John Creighton

heavy sigh….good luck tonight.
I hope our community will be supportive & proactive, not judgemental & over critical…
this is incredibly frustrating, b/c I feel we need so much more support (especially in Special Education and Technology)…
I’ll keep my eyes & ears open for good ideas!

- We know that education is Job #1 for the school district. That being the case I think we need to consider providing a safe environment to learn as Job #0. We de-prioritized our building maintenance during the last budget crisis. As far as I know, no one was hurt by this. Are we sure no one will be hurt if we do it again?

- I think it will be impossible to decrease costs without impacting programs and instruction. That means jobs will be lost. Cut out the deadwood, not the healthy established branches or the bright green new growth.

- I am not sure this is sound legal advice but look at cutting out state mandated programs. The state is not following its own laws but funding as required by the Constitution. I think it would be reasonable that state-mandated programs bear the brunt of those cuts. Would we really miss not giving CSAPs? Do they have the money to sue us over it?

John, thank you for serving during these difficult times.

What do you mean that “the state is not going to be able to honor its Amendment 23 commitments?” When did following the state constitution become a matter of choice?

Do taxpayers get to decide whether we are “able to honor” our commitments to follow the law when it comes to taxes? I sure hope so!

I agree with Daniel – if the state is not able to meet its constitutional commitments (“oops, sorry!”), then I think state-mandated programs should be a serious consideration in cuts. Can’t support the programs for the state if we don’t have the funding from the state.

I can’t deny that I’m angry about that, but at the same time I hope the conversation does steer toward supportive, creative and proactive, rather than angry and destructive. Good luck with the conversation.

I believe the most important thing to preserve is a broad view of education and learning. It’s disappointing to hear that the positive benefits of the mill levy will essentially be offset in a couple of years. Schools have come to live under a cloud of cuts, which tends to steer us to a deprived perspective. Yes, schools should be funded, and funded well. Yet if we keep a broad view of learning – keeping in mind all of the ways we now learn as adults, and the new and exciting ways kids are learning on their own – I think we may be able to enhance the school learning experience for our kids.

Lawsuits are likely. Resolution of lawsuits not likely in next 24 months.

Look at a a 4 day week for at least the High School and Middle School levels where daycare is not as much of an issue for parents. Consider Tuesday through Friday since many extra curricular activities fall at the end of the week r and you can maximize the use of utilities. Consider incentives for early graduation facilitated by taking online courses (at an additional small fee) for core subjects.

Consider dynamic scheduling in the elementary levels. You recently wrote about higher income families’ negativity toward a longer school year. Offer longer but fewer school days (which would still meet state guidlines for attendance mandates) to students who are proficient and above at their grade level. Lower acheiving students and those with daycare issues can continue on a regular or maybe an extended schedule. This could have the benefit of focusing the resources on those that need it most and inspire some students to work hard for the extra vacation days.

Would early retirement incentives help the bottom line?

Overall you need to take this as an opportuniy to step into the future. I think we’d all be foolish to believe that this money is ever coming back. The old ideas of charging for and/or cutting transportation, extra curricular activities, and elective courses only serve to anger and don’t really have an enormous impact on the bottom line. Time to think outside the box and get rid of traditional ideas of calendars, teacher ratio, and schools as buildings. Find ways to reward students and families for independent academic acheivement and the district will benefit by not needing as many resources per student.

Even though I no longer hold a personal stake in the St Vrain, I believe the opportunity to be a leader and an innovator is safe in your hands.

What was the contingency plan if the Mill-levy had not passed? That would be a good starting point since the net effect may be the same.

Larger class sizes might be OK IF each teacher had a teachers-aide in the classroom. Not sure this would fly with the Teachers union, but everyone needs to give a little to solve these problems..

Good luck tonight John.
Whatever you do, don’t add more homework!

Maybe this would be a good time to end the failurist funding model, in which schools are rewarded with extra general fund money for having poor test scores. Note that I am not talking about all of the governmental designated-purpose grant fund money, which naturally goes to poor schools; I am talking about straight general fund money. Such budgeting creates perverse incentives, to say the least!

There are hundreds of very simple ways you could improve educational results and reduce costs at the same time, John. Consider (as just one example), third grade spelling. Right now, the district purchases spelling books, which are simply lists of words with associated activities. Why not simply create a list of third grade spelling words and post it on the Web? Then do a 30-minute pre-test at the beginning of the year. If a student could correctly spell, say, 93 of a random sample of 100 words from that list, that student would be done with third grade spelling — no busywork for the kid, no meaningless papers for the teacher to grade. Furthermore, students and parents would always know exactly what types of words third graders are expected to know, so they would be better able to meet the goal. For those (few and getting fewer) students who have no way to get to the Internet, print a few copies of the list. Two pages, front and back, should suffice. Surely this would be a lot less expensive than buying spelling books, and it would reduce wasteful work for both students and teachers.

In Singapore, it is not at all uncommon to see 40 kids in a class. The secret? They have actual academic standards, with actual consequences. Perhaps we could try that here.

Sandy Herman makes the common sense deduction that the current model of schooling is not sustainable. He/she then makes some interesting suggestions on how to move away from the model toward one that provides both incentives for achievement and cost savings. Were these suggestions and others like them considered?

The only way to avoid tax shortfalls when the economy takes a downturn is to amend TABOR, the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

Another way to battle low tax revenue is to encourage more underemployed women to step up their careers and thus pay more state taxes. Ditto on underemployed citizens in general, which I find to be the case in Longmont. Many state residents are not working in jobs that challenge them in the state of Colorado and therefore our tax base is smaller than states where two income families are the norm. Women in particular need to start more businesses, and challenge ourselves to continue to work and pay taxes into the system if we want to have strong funded public schools for our children.

As far as budget cuts, we all know what to do: Cut teachers and administration. The biggest lever arm in our school budget is salary. Just do it, and stop pussy footing around, acting like cutting bus services will balance the budget. Another area to consider: the pension plan for teachers is very generous. Who else in society earns such a pension, not many government employees, not high tech employees and not self employed individuals. For instance, in the federal government, Department of Commerce cut the big pension years ago. When will teachers catch up and need to use 401Ks like the rest of us do for their retirement?