Archive: Opinions

EditorialIf I were the Lansing Superintendent of Schools at Monday's Board Of Education meeting I would have been disappointed in the teachers' comments.  A long line of teachers got up to say 'if you cut one piece of my program the whole thing will collapse and render our students' education up to this point moot.'  What we didn't hear was 'This stinks but let's work together to find innovative ways to do it.'

Well, we did hear the latter, but only from Superintendent Stephen Grimm.  He has reached out to stakeholder groups as he has in the past to get input, to give people in the district a voice in the very tough decisions that have to be made within the next three weeks.  He presented a detailed preliminary list of cuts.  This had to happen at some point.  Monday was the point.  Faculty and staff got the list before the public did.  He was very clear about how much has to be cut and why, and clear on the notion that the cut list wasn't written in stone, but that the school board would have to start etching in stone soon to meet the budget deadline. He invited more discussion so that all ideas from the full range of stakeholders can be part of what will have to be a new innovative approach in an economic atmosphere that promises to get much worse before it gets better.

Grimm also said he wants to spend more in reserves next year than may be prudent in long-term planning in order to buy the district more time to figure out a fundamentally different way of delivering education under budget restraints that don't look like they are going to go away.  That says he is willing to bet real money on the ability of the faculty and staff to be innovative.  He seems to have more faith in this talented pool of educators than the teachers themselves expressed Monday.

Somehow Grimm has narrowed the budget gap for next year from over two million dollars to under a million.  That is still a lot to cut.  If a teacher costs $60,000, $1 million equals almost 17 teachers.  That is the equivalent of taking one teacher out of every single grade and then taking four more away.

There was a lot of intimation that the public might be willing to pay more to keep at last some programs as they are.  And nobody got up to say that Lansing property owners wouldn't be willing to pay more.  Lansing Teacher's Association President Stacey Kropp said the school board should put forward a budget without faculty and staff cuts to see if the public would accept it, reasoning that there is always an opportunity for a second budget vote if the first one fails.

Well, those taxpayers already pay more, and if it's not politically correct to say so in a public school board meeting it doesn't make that any less true.  Grimm has been reaching out to stakeholders across the entire community, not just within the narrower school community.  He has a good idea of what taxpayers will bear.

Many of our neighboring districts are suffering more from the drops in aid because they rely on it to a much higher degree than Lansing does.  Some of our neighbors count on government aid for 60% to 80% of their budgets. Lansing relies on it for about 32%.  When you look at the list of local communities' expenditure-per-student Lansing comes out spending more than the surrounding districts.  But Lansing residents are in the same economic disaster as everyone else.  I don't think there is anyone in Lansing that wants to cut school programs.  Given that Lansing is facing less drastic cuts than most districts in the state, it doesn't seem fair to ask taxpayers for substantially more.

Grimm noted that the loss in school revenue from the reduction in the AES Cayuga PILOT alone is the equivalent of 200 $150,000 houses being taken off the tax roles.  Taxpayers are already going to be paying more as the tax rate flies upward.

Nobody wants their program cut.  That is understandable.  I also think it is part of the job of a department head to defend his or her program, not just in times like these, but any time.  But Grimm has challenged the community to rise to the occasion and find new ways to deliver the quality education we have come to expect from Lansing in innovative new ways that fit within the amount the community is willing or able to pay given the very drastic state and federal cuts.  That Monday meeting was only one meeting, but it was the public one.  It was a missed opportunity for teachers to show the public they will adapt to maintain quality education in Lansing. 

And I believe they will.  Kropp's admonition to keep the cuts as far away from children as possible is a point well taken as an overlying principal in determining cuts.  But keeping programs exactly as they are is not the same as keeping cuts away from children.

Software developers often look at some behavior in a computer program and ask, 'Is it a bug or a feature?'  You can look at the school revenue loss as a problem or a challenge.  The challenge is to be innovative in delivering education.  To use the extra year Grimm is buying them to adapt and come out stronger and better than now.

Those changes could be more beneficial to children than the status quo.  They don't have to be worse.  Willingness to embrace that challenge was what I hoped to hear Monday in addition to defense of arguably excellent existing academic programs.  Doing so will give our faculty more buy-in as they become the leading edge in New York educational innovation.  They have demonstrated that they truly care about excellence -- the statistics prove it, as well as hundreds of personal experiences of past and present Lansing students.

There are truly excellent teachers in the Lansing schools.  Some were singled out by their students in Monday's meeting.  By nature teachers want to go the extra mile for students, and many here do.  I know from teaching myself and later working in a corporation that change is the only constant, and nobody likes it.  In the corporate world companies that embrace change are the ones that thrive and survive.  Schools are somewhat insulated, but ultimately they are in the same boat.  I expect that excellent teachers will embrace the challenge and end up with more buy-in to a program that they now have the opportunity to create.

I think the teachers just had a bad night Monday, and I don't blame them. The threat to our school system and districts across the state is huge. Seeing the list of potential cuts in black and white must have been the equivalent of a figurative punch in the face. The stages of grief include shock, denial, anger, depression and acceptance. By Monday the faculty had only had time for the first four -- or more probably the first one.

Is our small rural school district so mired in procedure and paranoia that it can't be flexible and innovative in the face of adversity?  I'm going to say no.  The talent is clearly here.  Grimm's challenge will be to lead faculty and staff through this frightening, yet exciting opportunity to step up education in Lansing another notch and show the world that a dysfunctional state legislature and the national economic downturn can't cripple this plucky school district that has always exceeded the expectations of a district of its size.

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