Why Are We 'Waiting for Superman'?

Geoffrey Canada, a fellow Bowdoin graduate, founded the Harlem Children's Zone in 1990. The Zone's goal is "to do whatever it takes to educate children and strengthen the community." In Harlem, this has meant establishing new methods to end cycles of generational poverty.

The phrase "waiting for Superman" is Canada's term for his own childhood belief that the ghetto in which he was growing up was in such crisis it could only be rescued by a superhero. He and filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (Academy Award, "An Inconvenient Truth") believe that public education in the U.S. is an a similar state of severe crisis.

Why are we "waiting for Superman" to fix our public education system, the foundation of our democracy, innovation, and U.S. leadership throughout the world--and so evidently in decline? The filmmakers hope, and ours in screening this film at the Opera House March 3, is that the powerful stories of children and their families it documents will give all of us, in each of our communities, a launching place for dialogue and action to improve our schools. The film shines a spotlight on key education reform issues and the importance of great teachers, and will hopefully not only spark conversation and action but also galvanize the community support essential to bringing about meaningful and lasting change in our public schools.

As part of the "Waiting for Superman" house party movement in which the Opera House will participate on March 3, the film's producers, Participant Media, have created a Social Action Campaign around four key initiatives: celebrating great teachers; ensuring world class standards; encouraging more great schools; and raising literacy rates. You can learn more about how to participate in any of these areas, before or after seeing the film at the Opera House, at waitingforsuperman.com/action.

Maine is Setting New Graduation Requirements: and the Arts MUST be fully part of them

Here we go again: our state legislature is hard at work trying to "dumb down" our state high school graduation requirements.

There are 8 learning standards defined in the Maine Learning Results, yet a new piece of legislation, LD 1325, An Act Regarding Curriculum Requirements, calls for students to "fully meet" standards in some of these areas and only to "partially meet" them in other areas--including the Visual and Performing Arts.

This kind of requirement officially devalues the arts in state law--and ignores broad-based research which proves that students perform better across the board when they learn in and through the arts.

It's important for our students'--and, by extension, our state's economic and cultural--futures that we let our legislators know our students need to FULLY MEET standards in all 8 learning areas: including the Visual and Performing Arts. All Maine students must have equal access to rigorous instruction by highly qualified teachers and their learning must be appropriately assessed. Students must be required to fully meet those essential standards in all 8 areas! For the Visual and Performing Arts, this means students would be required to receive instruction in 2 of the 4 visual and performing arts disciplines--not too much to ask for a well-rounded education, is it? The arts education community is willing and ready to work with the Dept of Education and local districts to find effective ways to make this work within the realities of the school day schedule.

So if you can, gather in Augusta at the Cross State Office Building Room 201 by 1PM THIS MONDAY, MAY 11.

If you are unable to attend the hearing: you can contact members of the
Joint Standing Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs
Senator Justin L. Alfond (D-Cumberland), Chair
justin@justinalfond.com

Senator Elizabeth M. Schneider (D-Penobscot)
http://www.mainesenate.org/schneider/index.htm

Senator Carol Weston (R-Waldo)
cweston@fairpoint.net

Representative Patricia B. Sutherland (D-Chapman), Chair
psutherland@sutherlandweston.com

Representative Edward D. Finch (D-Fairfield)
RepEd.Finch@legislature.maine.gov

Representative Alan M. Casavant (D-Biddeford)
RepAlan.Casavant@legislature.maine.gov

Representative Richard V. Wagner (D-Lewiston)
RepRichard.Wagner@legislature.maine.gov

Representative Stephen D. Lovejoy (D-Portland)
steve.lovejoy@myfairpoint.net

Representative Mary Pennell Nelson (D-Falmouth)
RepMary.Nelson@legislature.maine.gov

Representative Helen Rankin (D-Hiram)
RepHelen.Rankin@legislature.maine.gov

Representative David E. Richardson (R-Carmel)*
RepDavid.Richardson@legislature.maine.gov

Representative Howard E. McFadden (R-Dennysville)
RepHoward.McFadden@legislature.maine.gov

Representative Peter B. Johnson (R-Greenville)
RepPete.Johnson@legislature.maine.gov

Ironies and Tragedies

It’s ironic at best--and tragic for our students at worst--that those fighting school consolidation under the banner of “local control” are looking to the state “for a better deal”(or a legislative repeal) to provide our students with access to better education.

School consolidation is not going away. Coordinating and sharing teaching resources, and spreading administrative costs across larger districts, are proven, effective methods for sustaining small rural schools and improving the level of education we are able to provide for our students. 80% of Maine’s school population is now consolidated.

The close vote on the island, despite months of one-sided, negative reports riddled with unsupported facts, shows there is no mandate here for fighting consolidation. Instead, we could assert some real local control—the kind that provides a better education for our students—by creating a positive, pro-active plan which leverages the benefits of regionalization and is worthy of support.

This effort might start with creating efficiencies in our existing school union: synchronizing schedules to enable the sharing of teaching resources, professional, and curricula development; consolidating contracts to eliminate the costs of multiple negotiations; consolidating purchasing to decrease expenses; collaborating to seek independent grant funding to support important educational initiatives; and creating school cultures which attract peninsula students to take advantage of Deer Isle-Stonington’s particular strengths (marine trades, the arts). These kinds of cooperative initiatives, savings, and educational improvements are necessary and should not require legislative mandate.

State and local funds are limited: funding will be awarded to those with the best, most effective performance, management, and governance; and withdrawn from those who don’t keep up. In turn, we will be asked to cut educational resources our students need; when instead we could embrace administrative change to ensure our kids don’t get left behind other parts of Maine or the country. The sooner we really shift our focus locally—recognizing it’s the children who matter, and not the school committee or where the superintendent is—and implement a good plan for administrative change, the more fiscally and educationally viable our schools will be for our students’, and our community’s, futures.

Yes, We Can: Locally as Well as Nationally

Change.

While our country is standing at the threshold of great change this week, those of us born and raised along the New England coast have never been very comfortable with it. We’re stubborn Yankees, descendents, as the journalist Colin Woodward noted in his fine history, The Lobster Coast, of fierce Anglo and French stock. Not only do we not like change: the desire to actively FIGHT it seems embedded deep in our genes.

While fiercely sustaining our unique island culture and traditions is critical, resistance to change can also hurt us and limit our future prospects, most especially when it comes to educating our children.

As world change happens ever more quickly—including in our fishing industries—spurred on by technologies that make once complicated functions possible in mere seconds, the requirements for and demands made on each new generation of students change exponentially. Meeting these needs requires vision and the ability to take risks. Yet instead of leading necessary changes to our schools so our students can compete equally, and succeed, we’re being asked by local school leadership to resist such change.

The biggest change at stake, in a vote on January 27, is school consolidation: whether or not to bring together our small area schools under a larger umbrella, to ensure their survival and ability to provide the resources our students need for a 21st century education.

The benefits of a consolidated rural school district are uncontestable and are currently being realized throughout the small coastal towns in Regional School Unit (RSU) #1 around Bath where, in the first year of consolidation, they have saved over $1.2 million AND added quality to their school program (in the form of additional AP classes at their high school, foreign language at elementary level, etc.—the very things our current structure is lacking). Consolidated rural school districts allow small schools like ours to align schedules; professional development; teaching resources and specialists; curricula; and purchasing and other contract negotiations to keep our small schools alive and thriving. While there are short-term costs to making such changes, the long term savings and benefits are much more important.

Perhaps the most misunderstood component of consolidation is its focus. This is not about closing schools: in fact, the island will be able to strengthen our position by becoming part of the larger district. The focus of consolidation is administration, not buildings. By mandating larger administrative districts, consolidation shifts the focus of control, and costs, away from superintendents and unwieldy numbers of school governing boards, meetings, and disparate contracts, correctly recognizing that true “local control” resides in strong principals in the buildings themselves, as well as active parent-teacher organizations. Consolidation is not about losing our local schools, or control; it is about preserving and improving them.

Students around the country and, increasingly, around Maine, from Bath to Ellsworth and beyond, benefit from consolidated educational structures. Our own students are benefitting immeasurably from the consolidation of the Deer Isle and Stonington elementary schools, another bitterly fought change more than 15 years in the making. Let’s hope it doesn’t take us 15 more years, plus state penalties and further mandates, to take this next necessary step to improve local education.

It’s just plain sad that our local educational leadership has chosen to discuss and plan only for the short term costs of consolidation, rather than the more important educational improvements and long term financial savings. Not surprisingly, those mounting the strongest opposition are those whose roles will be most directly changed in a regional school district: the superintendent and school committee members.

The state law mandating consolidation—similar to the state law mandating the creation of the Stonington Sanitary District in the 1980s, also opposed by local voters—is not perfect. The consolidation plan brought to us by our existing school committees, for an Alternative Organizational Structure (AOS), is so badly put together, taking advantage of few of the benefits offered by RSU’s, it only makes clear they want consolidation to fail.

That leaves making this necessary change up to us, the voters. Even though the current proposals are imperfect, we must vote YES—for the sake of our students and the future of our communities—to keep this critical process moving forward. The existing structure is broken and will not survive the economic and educational demands of the 21st century. We can’t afford to drag our feet on this issue. We owe it to our children.

On January 27, vote for a new and improved future for our students and our communities. Vote YES for school consolidation.

Written from my perspective as an active volunteer, mentor, and teacher in the Deer Isle-Stonington schools, who helped to draft and pass the schools’ Strategic Plan.