In 1997, Jonathan Levin, the son of former Time Warner Chair Jerry Levin and a dedicated high school teacher in the South Bronx, was murdered in his home by one of his students. The apparent motivation was robbery. Levinâs murder sent shock waves throughout New York City and its public schools. In honor of Levinâs memory, a new high school was founded five years later; the Jonathan Levin High School for Media and Communications was opened in the same building where the slain teacher had taught. Nearly a million dollars in scholarship money poured in, a ball field was built, and computers were donated. It was a fitting tribute to what the New York City Department of Education called the young teacherâs âspirit, values, commitment, and impassioned beliefâ that every child has a right to a quality education.
But a decade later the school has fallen on hard times. The graduation rate has dropped to 31 percent, the fifth lowest in the city. Enrollment declined from 484 in 2007 to 339 this year. And half of the schoolâs students have said they do not always feel safe… Predictably, Levin High School is on the verge of closure⌠despite impassioned pleas from students and parents to keep the school open and arguments from civil rights groups who say Levin High Schoolâs closing (among many other school closings) will disproportionately affect poor students of color.
The anticipated closing of Levin High School puts the issue of school governance squarely in the policy crosshairs. School closures that look rational on paper become messy in the real world⌠The sad truth, however, is that schools in a declining tailspin, such as Levin High School, are almost never able to solve the problems they face without a massive overhaul. Organizational cultures donât change overnight; they are bone deep. It is difficult to prove a negative and, therefore, we donât know for certain if Levin High School could accomplish a dramatic turn around, but the odds are against it.
Perhaps we need a new paradigm for opening schools. Before opening any school, they should be required to demonstrate a solid academic and financial foundation. The test of any organization is its strength over time, and while the numbers donât always tell the story, they donât lie either.
Education Sector’s Peter Cookson Jr., pointing out the reality that school closures are often a necessity in order to provide our kids education fit for their futures. Accepting this reality includes adults not using the issues that sometime complicate the lives of our children as excuses for keeping open failure mills that damage their futures, a point made in this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast.
Farce has been standard fare in litigation over school choice since the Supreme Courtâs 2002 decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris upholding the constitutionality of vouchers⌠But farce doesnât seem to capture what happened last week in Alabama. Two weeks ago, the Alabama House and Senate passed the Alabama Accountability Act, giving parents with children in failing schools a tax credit for tuition at a private school. The bill passed by 2-1 margins in both houses of the Republican-controlled legislature. Naturally, organizations such as the Alabama Education Association (AEA), opposed as they are to letting students escape miserably failing schools, howled that the measure violated state law. But this time, rather than at least having the decency to sue once the legislation was signed, the AEA decided to lawyer up before it even reached the governorâs deskâŚ
It asked a state judge to enjoin the governor from signing the legislationâclaiming that the conference committee violated the stateâs Open Meetings Act when it inserted the tax credit with insufficient deliberation. The judicial gods smiled on the AEA when the case went before Circuit Judge Charles Price. Price had previously achieved momentary fame for declaring that a fellow circuit-court judge could not display the Ten Commandments in his courtroom or begin sessions with prayer. After a brief hearing, Price agreed with the AEA ruling that the state legislature could not send the bill to the governor and scheduled a hearing for mid-March over whether the legislature violated the Open Access Act. The state attorney general has appealed to the state Supreme Court.
The litigation raises two basic questions about separation of powers. The first is whether the courts have the authority to oversee the procedures that the legislature establishes for itself. Typically, courts have ruled that as a matter of separation of powers, they are not allowed to exercise this kind of oversight. But even if the Alabama courts were to intrude into the internal workings of the state legislature, it should be a question raised only after a bill has actually become lawâŚ
The second, more significant question is whether the courts have the authority to actually stop a legislature from sending a bill to the governor to be signed. Passing a bill and sending it to the governor to be signed (or vetoed) are obviously exercises of legislative power. Legislative power is not granted to courtsâthatâs why they are courts and not legislatures. By definition, under a system of separation of powers, courts cannot have such power.
Of course, Priceâs actions do raise some humorous possibilitiesâones that hopefully will arise, if only to salvage this absurd spectacle. What if the legislature were to send the legislation to the governor anyway? Would Price dispatch marshals to block thoroughfares between the statehouse and governorâs office? Would he send marshals to confiscate all the governorâs pens?
Joshua Dunn, taking a look at the lawsuit filed by the National Education Association’s Yellowhammer State affiliate to stop Gov. Robert Bentley from signing a school choice measure into law. As Dropout Nation Editor RiShawn Biddle noted last week on the Midweek Monitor, the real absurdity is that anyone is opposed to allowing families to provide their kids with high-quality educational opportunities.
One of the reasons itâs difficult to achieve serious cost control in the public sector is that those managing public dollars are convinced they canât live without a penny of what they have. Worse: It is so easy to find pliable members of the media who will whine on their behalf. MLiveâs Susan J. Demas did the bidding of whiny school administrators last week in a column lecturing Gov. Rick Snyder that he needs to stop âattacking education.â If you havenât heard him attacking education, join the club. But within the political/pundit class, the word âattackâ has different definitions. One is that you tell people they have to live within the fiscal realities of the times…
Demas, who thinks this is too much to ask superintendents, links to a two-year-old story in which Kalamazoo Superintendent Ron Fuller complains that Snyderâs proposal of increasing employee health care contributions to 20 percent (which is commensurate with what usually happens in the private sector) only saves $3 million of the $11.3 million he would have to cut. Dude. Youâre more than a quarter of the way to your goal and you havenât even had to think yet. Does Snyder have to do all your work for you?
Then Fuller complains that he doesn’t like Snyderâs other suggestion, which is to cut 10 percent of non-instructional spending, and he points out that this includes utilities. âDo we cut that?â he asks. Well. Maybe. People look for ways to reduce their utility costs all the time. You canât do that in a school district? You donât have facilities managers who can find ways to bring those costs down? Then maybe you can save money by firing the utilities managers. But the problem here is one of mindset. You have to set priorities. The usual rejoinder from people in the public sector and their media mouthpieces is that theyâve âalready done thatâ and that theyâre cut to the bone. But good managers understand that this is a never-ending process.
Dan Calabrese, in the Detroit News, pointing out the unwillingness of many traditional district leaders to actually  lead when it comes to addressing the new realities of school finance.