Billy Beane (or at least the Brad Pitt Moneyball representation of Billy Beane) has been in my head quite a bit as of late.
(If you don’t know the movie, Beane is an executive with a small-market, poorly-funded baseball team. He doesn’t have the resources to compete for high-priced talent with big-market teams, so he needs to find a way to assemble an affordable competitive roster out of players no other team values. Part of his job is to convince the old-school baseball guys to adopt a new strategy.)
“We are organ donors for the rich – the Yankees have taken our heart, the Red Sox got our kidneys… we are the last dog at the bowl. You know what happens to the runt of the litter? He dies!”
The analogy to public schooling isn’t perfect but I can see its reflection.
As a tactic to bring his scouting staff around, Beane repeatedly asks “What’s the problem?” until the conversation reaches a boiling point: “Is there another first baseman like Giambi? And if there was could we afford him? Then WTF are we talking about?”
It helps to understand the essence of the problem first.
A new billboard went up on my route home from school last week.
Gary Community Schools Corp. has been under the financial direction of the state for the last seven years and faces stiff competition from a number of charter schools. The birthplace of progressive education in the United States is down to one public (non-charter) high school. Literally fighting for survival. But due to financial distress in a neighboring town, GCSC leaders apparently saw an opportunity to market themselves as an upgrade and rebuild its enrollment numbers.
So here’s where we are in public education in the Region: Gary schools recruiting kids from a border suburb, a community that when my mom was born there was known as East Gary. Lake Station residents voted down a referendum by 14 votes last November, and now it’s time to pay the piper. The district is cutting bus service and going to a three-day in-person/two-day remote school calendar.
Maybe the location of the billboard is a coincidence, but it feels like Gary senses an opening here. Parents get one chance to get education right for their kids, and when your district is being stripped for parts, the next town over that has school in-person five days a week starts to look pretty good.
My district is in financial distress as well and nearby districts are also recruiting famlies and teachers.
East Chicago has billboards, Calumet Township used its social.
Hammond has advertised its College Bound scholarship program on billboards throughout the Region. (And on water towers in the city). That at least involves families moving in and buying property.
So here’s all these urban districts dealing with disinvestment and declining enrollment and maybe they can’t keep kids’ families from leaving or get new families to move in, but instead entice new students with an open enrollment policy. Find the weakest district and pull their kids over. At 8000 bucks a student in state money, the incentive is powerful.
It’s cutthroat. A zero-sum game. There are most definitely winners and losers.
You can guess who loses.
When we open the doors on August 12 we are going to have to provide educational services to our kids in all our buildings, no matter how many students are here or how many long-term subs we have to hire to fill classrooms. With however much funding we have. The fewer kids, the less funding.
It’s a problem. And I don’t have the answers.
We finished this school year with 15 long-term subs and 15 emergency permit teachers on a staff of 78. Roughly 38% of our classes were taught by a non-certified teacher. What does that mean for our kids?
What would parents do in more affluent communities if that were the case for their kids?
What I do know is that school isn’t a game and this ain’t no movie. And districts in the poorest communities in the Region shouldn’t be reduced to fighting each other for students.
We’ve got a Teach Plus Hill Day coming up next month. Twelve teacher leaders from across the country will spend a week in Washington, DC, continuing to advocate for policy that will strengthen teacher recruitment and retention. We will be holding a legislative briefing for congressional and senate staffers, and I just got off a planning call with my colleagues and directors. It’s going to be a powerhouse week and we have a ton of work to do between now and July 9. Reading and studying and setting up meetings and rehearsing our presentation and breakout session is going to dominate my free time for the next two weeks.
But I have the privilege to be in a position to meet with policymakers and advocate for my students and colleagues. And I’m gonna take it. That seems like a more appropriate way to fight for kids.
Tweaking For No Reason 