11/21/98
The Auburn Bulletin11/21/98
Article: An open letter to the city
TO: Auburn City CouncilFROM: Cheryl CobbSUBJECT: A Lack of Balanced Information on YRS
My family moved to Auburn six years ago. We could have chosen any town in a three-state area. We chose Auburn because of its excellent schools and cohesive community. I have two children my oldest graduated last year. My youngest is a junior at AHS. I am active in the school system and am currently PTA president at AHS.
I've been involved with PTA since my first child was in kindergarten. I'm a person who believes in working within the system.
However, this weekend I joined a group called Citizens Against Year-Round School. I joined because of my frustration with the failure of ACS to provide parents with balanced information on the YRS issue.
I have felt this lack of balance throughout the information collection process.
I felt it as a member of the ACS YRS Committee's Subcommittee On Facts that worked hard to produce an accurate, easy-to-read summary of the literature for parents only to have it buried in a document that was not the work of the sub-committee. I felt it as I tried to put together a balanced and informative panel discussion on YRS and was provided with panel members who addressed only the pros of YRS. I felt it as I listened to administrators stress the importance of independent, well-designed, and carefully carried out surveys and then watched as they carried out their own straw polls of teachers and students. I felt it as a simple public survey was made confusing and hard to turn in.
I most recently felt it when I picked up the Nov. 13 issue of the OA News to find an eight-page ACS insert containing a very PRO-YRS Q&A that ignored data less favorable to YRS, and ignored or made light of many of the concerns expressed by parents, teachers and students at the parent information sessions.
As a taxpayer, I'm frustrated that ACS is using my tax dollars to provide biased information to the public. As a believer in the system, I'm disturbed that parents have had to expend time, energy, and money trying to bring balance to the discussion. As a PTA president, I'm worried that this discussion is draining the energy of parents, splitting the community, and making it impossible to address the many issues within the school system that need attention such as playgrounds, library books, block schedule, the tougher graduation exam, etc.
Just think what we could have accomplished if all of the energy parents have expended trying to bring balance to this discussion had been used, within the context of the traditional calendar, to address the needs of at-risk students.....
Letter: Committee member dismayed at YRS tactics
Attached (See A-1) (see above), is a copy of a letter on the YRS community education process that I read at the Nov. 17 city council meeting. I have covered these same points with school administrators and the school board at various times over the past few months.
In all the years that I've worked with PTA, I have never seen a more biased handling of an issue by school administrators. Throughout the process, I have made our administrators and school board members aware of my concerns. But the blasted information kept coming.
In the past few days, I've had numerous calls from parents who are totally confused by the survey and polling process. I've also received calls from parents wondering when they were going to get their surveys.
Last night, I overheard a conversation of some middle school children about a presentation they heard at school regarding year-round school. These children were talking about all of the wonderful enrichment classes that would be offered during the inter sessionÛart, music, rock climbing, etc.
A check with a teacher this morning confirmed their story and the fact that the presentation was made before the children were to fill out a survey on this issue. As a member of the committee appointed to look at YRS, I know that our committee did discuss enrichment activities but only in a most general way. I also know that Dr. Martin made it clear that there were no dollars in the current budget to pay for such wonderful things. We don't even I have the money to pay for the proposed remediation.
I'm deeply concerned that our administrators would use children in this manner. I'm so concerned that I've decided to submit the letter I read at the city council meeting for publication in your letters to the editor column.
Cheryl CobbAuburn
Letter: Reader: 'Malladi letter misleading'
Dr. Malladi has continued to write again and again about why we need YRS. Needless to say, I disagree with him. He does have the right to give his opinion as do I. However, a few items within his Nov. 15 O-A News article need clarification. The fact is, the traditional calendar as presented on the Alternative School Year Community Survey should be correctly listed as a 12-week summer break instead of 11. If you look closely, the traditional calendar and calendar A both list an 11-week break despite the fact that the traditional calendar has eight days more of summer break. The Auburn City School administration continues to mislead the public on this matter. They say the traditional calendar is 11 weeks because we had an 11-week summer last year. If the traditional calendar as shown on the survey is used, it yields a 12 week summer, not an 11 as indicated. ACS has not made a simple mistake, it is a misrepresentation.
Dr. Malladi refers to the informal teacher survey taken at the Auburn City Schools. Considering the survey, I too am not surprised that it shows a high number selected the alternative calendars. What Mr. Malladi did not tell you is that the informal teacher survey is not the same as the survey published in the paper. The informal teacher survey did not include a traditional calendar in its options, it only showed the four alternative calendars.
Concerning the polling of the AU faculty, I am unaware that a survey has been taken of this group. If so, I would like to see the survey and the raw data from this survey.
Vance RutherfordAuburn
Letter: Too much administration (cri adminis)
The Alabama education crisis has been around for some time and probably will not be resolved soon or easily. We can expect the current debate to continue indefinitely, and a major reason is the education establishment, 32 percent of whose staff never see a student and seldom see a school, or more accurately, are not involved with students directly. They toil in district, county and state offices where their main concern is making reports, designing experiments, attending meetings and proposing "improvements." They are members of a bureaucracy, that like any normal bureaucracy, is concerned mostly with self preservation. What is more, it is a bureaucracy that was set up to indoctrinate, not to educate. Too many things are working against the system for it to be a success.
In seeking an answer, consider the operations of one successful corporation. AES is a profitable company that works around the world and does not follow conventional management practices. With 10,000 employees, it is the world's largest privately owned generator of electricity. It has no personnel department, its legal department consists of one lawyer, its finance department has one treasurer and it has no public relations staff. Its negotiations with environmentalists, like all its activities, are handled by line staff, the people involved in day to day operations.
Imagine what our teachers and our children could accomplish if this was tried in our schools. Imagine small schools with responsibility assigned to teachers, with teachers reporting directly to parents, and with no intervening state or federal regulations. Not only would costs go down, but learning would go up as teachers and parents came to know one another, and as working together they discovered what best suited each child.
George CrispinAuburn