Ft Thomas board member takes a swipe at legislature, Seek formula

This from Scott Johnson in the Cincinnati Post.

State formula is unfair to schools in Northern Ky.

If you follow Northern Kentucky, you have gotten wind of the storm that is hitting Boone County schools.

The storm's origin dates to 1989, with the Kentucky Supreme Court's landmark Rose v. Council for Better Education decision. This ruling produced the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) and a funding formula, "Support Education Excellence Kentucky" (SEEK).

In Rose, the Court held:

"The system of common schools must be substantially uniform throughout the state."

"The children who live in the poor districts and the children who live in the rich districts must be given the same opportunity."

"This obligation cannot be shifted to local counties and local school districts."

The future of 18,000 students, Boone County's quality of life and the future of similar districts around the state will ultimately be touched by the strategy that deals with this Frankfort whirlwind. Although there is a tendency to muddle the forces at work, it is only by bringing clarity to these components that we can arrive at solutions.

First, Boone County is synonymous with growth. By looking back to go forward, KERA / SEEK is ill-equipped to handle a district that needs one new school a year. Although the need to house students would seem undeniable, Frankfort continues to deny that the situation exists. While this is Boone County's issue, the problem did not show up two weeks ago.

Second, there are issues with KERA / SEEK that go beyond rapid growth. These flaws apply to Boone County, a rapid growth district, and Fort Thomas, a district where size is constant. The problems center around the way SEEK handles increasing property values, like those in Northern Kentucky, as "wealth" - the implication being that hefty mortgages mean mason jars of cash in the cellar. Under KERA / SEEK, increasing property values trigger corresponding drops in state funding. This dynamic results in chronic shifting of the funding burden from the state to local taxpayers, in direct conflict with Frankfort's obligation to fund education.

In addition, a separate law, (commonly known as House Bill 44), interacts with the SEEK formula to result in "property rich" districts losing money when values increase. This law requires revenue increases to be capped at 4 percent or risk voter recall. If a district receives a 10 percent increase in PVA values, the state responds with a corresponding 10 percent reduction and the local school board adjusts tax rates downward to limit revenue to a 4 percent increase - resulting in a net loss of 6 percent.

Previously healthy districts have found 17 years of SEEK debilitating. To take up the state's slack, local districts have little choice but to tax themselves senseless or allow their own decline. Although Fort Thomas and Boone County passed levies in recent memory, neither board welcomes the notion again - given the extent to which locals already pay the legislature's tab.

Fort Thomas schools receive $1,523 per pupil less than average state revenue, and local taxpayers contribute $1,928 more in local revenue than the state average, for a total per pupil imbalance of $3,451 relative to state averages. Boone County schools receive $1,839 less state revenue and local taxpayers offer an additional $1,455, for a total per pupil deficit of $3,294 relative to state averages. Despite the fact that Boone County is exploding and Fort Thomas remains constant, the two districts have more in common than apart under the KERA/SEEK formulas.

The third and immediate force impacting Boone County is the death of the property valuation administrator, the subsequent state assessment audit and the value increase of an astonishing 37.2 percent for commercial property. After this "windfall" is combined with the 4 percent rule, Boone County Schools project depleting cash reserves and netting a multi-million dollar deficit.

As for solutions, the General Assembly will likely acknowledge the anomaly of this "bubble" with special legislation, eliminating this component of the storm. As for rapid growth, legislation could get this job done, but given the legislature's tendency to duck controversy, litigation may be required.

When it comes to the discriminatory practices of KERA / SEEK, however, the time has come for local school officials to exercise fiduciary responsibility to taxpayers by utilizing litigation as the means necessary to secure a substantially uniform system of common schools.

With the General Assembly being engaged in "Reelection Incorporated," it is naïve to suppose that after 17 years, this body will suddenly muster the political conscience and courage to morph the current culture of majority entitlement to a system that serves every child equally.

Because the General Assembly has been deadlocked for 17 years, this is a textbook example of a time when judicial intervention is required to protect the rights of the few from the excess of the many. Although pursuing the same course and expecting alternative outcomes is insanity, expecting a legislative fix for KERA / SEEK is just plain crazy.

A brittle little stick

It was announced yesterday that the Cincinnati & Kentucky Post would be closing up shop at the end of the year.

In the meantime, the Post produced a thoughtful editorial on the impact - or lack thereof - of the provision of NCLB that allows parents to move their children from schools that have failed to meet their goals. For the little good it does, the provision is hardly more than a big pain in the rump for local school administrators.

Last year, 12 Fayette County schools offered transfers to 6,931 eligible students and only 131 students took advantage. But parents can't choose whatever school they want due to space limitations and transportation constraints. School administrators try to provide an excellent education in every school. But some parents see school choice under NCLB as death by fire, or death by water.

The Post hints at vouchers for "whatever educational institution would accept them" as a possible solution. For the middle class - fine. But I'm not sure how that works for poor folks; therefore, how does it work for the entire system?

Setting aside the unprecedented federal intrusion into state education under NCLB; the good intentions of the law are further impaired by underfunding. The desire to offer school choice through the present method is big-hearted, but empty-headed. Why not adequately fund the system before we look for ways to declare it dead? The goal is not "putting teeth into the transfer rule." The goal is an adequate education for all Kentucky students.

This from the Cincinnati Post:

A brittle little stick

Even though the federal government provides less than 10 percent of the money for most primary and secondary schools in Ohio, Kentucky and the other states, it has through the No Child Left Behind law gained an enormous voice in education policy.

This has been accomplished in no small part through the testing requirements imposed on the states. The notion is that the public's response to test results will force state and local officials to improve the quality of the schools.

The No Child Left Behind law also has an ostensible stick. It requires that students in schools that repeatedly fail to reach specified targets on reading and math tests be allowed to transfer to better-performing schools within the district.

This has turned out to be a brittle little stick. Most districts with one failing school, it turns out, usually have others that aren't much better. And most families who live in such districts are stuck there because of poverty - if parents had the money to move to a better school district, they would do so.

Moreover, the upheaval and logistical problems associated with transferring a youngster from one school to another - particularly at the elementary and middle school levels - makes the transfer option one that is rarely exercised. In fact, according to an Associated Press account, just 320 of the 70,526 Kentucky students eligible to transfer out of failing schools in 2005-06 did so.

Comes now even more evidence that the No Child Left Behind transfer rule is a joke.

The Kentucky Department of Education, with permission from its federal overseers, has announced that it doesn't plan to release school test scores - the ones that determine whether students are eligible to transfer - until Sept. 12. That's a full month after school has started in most districts.

How many parents are going to pull their children out of one school and send them to another a month into the new year? It would be a surprise if more than a handful took advantage of the transfer option.

State officials told the Associated Press the delay in reporting test results is due to the fact that every child in grades 3-8 was tested last year. In the past, only some students were tested. That beats the excuse that a dog ate the tests, but not by much. Put it this way: If the increased number of test takers really did overwhelm the department's capacity to compute the results on time, Frankfort has more problems than we thought.

Were the transfer policy actually working, this would be cause for outrage.

As suggested above, on preemption grounds alone we have reservations about the No Child Left Behind law, which is up for authorization this year. If Congress wants to intrude this far onto state and local prerogatives, it ought to be putting up a heck of a lot more of the money needed to run the nation's schools.

But here's a thought: If they are in fact serious about putting teeth into the transfer rule, policymakers should expand their horizons. Give vouchers to the families of students in failing schools, good at whatever educational institution would accept them. Of course, if Congress did that, the state education bureaucracies would doubtless start holding on to the test scores until Christmas.

Political overtones from the Education Commissioner debacle

This Editorial from the Cincinnati Post.

Flunking the test

Kentucky's newly constituted State Board of Education has flunked its first big test. Royally.

The board, hand-picked by Gov. Ernie Fletcher, spent five months and $50,000 on a search firm to find a successor to commissioner Gene Wilhoite, who left in November to become executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers.

After a search process that allowed little public input, the Board of Education in May offered the job to Barbara Erwin, a suburban Chicago school superintendent who had also run school districts in Arizona, Texas and Indiana. Erwin was supposed to start her job in Kentucky yesterday. But on Friday, citing "continued noise by the media,'' she backed away from the job - and a contract that would have paid her $220,000 per year over the next four years. According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, her decision came hours after board members questioned her anew about the controversy that has dogged her since her selection was announced in early May...

...Kentuckians can only hope that the board has learned from this debacle and does a better job of vetting the next crop of candidates.

But at some point Fletcher must answer as well for this embarrassment. After all, since taking office he has appointed all 11 of the board's voting members, including seven last year. In doing so he has repeatedly chosen to get rid of experienced board members, despite being counseled against such wholesale change.

Fletcher was within his rights to put his stamp on the State Board of Education. But he shouldn't have been so hamfisted. Had Fletcher left a few experienced board members in place, they might have steered clear of the Erwin landmine. As it happened, the hiring was a rookie mistake.

A governor, in seeking re-election as Fletcher is, should be judged on his full record, not an item here and item there. But this mistake is a blemish on the Fletcher record, and voters should consider it when putting his achievements in a plus column and his errors in a minus column in order to compute the balance.

Kentucky's next education commissioner will face a challenge that extends far beyond day-to-day governance of 175 school districts and more than 650,000 students. It will even go beyond bringing Kentucky into compliance by 2014 with the goals mandated by state law and by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The next education commissioner must help the governor rally the entire commonwealth to complete the assignments envisioned in the landmark Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990.

This isn't just rhetoric. Jobs are at stake. An improved educational system is the commonwealth's single most important economic development need. Kentucky needs a strong leader - a consensus-builder who can work not just with educators, but with the Legislature and the public at large.

The Board of Education blew it on the first try. It must do better on the makeup exam.

Grant County bus driver urine tests ruled admissible

The boy who was most badly injured when driver Angelynna Young crashed her school bus last January sat just a few feet from the Williamstown woman in a Grant County courtroom Wednesday.

He listened as her attorneys tried unsuccessfully to get disputed evidence that she was using drugs that day excluded from her upcoming trial, which a judge also refused to move away from the close-knit rural community.

Grant Circuit Court Judge Stephen Bates ruled that urine tests showing the former Grant County Middle School bus driver had intoxicants, including cocaine, in her system during the Jan. 17 crash, is admissible. Attorneys argued her blood tests - which showed no intoxicants - are more reliable.

...Young, 28, faces a 25-count indictment, including charges of assault and wanton endangerment, stemming from the Jan. 17 incident.

She is being held in the Grant County Jail on a $50,000 cash bond.

Her attorneys were seeking to suppress her urine tests results, which investigators said showed she had a barbiturate, a narcotic, marijuana and cocaine in her system the morning of the crash. They said the drug test on her urine should not be allowed at her trial since the results contradict results of tests on her blood that day, which they said are more accurate.

This from the Cincinnati Post.

Former Miss America gives intruder a lesson in trigger-nometry

Eighty-two-year-old former Miss America Venus Ramey shot out the tire of an SUV after she found trespassers on her land allegedly there to steal scrap metal, according to a report in the Interior Journal.

The Lincoln County newspaper reported that Ramey, a Kentucky native who was Miss America in 1944, got her snub nose .38 after hearing noises about 6 p.m. on Friday, April 13.

Ramey, who ran unsuccessfully for the Kentucky General Assembly and for Cincinnati City Council and worked to save historic buildings in Over-the-Rhine, apparently held her gun in one hand while she steadied herself on her walker with the other, according to reports.

Deputies responding to a 911 call arrested Curtis Parish of Ohio for trespassing.

Parish complained to deputies that Ramey tried to shoot him in the leg.

Lincoln County Deputy Sheriff Danny Gilliam told the Interior Journal, "I think she shot exactly where she intended to shoot."

Theological seminary under fire

The Cincinnati Post reports:
Asbury Theological Seminary faces a budget shortfall and an investigation by its accrediting agency, adding to the school's problems since the departure of its president last year.

The interdenominational seminary, which has more than 1,600 students, is projecting a deficit of more than $2 million for this fiscal year. Jim Smith, chairman of Asbury's board of trustees, said a surplus from last year could help reduce the shortfall to about $500,000 by year's end.
Asbury also is under scrutiny by its accrediting organization, the Association of Theological Schools, because of a student complaint filed last December over the departure of former Asbury President Jeffrey Greenway. He resigned in October after being placed on paid leave by the school's board of trustees on Sept. 1.

"This is kind of a correction period," Smith said. "It is not a crisis. The seminary is not about to close or go through major problems."

Asbury is particularly important in Methodist circles because of the many Methodist ministers it trains. "It probably has more United Methodist students than our largest three or four United Methodist seminaries combined, which makes it very significant," said James V. Heidinger II, president and publisher of Good News, a Wilmore-based ministry aimed at renewing the United Methodist Church.

The school's tuition revenue is down slightly this year, Smith said.

Asbury had 1,688 students enrolled during the last school year, down from 1,724 the previous year but comparable to the year before that, according to the Association of Theological Schools.
The seminary was also experiencing "a projected decline of as much as 33 percent in the giving that funds the operating budget," interim president J. Ellsworth Kalas wrote in a Feb. 6 message to Asbury supporters.

Teen compiles a Civil War film. It explores northern Kentucky's role in the conflict.

Like many who live in Northern Kentucky, James Kyle Hill had no idea of the history of his region.

That changed when the Fort Mitchell resident decided to enter a scholarship competition sponsored by the History Channel.

For his project, he decided to find out how cities like Fort Mitchell, Fort Thomas and Fort Wright got their names.

The 10-minute documentary he made with his findings aired Monday night on Insight public access cable Channel 15 and will air again at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday. It's also on a continuous loop at the James A. Ramage Civil War Museum in Fort Wright, where Hill spent three months researching his film.

The 18-year-old had little interest in making movies until he took a video production course at Beechwood High School, where he's a senior. Now, he's passionate about the process.

This from the Cincinnati Post.

Covington Board member speaks out against Stumbo

The Cincinnati Post reports:

A Covington school board member is speaking out against the effort of the state's highest law enforcement officer to unseat him.

Paul Mullins, elected to the Covington school board in November, planned a statement this morning outside the Covington headquarters of the Lunsford/Stumbo campaign slate, on which Kentucky Attorney General Greg Stumbo is running for lieutenant governor.

On March 22, Stumbo filed suit in Kenton Circuit Court to have Mullins removed from office.
The issue is that at the time of his election, Mullins drove a bus for Covington schools and did not give up that job until about a month after the November election...

[Covington Superintendent Jack Moreland] said Mullins has acknowledged publicly that a school board employee told him before the election that he would need to resign as a bus driver before the election.

"Paul Mullins is a good man, I hate that this all happened the way that it did," Moreland said.

And this from the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Ohio Governor: Charter schools a failure

I remember, during the Patton administration, going to Frankfort to talk to former State Senator Ed Ford about starting Charter School legislation in Kentucky. I liked the idea of getting out from under certain regulations (or was it authorities) that we believed made it harder for us to meet our goals. Ford rejected the idea saying Kentucky was just "not ready" for charter schools. After all these years the results for states with charter schools appears to be very mixed.

The Cincinnati Post reports:

"Gov. Ted Strickland crossed the state Thursday to promote his $53 billion spending blueprint as anger flared among advocates of education choice over his plan to scrap the state voucher program outside Cleveland and cut off state funding to for-profit charter schools..."

"The charter school movement in Ohio has been a dismal failure," Strickland said during a Thursday stop in Cleveland.

"What I'm asking for in terms of charter schools is simply that they are held to the same standards of fiscal and educational accountability that we are expecting out of our public schools."

Ohio has the nation's largest voucher program, which was born as an experiment in Cleveland in 1995 and expanded by the state in 2005 to include other low-performing public districts.
David Zanotti, president of the conservative policy think tank that fought for years to protect vouchers, said backers are mobilizing parents to fight the plan. "It's a much more aggressive attack than we anticipated," said Zanotti, of the Ohio Roundtable.

"His opinions against vouchers were known, but to start throwing kids out of school is really a shock to everyone."

Public schools have complained for years about losing money to charter schools and private schools that students attend through the voucher program. Cutting the program for 2,829 students participating outside Cleveland would put $13 million a year back into public schools.

He's a Newport school board member, she's a teacher. Now...

...they are both out, after they "allowed or encouraged teenagers to drink and smoke pot during parties" in their basement Boom-Boom Room.

According to the Cincinnati Post, a plea deal requires them to speak "to groups such as parent-teacher associations about the proper rearing of teenagers," as part of their 100 hours of community service.

I wonder whose going to write their script.