I've looked into this matter about as deeply as one can - who wasn't directly involved - and I can't say with any certainty whether that decision was proper. I will once again say, though, that the School Board gave the community little cause to have confidence in their decision.
That result caused a level of outrage which seemed to overwhelm sober reflection for a lot of people. This "throw the bums out" mentality made campaigns seriously challenging for two incumbents - Kim Barnbrook and Ann Rosen, and they each reacted in very different ways.
Ms. Barnbrook maintained a low profile and didn't appear at any of the sponsored events I attended. Ms. Rosen, on the other hand, was at most of them, sought endorsements and ran a very active campaign. Picture someone power walking upstream, making steady progress.
On top of that, Ms. Rosen's presence at these events was quite valuable in and of itself. Several times she gently reminded everyone of the boring, mechanical, yet critical aspects which burn up time and resources for the school corporation and its leadership. She didn't try to discourage anyone from vision strategy, but I think she knew from her own experience that it could be quite discouraging for someone unfamiliar with the day to day drudgery involved in just making the machine run.
In fact, Ms. Rosen had and has a vision of her own. And thanks to Joe Dits and the South Bend Tribune more people know about it:
SOUTH BEND -- As the minutes closed on her last school board meeting last week, Ann Rosen spoke of "the elephant in the room that we don't talk about."
Over several years, she said, the students of the South Bend Community School Corp. have changed. More of them are poorer and are minorities. As a result, the needs of students have changed. The schools must do a good job of educating both the kids with these needs and the kids who excel, said Rosen, whose term on the board is ending.Rosen pointed to research from 1998 that found that children in welfare families heard one-half to one-third as many spoken words as children in more affluent households. And the kids' vocabulary reflected that.
"This language gap deeply affects children's ability to read," said Rosen, a consultant with a local group called the Family Connection.
Indeed, numbers from the Indiana Department of Education show that minorities have grown steadily in the school corporation since 1990, from 35 percent of the student body to 59 percent. During the same time, minorities grew from almost 14 percent of students across Indiana to 24 percent.
Hispanic youth grew from 7 percent of the school corporation's student body to 15.5 percent.
And the percent of South Bend students on free lunch programs has grown from 42 percent in 1996 to a high of 58 percent this year -- while students with reduced-price lunches have gone from 6.5 percent to a high of 10 percent in that time, according to the DOE.
"If I had one wish for the community," Rosen said, "it's that it would invest in quality early childhood education." She said James Heckman, a Nobel Laureate economist at the University of Chicago, argues that it's wise for communities to invest in good early childhood education to ward off social problems.
I think somebody else has been talking about sort of thing. Hmm...
The editors of the South Bend Tribune put it very nicely:
Outgoing South Bend Community School Corp. Trustee Ann Rosen called the growing privilege gap among students "the elephant in the room that we don't talk about."
It should be a subject South Bend trustees talk about again and again. Nothing is more important. That is because the number of schoolchildren living in impoverished households is growing steadily. So is the number of minority children and the number of children whose first language isn't English.
Rosen's point, that it is important for school systems to invest in quality early childhood education in order to close the education gap, has not gotten nearly enough of the current school board's attention. Much of the board's time has been spent debating the merits of contracts — for buildings, buses or superintendents — instead of talking about kids' educational needs.
We hope that will change, and that those with knowledge of this serious issue — including Rosen — will make themselves heard. As Rosen noted before leaving the trustee stage for the last time, minorities in the South Bend schools have grown from 35 percent to 59 percent since 1990. And just since 1996, the proportion of students receiving free lunches has grown from 42 percent to 58 percent. Poverty is by far the biggest factor in students' failure to learn.
A Dec. 21 interview with Superintendent James Kapsa by Tribune staff writer Alicia Gallegos also touched on the impact that poverty has on achievement. That, in Kapsa's words, is something "we need to keep in mind on a daily basis."
Whether this will be a successful community — with crime under control, a pool of skilled workers able to meet the needs of professional and industrial employers, and a generally high quality of life — will depend
very much on how well public education meets the challenges facing it. We are glad Rosen mentioned that fact and hope it will get much more than a mention in the months and years ahead.
Had I known of Ms. Rosen's quality earlier (and thought it would do her any good), I may well have decided to leave the race and publicly endorse her. That ship has sailed.
I salute her hard work, her gentle, determined nature - and hope to be able to work with her in the future on these issues we both feel so strongly about.
Crossposted from Progressives, South Bend
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