PR Firm Recommends No PR on Busing Issue

This from Toni at C-J:

PR firm advises JCPS board to keep quiet on student-assignment proposal

Let chairman do the talking, PR firm says

Some Members Uncomfortable "being muzzled"

Board could pay as much as $20k for bad advice

A Louisville public-relations firm recently hired by the Jefferson County Board of Education is advising board members to let the board chairman do all the talking on certain issues, including a controversial recent student-assignment proposal.

 

After The Courier-Journal revealed last week that the board had shelved a student-assignment plan that would have bused up to 38 percent fewer elementary students this fall for integration purposes, Dan Hartlage, a partner with Louisville-based Guthrie Mayes Public Relations, sent board members an email Thursday recommending they stop talking to the media about the proposal.

 

Last spring, the board chose not to discuss the proposal publicly, instead deciding to await recommendations from a national expert on school integration whom they had hired as a consultant. District officials initially refused to turn over the plan until several board members urged them to reconsider.

 

“We should … do what we can to allow this story to pass,” Hartlage wrote in an email to board members and district staff. “That said, should any of you receive media requests to further discuss this issue, I recommend that you decline. For all the reasons previously discussed, there is no productive reason to further discuss the issue in the media. If a media outlet pushes hard for an interview, I recommend that you suggest they talk to the board chair.”

 

The board hired Guthrie Mayes in July, one month after it hired Donna Hargens to replace outgoing Superintendent Sheldon Berman...

This advice comes on the heels of a Courier-Journal scathing rebuke of the board's ongoing resistance to full transparency in an Editorial last week.

Those who remain unconvinced that the Jefferson County Board of Education is a dysfunctional unit need only look at the latest example of the members' flailing and failing leadership.

Staff writer Antoinette Konz reported in last Thursday's Courier-Journal that a proposal to alter the district's student assignment plan, the one at the heart of so much volatile community debate and disagreement, was quietly set aside by school board members earlier this year and shielded from any sort of public discussion until other recommendations, still being awaited, arrive. Meanwhile, the new school year starts in one week.

The jury is out on how much the proposal, put together by former Superintendent Sheldon Berman and 20 other top-level administrators, might have reduced the number of students who needed to be bused to keep elementary schools integrated. The proposal said the reduction could have been up to 38 percent, while others dispute that.

Given the uproar over the student assignment plan's perceived shortcomings and the political hot potato its diversity goals have become among some voters, one would think the board would do whatever it could to keep the public informed, clued in and up-to-date on what is happening on this front — even if it's just a proposal and even if others are expected to be part of a more comprehensive discussion.

Not this board. They may talk transparency, but they walk a much different walk. Keeping this proposal from the public is just the most current reminder of that. Other examples:

The members perform part of the superintendent's evaluation out of the public eye; they even worked to change state law in order to ensure that lack of sunshine. After they fired Superintendent Sheldon Berman last fall with zero public discussion, their proceedings to replace him were secretive, the names of serious contenders weren't released, and they never really told the public what they were looking for in the way of his replacement.

When The Courier-Journal filed an open records request for the panel's proposal to amend the student assignment plan, the district initially refused to release it because the board had not yet taken action on it. A heavily redacted version of the plan, with all detail blacked out, was turned over to the newspaper. More recently three board members — chairman Stephen Imhoff, Linda Duncan and Debbie Wesslund — insisted the district release the unredacted proposal in the name of transparency. Hence, Ms. Konz' report on a plan that was forwarded to the school board in February.

Still, not all members were on board with Mr. Imhoff's, Ms. Duncan's and Ms. Wesslund's commitment to belated transparency. Member Carol Haddad distinguished herself, and not in a good way, when she said to Ms. Konz, “I didn't want all these ideas floating around — it confuses people.”

Actually, it confuses people when ideas are not floating around and when public servants do the business of the public out of the public eye, a concept that continues to elude this school board.

It also apparently eluded Superintendent Berman, who told Ms. Konz that he had planned to put the proposed plan on a board meeting agenda, but did not do so at the request of board members, who wanted to wait on other recommendations. He should have gone public with an issue that was — and is — the public's business.

No one was served with this secrecy.

Jefferson County grapples with the future after Meredith, wary of neighborhood-based plan

To some it seems simple: If Jefferson County Public Schools must redesign its student-assignment plan, why not just send children to the closest school?

Parents will be more involved, bus rides won't be as long and the student-assignment process will be a lot easier to understand, they say.

I'd love a neighborhood school — and a lot of other parents would, too," said LeeAnn Morrison, whose eighth-grade daughter will take a 25-minute bus ride to a Valley Station school next year.

But district officials say that switching to an assignment plan that relies solely on neighborhood schools could create a host of problems.

Schools in growing suburbs could quickly become too crowded. Parents likely would have fewer schools to choose from. And schools in segregated neighborhoods would become less diverse — both racially and economically.

A 2000 district analysis projected that a strict neighborhood plan would leave 48,000 students in resegregated schools, falling outside the district's goal of 15percent to 50percent black enrollment.

"I've heard a lot of people say, `If we could just go back to neighborhood schools...,'" said Amy Metz, a member of the district's PTA board. "But to me, that's the worst thing that could happen."

District officials appear wary of such a strict neighborhood plan.

New Superintendent Sheldon Berman said last week that he was "not leaning in that direction," and Joe Hardesty, chairman of the school board, said board members worry about the effect on the district's integration efforts.

"I'm not ruling anything out," Hardesty said. "But it's probably accurate to say the board would not be interested in a plan that would resegregate our schools, and a neighborhood plan might do that..."

This from the Courier-Journal.

I see your Moloch...and raise you a Jesus. My response to the Family Foundation's celebration of the Louisville school desegregation decision

Yesterday, Martin Cothran of the Family Foundation wrote a brief celebration on the Supreme Court decision in Meredith on his blog vere loqui. It is a ruling that has many historical overtones that must be understood. Since the issue hit me in my wheelhouse, I thought a response might be in order.

Cothran implies that those who think diversity is a good thing...(actually he says it better than that)...He says those who "sacrificed children to the idols of egalitarianism and diversity" are the modern descendants of the Canaanite god, Moloch.

Well, this sounds really bad. I believe there is strength in diversity, so I wonder... Have I just been offended?

I don't actually know. I'll have to look up Moloch first...to find out if he was particularly nasty or something. But if I've been sacrificing little children to some Canaanite god and didn't even know it...I'm gonna be hacked off.

Martin is correct to point out that school districts will find other means to promote diversity.

Today I reveal the social liberal's Double-secret Plan B.

~
Dear Martin,

Access to quality education – who gets taught, and the quality of that teaching – is the central issue in the history of education in America.

Our Constitution said that all men were created equal. But in America’s earliest days, with few exceptions, it was the sons of white male landowners who received instruction. Why is that?

Racism? Well, yes…slavery was America’s original sin - but also economics.

Poor children were not thought to be worth the effort. After all, how much schooling is necessary to work a plow? An adequate education in the 19th century didn’t have to meet a high standard – just the 3 R’s (at about a 3rd grade level) would do. This - while children of means learned the classics. Millions of poor white and black children were denied equal opportunities. It was about class and economics – one’s station in life.

As a youngster in all-white Ludlow, Kentucky, I knew what it meant to have low expectations. I believe I was one of two Ludlow graduates in 1969 that went right on to college. That was not the story at the upscale Beechwood School. As bad as it could be for poor white children, being black was an additional burden. Why is that?

Neither group found it easy to get to a high quality school. It was doubly tough in Appalachia.

But, future economic success demands a competitive workforce. That means a 21st century education for all Kentucky children – something I suspect you fully support.

So we have to get the kids to school.

Every day school folks put millions of kids (who can’t drive themselves) on buses. We bus them...all over the place. We bus them from wherever they live. Big yellow busses. Flashing lights but no seat belts. And the wheels on the bus go ‘round.

It would have been nice if we never had to bus kids for reasons of racial desegregation. The best solution is always the presence of a high quality school in every neighborhood. But it didn’t work out that way. Why is that?

I assume nobody is arguing in favor of a return to the separate and very unequal days of Plessy v Ferguson. But when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v Board of Education I, in 1954, that separate schools for African-American children were unconstitutional the Court was largely ignored. The following year the Court in Brown II ordered schools to begin desegregating. But they didn’t. Instead over 100 southern legislators decried the Court’s “intrusion,” asserted local control, and signed the Southern Manifesto vowing to obstruct where they could.

It was not until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the decision in Green v. County Board of Education in 1968 that school districts made any real attempt to comply with the court’s 1954 ruling, and then only under threat of losing federal funds. In the 1963-64 school year barely 1% of black children attended school with white children. By 1972 that percentage had grown to better than 75%.

Social engineering? You bet. Let’s say it together. Social engineering.

It would have been better if the Court had never had to intervene. But I think one can argue that the Court in Brown upheld unpopular principles of the Constitution on Christian moral grounds. As I read the Bible, I have trouble finding any place where Jesus did not gravitate toward the poorest, lowest class, downtrodden, sick, or otherwise despised individual and lift them up. Correct me if I’m wrong. Should we not do likewise?

Of course, the present Court’s ruling was predictable – signaled during oral arguments last March. There is even a rational legal basis for the decision. It is notable that civil rights advocates who argued the need for federal protection in Brown, were now arguing for local control in the Louisville case, Meredith. Legally, what else did they have to argue? It is fairly well understood that today’s residual racial segregation is the result of housing patterns in our cities – not the result of any intentional efforts by school districts to keep the races apart. This under lays Chief Justice Robert’s snappy retort.

So what now?

Is the Court inviting local school districts to return to the days of Jim Crow? Of course not.

I suspect what you will see now is a shift toward economics as a basis for future busing schemes. Since African Americans are overrepresented among the poor, the real impact of the Court’s decision may be limited in some places. In other places, probably in most places, it will result in a racial resegregation. The extent to which communities have built diverse neighborhoods will determine the extent of the impact.

Is this social engineering? You bet. Social engineering and busing. Different ideology, perhaps. Different set of kids maybe. Same buses.

What you won’t see: school districts ignoring the Court.

The solution today is the same as in the beginning. We must have high quality schools in every neighborhood, but the requirements of an adequate education today are much more substantial than in the past. If the citizens of Kentucky will support this effort we will all be better off and the courts won't have to do anything. Actually, our children will all be better off. We need a gainfully employed citizenry – with more employer supported healthcare and a much lower Medicare burden on the state budget. We need to care for the poor – not by giving them a handout, but by giving their children an opportunity to do better.

What would Jesus do?

With respect,

Richard