Swimming in the Pensieve

We just now saw an article written by Kevin Butler, of the Press Telegram, wherein he discussed a drop in LBUSD enrollment of 1122 students; that this translates into approximately 5.5 million dollars lost to the district (my figures are somewhat higher, BTW); the consequential cutbacks in manpower and service delivery by LBUSD; and how parents are now footing the bill to pay the salaries of certain LBUSD employees.

He did neglect to mention schools like Jackie Robinson Academy, which no longer have a full-immersion language programs. The former Project F.L.A.M.E. now means that your child will have only partial language immersion on a single track (Track 2), and only for 4th grade and up. Kevin also didn’t bother asking the question as to why–when essentially the same teachers are on campus–does teaching foreign languages seem to cost more? The teachers work no longer than they do when teaching other subject matter; and teaching is teaching no matter what you teach. All one needs to know is the material that they must present to the students. Once you allow yourself to stop and think about it in terms of real cost, there is no rational reason to discontinue or reduce a language program at any school; because it doesn’t cost you anything extra at all.

Only once did Kevin mention a school in something other than an affluent neighborhood; this being the downtown-located Stevenson, where parents are so financially strapped that raising $1,200.00 is a sacrifice that far out-strips the sacrifices felt by the parents of the other schools that he dwelt upon. One might get the impression that the Press Telegram holds the position that, just like the near-nonexistent immediate response to the Katrina-struck areas of the nation, people of color or spartan means have no needs and do not suffer in the same way that the affluent and caucasian do.

He finished-up the article with a bare mention of the problems high school students have in passing the high school exit exam–at a time, of course, when LBUSD is patting themselves on the back for what they consider to be positive SAT-9 returns. I’d be very interested to see how LBUSD students fare on the SAT and ACT exams this time-around, too. How much do you want to bet that the normed scores drop–particularly for those in WLB?

Then again, if the only newspaper you read is the Press Telegram, chances are very good that you’ll never hear about it, and assume that all is well with the state of public education in LBUSD.

I didn’t write all of that to point out a few of the detriments of LBUSD, the Press Telegram, or the cozy relationship between the two; which, if you believe the kid gloves observations by LBReport, seems to have it roots in City Hall. That probably serves as a good example of self-evident fact, if you’re somebody who has their wits about them. (You can see a perfect example of LBUSD’s “Affluent-Us Against Barbaric-Them” attitude here.) I wanted to focus upon the initial reports of lowered enrollment of students in LBUSD schools.

By simple calculation of last years per-pupil spending ($6,844.00) -times- the projected loss of revenue-generating bodies (1,122), the school sites are looking at an aggregater loss of $7,678,968.00 from their site budgets; which is, of course, a very simplistic figure. However, we can state with relative confidence that, if the projected loss of bodies is reasonably accurate, LBUSD certainly won’t lose more than $7,678,968.00 in revenues for this academic year, and the least they will lose will be something just over the 5.5 million dollars quoted in the article. At 0.843% to 1.177% of LBUSD’s total $652,685,602.00 budget, we can’t really say that, in and of itself, this loss of body-count revenues is crippling LBUSD.

Yet, if memory serves me correctly, LBUSD lost something on the order of $50 million from their budget over the past two years; which, if you take at simplistic face-value, translates into a budget-loss of 7.661%. It is most certainly, on an annual budget basis, less than that. So, if we take maximum figures to determine the percentage loss from LBUSD’s budget, we can set a figure in the region of 8.838%–just for the sake of argument.

While taking 8.838% from the top-end of a corporate revenue sheet isn’t pleasant, it isn’t cause for declarations of emergency or dire forward-looking statements–for a company that isn’t in bondage to stockholders, that is. A school district is a different fiscal animal, and really can’t stand much more of this kind of thing.

The problem isn’t the lost enrollees, but those very losses certainly aren’t helping the situation in the least. Maybe this is just what they need to wise-up and quit driving-away their potential enrollees; but that would mean that the school district would have to do something that they consider unthinkable–actually give children a high-quality education, instead of milking the state and federal cash cow to massage the real estate prices in a resort city.

What I hear from Butler’s article, is a bunch of school districts whining about having less money because of reduced enrollments. Nobody seems to be saying, “Hey! We’ve really screwed-up and are chasing away our own customers!”

The enrollment defecit is certainly an effect with multiple causes, some of which may be something as simple as a family moving to another part of the state. However, a good measure of this defecit is most assuredly because the school districts are not doing their job. You may wish to argue the point, at which time I will point out that you seem to have missed reading the last 3 paragraphs of the article; which understate the problem to a ridiculous degree.

Based upon everything we’ve seen and heard in LBUSD, I can arrive at the reasonable conclusion that at least 50 to 75 of those lost enrollees were the result of the unprecedented growth of CAliVA@Kern (no enrollment defecit there); which, if I have anything to say about the matter, will only increase exponentially.

LBUSD would state from the position of narrow self-interest that losing students is a bad thing; to which I preemptively respond that I really don’t care what LBUSD thinks, because they’ve adequately demonstrated that, beyond mere clichés and platitudes, they really don’t give a hoot about the children. In my book, this is good news for the providers of quality alternatives to the public school system; as well as the parents who have a wider range of choices in education for their children.

Half-empty? Half-full? It depends on your perspective.

From my perspective, we’re still waiting for LBUSD to act like something other than idiots; and we’re very worried about the children still left with nothing better than a fair-to-poor education. We’re extremely fortunate to have something better for our children at this very moment.