Many of us question and have issues with CBHS's fiscal policies and spending habits. Are there accountability measures in place? Are the individuals who make critical financial decisions and allocations competent to do so? If it were your job, on what would you spend? Where would you make cuts?
What do you think?
Welcome.
We launched our blog in 2008 initially in response to a serious of troubling events that included budget cuts, human resources issues, excessing of teachers and others. It is now April 2010, and these same issues remain, with few solutions in sight: supplies are scarce; there are insufficient educational materials in some departments; safety issues remain; class sizes have not been reduced; technology is not available to those who need it the most; we have students with specialized needs that are not being met – the list goes on. We also have a community of professionals who manage to get the job done anyway – people who have great ideas, strength, compassion and resilience.
We invite all who are part of the CBHS community to make your ideas, experiences and perceptions known here. This is a humble attempt to provide a channel for open communications – a forum for the exchange of ideas and best practices. We encourage you to participate often and invite your colleagues to do so as well.
If you have an issue that you would like us to handle offline, or a post that you would like us to make for you, send email to clarascircle@gmail.com.
We will post series of topical questions to get the conversation started. Scroll through the topics below, as well as the Blog Archive. You are free to post responses under your name, a screen name or anonymously. We do not want to censor any submissions, but unless you are writing about yourself, we ask that you refrain from using full names in your posts. We welcome all suggestions of ways that we can improve this site. Make sure to click on "Comments" at the bottom of each topic, so you can read and respond to your colleagues' entries.
What do you think?
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2 comments:
It's a good question to ask. Personally, I find that working at CBHS has provided ample evidence for things I did not wish to believe about how money is spent in public schools when I began working in this profession. There is waste on several levels from what I have seen. First, $2,300 (so I hear) apiece for flat screen TVs, well above the market rate at a store, which are placed at the top of the wall where students must crane their necks to see them. That, and many teachers are not trained in the use of the flat screens and will have to keep on with the conventional TV carts. Second, thousands upon thousands of dollars for Kaplan tests which waste the time of students and teachers alike and do nothing but confirm what teachers already know, that many students are well behind in key content areas. Third, it seems that at every faculty conference there is some new pet project, such as the people who came in to announce that they were here to show teachers how to differentiate instruction through art, as if we don't already have an art department who could do the same job and is already paid to do so.
The administration's double talk, claiming that there would be no excessing and then handing out the papers showing that there indeed would be, is symptomatic of an approach in which decisions are made from the top down in secret and those most affected are shut out of the process. There is clearly a misallocation of funds when $2,300 tvs are installed on same the week that $80 air conditioners could have brought much needed comfort to staff and students. There is great waste and hypocrisy when a school which has doled out thousands to a private testing service and has its APO announce, with a straight face, to be extremely conservative in our use of copy paper next year because "we could run out by December." If a corporation was being run this way, the stockholders would demand that the current management be fired and replaced with those who could bring the enterprise back into a state of efficiency. In this case the parents and students, the major stakeholders in the enterprise of the school, deserve better decisions made on their behalf.
One final note: I do not understand excessing now that the budgetary system has changed. A few years ago (so I hear,) when a teacher was excessed and became an ATR, a central pool of city money paid for that teacher. Now, schools apparently have to pay their entire staff out of their own budget. What is the sense in excessing a teacher only to have him or her come back in the Fall as an ATR to be paid the same salary as before for less productive work?
The purchase of the flat screens was yet another tech (and spending) decision made by someone who does not understand technology, nor how to create a viable tech plan, nor how to implement one. The total cost for this equipment (including installation and programming) was equivalent to about one teacher's annual salary.
Teachers, especially those most likely to use the monitors, were not consulted about where they might be installed, and the person(s) who made the buying decision still apparenly did not consider that you can not use the monitors without an input device. Do these classrooms also have DVD players? VCRs? Laptops? Any external device? Are we still going to have to push a TV cart into the classroom, because that's where the DVD player is bolted? You also have to use a remote control with the monitors. Any wagers on how long it will take before they disappear?
The monitors were installed high in the hopes that it will provide some protection from damage. They were also (in most cases) installed in classrooms where they would not be seen from the street (the school did not want to excite temptation). I believe that the monitors were also purchased to make us look like we are a more tech focused school. For some folks, TV = high tech I guess.
I am so sick of incompetent decisions when it comes to technology spending. It is flat out stupid to purchase a Web-based service (like Kaplan) if you are not going to give the people required to use it a computer and training. It is also ridiculous to not have teacher input.
There are actually a lot of great tools services out there -- ones that address our students' needs and deficits (ie, literacy!), but we are repeatedly told (at least I am) that there is no money available.
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