THE LOCAL AREA WATCH

NEW MOTTO FOR BLOTTO TEACHERS: NEVER SAY QUIT!

Last month we reported the story of John Gregory, a Forest Hills school district principal who refused to resign his office after pleading guilty to drunk driving.  Why should he?  No one in authority is demanding it of him.  Besides, ‘fessing up to his criminal irresponsibility made it a “teachable moment” for his students.  Exactly what that moment taught I’m not sure, but when too many kids drunk behind the wheel kill and get killed, keeping his office certainly doesn’t send the message that drunken driving should be taken too seriously.

Gregory, it seems, has an acolyte of his school of “Never Say Quit!”  James Idziak, a Comstock Park school district teacher, was charged with a pair of felonies after leading the cops on a drunken car chase northwest of town last month.  The prosecutor further charged him with misdemeanor child endangerment from partying with his high school students prior to the chase.  The teachers union, the Michigan Education Association, is standing by their man and providing him with a lawyer to defend his tenure because he refuses to quit teaching.

Again, why should he?  Even though the Comstock Park school board, in stark contrast to the Forest Hills board, fired Idziak for his reckless conduct, that is no guarantee he will lose his job because of it.  The union will fight for him.  In fact, even a conviction on one of the felonies or the child endangerment charge is no assurance that he will lose his teaching certificate.  The union will fight for him again.  The only certain means of Idziak losing his job is to quit.  But he learned from Gregory’s teachable moment that a public servant is the last person who needs to hold himself accountable for his wrongdoing.

BLOTTO PRINCIPAL TEACHES STUDENTS TO NEVER TAKE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Whatever happened to the "morals clause" in service and employment contracts?  How is it that a high school principal can get sloshed, climb behind the wheel of car, get arrested for drunken driving, then convicted for the same, and still keep his job?  Indeed, how is it that the man is perversely lauded for providing his students with a "teachable moment"?

What Jon Gregory, principal of Forest Hills Northern High School, taught his students this week is that a bad act may have consequences, but one of those consequences doesn't have to be taking personal responsibility for it.  The police may arrest you, the media may report what you did, and the judge may fine you or lock you up, but you certainly don't have to resign from your public office.  Others may have the power to make you account for what you did, but you don't have to make yourself pay for your malfeasance.

This is the substance of Gregory's "teachable moment" after he was arrested last November for drunken driving and pled guilty to it on Tuesday in Rockford District Court.  He has been hailed for his honesty in revealing his arrest to the Forest Hills school board last year and his impending trial to Northern's staff and students last Friday.  Well, I'm not sure how much virtue there is in being honest about a matter that is public knowledge.  I do know, however, that the integrity of making yourself personally accountable for your misdeeds is virtuous.  I do know that such integrity probably demands that you resign your office for violating an important public trust -- i.e., setting an example of character for our children -- because it is simply not enough to roll the dice on whether anyone else will hold you accountable.

The bottom line is that the students of Forest Hills Northern have learned this from Gregory:  Have no shame for your bad acts.  It is enough to be honest and declare mistakes were made, but let's not drag integrity into this mess.  If outside forces make you pay, sobeit.  But you don't have to make yourself pay.  Why should you?  If what you did wasn't too heinous, possibly no one will make you pay much for what you did.  So why make certain you will pay through your own actions?

We do not ask too much of a high school principal to have the shame to resign for drunken driving, especially when that dangerous behavior is one far too many high school students indulge in.  If Gregory hasn't either the decency or the commonsense to know that by holding onto to his office, he is clearly communicating to his charges that drunken driving really isn't that serious of a thing, then the Forest Hills school board should supply that decency and commonsense.  Unfortunately, while none of this is too much to ask, it is too much to expect these days of public servants.

EL DORADO, BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN, AND THE GRAND RAPIDS PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT

Those of us not in straitjackets are fairly certain that lands of fabulous wealth free for the taking do not exist.  There is no El Dorado with streets paved of gold, no Big Rock Candy Mountain with cigarette trees and whiskey lakes, and no Shangri-la to ply us with every physical pleasure imaginable.  Also there is no Grand Rapids Public School District with money growing on trees to build grand palaces of secondary education to the tune of $165 million.

Alas, there is a very real Grand Rapids Public School District, one that is on verge of meltdown in terms of both finances and performance.  The near-bankruptcy of the GRPS is well-known.  Likewise, the poor student performance.  The latter was confirmed once again just this past week.  On the most recent standardized test for high schoolers, all four of the district's comprehensive high schools failed.  (Well, they all got the fig leaf that they hadn't actually failed yet but were only at the cliff's edge.)  The educrats complained that it was a new test so the kids weren't ready for it.  Translation:  School officials weren't given enough time to teach to the new test.  Of course, there is nothing new about readin', writin', and 'rithmetic, so if the GRPS had been sticking to the basics, no test old or new should be an issue.

Now comes a select committee to provide GRPS officials with a bevy of suggestions to improve the district's high schools.  Astonishingly they say it's not all that hard to do.  Just spend scores of millions of taxpayer dollars on renovations and new construction!  The committee wanted to consider a wide range of options, and so they did.  Their suggestions ranged from nicking the taxpayers for anywhere between $120 million and $165 million.  Unfortunately, the committee's plans for rebuilding the district's high schools didn't explain where the money would come from nor how new bricks-and-mortar would solve the endemic lack of discipline that is at the core of poor student performance.

Thus, we can only conclude that the committee knows something we don't know.  The Grand Rapids Public School District is an El Dorado where nothing but riches and pleasures can be found to eliminate any problem.  Indeed, according to the Grand Rapids Press, some GRPS officials actually said that the taxpayers would not have pick up the entire tab.  Well, why not buy into that fantasy?  Avoiding reality has been S.O.P. for the GRPS for quite awhile now, and those running the show haven't had any trouble getting their wallets fattened by the taxpayers in the process.

Unfortunately, the education of our children is a little too important to indulge in make-believe, no matter how much that has served city educrats so well over the past couple of decades.  So let's deal with an ugly truth.  Those running the Grand Rapids Public School District, starting with Superintendent Bernard Taylor, have given up on the kids currently in the system.  They do not want to do any of the heavy-lifting needed to help these students, so many of whom come from broken families and rotten neighborhoods, to learn the basics they need as adults to be responsible, productive, and self-reliant.  Instead they want to mask the poor performance of these students by drawing into the GRPS higher performing students from charter, parochial, and suburban schools who will by their numbers raise the district's average test scores and so make GRPS officials look better.

Hence the mantra of the select committee and GRPS officials to build a Shangri-la of educational facilities and programs that look and feel like the suburban school districts.  By some weird logic city educrats think pouring fresh concrete and slapping together specialty schools for the performing arts (but not plumbing, machining, and auto repair) will make parents overlook the deficient substance of education in the Grand Rapids Public School District.  Of course, GRPS officials have no excuse for not knowing that this doesn't work after the repeated failure of new buildings and speciality programs to pull in students currently attending non-district schools.  But then why should they let reality intrude so long as the taxpayers keep sending them paychecks and funding their pension plans?

MORE STUDENTS FLEE CITY SCHOOLS

Grand Rapids Public Schools Superintendent Bernard Taylor has finally released the enrollment figure for the new school year.  Almost all of the other public school districts in the state released their figures last month.  Taylor embargoed the figure for the GRPS without much explanation, although there really wasn't much doubt why.  After Taylor's media blitz to support spending on new consultants, new programs, and new schools to bring back students to the declining school district, not only were this year's losses in enrollment not stemmed, they were greater than last year's.

Nothing but whistling past the graveyard, making a show of what's new and glitzy while ignoring the fundamental problems destroying the school district.  Now the official enrollment figure proves it.  The number of students attending Grand Rapids public schools this year is just above 20,000.  That's a loss of 880 students and about $1.27 million in state taxpayer subsidies for the district.  This compares to a loss of 745 students in 2006 and 902 in 2005, which are merely part of a decade-long 25% decline in enrollment.  Keep in mind that the losses in those years were not mitigated by Taylor's newly implemented Iron Curtain forcing students exiting charter schools to attend city high schools.  Otherwise this year's enrollment loss would have probably exceeded one thousand students.

The school district's official line is that the bad economy is driving families out of Michigan and so students from the Grand Rapids public schools.  But I don't think there has been a four percent decline in the city's population over the past summer to match the decline in enrollment.  Plus, most of the enrollment losses show up in the elementary schools, not spread out across all grades as would be expected from a general loss of population in the region.  Nor are the enrollment figures for other school districts and charter schools consistent with this explanation.

It's true that many breadwinners have left the local area to earn a living elsewhere.  Their families have not necessarily followed.  And school districts even in the worst hit regions of the state have increased enrollment.  So the "bad economy" excuse does not wash.  If it did, then the Grand Rapids public schools should have stemmed the enrollment decline by picking up students from families whose stretched budgets can no longer cover parochial or private school tuition.  That didn't happen.  What did happen is that parents continued to be disgusted with city school officials who won't maintain discipline (here and here), won't enforce basic standards of decency (here and here), think the school district exists for the benefit of those drawing a paycheck from it (here, here, and here), and have nothing but contempt for those who don't want to put their in kids in a rotting system (here).

That last point is important.  We can all agree that school board members who call dissenting parents racists or tell them to get the hell of the city if they don't want their kids in the Grand Rapids public schools are a part of the fundamental problem with the district.  But consider Superintendent Bernard Taylor's performance in the recent textbook controversy.  There was strong objection from the community to a high school textbook laced with obscenities.  Taylor thought the book was fine and should be used unaltered.  Then he pressed the school board to make a quick decision on it and sweep the matter under the rug.  Just who does Taylor think is fleeing his school district?  Students with parents who are against obscenity in the classroom or those with parents who don't?

Of course, it is mostly the former.  Taylor is either contemptuous of the families he wants to bring back into the school district or he is completely clueless as to what is ticking them off.  Either way he is not the man for the job, and keeping the lid of bad news like the big decline in enrollment only delays the day of reckoning.

YOU WON'T %$*!@#& BELIEVE THE $#!% THEY WANT OUR KIDS TO READ IN SCHOOL

... Or maybe you will.  After all, this is about the Grand Rapids public schools.

Allegedly without reviewing it, the city school district ordered 140 copies of The Literary Experience as an literature appreciation textbook for advanced placement classes at City High.  After shelling out sixty bucks a pop for the book and receiving shipment, administrators finally got the idea of checking out its contents.  Only then did they discover the mistake they had made.

The Literary Experience is a collection of short stories, the prize pig of which is a 70-page tale of two brothers who cannot utter a sentence without a "s---" or a "f---" in it as they talk about their vile lives of sex, drugs, and crime in the urban jungle.  Now I would have thought that if an honors English cirriculum needed a good story about brothers with a penchant for finding trouble, Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov would have fit the bill.  Certainly a bill less than $60 a book.

Well, at least school administrators, after having failed to vet The Literary Experience before taking delivery of the volume, didn't fail to recognize its unsuitability as a textbook.  Plan "A" is to return the books.  If they can't do that (seeing that they have already stamped them the property of the Grand Rapids Public Schools), Plan "B" is to cut out the pages of the offensive short story from each book before distributing it to students.

Of course, that back-up plan already has the usual suspects hysterically denouncing school administrators as censors.  Need we discuss the idiocy of defining censorship as the adult exercise of judgment as to what textbooks should be used for the instruction of minors?  No, anyone who can't get that, won't ever get it.  Instead, let's turn our attention toward the captain of this ship of fools.  That would be none other than the Board of Education vice president, Lisa Hinkel.

She is horrified at the prospect that school administrators might deny their young charges the joys of reading filth.  Shaken by their tyrannical designs upon our youngsters, Hinkel shuddered, "I can't advocate for cutting pages from a book.  That just goes against everything I believe."  This from the woman who a couple of weeks ago told parents unhappy with the quality of education at the city's public high schools to pack their bags and get the hell out of town.  Maybe it's time parents told Hinkel to pack her bags.

BIG SISTER GETS IT RIGHT

Let's give credit where credit is due.  According to the Grand Rapids Press, G.R. Mayor George Heartwell (a.k.a. Big Sister) eschewed the usual leftist pieties to stick up for parents unhappy with the Grand Rapids public schools.  He criticized the school board members who had publicly excoriated parents opposing Taylor's "Iron Curtain".

Well, maybe not quite a criticism, but at least Big Sister said this:  "I know the day will come that the Grand Rapids public schools will be the schools of choice for parents in the suburban districts.  But until then, I'm disturbed by some of the attitudes from these board members."  Those board members were Arnie Smithalexander who called parents racists because they wanted to transfer their kids out of the city schools to suburban ones, and Lisa Hinkel who said those parents can either move out of the city into the 'burbs or pay tuition for a private school.

So not very stern stuff from Heartwell in light of the poisonous statements by Smithalexander and Hinkel, but remember, folks, he is taking a stand on unfamiliar territory -- i.e., neither leftist nor establishment insider.  The man may be a chameleon when it comes to political opportunity, but I sense Big Sister actually sees the real wrong in what they said.  That earns him a pat on the back.

Also, one school board member, Jim Rinck, finally expressed some concern with Smithalexander and Hinkel.  On Tuesday he said, "You don't ever tell people you disagree with to leave the city."  Then he softened that tepid admonishment by explaining that the two probably got a little too enthusiastic in their support of Taylor's anti-transfer policy.  And just to make it clear which side of Taylor's "Iron Curtain" he is on, Rinck suggested that parents who don't want their kids to attend Grand Rapids public schools don't have a real beef because the schools aren't actually "crawling with gangs and violence".  No, the violence is merely common not epidemic.  Shame on those parents for wanting discipline in the classroom to be common instead.

Well, it's probably too much to expect both Big Sister and the school board to stand by parents.  But at least one has, and that's a change for the better.

IF THEY BUILD IT, WHY THEY WON'T COME

In response to our editor's article on the downtown condo building boom, Taylor's Iron Curtain trapping city kids within his undisciplined and failing schools is one important reason why they won't come.

TAYLOR'S IRON CURTAIN

Members of the Grand Rapids Board of Education showed the public on Monday what thugs they are.

Earlier this year, to stop the flight of students from the rotting Grand Rapids public school district, Superintendent Bernard Taylor implemented a new policy of refusing student requests for transfers to other districts.  Unless exceptional circumstances can be proven, a student who is a resident of the city of Grand Rapids will be forced to attend a Grand Rapids public school -- unless, of course, his or her parents can afford the price tag for a private or parochial education.

That is certainly one way to stem declining enrollment.  Imprison the kids within the system (while, incidentally, putting the lie to the rationale for spending taxpayer dollars on new buildings).

At Monday's regular meeting, members of the Grand Rapids public school board vociferously defended Taylor's new policy.  In fact, they even denounced the parents who opposed Taylor's crackdown on transfers.  Indeed, the repulsive Arnie Smithalexander accused dissenting parents of "blatant racism", a disgusting slander that once again demonstrates this woman's lack of fitness for public office.  Of course, educrat apparatchik and board v.p. Lisa Hinkel was in lock-step with Smithalexander, while none of our other public servants demanded an apology for the outrageous statements of their colleague.  But you see, dear readers, this is the way of thugs.  They get what they want from you through coercion, and if you have the temerity to complain, they will vilify you.

So down comes the Iron Curtain around the Grand Rapids public school district.

NEW BUILDINGS WILL NOT BRING NEW STUDENTS INTO CITY SCHOOLS

A reader, Tommy Times, disagreed with our "If You Got It, Spend It!" article in which we opined that the Grand Rapids Public School District should return to the taxpayers the excess funds from an infrastructure bond rather than spend it on a new elementary school building.  The inestimable Mr. Times commented:

Oh, come on. GRPS has many more infrastructure needs than their last bond issue could cover. They spent less money on the first round of projects, so they are going to the next priority on the list. Doesn't that make more sense than giving the money back, then going back to the voters to fund the additional needs, with the cost of an election, selling new bonds, and paying a higher interest rate?

It may be true that Hall St. school is only 50 years old, and I certainly appreciate mid century modern schools, having attended them (boy, I loved walking outside in michigan winters to change classes on our six building campus), but there are some things they are likely to be missing, having been designed for a culture with different expectations from schools. Smaller schools in walkable neighborhoods are wonderful, but the baby boom is over, and neighborhoods do not have the density of kids to support pure neighborhood schools that are efficient to operate.

The school district cannot operate with the philosophy that 'this is what we can afford, if the suburbs can afford more, good for them.' They have to compete for students with the suburbs, because they lose dollars with every student. Education quality should be the number one point of competition, but the reality of keeping and attracting people to the district is that you have to have buildings that are competitive with the burbs. EGR and Forest Hills have plenty of 50 year old buildings, but they have also had much higher building millages to maintain and enhance their buildings.

Although I have already responded to Mr. Times in the comments section of that article, I'd like to post a more complete response here ...

Hi, Tommy.

Your argument is based upon a contradiction.

You say: "Smaller schools in walkable neighborhoods are wonderful, but the baby boom is over, and neighborhoods do not have the density of kids to support pure neighborhood schools that are efficient to operate."

If that were true, then fewer students means less infrastructure needed.  For example, on the northeast side of town where I lived as a kid 30-40 years ago, there were six elementary schools (Huff, Aberdeen, Riverside, Crestview, Wellerwood, and North Park).  Now there will be only one servicing the same area.  That should translate into a considerable reduction in infrastructure expense, both capital and operational.  Indeed, the sale of those unneeded facilities would provide more than enough capital to renovate and maintain the remaining school.  So fewer students is hardly a rationale for dunning the taxpayers to cover more infrastructure spending.

However, what you say isn't true.  They're about as many kids living within the Grand Rapids Public School District as there were when I was kid.  The reason the GRPS student body has shrunk is because it now faces competition from suburban and charter schools.  A large fraction of families living within the GRPS district have jumped at the chance to send their kids somewhere other than the neighborhood schools.  Why?   Do you seriously think it is because the school buildings aren't brand spanking new?  Are parents these days that superficial?   No.  The problem is the lousy education provided and even worse, the undisciplined environment, even in elementary schools, that has been tolerated in the city schools.  I know this from personal experience.   It is a wretched situation that is INEXCUSABLE, period.

The discipline that produces the civility and decency needed for a good learning environment doesn't require another dime from the taxpayers.  What is does require is the WILL of the GRPS superintendent and the board of education to lay down clear policies on discipline, back up the principals and teachers who enforce discipline in the classroom, take no crap from rabble-rousing parents who claim their little darlings do no wrong, and ultimately expel those students who will not get with the program.  What is does not require is multicultural sensitivity training of administrators, teachers, and students that operates on the premise that a kid's skin color makes him or her any more or less capable of decent behavior.  Black, brown, yellow, or white, kids are kids, and it is a nasty brand of crypto-racism that the educrats are pushing to avoid dealing with their lack of will to make every student behave properly while at school.

Absent that will to make city schools decent places for kids to learn, throwing taxpayer dollars at new infrastructure is like putting lipstick on the pig.  Pretty new buildings won't fool the parents who have made the decision to send their children to a charter or suburban school.  Indeed, that lesson should've already been learn last fall when the brand new schools the GRPS opened did not add any new students to the district's roster.  In fact, I think Superintendent Taylor has learned that lesson, but in the wrong way, which is why it is now his policy to hold hostage as many kids as possible who live in within the district by restricting their release to suburban districts.

The bottom line for me, Tommy, is that the GRPS has to address its fundamental failures to retain students before hitting up the taxpayers for new capital expenditures.

Regards, Bill Tingley, Executive Director L.A.W.

IF YOU GOT IT, SPEND IT!

About forty years ago I first attended school at Hall Elementary on the southwest side of town.  There's even a yellowed newspaper article with a photo of me attending the area's first Head Start class to prove it.  (So, you see, my liberal friends, I actually owe everything that I am today to LBJ and the Great Society. ;)  At the time the school was almost new, built nine years earlier to accommodate the post-war baby boom.  So now, with only a half-century's wear-and-tear on the building, the Grand Rapids Board of Education voted on Monday to tear it down and construct a brand spanking new school.

Why?  Because the school district has money to burn.  Sure, the operational budget is out of control, and no doubt that problem will eventually sink the district into bankruptcy.  However, some years back the voters approved a $165 million bond issue for new bricks and mortar to repair or replace dilapidated school buildings.  It seems that the district got that job done under budget, even with funding new construction that was not truly needed.  So there's $11.5 million left from the bond.  Let's give the local educrats a pat on the back for that.

Now let's give them a kick in the shins for board's decision this week regarding Hall Elementary.  Apparently it's inconceivable that the Grand Rapids public school district should return the $11.5 million to the taxpayers (plus saving the interest expense on top of that).  Because the educrats got the money, they've got to spend it.  (And don't even get me started on the soccer field included in the site plan!  Where's the baseball diamond?)  Hall Elementary did not need to be knocked down and replaced before these funds were known to be available (which is why it was NOT on the district's original list of infrastructure priorities).  It's only after the money showed up as a surplus did the district now need to do something about Hall Elementary.

There's a lesson in this for the voters.  They should only approve bond issues to fund specific projects.