Closing schools can not be done lightly
Shuttering community schools has painful consequences for children and neighborhoods.
Voters are more dissatisfied with their local school boards than their local schools,
The governing of public schools in many local communities is nearing total collapse.
Recently, local school boards have fought over matters ranging from allowing protest signs to deciding whether to follow government mandates on COVID-19 or yield to the loudest voices.
Many of these matters are tearing communities apart and dividing communities. Meanwhile, problems such as student performance, working conditions, and student learning loss during the pandemic remain on the sidelines.
In the turmoil being felt in many communities, it is vital that the quality of teaching and learning and the conditions that enable these twin goals be job No. 1. Don’t let school boards become a venue for airing issues that crowd out the focus on children and learning.
School boards have become training grounds for political activism that reaches far beyond the best interests of educators and children.
School boards are not fully maintaining community schools because of a combination of factors, including: lack of understanding about the nature of community schools, perceived insufficient funding, political resistance, inadequate staff training, challenges in building strong community partnerships, and a lack of clear policy support at the local level. Rather than shutter schools, school boards should reinvest in them.
To talk about school closures, one must talk about school buildings. Many community schools in West Virginia are 50 years old or older, and most require extensive rehab, repair and renovation. Many schools built to educate baby boomers in the 1960s and 1970s were constructed hurriedly on the cheap. Combine those factors with a failure of proper maintenance and you have school closures.
Our communities have been so demonized to the point that nobody thinks they’re good. Our institutions have been sabotaged. Local school boards all cry “broke” as they shift major portions of their budget towards “Woke” ideology, while neglecting and starving neighborhood schools.
Public schools have always impacted communities in ways that go beyond just educating young people. Well-maintained school facilities can help revitalize struggling neighborhoods, just as decrepit buildings can hurt them. And whether it’s attracting businesses and workers into the area, directly affecting local property values, or just generally enhancing neighborhood vitality by creating centralized spaces for civic life.
Whether for fiscal reasons or for low academic performance transferring students to schools that are not much better, and in some cases even worse, than the ones they left. Children can encounter bullying and violence at their new schools, while teachers are often unprepared to handle the influx of new students. In addition to overselling academic gains, school boards have overstated how much money they’ll save from shutting down schools.
It’s always very scary to the public when people who are guilty of something say “Yes, we are guilty, but we’re going to fix this our own way.” It feels almost like the police are policing themselves. How do you allow the people who helped design all these destructive policies also design the remedy?
Schools belong to the entire community, and it should be the local school board’s job to find the right policy levers so that we can really advance our educational and economic development together in the best, most equitable way,
Good Day!
Robert Ware
French Creek