Busing a rhyme

I can't really weigh in on the question of transporting our kids to school without admitting that I have already been hammered for wanting to "hammer on" this issue.  That was the phrase that I used when I I sent a Facebook message on the subject to the three school board members who are my friends there (luckily another board member quietly defriended me after my call for transparency during his last reelection campaign; I'd hate to risk a violation of the open meetings law), and one of those friends took exception to the phrase.

I'm not a musician, but I think that "hammer on" is a way to create a sustained note through continuous pressure on a guitar string.  My board member friend, I fear, anticipated an approach much more aggressive and nasty.  I can't say I can blame anyone on the board for such a reaction; in New Paltz it's rare to find someone who is willing to debate using truth and logic instead of passion and half-truths.  In addition, I'm no stranger to passionately arguing for a position I care about.  Hopefully I've learned my lesson.

Now, about those school buses

I've been following a local school bus strike threat for the Shawangunk Journal, and it's quite amazing what I have learned.  New Paltz drivers start at $22.90 an hour, while Rondout Valley pays about $23 an hour for its bus contractor.  RV's drivers are considering a strike because they make so little, but as it stands now the districts which privately contract are paying a rate per hour that is comparable to our local driver hourly rate.

How much should busing really cost?

Keep in mind, the hourly rate in New Paltz doesn't include sick time, vacation, retirement, vehicle procurement or maintenance.  We voted down a new school bus proposal just last year, and privatizing busing is one of many options the board is going to consider to resolve the insane budgeting problems they face.

I've had people tell me that they would not feel comfortable with contract drivers. This is an emotional argument, and I sincerely hope no board member dares consider it.  I want facts, and only facts, to make this decision.  Facts might include:

• The way that private companies are regulated by the state in comparison to how the district is regulated
• Documented records of safety and screwups.
• A comparison of how often private companies need to send in a substitute unfamiliar with the route versus how often the district needs to do so.
• An analysis of transportation times, both overall and with a substitute at the wheel.
• A comparison of background check requirements.

Starting now, and going forward, I am going to sound a note for privatizing our busing.  Unless strong evidence is presented to show that we really need to be spending three, four, or more times what neighboring districts do for their busing (Rondout Valley privatized 19 years ago, and so far their biggest problem is the threat that three drivers will strike), I am going to continue to keep hammering on that note until I am heard.  Short of consolidating districts (which is outside the scope of this post), I can see no more effective way to save tons of money with very little downside.

Zero tolerance . . . policy or tradition?

Some interesting developments unfolded in the halls of New Paltz High School this week.  Several students were caught violating school policy on drugs, and the district's "zero tolerance policy" rolled into action, with the principal meting out multi-day out-of-school suspensions pending hearings.  Despite the fact that the case is swathed in rumor and cloaked in the secrecy necessary for dealing with kids, it's an opportunity to see how the school's code of conduct and due process work.

By cobbling together scant official reports with the existing rumor mill and some knowledgeable sources, I pulled together some details of the case.  Students generally believe that a dozen students were involved, but none of those questioned were able to provide more than one name.  The official line from superintendent Maria Rice was that the number I had heard was grossly exaggerated, and a source close to the investigation claimed that it was really only five students.  I spoke to the one kid whose name the other students knew, and he confirmed that the accusation was of selling marijuana (and, I'm going to guess, possession).  I was able to gather very little information about the other cases, but it appears that one of the other students may have been caught with a weapon (brass knuckles) and turned over the alleged drug dealer to cop a plea.

Now the fun begins.  At the beginning of the school year the board said that they were going to be looking at the "zero tolerance policy."  I reviewed the code with a board member, looking for a quote about that member's position on zero tolerance.  It took some time for the member to wade through the code of conduct, which didn't surprise me, but what did was what we didn't find . . . zero tolerance.

Wikipedia says that "zero-tolerance policy in schools is a policy of punishing any infraction of a rule, regardless of accidental mistakes, ignorance, or extenuating circumstances."  However, the district's code provides for a wide range of consequences for drug charges, ranging from an oral warning to permanent suspension from school.  (This is the same range of punishment that can be meted out for lying, possessing a cell phone or iPod on school premises, and using an obscene gesture.)  The superintendent is explicitly given the right to consider "extenuating circumstances" and other information when deciding on or approving of a disciplinary action.

With the board member befuddled, I contacted the district office to ask exactly where this "zero tolerance policy" exists.  I got a request to FOIL the info, and I'm considering exactly what to ask for.

The language of discipline in schools has changed.  OSS (out-of-school suspension) was not in my vocabulary as a kid - you were suspended, or you were not.  It was always in school.  If a kid got kicked out, we called it "expelled," and I think it happened once in my school years.  Now we have OSS and ISS, and OSS is considered a viable option.  Let's see how that works, shall we?

This kid is out of school until he gets a hearing in a week or so.  He will get maybe two hours of tutoring a day, and unless his parents don't work, he will be otherwise unsupervised.  So by sending him home, the schools have committed to spending money on a tutor above and beyond what his teachers already cost, right?  And since he's accused of breaking the law, I assume that there is some possibility that in his free time he will roam the community and perhaps do something that will require police activity - also paid for by my tax dollars.  If the student was remanded to the school as a non-dangerous but disruptive student, he could get his work sent to him all day long and require neither tutors, nor police.

Sounds to me like the school district is foisting off its problems on the rest of us.  I've talked about the problems with OSS before, and I think it needs to change.  If a kid is a danger to the schools he needs to be out of there - but that probably means the police need to be involved.  I doubt there is a case where the kid is really a danger and some kind of professional intervention (mental health, police, whatever) is not needed.  Why can't you keep the rest of these kids in the building?  Why are they being sent home?  It doesn't appear to be mandated by law, and so far I can't find the actual "zero intelligence tolerance policy" which is taking things out of their hands . . . so why is the school washing its hands and putting the problem back in our laps?

Considering the number of administrators making more than $150,000 a year, I think they can find a way to do just that.  We're paying them a lot, and I would like to see them use those well-paid brains to come up with a better idea, like keeping kids in school.

Kerrses!

Last night's school board meeting, and the subsequent press coverage, were certainly entertaining.  I avoided taking a position until last night; the fact that I know Mr. Kerr made me want take the time to gather the facts so that I could be sure that our relationship (which I would characterize as an acquaintanceship, albeit a strong enough one that he offered me a ride recently) did not bias my view.

Two out of three reporters have filed their stories; the only one missing is for our local weekly paper, which comes out a day before its publication date; that story should be available Wednesday next in print.  The articles which are out, one in the Times Herald Record and the other in the Daily Freeman, didn't include my comments, so I will reproduce them here, with helpful links that I couldn't figure out how to include orally:

My comments this evening are focused on the Code of Conduct, and the "zero tolerance" policy that underlies it. The district's code of conduct in its present form makes it theoretically possible for a student to receive out-of-school suspension for using an iPod, and for a number of other offenses including serious ones like drug dealing and bullying.

In today's society, where almost all adults must work to keep their households afloat, OSS is more of a reward than a punishment, and should be reserved for those rare and extreme cases where keeping a child in school poses a danger.  In fact, a few months ago a New Paltz high school student told me that yes, he has deliberately broken rules to earn himself a three-day vacation from school.

Instead of sending kids home where they will be unsupervised, I suggest we revamp the code of conduct to keep most student offenders in the building.  There they can be supervised, and held accountable for their assignments. The district could even explore a community-service component, demanding that troublemakers give back to make up for their disruption.  OSS is an abdication of responsibility which simply transfers a problem out the school's influence. It's one of the strongest reasons why the zero-tolerance policy is ineffective.

I would like to see these changes take place from the top down, starting with the Board itself.  Many people in this room feel that Don Kerr should not be afforded the luxury of being deemed innocent until proven guilty.  If the Board agrees with this position, then Mr. Kerr's punishment should send a strong message. Don't go easy on him - make him continue in the thankless job of Board President, and demand that he give back to this community by paying for all the necessary training out of his own pocket.  After he's been President for a year, I have no doubt that Mr. Kerr will see the error of his ways.

It was slightly tongue-in-cheek, but it was completely true.  The Code of Conduct sucks, and needs a revamp as I've been saying for months (and will be getting one this year regardless).  The President job also sucks, even when the man in the job doesn't have his own deeds haunting him.  He has to set the agenda, run the meeting, and take it on the chin for every action the school does and does not take.  There are two other members who have been President before, and three who according to past practice are unqualified because they have never served as VP or President.  Neither Patrick Rausch nor Bob Rich wanted the job.  That's because they know it's a beast and a half, and takes countless hours of unpaid time to do well.  And that remark about the training? Well, Don's already paying for it out of his own pocket, because they didn't budget for it.

There was over an hour of public comment, and I can't fault either reporter for redacting my viewpoint, but there were other omissions that I think were more glaring:

• Justin Holmes and several others suggested that this is an opportunity to review our society's inconsistent messages about marijuana use.  His partner Amanda Catherine Stauble probably did the best job of it, however; she explained how as a DARE graduate she watched as several friends discovered that pot isn't as bad as the program claims, and how those lies lead kids into falsely believing harder drugs are no big deal.
• David Dukler, former school board member, pointed out the biased editorial practices of the New Paltz Times regarding coverage of school board members and candidates. His comments did a much better job than I have of pointing out how rampant yellow journalism is in this community.  Not a surprise that this was ignored; the Record took my inquiries into Edgar Rodriguez' lawsuit against the district and turned it into an article on Steve Greenfield, who wasn't even running. Gotta protect your own, right?
• There are rumblings of a time- and money-wasting legal action to get Don Kerr to resign.  I say it's a waste because there's no legal recourse, period.  If this was a concern, it should have been addressed when he ran for reelection.  Public comment is appropriate, but please don't piddle away my tax dollars dragging this out any longer.

I would like to address Ed Burke specifically, since he does occasionally comment here.  Folks referred to this as a "witch hunt" because there are people who are using this incident to attack Don, even though they don't particularly care about this issue.  I don't believe that describes you, but please don't be naive.  One of Don's most outspoken critics told me about his own pot use in the parking lot, and the room was packed with people who feel that removing Don from this position will help them keep their unreported cash rents in their pockets rather than paying their share for our kids' education.  It is possible that there are people who agree with you for reasons other than those they state.  It's Don's fault he gave them the ammunition, but that doesn't mean everyone has the kids' best interests at heart.

Note: per this blog's code of conduct I have attempted to contact each person named in this post.  I have not yet obtained email addresses for Patrick Rausch, Bob Rich, or Ed Burke.

Anecdotes about school discipline

So I was having a conversation recently about getting into trouble in school. I was a kid that at least wanted to do the right thing, and when I got into trouble it was for things like chronic lateness (why they want kids in school early when their bodies want to sleep late, and vice versa, has always been beyond me), but I did manage to see the inside of an in-school suspension room more than once. We didn't actually call it ISS, but it was the same concept - sit there and do nothing quietly while being watched by a teacher too incompetent to actually teach but too tenured to dismiss.

One of the people I was talking to, a current New Paltz high school student, said in reply, "I once walked out of ISS because I knew that I would get OSS instead."

More than all my analysis of the school code of conduct, I think that one comment supports my idea that it's stupid to send kids home, because that's where they would rather be. The only ones who don't want to go home are the ones whose parents beat them, and sending them home would be cruel.

So why, why, why, do we have out-of-school suspension?

Code of Conduct statistics (now, with a title)

The superintendent's office prepared a response to my inquiries about the code of conduct, as promised. I did have to submit a formal request for this information, but I got far more than I really could have hoped for. Instead of simply allowing me to review the endless pages of statistics the district no doubt keeps, assistant superintendent Connie Hayes prepared a specific response to my request. This was a remarkably unobstructionist thing to do - they gave me exactly what I asked for, even though they weren't under any legal obligation to do so. It took some time, but that included doing the research, confirming what they legally could tell me, and checking with the Health Advisory Committee because I found a typo in the Code.

What I asked
Mostly, I wanted to know how many kids have been told to "go home" as punishment for something that they did. In the 2008-9 school year, 169 kids were suspended from school, none permanently. 122 of these, or 72%, were high schoolers; 45 (roughly 27%) were middle school students; the remaining two were attending Lenape. Most of the suspensions were for five days or less (149, more than 88% of cases) - this included the two Lenape students. Twenty kids were given longer out-of-school suspensions - nearly 12% of cases.

I also asked how the punishments fit the crimes. Interestingly, the offenses aren't reported using the same categories as are listed in the Code of Conduct, so the information was less clear. Here's the list in order of occurence, with my paraphrasing of the name of each offense:

• Insubordination: 77
  
• Willful acts to disrupt normal operations in school: 76
• Disorderly conduct (includes abusive, lewd, and obscene behavior): 30
• Misconduct on school bus: 30 (all Lenape)
  
• Drug offenses: 20 (all high school)
  
• Misuse of electronic devices: 9 (all middle school)
  
• Stealing: 8
• Tobacco: 6

Some interesting hints about the actual offenses come from the names of the discipline reports, "Cell Phones," "Inappropriate Language," "Disruptive Behavior," and "Insubordination." Did nine children actually get sent home for using a cell phone? Were another twenty given the boot for cursing out a teacher?

Conclusions
I realize that violent kids have no place in school, but how serious does a cell phone offense have to be to send a kid home? I was surprised at how few of these cases were related to drugs, but I have to wonder how serious the inappropriate language has to be to get the kid the reward he might just be looking for.

I'm glad the district made it so easy to discover the truth here - that we're awfully quick with the nuclear option of sending a kid home. Am I off-base in thinking we could make this a lot less common practice?

School Code of Conduct update

I stopped by the district office yesterday and spoke with the District Clerk. She confirmed that my request for information about how the code of conduct is implemented was received (I wasn't sure, having never gotten any response to my email), and that the data I requested couldn't be compiled until next month. The Health Advisory Committee needs to meet and discuss some kind of error in the code first, apparently.

Maybe it has to do with the wisdom of having a zero-tolerance policy?

We need a clear plan for disciplining our kids

If you've ever watched Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader, you've probably been stumped by a fair amount of the questions that throw at the contestants. Some of them are bloody hard, but that's good - it prepares our kids for much tougher things, like reading the Code of Conduct for the New Paltz Central School District.

Some background: every year the Health Advisory Committee, a group of faculty, parents, and community members appointed by the Board of Education, review and revise the district's code of conduct. Then the Board reviews what they say, and approve some form of it.

What the actual Code ends up being is a Gordian knot of vague statements supported by endless appendices that is damned near impossible to decipher. The actual Code lays out what's expected, because it frames it in a positive light. However, this means that one might want to look up in a stressful hurry - say, what happens when you or your kid is accused of doing something wrong - you discover it all crammed in the back, as if it were an afterthought. To make things even more fun, the list of prohibited conduct is one appendix, and the consequences comprise another one entirely. What this means is that you have to find the bad behavior in Attachment C, and then cross-reference it against the list of punishments in Attachment D.

I'm sure that all of these hard-working volunteers have the very best of intentions, but it makes me recall the joke about a camel being a horse built by committee. And the organization of the document hides some even more troublesome facts.

When I was a kid, it was universally accepted that there could be no more terrible punishment than having to sit quietly in a room, doing nothing, for an entire school day. Okay, maybe some schoolwork if you were lucky enough to have a teacher send some down (and you'd be begging for that to happen after a couple of hours), but no talking, standing, moving, singing, sleeping, leaving, or enjoying was permitted. There were always tales about that really bad kid who decked the principle and got expelled, but that was serious stuff - it never happened to someone you knew or anything.

I'm finding that in the New Paltz Code of Conduct, the phrase "permanent suspension" (which sounds like Newspeak for "expelled") is popular - it's a listed consequence for twenty-four different offenses, ranging from violence and theft to lying and using an MP3 player. I emailed the superintendant on September 18 requesting some fairly detailed information about how often this and related consequences (suspension from school, as opposed to in school suspension) were actually meted out last school year; as of this writing I haven't even heard whether or not she intends on supplying me with those data.

Removing a misbehaving child from the classroom is often a good idea, and in extreme circumstances I'm sure it's useful to keep them out of the building, too. But in a world were parents have to work, being sent home isn't so much a punishment as it is an abdication of responsibility. If a kid brings a weapon to school, of course the first priority is safety, but shouldn't the second be to figure out what's up with this kid? That might be harder if they're, oh, wandering the streets for an extra four hours a day (figuring two hours a day is being spent with a district-supplied tutor). If it's serious enough to keep the kid out of school, it should also be serious enough to keep the kid in a juvenile hall or psychiatric facility. Any kid that isn't in one of those categories shouldn't be sent home as a reward for "Engaging in any willful act that disrupts the normal operation of the school community." (prohibited conduct A9).

So my concerns about the existing Code of Conduct are three:

1. It's so badly organized as to appear to be deliberately confusing,
2. It permits removal of children from school when that may be detrimental to both the child and the community, and
3. It provides so much latitude in meting out punishments that a child could be expelled for lying (prohibited conduct D1).

Let's keep the kids in the classroom, or at least the school, unless it's dangerous to do so - and get those kids the help they need, instead. Understanding that the current Code provides flexibility so that an administrator won't find her hands tied when she needs to act, let's take another look at whether or not the punishment fits the crime. And to make any of that possible, let's make some real changes to how the Code reads, so that's it's understandable to the layman instead of the lawyer.

Otherwise, what are we teaching our kids?

School supplies don't have to break the bank

Second in an occasional series about Family of New Paltz.

Today's the first day of school in New Paltz, when parents and kids alike are filled with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. One thing that parents shouldn't have to worry about is making sure that their kids have adequate school supplies.

In addition to running a food pantry in New Paltz, Family accepts and distributes school supplies to people who are having trouble making ends meet, but not so much trouble that they received a check for school supplies from New York State. What they can give depends largely upon what's been donated by area businesses and residents, but depending on their ages children can get notebooks, paper, pens, pencils, crayons, and maybe even a book bag, although those are few and far between.

Interested families should find out what their teachers are asking for and stop in to Family to see what's available. Not every child will be able to be helped since these items are in short supply, so families should be willing to take the bare minimum that they need so as to leave as much for others as possible.