Rick Jensen Interviews Red Clay Officials On Referendum
Kilroy live-blogged the show. Go over to his place and read the whole thing!
Before I get into what was said during the interview let me say that it looks like we’ve found a tax increase that Rick Jensen supports.
According to Kilroy, when Red Clay was asked about building a school in the city, rather than the suburbs, their answer was to cite the number of Charter Schools that opened in the city. Seriously? Charter Schools are not Red Clay schools, and that statement sounded as if RCCD was saying, “We don’t need to consider our city residents since, if they aren’t happy with our RCCD schools, they can leave our traditional public schools and go to Charter schools.
If you also take into account the times Red Clay has tried to move a Charter into its city schools, I’m left wondering why my school district’s plan for my Red Clay schools is to… give them away?
Moving on… When asked what the feeder pattern for the new school would be, Red Clay can’t (won’t?) say. This is consistent with their FAQs answer:
What neighborhoods will go to the new school?
It would be premature to look at feeder patterns at this point. Once funding for a new school is secured, we will invite community members to work on the most appropriate feeder patterns. The goal would be to decrease the overcrowding at our most crowded schools.
Um… okay. Are they really claiming that they went to the State citing a need for a new school without having any idea who was going to go to that school? If this is true* then how would they even know if the Graves Road property would suit their need?
* Sorry, I’m having trouble believing that they haven’t looked at feeder patterns. A more likely scenario… the feeder pattern exists (and may be tweaked by the community if the referendum passes), but if they put this information out it will result in splitting the suburban community into those that get into the new school and those that don’t – but feel they should. Releasing the feeder pattern would lessen the chance of the referendum passing. I remember the uproar from the suburban community when RCCD released its feeder for North Star – I attended this meeting at Baltz. Talk about fireworks! There were many suburbanites saying that they would have never voted for the referendum had they known their neighborhood (which was 1/10 closer to the new school than that other neighborhood) wouldn’t be included in the feeder pattern.
Moving on to the next point… A caller named Mike asked about increased traffic on Graves Road and the need to widen the road and upgrade intersections. He wanted to know the cost and plan for this, and had very serious safety concerns. Red Clay’s answer? No impact study has been done.
Let me get this straight… Red Clay is asking residents to vote for a school, and once they get approval they’ll figure out who will attend that school and what impact it will have on the surrounding community?
Finally, Kilroy gets on the air! He points out that a new dual language Charter school is planned to open within blocks of Red Clay’s dual language school (Lewis). He wants to know what the District plans to do to fill the empty seats (capacity) this Charter will create at Lewis. I didn’t hear an answer to this question.
Let’s take a moment and review. Red Clay has no feeder pattern plan for a new school. Red Clay hasn’t done a traffic impact study on the new school. Red Clay offered no plan to lessen the impact of a new Charter school on Lewis. That’s an awful lot of “We don’t knows.”
I will vote “yes” on the renovations, but “no” on the new school. And I’m not letting the State off the hook. They need to tighten their rules on how they’re defining capacity, and on how they can give approval for a new school without a traffic impact study.
Tags: Education
I’m not the caller Mike, but I do live in the area and yes, the traffic in that area is already horrible… for about 45 minutes in the morning, and another 45 minutes in the evening. At other times, no problem.
Unfortunately the morning rush hour coincides with an elementary school start time. The earlier start time of a middle school might not be a problem.
So inevitably after the elementary school is built there will be pressure to widen the roads, which are currently rather bucolic most of the day. Of course once the roads are widened the strip malls come.
I’d far rather shift the school start times to accommodate traffic, than change the character of the landscape. That pastoral quality that we are just barely clinging to isn’t just an elitist indulgence – it is an asset. Just ask Bucks County PA.
On the other hand the traffic is all headed toward Wilmington in the morning, and away from Wilmington in the afternoon. So if the buses can manage to approach the school in the lane opposite from traffic, there should be no problem. We’d just need a big tough traffic cop at the school entrances.
This is where a Traffic Impact Study would have been useful. No?
“I’m not the caller Mike, but I do live in the area and yes, the traffic in that area is already horrible… for about 45 minutes in the morning, and another 45 minutes in the evening. At other times, no problem.”
And when a student, parent, teacher or cafeteria lady get’s killed will it be a problem?
“So inevitably after the elementary school is built there will be pressure to widen the roads, which are currently rather bucolic most of the day. Of course once the roads are widened the strip malls come.”
The road renovations aren’t factored into the taxpayers burden.
“I’d far rather shift the school start times to accommodate traffic, than change the character of the landscape.”
Sure no problem for the affluent stay at home mom! She’ll just change her tennis time or getting her nails done. Screw the landscape Red Clay needs this school here! Furthermore, why didn’t Red Clay sell the unusable Graves Road property to pay for the property needed of North Star that would lessen the the tax burden? Because the agenda was there for the Graves Road school. The reason all the details weren’t sorted out was Red Clay needs to go to Capital referendum now because in a year or year and a half they need to for Operational referendum! Red Clay is in deficit spending now! Also, the was no study done on the added financial operational impact on the new school. There is utility, maintenance, and building services related cost that cannot be paid out of capital expenses.
“And when a student, parent, teacher or cafeteria lady get’s killed will it be a problem? ”
Not likely to happen at 0-5mph 🙂
“no problem for the affluent stay at home mom”
Point taken. Shifting times is not a great idea for most parents. But boy will those parents get a surprise when their kid enters middle school @7:30 am. It is still stupid to widen roads for 45 minutes per day though.
“why didn’t Red Clay sell the unusable Graves Road property”
Sell to whom? A developer who will also increase traffic in the area? I’d rather Red Clay cut a deal with the state to keep it as a park or open space until the inevitable time in the future when it will be authentically needed for capacity. Then we can do the traffic study for real. Until then the land is an investment.
“And when a student, parent, teacher or cafeteria lady get’s killed will it be a problem?”
Really? That’s your standard? We better close all the schools in the city then.
I drive Graves Road everyday at both rush hours and it is fine, except for those using it as cut through by coffee run where it backs up. The local yokels just don’t want the influx of new traffic associated with the school-buses, teachers, parents. I would rather it be a school than another development. Just because the cornfield is pretty to look at now doesn’t mean the owner shouldn’t be able to do what they want with it. No way it will stay undeveloped. I agree that the district needs to come clean with the feeder pattern.
I found the show interesting, but too short. There were two comments I would have liked to have made:
1. Why should we trust what Red Clay says regarding that it knows what it is doing? They admitted to not conducting a TIS on this show. And Northstar was pretty much at capacity the day it opened. Why wasn’t Northstar bigger?
2. As far as the overcapacity, closed to choice schools go, is anything being done about the fraud of people not in the feeder pattern sending their kids to these schools? I am in the feeder pattern and my kids attend one of the overcapacity schools, and I cannot tell you how many b-day parties or functions I or my wife have attended where parents freely admit to using their mother’s/sister’s/aunt’s/cousin’s address to go to that particular school because they do not belong to that feeder pattern. People in other states go to jail for this, yet I rarely hear about it here. One of those ‘Delaware Way’ things?
“A developer who will also increase traffic in the area?”
Good point and with a new school will increase pressure to build new homes nest to Camelot.
“Not likely to happen at 0-5mph” My bad, I didn’t know there was bike path on Graves Road 🙂 But I guess you mean bumper to bumper traffic!
Geezer Geezer Geezer! Bad Boy! Keep snoring that MDA ! 🙂
While I don’t have a dawg in this hunt, I just have to say that Pandora’s blogging on the referendum and the general level of thought in the ongoing discourse makes me proud to be associated with this blog.
A real public service for anyone taking the time to read.
Thanks, El Som!
I posted comments I made to the school board tonight on my Facebook. The more thinking I do, the more I find my thinking and how I’ll vote right in line with Pandora’s!
AMEN to kudos on Pandora’s blogging on RCSD.
I’ll add my cheers to Pandora’s efforts here, as well as to all the commenters. Like El Som, I don’t have a dog in this race, and didn’t know much about the issue until I started reading, so I sat back and just read rather than insert my uninformed two cents.
Spectactular work by all.
I think it is not too soon for all of us to start gathering our thoughts for the day after the referendum. Whatever path you are in favor of, don’t forget about it on the 29th.
The existence (or not) of the Graves Road school should make little difference toward a long-term solution for city schools. Figure out what you really want and keep fighting for it.
But pandora, it’s a SCHOOL!. Voting against anything involving a school is anti-child. @@ /end snark Good job sorting this out. If kids answered test questions so incompetently, there would be a parent teacher conference, and clearly one is called for, here.
What I would like to see is quality educational programs at all RCCD schools.
I would also like to see the RCCD school board and district work at making all their schools great, not just a few. The sad truth is… if a parent who sends their child to North Star moved to the city they would not send their child to a RCCD city school. That’s the point. Bus rides and schools close to home only hold up as valid arguments if all Red Clay schools are equal educationally.
I also don’t understand why we have to do all the fighting. Why isn’t it the school board and district’s responsibility to fight for all the kids? And I’m more than willing to fight – and have done plenty of fighting. It’s just frustrating that city residents end up fighting with, and against, their school board and district.
Pandora, a while back you said that many hearings, meetings, and workshops had taken place in the recent past. You are of course correct, and now I am in the middle of tracking down the names, dates, and outcomes of those meetings in the 2000s, and at some point I will post the timeline with links to the primary documents.
There are in fact some very significant proposals put forth by Wilmington leaders in that timeframe, but none of them have been acted on. We need to hear more about those proposals and find out who is accountable for their failure. Those exact proposals might not be the answer anymore, but they are a starting point for today.
I now think it does make sense to stop all new school construction AND approval of new charters until there is a credible plan for restoring normalcy to Wilmington schools. And to the suburban schools as well, given that all RC middle schools are on academic watch. But I do not expect that plan to come from Red Clay. Too many issues are outside of Red Clay’s control.
@Napier – That is a great point! No one is minding the shop when it comes to address abuse, choice abuse, etcetera. It’s all quite laissez faire. The Delaware Way, indeed!
@Mike O. – I have a copy of the Wilmington Neighborhood Schools Act Committee proposal of 2001 and it is a marvelous document. So sad it was disregarded like nothing; and the negative outcomes the committee clearly predicted with great fear have not only come to pass but have been outdone. Disastrous. Though things have changed, much of it remains relevant and so do their proposals. It needs an update, for sure.
I totally agree about a moratorium on new funding, new schools, etc., barring a clear expression of the district showing an analysis of ALL its current feeders and what their forward going agenda is – and its expectations (or co-plan with the state or whomever) of how they see the issues of the city residents being addressed. If “charters” are the supposed answer, then we have so many more more questions to ask.
I am not expecting this Referendum to fail, nor would I dance upon its grave if it did. Unfortunately not being aware of a referendum until asked to join a school level committee until December hindered my crew’s ability to fulfill our responsibility to question it. We’ve learned our lesson. It is what it is. But this is IT.
There’s also a 2008 proposal from the Wilmington Education Task Force, which was chartered by the General Assembly:
http://wdel.com/story.php?id=11717
That sounds like the right process, but I don’t know what the outcome was yet. I still need to locate their report and the outcome. Shouldn’t be too hard to find; I just don’t have the time right now.
Also all of these proposals were orbited by many community meetings, board meetings, comments by local officials, news articles, and more. If good records were kept (or if memories are good – please share!) there should be a lot of good alternative proposals in there that would be even closer to the grass roots.
The 2008 proposal, Mike refers to, was known as the River-to-River plan. I believe some form of this existed in the Wilmington Neighborhood Schools Act Committee proposal Coolspringer references – not sure, but I think it was called the Metropolitan plan?
So many meetings – and all saying basically the same thing. Not sure where all these plans went to die. You still hear about them, but even committee members (the ones I speak with) aren’t sure what happened.
Yes, sounds very much like the Metropolitan school district proposal. In the 2001 proposal, it suggested a Wilmington district (in terms of governance) be created and consolidated into a large Metropolitan Consolidated School District comprised of Red Clay, Brandywine & Wilmington. One shared tax base, one overarching school board. Each sub-district to be governed by a Local School Council.
I could be off slightly, just reciting from memory. Not a bad idea, though I would personally think charter accountability & oversight should not be carved off from this public sphere, but included.
I am for exploring that two district option or rather revisiting it.
The issue must be addressed and further expansion of new schools in the suburbs will alienate Wilmington! As I said last night, Wilmington is a neighborhood too. We may be seeing something opening up in Red Clay creating some groundwork dialogue which will be a foundation. But the concern is beyond Red Clay’s control and does require legislative intervention.
I’m pretty sure any plan that creates a new “Wilmington School District” won’t pass the segregation sniff-test.
Reply to Coolspringer: A plan similar to the 2001 plan has been in effect for many years in the Fairfax County School District in Northern Virginia, where I taught. This district is the result of consolidation, resulting in more than twenty high schools, compromising a total of about 160K students K-12, which is comparable to the entire DE school system in size.
I have mentioned this on here in the past, because I see it as something our state should look into, because it saves money by economy of scale, and provides more flexibility than the scattered school districts we presently have. Moreover, our plethora of private schools adds additional confusion in terms of being able to organize and run a school system. My perception is that the FCPS district has many fewer private schools than we have here in DE.
It seems to me, correct me if I am wrong as I’ve only lived here for 12 years, that we tend to churn, therefore do not progress very well according to our educational needs. I think it is time we put some long range planning in place, by researching and incorporating pieces of models which have already been proven successful in practice.
I propose that we consider to reduce our school organization down to 3 consolidated school districts, instead of the 16(?) or so which we now have, with one superintendent over all, and three assistant superintendents to lead each district. As an example of this, check out the Fairfax County School District organization plan, and consult with their officials. In my view, we need a long range plan on working out the kinks that are revealed by the excellent discussions by Pandora and others here on DL.