The Education Issue

The following question in from Brenda: (Disclosure, this is Brenda of the Racine’s Report Card blog, a passionate advocate for Racine public schools, this is from her blog description; An unbiased and perspective of the issues surrounding education in Racine, WI. I advocate for both excellent schools AND the responsible use of taxpayer dollars. I believe educational issues should always be non-partisan and never about politics, but I am also not naive to think that some will make it all about politics.)

Fred,

You mentioned the under-performing school district Racine as one of the many challenges the city faces.

What, if any, role should city or municipal government play in guiding the leadership of our school district?

Also, should the city (or surrounding villages) have a say in new buildings, school closings, etc?

Thanks for this important question

Brenda.

I consulted with a number of people before deciding to run for Alderman. All of them told me to avoid this issue as no matter what I said I was bound to anger too many people. I appreciate the advice, but frankly avoiding a controversial issue because it may be politically expedient is not my style.

This community needs to grow in order to add to its tax base. In order to accomplish that we need to make the community an attractive place to do business, live, work and raise children.

A good public school system is a vital component of that over-all plan. A number of people in this community get all defensive playing the blame game whenever anyone dares to criticize our public schools. Ask yourself this question, when was the last time you met someone who moved to the area in order for their children to go to Racine Unified Schools.

If the answer to that question is "gee I can't recall", we have work to do.

I am a realist, I understand the challenges here are enormous and I will not pretend to have all the answers, frankly I would defer to Brenda’s expertise on this issue. However, what I see is a disconnect between City Hall and the Unified Central Office.

Everyone knows that city administration has very little to do with education policy, they just collect the money from our ever-growing tax bills. What City Hall can offer is rhetoric and leadership. We need to make improving our schools a top priority, we should take it personally when we see how badly our schools rank in comparison to the rest of the state. We need to make this a primary focus in every thing we do.

Every idea should be seriously considered and we should try to make it fun for our kids. I can tell you one thing about kids, they love to compete, they love to have fun and they love to win. Something as simple as an academic competition between two schools with a pizza party and a traveling trophy to the winner would promote school pride, teach students to work together towards a common goal and create excitement about learning.

Now, imagine that excitement on a district wide basis, or even our whole district competing against Kenosha! Trust me on this, the community would step up and pay for rewards and incentives to winning and losing schools if they felt any excitement or improvement in the learning environment. Heck, I’d be the first one in line to donate.

That is just one idea from one guy in his home office on New Years Day, imagine if we got the entire community focused on improving education like that, the energy in the very thought of that excites me!

We need to talk about education; we need to make it a priority in everything we do, every day.

We need to create an environment of excellence; we will not do that by deferring to Central Office as that is “their area”.

As to the second part of your question, should the city (or surrounding villages) have a say in new buildings, school closings, etc?

If any changes in buildings or closings will have an effect on the city or surrounding villages in terms of quality of life or city provided services, they should be consulted and their concerns be evaluated as part of any decision making process. Ultimately though those decisions do and should rest with the duly elected members of the school board.

Brenda, thank you for your passion and concern about education in the Racine area, I do appreciate it.