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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > June > 06
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Editorial: Kettering a harbinger for local school districts
Kettering is doing the right thing in closing Moraine Meadows Elementary School, as painful as it is.
The district has learned the hard way, through levy defeats, that voters are serious in their expectation that schools have to aggressively cut costs. Other districts are getting that signal, too.
Administrators in Kettering have known for some time that the cost versus benefit of keeping Moraine Meadows open was tilting in the wrong direction. When it closed this week, Moraine Meadows was the smallest non-charter elementary school among nearly 300 schools in a four-county area. With just 160 kids, it was roughly half the size you would expect for even a small elementary school.
Kettering tried to keep the school open partly because it served Moraine families, who are geographically isolated from most of the rest of the district.
Moreover, there were political considerations in play. Moraine, with its historically big industrial tax base, has contributed significant amounts of property taxes to the school district. Given how much money was coming to Kettering from Moraine, and how few Moraine students were attending Kettering (most go to West Carrollton), the community wanted something in return for its money.
(Last year Moraine contributed $7.5 million in property taxes to Kettering schools. The overall budget is $82 million.)
Ten years ago, when Moraine was flush with property taxes, it toyed with starting its own school district. Now, with the state phasing out the tangible personal property tax — that’s the tax businesses pay on their inventory and equipment — that wouldn’t be so easy.
Interestingly, Moraine Meadows is about the same size as Phillipsburg Elementary School, which was closed last year by the Northmont school board.
Similarly, Phillipsburg also was kept open primarily to serve families set somewhat apart. In the wake of a deep recession and moving into a new economic reality, keeping what are effectively special centers is hard to sell. Voters, who themselves are sacrificing financially, are likely to see especially small schools as unaffordable.
It needs to be said that some of the schools and practices that districts are trying to hold on to are not frivolous.
Keeping Moraine Meadows students close to home and in small classes, for instance, was also an academic strategy. As the school with the lowest-income families, a small elementary school helped students achieve.
Fortunately, Kettering has a good alternative. After some bumbling, which included an ill-advised plan to bus most of the kids five miles to distant schools, the district decided to assign the Moraine Meadows students to nearby Southdale Elementary School.
Class sizes will be bigger, but students will be attending a high-performing school. Sometimes, difficult circumstances force school leaders to see that they really do have a cheaper alternative that is still a good alternative.
Kettering for years passed its school levies on the first try. But in 2007 it took two attempts to win a new operating levy, and last month a new levy went down. Superintendent Jim Schoenlein said the school board’s decision to cut the size of the next request, planned for November, by 2 mills to 4.9 mills is forcing very tough decisions. The board believes reducing the levy size is necessary to pass it next time, he said.
“I can’t argue with them,” Mr. Schoenlein said.
The smaller levy will require $2.5 million in budget cuts. The shutdown of Moraine Meadows will save about $500,000 annually.
“We heard during the levy campaign that we needed to tighten our belts and understand the realities of the economy,” he said.
Other area school districts may also need to start facing up to those realities.
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