Support the Timberjay by making a donation.

Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

As school officials backtrack, is consensus possible?

Marshall Helmberger
Posted 3/5/11

It’s taken more than two years, but reality is finally catching up with Johnson Controls and the St. Louis County School District, and that should allow for both sides in this longstanding debate …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

As school officials backtrack, is consensus possible?

Posted

It’s taken more than two years, but reality is finally catching up with Johnson Controls and the St. Louis County School District, and that should allow for both sides in this longstanding debate to finally find some common ground.

Those of us who have been questioning the veracity of claims made by JCI and school officials about the district’s financial status and the savings purported from the $78.8 million facilities plan can now point to the district’s own numbers and sworn statements as evidence that district officials are beginning to acknowledge what took place here.

The recent hearings on the closure of the AlBrook and Cotton schools have provided some of the most interesting information so far.

There was virtually no local opposition to the closure of the two schools, so the two witnesses, Superintendent Charles Rick and Business Manager Kim Johnson had only to answer questions from their own attorney, John Colosimo, who led them through an abbreviated version of events and justifications for the closures.

The hearing officer, a retired judge, asked very few questions, but after adding up the statements of Kim Johnson at one point, he asked about the total financial benefit of the district’s facilities plan, or “the reconfiguration” as he called it. Johnson had earlier claimed in her testimony that the district faced a $1.6 million deficit in the current school year, and that it would see a $1 million surplus next year once the restructuring was fully implemented.

“So you’re looking at a $2.6 million turnaround,” the judge asked?

“That’s correct,” responded Johnson.

Keep in mind that both JCI and school district officials had claimed throughout the referendum campaign that their facilities plan would save $5.6 million, and close a projected $4.1 million budget gap. Now, it appears that even the district’s business manager is conceding that the plan won’t achieve anywhere near the savings originally claimed. Indeed, Johnson’s latest estimate would put actual savings at less than half of JCI’s original claims. And closer examination will reveal that even Kim Johnson’s now steeply-discounted savings projection is overly optimistic.

As district officials have begun to acknowledge the savings shortfall, they have turned their justifications to purported educational benefits. They claim that consolidation is the only way to achieve better educational opportunity for kids, particularly at the secondary level. Yet that outdated myth is laid bare by the hundreds of small schools in Minnesota that are doing an excellent job academically with student enrollments that are significantly less than at any of the northern schools in ISD 2142. The notion that more kids are necessary to provide quality education is completely without substance. There’s only one proven way to provide quality education for kids, and that’s to put them in classrooms with skilled and engaging teachers. If you do that, you obtain good educational results.

And the district itself has undermined its own argument that bigger is better by leaving Cherry on its own. As of January, Cherry had 341 students, including 159 in the secondary, while Cook had 348 students, with 150 in the secondary. At the same time, Orr had 148 students in the secondary. If satisfactory educational opportunity is available at Cherry with an average of 26.5 students per grade in the secondary, then there’s no logical reason it cannot be achieved at Cook (average of 25 students per grade), or in Orr (an average of 24.2 students per grade).

The school district’s own legal counsel is now raising similar concerns. He has suggested in a recent letter to board members that the district may have a tough time demonstrating sufficient educational benefits from the merger of Cook and Orr this next year, in part due to the decision to keep Cherry as is.

He’s right, and the acknowledgement is a significant one. Yet if the district can’t demonstrate educational benefits from the merger this fall, it won’t have an easier case the following year, even if the new school is built in Field Township.

It all raises the obvious question. Why spend $30 million to build a new school that achieves very little in operating savings and won’t necessarily lead to educational benefits that couldn’t be achieved in existing, community-based schools?

Supporters of the plan are obviously well intentioned. It’s easy to understand the desire to deliver better educational opportunity to the students of our area. It’s a cause for which I and many other opponents of this plan have worked for years. For most of us, our opposition to this plan isn’t about putting low taxes over students (many of us have supported every operating levy the district has run) but is based on a strongly held belief that this plan was poorly-conceived from the start, by a consultant with a multi-million dollar conflict of interest.

That’s why so many of us have fought so hard to find a better way forward. But in the end, the case for the plan has been undermined as much by school officials, as by opponents.

It’s time for everyone to acknowledge what happened here. JCI, a Fortune 500 corporation that is solely focused on profits, hoodwinked the school board and the public into supporting a plan that fills the pockets of JCI shareholders, but fails to deliver for the communities and the students of our area. Communities and students in the north half of the district lose their schools, their identities, and their economic futures.

We were sold a plan that claimed savings that even the school district’s business manager now acknowledges won’t be achieved. And we were promised educational benefits that are little more than wishful thinking.

Both sides in this debate have real grievances. If you believe in responsible management of public resources, you have a right to be angry. If you want better opportunities for students, you have a right to be angry. If you believe in both of these things, as many of us do, you should be livid.

But let’s not direct that anger at those who view the issue from a different perspective, because that divides our communities when what we really need is a united front— against the actual perpetrator of this injustice.

When everybody in our region understands that we have been let down, not by each other, but by a corporation that couldn’t care less about the truth or the future of our communities, then we can begin to put aside our differences and pressure the school board to demand some accountability.

JCI officials need to answer for their misstatements and broken promises. They need to compensate our school district, our communities, our families and our kids for the damage they have caused through their reckless actions. We should demand a real educational improvement plan, one that uses creativity rather than the recycling of outdated notions that have been long abandoned by most school districts. And we should demand that JCI pay for it.

If we don’t come together to push for compensation, we’ll all be losers in the end. And JCI will skate off into the sunset, free to sow disaster in the next unsuspecting school district. That’s an outcome nobody should support.

ISD 2142, Johnson Controls, Inc. Cook, Tower, Minnesota