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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2008 > May > 04
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Who will sing the alma mater?
(Ted Murphy with music students at Thurgood Marshall High School)
Ted Murphy wrote an alma mater for the new Thurgood Marshall High School, but he had no one to sing it at graduation.
Last summer’s budget school district budget cuts decimated the arts at the school once known as Colonel White School for the Arts, wiping out choir there along with other arts programs across the district.
Murphy, an elementary schools music teacher for 22 of his 34 years in Dayton, hung on until the Thurgood Marshall assignment came just before summer’s end. Murphy was one of the last two music teachers in the district to get an assignment and Thurgood Marshall nearly opened with no art or music programs at all.
Last week, a consultant delivered a largely upbeat report on the district’s operations nearly a year after a devastating levy defeat brought $30 million in cuts. Linda Recio of Evergreen Solutions said the schools made great improvements over six years.
But since last summer, teachers say the cuts placed a great strain on instruction that some fear will harm the district’s run of test score gains.
At Thurgood Marshall, Murphy said the challenge of rebuilding the music program in a new building has made this the best year of his career.
Even so, the kids and the school have suffered.
Just two years ago, Superintendent Percy Mack invited Colonel White’s robust and energetic marching band to perform at his convocation speech, lauding a young director named Jamie Shelton for reviving a program that had dwindled to 12 kids.
But Shelton departed for Trotwood schools in the cuts and several of his students left the district to follow. This fall, the band was back down to about 20 kids, if you counted every dancer, drummer and flag waver. The school can’t even afford to buy them updated uniforms with its new colors.
“That’s where I am right now, starting all over again,” Murphy said. “It has really disgruntled my kids. It was a strong program and they saw it collapse around them.”
Still, Murphy is hopeful. He has begun tutoring a group of students in choral performance and for graduation, he said, someone will sing the alma mater.
Last year, Nancy Rutter’s class at Orville Wright Elementary School had music, art or gym for 45 minutes a day and several of her students took instrument lessons from the music teacher.
“This year, none of my sixth graders are in band,” she said. “The school had no concerts. All those things are gone.”
Instead, students take music, art and gym once a week each for 30 minutes. The school day is shorter and Rutter’s downtime is curtailed.
She no longer grades papers or holds phone conferences with parents during breaks. Rutter said she rarely even has time to even run to the rest room anymore.
“People are just exhausted,” she said.
Nina Ferrell, a teacher at Patterson Kennedy Elementary School, said a lack of planning time makes it harder for teachers to connect their lesson plans to state standards, which are tested on state exams. And it leaves less time for communication with students and their parents.
It’s also put many of her colleagues on edge.
“Even the younger teachers are affected,” she said. “They are stressed out, depressed and disouraged. They feel like they are not meeting the kids needs. If the levy doesn’t pass next time, it’s going to be even worse.”
A year ago this week, Dayton’s 15.17-mill levy was soundly defeated by voters prompting 428 layoffs, 208 teachers among them.
But teachers say the general public has not seen the worst cuts, as visible programs like arts faculty at Stivers School for the Arts, sports teams and high school busing were restored with outside funds.
A consultant’s report last week that gave good marks to much of the district’s management and education program left some teachers feeling that the classroom challenges they face daily have been obscured. They fear that the cuts could bring lower test scores this year and unhappy voters could defeat the next levy.
“The public needs to realize what is happening,” Ferrell said. “If I was a betting person, I would be my last dime that the scores will go down. It’s all these factors coming together. It affects the kids.”
It also affects the teachers. In March, teachers’ union president Pat Lynch told the board the cuts in planning time were running causing teachers to break down.
In fact, the district’s data shows teachers have been sick more often this school year. The average number of sick days used by teachers jumped from 6.4 in 2005-06 to 7.0 last year to a projected 7.9 this year. And long term illness of more than 20 consecutive days jumped to 67 so far this year from 50 and 62 the last two years.
“Teachers are going six straight hours with no breaks,” Lynch said. “They have no planning time so they are taking more work home. They’re tired.”
Tough working conditions probably explain why teachers were less enthusiastic about Superintendent Percy Mack’s leadership in surveys the consultant ordered, she said. While administrators rated Mack high — 97 percent in the central office and 100 percent of principals gave him top marks — only 60 percent of teachers rated him as well. Lynch said teachers might have rated Mack higher a year ago, before all the cuts.
A lot of top teachers are looking elsewhere, Ferrell said.
“If they can get out, they’re going to leave,” she said. And that is bad for the kids because they need people who are going to give 110 percent. A lot of people see no light at the end of the tunnel.”
At Orville Wright, Rutter said sixth graders need the creative outlet of music and art and the physical release of gym and recess. But now some days the only escape from the classroom is 30 minutes — 15 to eat lunch and 15 on the playground.
“There’s just so much more stress going on with them,” she said. “They need breaks from the classroom, from each other and from me.”
School board President Yvonne Isaacs said the cuts were the best way to limit the impact on the classroom and that it hurt board members to cut music, art and programs they had worked to build up. She said school leaders are listening to teacher concerns.
“There really was no easy way around this thing,” she said. “We know this is an issue this year and we have heard them loud and clear. We fully understand the impact this has had on the classroom.”
The goal of the consultant’s study was to find more ways to cut business operations to find money for the classroom, she said. But board members know a levy is needed. The study will help build the case for the November levy, Isaacs said.
“If this community wants a quality school district, we are going to need the community to stand up and help,” she said. “We fully understand the economic impact we are going through, but for the kinds of economic opportunities we want to attract to Dayton in the future we need to have an educated workforce.”
(Image credit: Ron Alvey, DDN)
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Will Dann have time for charter suit?
Marc Dann
While Ohio’s attorney general is mired in the turmoil of his office’s scandals, will he have time to decide in just 10 days whether or not to appeal to the supreme court in Cincinnati’s lawsuit over charter school funding?
After all, it just means $50 million or so to the state’s urban districts.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Post your comment | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice
