The Skinny on the Radnor Township School Board Election

Families who moved to Radnor for the "excellent" public school system for their kids, or tax payers who care about the future success of public education in Radnor, need to educate themselves. Critical educational issues will be decided by the Nov 3rd school board election will strongly affect the future quality of public education in the Township. Contrary to some candidate promises the election campaign has been anything but a non-partisan rational debate between public minded citizens with honest differences of opinion on which school policies will most benefit our students; but rather has been the result of the fractious attempts at insuring survival of a Republican dominated school board (by 7 to 2 majority) after being discredited as the "good stewards and managers" of the public schools in Radnor as they have claimed.

The key issues this year are maintaining school system educational excellence on a $74 million budget which will be limited by the Pennsylvania Act 1 legislation to no more than a 2.9% increase of cost to the tax payers; And this has to be done with provisions for equitable teacher contract renewal negotiations which insured retention and possibly hiring of good teachers to modernize the curriculum. To complete the perfect educational storm significant new effort must go on this year to revise the curriculum to meet new enhanced requirements to beef up science, math and technology studies for our students (mandated by the state and national Departments of Education) as part of an effort to improve competitive advantage of our graduates for jobs in an increasingly more challenging global marketplace.

BUDGET

The $74 million school budget represents about $23 thousand per student - more than 40% of which is spent for administrative services, construction of schools and sports - not spending on teachers’ salaries, books and educational resources. (By comparison teaching resources costs the average US school district only $12 thousand per student per year.)

Under this year’s tight budget constraints the 2009 - 2010 excessive expenses in the Radnor school system which do not contribute directly to good student education must be significantly reduced; but the single party majority is fighting hard to keep control of the largest budget in the township and its allocation to the no-bid contracts and expensive patronage consulting jobs which have been approved in the past. Minority candidates have insisted that tax payers must be made aware of how their hard earned money is being spent by reforming policies which now provide extremely little accountability or transparency to the budget decision process; and have pledge to maintain educational quality by not increasing class sizes or removing courses and teachers which students and parents consider essential for a well rounded education.

In order to accomplish rational streamlining of administrative costs, a review of the current curriculum and curriculum reform requirements (to standardize and boost educational quality) - coupled with matching tests of student performance or competency in a standardized graduation exam - should be undertaken. Then an objective reevaluation of educational staff utility and effectiveness in providing excellence of educational outcomes for our students can occur together with an impartial evaluation of the costs and benefits of alternative approaches to reforms for improving the education of our Township public school children within the fiscally responsible constraints of a tight recession budgets.

CURRICULUM REVISIONS

The Pennsylvania and US Departments of Education have agree that improvements in student educational performance is necessary to bringing US graduates up to the level of internationally benchmarked curriculum standards. 46 states currently plan to develop common standards for US student education curricula as a growing response to America’s decline in academic excellence (when US graduates were compared to students in 16 of the major industrial powers in the world by the Gates foundation, they came out dead last in Physics and Math - unfortunately critical skills we need in order to remain competitive in the global economy).

Matching tests to curriculum reforms to provide educational performance assessment tools/ and learning diagnostics are needed to insure that these higher standards are achieved. The Pennsylvania Board of Education has adopted plans this fall to develop a new standardize Keystone Graduation Exams matched to the curriculum reform requirements in Science, Math and Technology as well as English reading/writing History Social Studies and Civics. These improved graduation tests are needed to insure ALL PA graduates are fully capable of reading/ writing and doing Arithmetic computations at senior high school grade levels ….as well as having mastery of basic science, higher math, history and government studies necessary to be a fully participating citizen of our modern US democracy and economy.

Unfortunately the current Radnor school board has chosen to disregard this growing state and national consensus that there is an urgent need to raise the bar on graduation requirements and we can no longer rely on the old No-Child-Left-Behind standards - set to insure that each district could retain their educational funding. These policies are clearly out of touch with evolving PA/US educational requirements.

The current school board rejoiced in The 2009 PSSA test results for Radnor 11th graders who passed the No-Child-Left-Behind (NCLB) Law minimum requirements with 56% of Radnor students achieving competency in math and 65% in reading. This achievement, however, does not begin to address the problems of the lack of preparedness in a basic skill such as reading at grade level for 35% of Radnor students who do graduate from our township or 44% of our student graduates who lack grade level competency in basic math - and this leave quite some room for improvement.

It also does not answer why the Radnor school district which spends about $23 thousand per student (an estimated 40% overhead for costs of administration, demolition and construction of schools and professional sports facilities for students (compared to the $12 thousand per year nation’s average teaching school costs) and is not able to provide significantly better "educational excellence" than a large urban school district like Philadelphia (with all its additional problems of crime and poverty) which spends significantly less.

In response to the apparent need for educational reform Republican candidates for school board have pledged instead to fight "big government intrusion" in school policy, whether related to unfunded mandates or standardized testing. Thus Radnor single party dominated School Board rejects PA supported Keystone Exams based on the state Republican party platform. We should seriously question motives of candidates who would mindlessly drive Radnor school board /school district practice in lock step with partisan political policies rather than pledging to maintain educational quality through economically hard times. It would unfortunately be at the expense of our children’s improved educational learning outcomes to lose the benefits which would be provided by curriculum standardization coupled with matching Keystone academic proficiency exams.

CANDIDATES CAMPAIGN

The candidates campaigning on maintaining the status quo school board policies producing inadequate transparency and accountability to the tax payers appear to be out of touch with economic realities existing in the Radnor student community who need the best quality educational preparation for further college studies and successful careers in the Pennsylvania and National economies even in a depressed economy. They seem to be not well informed on key educational issues like reforms of curriculum and testing with their published platform raised no issues of educational significance beyond student parking arrangements at the high school and political maneuvering to eliminate the PA state approved Keystone Exam. The Republican candidates (most of whom have no children in public schools) seem to be mainly focused on minimizing property taxes; leaving significant doubts that their highest priorities will be maintaining educational excellence in the public schools. First of all their campaign has had no mention of educationally important issues like maintaining effective class size and avoiding removing courses and teachers which students and parents consider essential.

The Republican candidates for the school board have gone out of their way to propagandize, distort and intentionally misrepresent the only substantive school board issue allowed outside of the closed door school board meetings - namely the PA standardized Keystone graduation Exam. And after maintaining in interviews that the school board campaign was strictly non-partisan - the majority party candidates all signed character assassination literature designed to rid themselves of Brucie Rapoport - the single minority party incumbent candidate - with phony scandal mongering issues about "shocking" misspoken language (for which she later apologized). That mistake has nothing to do with qualifications to provide good judgment on educational issues of a mother who has shepherded her own 4 children through Radnor schools, a civic minded person who actively contributed as a school volunteer for more than 20 years ,and who does volunteer tutoring of students for whom English is a second language. It is appropriate to remind Republican candidates whose experience is primarily in the business community (where ethics is always a challenge) that everyone makes mistakes and let he/ she who is without sin, throw the first stone. In any event, candidates who mainly depend on negative advertising should remember that they look like they have nothing important to say about the real issues.

The majority party has put forward candidates who show a certain lack of concern with significant issues (like preserving quality education) by mindlessly driving Radnor school board practice in lock step with partisan political policies. The results of partisan manipulation of school board policy would unfortunately be at the expense of our children’s improved educational learning outcomes - by losing the benefits which would be provided by curriculum standardization coupled with matching Keystone academic proficiency exam.

What is needed on our school board are candidates who have shown that they have the expertise (like Wharton/ business analysis, teaching and certified school psychologist experience) and open minds to make rational, pragmatic and beneficial changes in the curriculum, teaching and graduation testing status quo to benefit the majority of our students. The school board should be more politically balanced with a non-partisan atmosphere which welcomes participation by teachers, parents, tax payers and members of the public who consider themselves stake holders (e.g. real estate business) in improving results supporting educational excellence. The voters should favor candidates who welcome the challenge of maintaining high educational standards in our economically constrained environment and eschew considerations of defending the status quo in spite of the damage which is likely to occur.