posted May 21, 2008
The furor about East Ridge elementary schools is interesting. It is nice to know that parents care, because 99% of student failure is due to lack of parental involvement. The "bad schools" in Chattanooga are not bad because of the faculty and administrators, but because of the lousy home lives of kids.
In urban residential areas, kids should be able to walk to school, like most of us did in the baby boomer generation. These are true communities, tied together by the presence of a school. To be able to walk to school, there must be sidewalks, safe neighborhoods, and no major commercial thoroughfares that students must cross, at least without a crossing guard (i.e; Ringgold Road). Elementary kids should have to walk no further than a half mile, while middle and high schoolers should have to walk no more than a mile.
East Ridge is suited for this. Not that many kids should have to be bused in East Ridge. By reducing the number of elementary schools in East Ridge, busing becomes forced on these kids, which alters their schedules for the worse, and begins to unravel the neighborhood.
It has been shown that smaller schools are better for kids, all things being equal. However, all things are not equal. Special classes or facilities can be provided by an economy of scale. A big new school may have professional specialists (school nurse, psychologist, speech pathologist, etc) and may have music, art, or scientific equipment that is too expensive to have at every site. Likewise, it is cost-efficient to have one great library than several substandard libraries.
For the school system, combining small schools to larger ones makes sense on a financial scale. The cost of fewer employees (half the administrators, janitors, secretaries, librarians, etc) more than offsets extra busing costs. Also, school officials know that many parents will continue to drive their children to school, saving the school system bus costs. One building is a lot easier to maintain than two, particularly if older, decrepit buildings need extensive updating.
This issue is a very tough one. The only sure thing is that all the parents want what is best for their kids.
Gary Furman
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