our atrophied brains. The GOP, if only to kill unions, is committed to "school choice" but what it really means is the end of public education as we knew it.

So, to compete in a rigged game, we're supposed to indebt ourselves to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. In fact, maybe the corporation should just disband and let the Republicans have their way. Then the revolution will come that much sooner.

But with golden parachutes for all!

Feedback: NA-FC school corp's "goofy 'no test = positive test' bunk."

Since Monday, when the New Albany-Floyd county school board approved a strange, Orwellian take on drug testing, I've seen several good comments, as well as this bad one, from a former local Democratic Party stalwart and elected official.

Hope this works out for the Best as should be imposed by all Schools! Hats off to New Albany Floyd County Schools!!!

Yay for civil liberties!

You're really a Republican, aren't you!

Voted for McCain AND Romney, eh?

Meanwhile, Bluegill writes just what I was thinking.

I've already heard a lot of parents saying they will refuse to allow their kids to be tested, challenging the school corp's goofy "no test = positive test" bunk. I hope they stick to that. A bunch of lug nuts that can't manage to fix a roof are going to fix community drug use problems? Authoritarian hubris knows no bounds.

Of course, Jeff Gahan's solution to drug abuse is for kids to go get wet.

I don't have children, but if I did, I certainly hope I'd react in the same way as this parent.

So, the kid in Texas with a clock, you know, the one that is probably smarter than all the teachers in that school combined, this should be a lesson for those that approve of NA-FC drug testing our kids.

If you have a teacher that wants to fuck with a kid, now they can. I instructed my kids they are not to piss in a cup for no one. They are to call me and I will be there with a ACLU lawyer before you can say unconstitutional.

The thing is, so what if a kid smoked a little before school? That should be handled by the parents. Now the way that it is that kid will be will probably be suspended, have a criminal record and be labeled before they get out of high school. And for what? Doing what half the teacher staff and administration has done themselves at one time or another.

Bull shit I say.

America and its ever-increasing infatuation of becoming a police state is out of control. Some keep saying kids need more discipline but it seems to me adults are the biggest fuckups in this world and the decision of the school board to apply this is proof of it.

NA-FC schools won't test administrators for drugs, but ...

The single best comment I've seen:

I'm interested to see how many students they test and the racial breakdown after a year.

Yep. As thinly veiled as veiled thinly can be.

New Albany-Floyd County students now subject to drug testing, by Jerod Clapp (N and T)

NEW ALBANY — After six months of discussion, students in the New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corp. may undergo drug testing if there’s reasonable suspicion that they’re using illegal substances.

The district’s board of trustees unanimously passed a measure Monday giving administrators different tools and guidelines to implement testing on students. Bill Briscoe, assistant superintendent, stressed that the policy is meant to help students, not punish them.

“This is not about random drug testing, this is about testing when there’s reasonable suspicion,” Briscoe said. “It does define in this policy what reasonable suspicion is, it tells you when it can happen. It can be on school grounds, it can be on events that are off school grounds or traveling to or from school for events.”

Superintendent Hibbard: "I think we need professional help."

Okay, that was just a bit gratuitous.

Here's the key quote for me.

“People had different reasons why we lost,” (Bruce) Hibbard said. “People thought it was apathy, but people also didn’t think we did a very good job of getting the word out about the question. People would go and read the question not knowing that 23 cents was falling off [the rate thanks to an expiring bond] and they were getting 20 [back on].

Earth to superintendent: One significant reason the referendum lost is that many voters understood the question quite well, but are terminally mistrustful of current management to implement the proposed bond.

Sorry, but that's as simple as it gets. You mean to tell me no one mentioned this possibility during the retreat?

(Rolls eyes, cues Yes Men, strikes up the band)

NA-FC referendum may get another shot, by Jerod Clapp (N and T)

It didn’t pass last time around, but the New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corp. might give a referendum another shot in 2016.

This time, they might hire some help.

At the board’s retreat at Wooded Glen in Henryville last weekend, administrators and board members discussed the possibility of hiring a political consultant to advise them on how to encourage voters to approve the measure.

Superintendent Bruce Hibbard said Brad Snyder, deputy superintendent, did what he knew to do with the campaign, but an outside company could hone their message to the county.

“We weren’t built to be politicians — we’re educators and I think we need professional help,” Hibbard said Saturday. “One of the things a professional will do is they’ll canvass our community.”

Jeffie bar the door: Redevelopment don't need no stinking TIF input from schools.

The piranhas are circling TIF even as we receive another lesson in City Hall's innate non-transparency.

A fair share? NA-FC Schools questions impact of TIF districts on education dollars, by Daniel Suddeath (Morris Trucking Publications)

NEW ALBANY — It may be a chicken and egg argument, but New Albany-Floyd County School officials want to make sure the financial basket for public education isn’t left barren by tax-increment financing.

The New Albany Redevelopment Commission finalized a resolution Tuesday to expand the downtown parking garage TIF district to include the one-block Coyle site off East Spring Street.

As part of an agreement to lure a 157-unit, market-rate apartment project to the vacant site, the city has agreed to allow the developer, Flaherty & Collins of Indianapolis, to fund the project primarily through TIF revenue.

Councilman Cappuccino, who continues to stand so close to Mayor Jeff Gahan that some local bait shops won't serve them, rushed forward to defend what he always used to routinely decry.

Dan Coffey, a New Albany City Councilman and member of the redevelopment commission, said TIF districts are a crucial economic tool for municipalities.

But the school corporation came loaded for bear, brandishing Reformation-era church tax idioms.

“But you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul,” responded Fred McWhorter, chief business officer for NA-FC Schools.

McWhorter joined NA-FC School Board President Rebecca Gardenour at Tuesday’s redevelopment meeting to ask for consideration for the school system when the body is considering TIF issues.

Shay-ruff Duggins noted that the new apartment complex won't "tax" the school corporation because the city intends to lure rootless metrosexuals and not the kiddos.

Though some children may move in with their families, the apartments are designed more toward young professionals said David Duggins, director of economic development and redevelopment for the city.

Duggins added that it's a matter of priorities.

The impact adding one-block of property to the TIF district will have on the school system is minimal, and the same is true for other taxing units in Floyd County, he continued. “They will receive nothing less than they receive now,” he said.

Of course, they'll also receive no more, and speaking of unavailable extras in the form of the perennial non-transparency of the appointed Redevelopment Commission, upon which sits not only Coffey In Your Pocket, but also the chairman of the Democratic Party itself, it seems that a wee dram of the fix is in.

Since 2008, school corporations have been allowed to appoint a non voting representative to redevelopment commissions in order to provide input on issues that affect public education, such as TIF financing.

But a school representative has been largely absent from New Albany redevelopment meetings in recent years. New Albany Mayor Jeff Gahan has declined to accept the recent appointment of NA-FC school board member Jessica Knable to the commission, Gardenour said.

“We appoint somebody, but the mayor has the final say so,” she said.

Jeff Gahan has the final say so ... when he bothers saying anything at all. When the school corporation belatedly shows an interest in city business, Gahan refuses to scan the ticket.

New Albany? It's not an option, is it?

Photo credit: MPI/Getty Images

NA-FC referendum: "A driving oriented, suburban school model."

Unctuous, thy name is Bruce Hibbard.

Back in February, when the reigning superintendent of the NA-FC schools appeared at a city council work session along with Brad "Actually Earns HIS Pay" Snyder to tout the May referendum, at-large councilman John Gonder cut straight to the chase and said aloud what everyone in the room should have been thinking.

Gonder said school officials didn’t actively lobby the public in support of Silver Street Elementary School when it was on the chopping block.

Now the system is wanting to build larger facilities while a school that children once could walk to has been closed, Gonder added.

“I do think that the school corporation has a strong responsibility to neighborhoods in the city,” he said.

Of course, "neighborhoods in the city" have tended to be the last thing on the school corporation's mind, apart from demolishing houses near existing schools (does Dan Coffey get a cut of that CCE action, too?), but if we were expecting introspection from Hibbard, it wasn't happening.

The decision to close those schools — which was made almost five years ago — was in reaction to state funding cuts and other issues facing the system at the time, Hibbard said.

“When we closed those four schools, we didn’t need those four schools,” Hibbard said. “It was really about efficiency for the district so we could survive.”

In short: The school corporation, without which Hibbard's pay packet is rerouted to a tar paper-lined sewer ditch on West 9th Street, must live even if our neighborhoods die.

A subsequent suggestion that "efficiencies" in school administration might include periodic examinations of past policy failures and current golden parachutes was greeted with disingenuousness in the form of Hibbard's gurgling sounds and palpable condescension; apparently Snyder is quite accustomed to dual duty as primary plan presenter and bucket o'sawdust-bearing cleaner of his boss's puke piles.

As the referendum's primary slot draws nearer, let's fast forward to last week's NAC post about the built-in lies of America's transportation system.

Marohn on transportation funding: "Facing the Unknown with Courage."

... We’re locked into a transportation system that requires us to lie to ourselves about what we can know about the future and then spend huge amounts to support that lie. When we underestimate our needs, it confirms our bias for building more. When we overestimate, we can explain it away – if we are ever asked to, which we hardly ever are – by citing factors beyond our control (oil price, recession, fickle humans, etc…). This is a dumb system.

JeffG, from whom the link was borrowed, then used Marohn's main point as a mirror, and held it up to the school corporation.

(Marohn's point) pretty well sums up the upcoming school referendum, too, in which the school corporation seeks to solidify its commitment to a driving oriented, suburban school model for the foreseeable future.

NA-FC buses already drive enough to circle the globe multiple times in less than a week. We know that's extremely costly and not sustainable. We know that children, neighborhoods, and our biosphere do better with walkable, neighborhood schools. But, when I suggest refocusing efforts on such walkable schools, I'm told I'm rehashing previous decisions.

The truth is, the current $120 million plan is the one looking backward, extending and exacerbating the misguided trends of the 50s and 60s while ignoring current and future reality. We can't afford the vehicles, roads, and fuel usage we have now, so what's the school plan? To use what's being called a rare financial opportunity to make sure we keep it that way for as long as possible.

We've often made the argument that the single worst aspect of New Albany's archaic one-way street grid is the way it incessantly rows in the opposite direction, 24 hours each day, negating all expenditures and well-intentioned efforts to revitalize urban neighborhoods. The school corporation often functions in similar fashion. It would be easier to support this referendum if it might somehow be a part of a deal to bring Hibbard to the table, to improve the school corporation as a participating stakeholder in the process of civic improvement, rather than an entity seemingly always pursuing autonomous agendas. Pie in the sky, perhaps.

Meanwhile ...

From what can be seen on-line and in social media, pending corrections, the only two May primary candidates to make public their views on the referendum are Al Knable (at-large council) and Cliff Staten (6th district council), both in favor.

There doesn't seem to be an organized anti-referendum effort, although the comments appended to two posts from January in the Floyd County IN, GOP group at Facebook, most of them by former Floyd County Republican Party chairman Dave Matthews, amply summarize the opposition from a "no new taxes" perspective.

First one
Second one

The pro-referendum case is made on Facebook at Families for Floyd County (the group's web site is here).

A final link: Referendum tax rate slightly higher than estimated for NA-FC Schools (Jerod Clapp, News and Tribune).

 ... (Snyder) said the district’s reasoning with the .1937 rate was to anticipate some growth in the assessed valuation of properties across the county.

The DLGF came back and told them to avoid assuming any growth in the values and keep them essentially flat, slightly raising the estimated rate.

Let's avoid the TIF discussion for now, shall we? It's only Monday morning, and we're already exhausted.

Meet Lee Ann Wiseheart and Danita Burks. They'd like you to vote them to the public school board. Their kids attend Christian Academy.

Roger: We have a new beer called Nan Brown. It's really good. Want to try it?

Customer: Sure (takes a drink) ... but this is Elector with a different name!

Roger: Precisely. Our next new release is called Amy Adams.

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Meanwhile, for those keeping score (as you should be, alibi-ridden partisan apologists), this makes two weeks, two columns, and two majestic upper deck home runs by Amanda Beam.

Last week, she popped the deceptive lid on local identity dysfunction, and NAC felt the chill of so many ghostly "conversations" past.

Those "phantoms of Facebook" have quite the pedigree -- right, Amy?

... All was fine and dandy with dear, sweet Nan (Brown) until she decided to reply to a post I had written a few days back about an upcoming school board race. The lovely lady disagreed with my opinion, which wasn’t a big deal. But when I asked her about being a teacher and if she had children, her answers didn’t match up with her profile identity. A quick search online revealed that, for all intents and purposes, Ms. Brown didn’t exist ...

... A couple of these accounts posted in other mediums too. Amy Adams enjoyed commenting on the News and Tribune’s website frequently these past few years on all sorts of political topics. Another young gal even said no good columnists wrote for the paper anymore. (Insert evil laugh here).

This week, Beam's bat meets ball -- again: "To me, if you choose not to send your child to a public school, then you shouldn’t be making fiscal and policy decisions for those of us who do."

BEAM: The power of choice

 Most of us can agree parents have a right to send their children to the schools of their choosing. Some select private institutions, whether for a parochial education or specialized ways of teaching, and pay out of pocket for the tuition. Others home-school.

Both are fine alternatives to public schools. Notice I didn’t say they were in any way better than the public offerings, just different.

That’s the parent’s choice.

But what if those parents decide to run for a position on a public school board?

Here’s where the situation becomes a bit hairy.

Let's face facts.

The current school board isn't exactly a shining symbol on the Grant Line Road knoll, but Lee Ann Wiseheart and Danita Burks plainly represent a theocratic view of the world, one that has no place in public school decision-making.

While we're at it, the superannuated Don Sakel also is undeserving of a seat, although for entirely different reasons.

Me?

Yes, I actually did vote, though not for very many, and firmly against a couple. The object was to view the process, because the 2015 insurgency will be here quite soon. In the balloting for school board, I voted for Jan Anderson, and that's it. She makes sense and is always responsive.

Thanks to Amanda Beam for her last two News and Tribune columns, and to Daniel Suddeath (and Jerod Clapp) for their reporting. They've restored a dollop of faith in the ability of the local newspaper to make a difference. More, please.

Dave Matthews just hates that Glenda Ritz won.

As always, setting a fine example for our school children.

Laughing out loud.

NEWS AND TRIBUNE LETTERS — For Dec. 11: GOP head wants campaigning out of schools, by Dave Matthews, chairman, Floyd County Republican Party

A huge percentage of parents are tired of the antics of the ISTA and a small number of bad teachers. We feel this kind of “education” has no place in schools that our taxes are paying for.

Distracted drivers.

My nephew recently graduated from Jeffersonville High School. The school is so large that commencement attendees were asked to park in a nearby big box retailer's lot and be shuttled in. My mother was excited. Having grown up in inner-city New Albany, it was the first time she'd ever ridden a school bus.

Things have changed.

New Albany-Floyd County CONSOLIDATED School Corporation buses travel roughly 1,000,000 miles per year. Fuel costs are so high adminstrators say it's worth spending additional money to install GPS tracking systems on the buses to try to determine more efficient routes.

And today they're closing the sale of one of the only walkable schools left in the corporation's inventory for a reported $415,000, helping to ensure that the driving inanity above will be much more difficult to correct in future.

I hope the homophobes enjoy it.

NA-FC Schools PR attempt.

Attempt, I think, is being generous.



If you find anything you didn't know, say, like, the reasoning used for determining what constitutes "essential" or how we're supposed to "get informed" if the guy we hired to keep us so has so little to say, please leave a comment. I at least hope they didn't pay for this.

Silver Street School + Sojourn = Cults on the River.

It's quite possible that this is the single most depressing development in New Albany in the past decade. The school that never should have been closed, Silver Street, now will adaptively house yet another wacko religious institution, Sojourn: We’ve Found A Home For Sojourn New Albany! Learn About Our New Campus Site

Back in 2008, LEO observed that Sojourn definitely Smells Like Holy Spirit:

Sojourn is a Southern Baptist church, and the message here is not a particularly progressive one. Pastors counsel a strict adherence to scripture, which means abortion is murder, men are the natural-order leaders and homosexuality is a sin from which gays need to be converted and redeemed.

So how does the school corporation enabling such a regressive subtraction to the community spin it? Like this:

Brad Snyder, deputy superintendent for New Albany-Floyd County schools, said the sale is "a huge win-win for the community” because the church intends to use it for "advancing community outreach."

Groan.

This is civil society? Really, Brad? How soon before we're taking money away from public education for Sojourn to re-educate gays?

Dude, please tell tell that to homeowners near Silver Street, Pine View ...

I'm still playing catch-up, not to mention ketsup, after abundant down time during the holidaze.

After reading Jerod Clapp's Tribune story, I'm puzzled anew at the school corporation's failure to grasp elementary (pun intended) public relations. Are their feet ever removed from mouths? Was the PR guy imported from Libya after Colonel Gaddafi downsized? Is this a good time to talk about a raise for the superintendent? Why do we need portable classrooms when neighborhood schools were given the mountain oyster treatment?

Here's a helpful hint: Keep this McWhorter fellow away from the microphone unless you really think an inadvertent comedy routine helps sell the notion of a referendum.

NA-FC Schools could bring referendum to vote; 2012’s budget could be in bad shape without it

... (Chief business officer Fred) McWhorter said the school corporation has made efforts to show the community how it’s worked to make the school system better.

“If we move forward with a referendum,” McWhorter said, “now we can say with a straight face, ‘we’ve become more efficient.’”

He said even though four schools were closed last spring, the facilities left are being used more efficiently than they had been. Without any empty classrooms and class sizes still staying in reasonable levels, he said he thinks the school corporation has demonstrated its efforts at increasing efficiency ...

... McWhorter said community members without children in local schools need to consider some of the benefits of having a good school system in their area, including the increase of property values.

He said studies show how a more educated populous generally has less crime.

“All you have to do is look at places like Detroit [Mich.] where the schools have been run down and what’s happened to their property values,” McWhorter said. “We don’t want that to happen here.”

Photo credit: My esteemed colleague M. Nash.

Another Hibbard Heads-Up: NA/FC Schools Admin seeking public participation changes.

According to messages NAC received this weekend, it seems NA/FC Schools Superintendent Bruce Hibbard and crew are at it again, proposing new, more restrictive rules for the public's engagement with the school board who supposedly serves them. It was clear enough during the school closure debacle that Dr. Hibbard is wary of communicating with the public. Apparently, he's uncomfortable with the public communicating with the school board and each other as well.

Click on the images for new public participation school board bylaws being proposed by NA/FC Schools Administration:


The old rules can be found at the school system's web site in the School Board section.

A message of concern from Mark Kessans, president of the local teachers association:

The above bylaw was written and is being recommended for passage by the Central Administration. It is apparent to the Association that the Administration is attempting to put into place measures that will allow the administration and Board to silence both the public’s and the Association’s ability to peacefully and adequately express concerns to the Board. It is also an attempt to prevent the Public and the Association from organizing to attend and speak at a school board meeting.

The Association especially finds paragraphs G -4 and G-5 to be very troubling, along with the requirement of a 10 day notification in order to request that an item be placed on the agenda. Paragraphs E, F, G-1, 2 and 3 are very sufficient safeguards to ensure a productive, safe and orderly meeting and a five day notification would be reasonable.

I have made numerous attempts to meet with Bill Briscoe to discuss and edit the troubling language. Bill has repeatedly told me that the Administration is holding firm on this and will not agree to make ANY edits to the proposed bylaw language. I have also sent an e-mail to each school board member expressing the Association’s concern and requesting that they make a motion to amend and/or support the removal of the three troubling components of the Bylaw. After nearly twenty four hours, I have not received the first reply to my request from any school board member.

If any of you have a personal working relationship with any School Board Member, I would encourage you to make a special point to contact them and encourage them to support rejecting the replacement by-law. Admittedly by the Administration, there has been no problem with the current by-law and it has served the board well. At a minimum, please encourage board members to support the removal of the above three items. This will allow whoever is President of the Board the authority to silence the voice of anyone that would like to address the Board if he or she does not want to hear what anyone has to say. (Censorship?) I thought that we lived in America where we enjoyed “Freedom of Speech”. How does the proposed bylaw language align with what we teach our students about Freedom of Speech?

Please share this e-mail with anyone that may voice our concerns. I would also encourage you, others and the general public to attend the Board Meeting this coming Monday, December 13, 2010, at 6:00pm in the ESC. Be sure to sign up to speak to influence Board Members to either amend or “vote down” the above bylaw. This bylaw would allow the President of the Board to abuse his or her authority and have sole censorship authority over who speaks, what is placed on the agenda and what is discussed at future Board Meetings. This holds true even if the board meeting continues or is adjourned and reconvened at a later time or date.

I would appreciate as many of you as possible attending Monday’s meeting and signing up to speak regarding this bylaw, or at a minimum, attending and supporting those of us who will be addressing the Board with our concerns.

I look forward to seeing each of you at Monday’s Board meeting!

Sincerely,
Mark Kessans
President
New Albany-Floyd County Education Association
Bonterra Building, Suite 100
3620 Blackiston Boulevard
New Albany, IN 47150-8529
800-638-5711 ext.# 4
nafcea2400@gmail.com

Some commentary/beginning talking points:

1. Though it's become commonplace for the likes of State Representative Ed Clere and State Education Superintendent Tony Bennett to blast teachers unions for exhibiting behavior strikingly similar to their own, it's worth noting here that the local union president is the only person currently trying to inform the public that their access to the school board may be changing. Union 1, Management 0.

2. The process for submitting items to the school board for agenda inclusion was flawed even before the 10 day advance was proposed. Other than submitting her or his own agenda requests, the superintendent should have no say in what the board does or does not discuss. There is simply no justification for giving the Superintendent the authority to approve or disapprove such requests from the public. Though Hibbard seems set on acting otherwise, the elected board is the superintendent's boss and not the other way around. The school board exists to protect the public's interests, not the superintendent's. As such, agenda items should be submitted to the full board for their inclusive consideration, not to the superintendent. If the board wants to change the rules, they should start there.

The 10 day advance for agenda item requests is troubling as well, owing to the superintendent's and the school system's usual lack of public communication. As we've seen repeatedly over the past few years, school initiatives are often kept hidden from public view until the last breakneck moments before a vote. This proposed public participation bylaw change is just the latest example of what has become an all too common practice.

What's actually needed is not a shortened time frame for public concerns and idea generation but an extended period of public notification, allowing proper research, debate, and communication to take place.

As an aside: Internal communication doesn't seem to be much better. The first communiqué I received about this matter did not include the actual bylaw language proposed. In an effort to be informed and fair, I contacted a school board member in order to familiarize myself with the proposal's specifics. As of Saturday morning, at least some of the school board members had received neither an agenda nor an information packet related to Monday's meeting and had no idea that bylaw changes were even being proposed. The public, on the other hand, is expected to have their act together well in advance to be considered at all.

3. Paragraph F states that oral complaints about specific students and/or personnel will not be heard. It further suggests that employees contact their immediate supervisor about complaints relative to employment. That makes sense in every case except as it pertains to the superintendent. The school board is the superintendent's immediate supervisor. Whether intentional or not, this rule in effect states that the board will not hear criticism of the superintendent. That's unacceptable.

4. Mr. Kessans rightfully points out problems with G-4 and G-5, which gives the school board president the authority to single-handedly adjourn meetings abruptly and to limit the number of speakers. Given that no consistent guidelines are provided for making such decisions, what's discussed is left entirely up to the discretion of a single person, inviting, as Mr. Kessans suggests, abuse and censorship. If 20 people show up to speak to a particular issue and the president limits the number of speakers to 10, how will he or she decide who is heard and who is not? If the public, according to these bylaws, are not allowed to register complaints about Dr. Hibbard and three people in a row complain about him, is that grounds for adjournment?

5. The audio and video recording rules are problematic as well. Again, decisions about access should not be made by the superintendent. It's not her or his meeting. And, again, as evidenced by this particular situation and many others, the lack of school system communication makes a requirement for five days advanced recording approval untenable. Having become aware of the proposed public participation changes (no thanks to the school system) just yesterday, let's say that I'm now concerned enough that I think recording is justified so that the public can witness what transpires at the meeting on Monday. According to the rules, I won't be allowed to record because, through the school system's fault, an approval request five days in advance is impossible.

In an era when large media corporations like Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. (the Tribune's owner) are demanding that staff take unpaid furlough days to cut costs, citizen-driven reporting is becoming more important, not less so. Curtailing access for those inclined to provide it would be a clear sign that the school corporation doesn't want coverage, which is precisely the attitude that justifies more of it.

-------

The next school board meeting is tomorrow, December 13, at 6:00 p.m. at the Education Support Center, 2801 Grant Line Road. That unfortunately overlaps with the Tolling Authority's "public forum", so take your pick or do both in succession.

NA-FC Schools and "one unhappy board member’s statements."

You get three guesses as to the unhappy Machiavellian's identity ... and the first two don't count!

TRIBUNE EDITORIAL: Facts still matter, especially at NA-FC schools

Accusations condemning Hibbard of looking for the board’s “rubber stamp” were rash and unfounded in accuracy, based predominantly on one unhappy board member’s statements to a Louisville newspaper reporter.

Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black.

Imagine if they tore down homes in historically poor and black neighborhoods to build giant interstates to make it easier for privileged whites to avoid them.

Imagine if those historically disadvantaged people started making educational strides in the public schools and they shut those schools down to better facilitate more spending in the privileged white areas, cutting a big "U" shape in a hillside school district to keep the privileged children from having to mingle with poor.

Imagine if our chamber of commerce and the head of our local university applauded such measures and egged them on.

Imagine if our state leaders built campaign platforms on the basis of it being unfair that the privileged should have to pay for such institutionalized luxuries.

And then do what the title says.

Wise: Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

It wasn't funny then, either.

“West Spring Street School is now the Hampton Inn. That’s a nice little use of space next to the interstate,” Snyder said. “Why would you want a school there anyway? But when we did that, there was emotion. But that’s a higher and better use.”

Reading Bruce Hibbard's and Brad Snyder's comments in the Sunday Tribune is like being given access to the Saturday Night Live sketches that weren't provided airtime the night before and understanding why others were chosen.

How did people so socially inept ever get to be in charge of a public school corporation?

Gonder: Yellow Peril is catching.

Perhaps someday more of the many organizations and individuals I've approached about it will take sustainable land use and transportation policy more seriously as a central part of their missions rather than waiting for self-inflicted crises to occur but, until then, it's encouraging to see City Council President John Gonder join in the call for more equitable transit, particularly as it relates to educational and employment opportunities within our community. - Jeff

Republished in its entirety from his blog:

When the School Corporation sneezes, the City catches cold.

One step the school board could take to ameliorate the funding mess it faces is to downsize or eliminate the large school bus program.

The City faces two problems related to the transportation system currently in place, ie., transporting of students via buses owned and operated by the school corporation:

1. It is a costly service which subsidizes the choice of some parents to live in non-walkable neighborhoods, which causes the well-planned inner city neighborhoods to further deteriorate as essential services such as neighborhood schools are eliminated. This degrades the general quality of life within the older neighborhoods of town, and the entire community suffers.

2. The Transit Authority of River City (TARC) is being forced by a variety of factors to cut service throughout its service area, including New Albany. Because of these cuts the already meager bus system is pushed closer to the brink. The city is deprived of a viable system of public transportation, such a system can benefit the the community at large through greater access for all its citizens, better air quality and a residential pattern. Such a pattern allows the city to operate more efficiently as infrastucture is used to its greatest advantage, rather than having it spread thin in a costly advance toward the the sprawling edges of the community.

If the school corporation would eliminate the school bus program and instead rely on non-corporation-owned buses, it should realize a sizable savings. If TARC were presented with a daily cadre of student bus riders it would go a long way toward building a base of ridership to rationalize a comprehensive general public transportaion system for the entire community. The transportaion system would benefit the community as a whole and the presevation and revitalization of inner city schools would, likewise, benefit the community as a whole. The savings would allow the school corporation to focus its funds on its true mission --educating students, enriching the community, ensuring a sound future for our city-- which is a better use of scarce educational funds.

Why us? Because Pogo was right, that's why.

Was City Hall in attendance, and did anyone from local government speak? What is the effect of this proposal on neighborhood revitalization? Are we at the crisis saturation point where there are simply too few (and far too exhausted) activists favoring a civil (as opposed to troglodyte) society to overcome the obstructionist looters?

Hundreds attend NA-FC's meeting on proposed school closures, by Tara Hettinger (Tribune).

Parents came to the New Albany High School Auditorium on Monday night, with many opposed to a plan by the school system to close elementary schools because of budget constraints.

State Representative Ed Clere's viewpoint was written prior to the meeting and published today.

CLERE: Let's point forward instead of fingers

... The state has accepted responsibility for funding schools, and we must fulfill that commitment. We cannot, however, deny economic reality. We're in the deepest recession since the Great Depression. The last time we experienced such economic challenges there was a striking Richardsonian Romanesque elementary school at the corner of Vincennes and Shelby streets.

Finally, here is Shane Gibson's take. Gibson will be Clere's opponent in the House election this coming November.

Gibson on education: Takin' it to the state.

The Indiana Legislature in the final days of session is attempting to develop solutions to the education funding fiasco created by themselves and the recent cuts in education from Gov. Mitch Daniels.