By: Jon Glover • Contributing Columnist
Sixteen schools currently operate at a 60% or less capacity, such attributed to a decline in student population, is that true?
Now before you go off that diving board, check the water level. What you will see is why a deficit in capacity at those sixteen schools.
First, parents want the best for their children so that age-old adage, “better” creeps in the equation. If a school, better equipped, to serve a parent’s child, academically, then a decision made, better it is. So, why the need to opt for that “better” when “better” should be in that neighborhood, can you say a strategic plan?
Strategically, the first charter, Magnolia Charter School, it presented what? New! Could not have been “better” because there was no data to support such a position, was there and yet a mass exodus to “new”.
The Caddo Parish School Board, its board members, the Caddo Parish Public School administrations, parents too, participated in a strategic plan that took many boys and girls away from our public schools to a “new” school building, a “new” name, which offered what, again?
Choice!
Now what brought forth my comments were the comments penned by District 4 School Board Member, Don Little, particularly these words, “It’s time for a strategic plan. One that involves very thoughtful consolidation, central office cuts and creative austerity measures yet has many luminous aspects. This could include centralized state-of-the-art campuses with the crown jewel being a new Career and Technical Education facility.”
“By building on past successes with the Caddo Career and Technology Center and deepening public/private partnerships, we can begin building a skills base that will break endemic cycles of poverty, crime, and dependency.”
Reading those words, oh, how my heart ached. See, not because of supporting new but not addressed, a strategic plan that spoke to the continuance of academic inferiority far too many boys and girls attending the Caddo Parish Public School system, where is that plan? That plan that addresses teaching the Caddo students the fundamentals of Reading, Writing and basic Math skills, where is that plan? What we should not is this, the age of the building does not determine the quality of education, and it is what goes on in that building, educating boys and girls.
What does building a new building have to do with population decline, for such decline, strategically developed, implemented, ensured that masses of schools would operate at a 60% or less school capacity, how? I thought you would never ask.
When neighborhood schools lacks effective resources, destiny dictates that that mentality of “enticing” would bring boys and girls from their neighborhood schools in search of better, compliments of a school system that intentionally made it so and parents who bought into such mindset. Now, again, why the 60% operating capacity or even the “new building” concept?
Caddo has never been short of plans, but what we are short of is a plan that addresses the real need, basic, of boys and girls who remain left behind, all because Reading, Writing and basic Math not gained.
How were that $260M COVID spent?
What we all have and continue to witness here in Caddo Parish is that there is little to no real attention given to why children attend school, education but an underlining need to support division, by way of divisiveness. How many can be assured that the “new” would be met by their child if the “new” is constructed, think before you respond.
That same old soup warmed over, by now, stomachs ache but cannot rightly determine, of that old soup, what contributed to its constant pain.
If ever our public school system is to mirror equity of achievement across the board, the “new” they will come concept must be eradicated for if that new lacks ensuring that schools operate at their intended purpose, providing a place where boys and girls educated, equally, no “new” will change the course to which is traveled.