Big Hollow Cuts Art and Music
- on 07.11.07
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The Big Hollow school board has finally made it official. They are cutting Art and Music.
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The beleaguered Big Hollow school board, faced with uncomfortable choices to help balance the Ingleside district’s budget, voted unanimously Monday night to eliminate all art and music classes for the 2007-08 school year. The District 38 board also voted to reduce the number of computer classes, eliminating them in kindergarten and middle school and cutting them from twice to once a week for Grades 1 through 5. The cuts are projected to save $245,000. The eight teachers — three in art, two in music and three in computer technology — will be reassigned, eliminating the need for new entry-level hires. |
The school board members in Big Hollow really are not listening. They claim to be by not cutting lunch and a few other items. Yet they will reassign 8 teachers who make much more than new hires. I also have a few questions about these teachers. These are the same questions I sent to the Big Hollow Superintendent that have not been answered. It is always amazing when school officials and school board members won’t answer questions. They want people to trust their decisions, yet they won’t answer questions that could lead to trust.
- Were these 8 teachers subject masters in music/art/computer respectively?
- If not, why were they teaching these subjects in the first place?
- It they were, do these teachers also have subject mastery in their new assignments?
- If not, will they be learning this material as they go and is that fair to the students they will be teaching?
These are the questions I originally sent to Ronald Pazanin and Mary Taylor:
- Why did the district build new schools if the finances were so bad? Why didn’t they scale them down if they needed more room?
- Does Ms. Gallichio know that there are many people in the district on fixed incomes? Seniors, empty nesters etc. who can not afford to pay higher taxes anymore?
- The tax increase has been voted down! It was voted down last time, why isn’t someone coming up with a plan to really cut spending instead of directing cuts at the children?
- Why wasn’t the old property put up for sale sooner, so the transition would be smoother?
- What personnel cuts are being made?
- What class will Ms. Cosman be teaching next year? What is here degree in? If her degree is in music, then why will she be teaching another subject that she has not mastered? If her degree was not in music to start with, why was she teaching music?
- Now that grades K-8 are in one location, why is there a need for two priciples and an assistant?
- Is it true that the Superintendent received a 5.5% pay increase?
- How many other administrators received raises and how much were they?
- What was the average raise for teachers this past year and also again for the upcoming school year?
- Is there a plan to freeze salaries? If so, for who?
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“We have come to the conclusion that computer, lunch and recess are probably the three most important items to the public,” board President Vickie Gallichio said Monday. |
Actually, parents are tired of the lack of control over spending. They are just tired of seeing their kids punished by people who get better raises and pensions without accountability.
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Still aiming for $1 million in cuts, the board has negotiated a new cleaning services contract, saving $117,000, board member Todd Wright said. |
Why didn’t the board renegotiate their contracts sooner? They supposedly have been claiming large amounts of borrowed money each year, and yet they are just doing this to cut costs. Again, this board has a credibility problem.
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With an extra $352,000 in miscellaneous savings, including changes to the bus schedule and turning all extracurricular sports into pay-for-play activities, Wright said the district has reached a total of $714,000 in projected savings. |
If sports are now pay-to-play, why not band? This is what Grayslake Elementary district did. This option would provide music as an extra curricula activity. Eliminating this is a direct assault on the children of the district. It is a punishment for the parents for not passing the referendum. It is in now way doing what is best for the children of the district.
I again visited the Big Hollow website. There is no contact information for school board members. They still have the press release from the original cuts still linked on their homepage. Is that from forgetfullness or just a reminder that they want you to give them more money so they can spend it without being held accountable?
Since Mr. Pazanin and Ms. Taylor won’t respond to my email, maybe some of you can send them my questions as well. Even better, would be to copy the entire school board. I will gladly publish the school board member contact information and any email responses here.
If you want things to change in Big Hollow, you must speak up to the board members. Be polite as always, but be firm in your resolve. You can win this fight. It is the right thing to do for your children.
I’m not on the school board of Big Hollow, but I believe I can answer many of your questions.
1. They built more schools because their student population has tripled. They were able to build these schools with SPECIFIC money that can only be used for building facilities. This money cannot be used for anything else. (People are always willing to spend money on a building…not on personnel.)
2. Although there are many people who are on fixed incomes, the population within Big Hollow has hugely grown to be a younger public. It seems misguided to provide poor public education just because retired individuals want to save money on taxes. I understand their needs, but we need to contribute towards our future and not just respect our past.
3. The tax increase does continue to be voted down. For some reason, people believe that there is rampant spending going in within the district. However, if you look at their financial statements and compare them with other districts in Lake County, they spend the least and are funded the least. They are, in fact, the lowest funded school district in Lake County. Feel free to look at their staff list and try to find positions that are not needed. If you compare it with other school districts, you’ll notice that many positions are actually missing. (And probably could be used!)
4. The old property is still property and not just a liability but a potential asset. I’m sure that the school district hoped that the community of Big Hollow would actually desire to have a good public education program. This would result in higher property value and then Big Hollow School District could later sell the property for additional value. Regardless, with a $30M debt and growing, a $5M sale of property isn’t going to help very much.
5. The personnel cuts are the programs that were cut. There is a requirement to provide certain types of education and although some people would not mind having 50 kids per classroom to save money on teacher salaries, this is absurd. If you look at their staff lists…they are already barebones. If you go to a popular website and look at the teacher salaries, you may also notice that they are poorly paid already.
6. Teachers can be proficient in more than one field. In fact, with the current NCLB requirements, all priorities must be towards supplying highly qualified teachers whenever possible. Those teachers would not be placed into regular classrooms if they were not qualified.
7. There are 3 buildings and each administrator must actually evaluate every teacher, maintain the school management, deal with the community as a whole, provide professional development, and ultimately be the leader and manager of a large staff. I find it hard to swallow that a suggestion of LESS administration is the solution than already exists. Many elementary schools have 1 principal AND 1 assistant principal. Middle schools in many cases have an assistant principal for each grade level. If you compare Big Hollow with other school districts, you’ll see that they have the bare minimum to function. By requesting that they actually remove more personnel is simply asking for them to give up and crumble.
8. There is no problem with a Superintendent or any other individual receiving a raise. If you look at his salary on a popular website, you’ll see that it is $40-50k less than other superintendents in the area. I’m not against pointing figures at overpaid teachers and administrators, but this is not the district to do so.
9. It doesn’t matter…what matters is that those administrators are still underpaid and will possibly go elsewhere where the salaries are better.
10. Raises are contractual and one of the few motivators for teachers to stay in their profession. This is especially true for Big Hollow who get paid so little considering their educational background. The theory is simple…the more experience a teacher has the better they are. I believe this theory holds true for the majority of teachers out there. Although we could hire 1st year teachers every year and fire them because they’d not be tenured, the quality of education would be even worse for the students.
11. The beauty or curse of contracts is that you cannot just freeze the salaries. See my multiple previous mentions about poorly funded/paid teachers and you’ll see why freezing salaries is not a good option.
The simple truth is that for public education to be successful, it needs to be funded well. This fact is what makes the difference between great school districts and horrible ones. It is a miracle that Big Hollow is doing as well as they are considering how little money they have to work with. When hiring new teachers, nobody is considering Big Hollow as their top choice to work. Nobody is dreaming of transfering there, and really some parents are not even glad that they are within this district as it stands. With poor funding comes poor quality and there is no getting around that. Nor is there any getting around the fact that the community is responsible for providing public education. The quality of that education directly reflects the community itself and if all you consider are dollars and cents…you may want to consider the damage that is being done to property value with the funding remaining where it is in Big Hollow School District.
You really didn’t give good answers to the questions. You continually compared Big Hollow spending to the spending in surrounding school districts. This reminds me of the story about the soberest drunk in the bar. In other words, it just doesn’t make sense.
Public education is currently overfunded. Charter and private schools get better results with less money. The system is broken in Big Hollow, Lake County, Illinois and across this country. Until we empower parents to choose their childs school public education has no incentive to be creative or cut spending. More money will not help Big Hollow, it will only perpetuate the spending problems without providing tangible results in the education the children of the district receive.
It’s easy to compare public education to private schools…private schools don’t have special education requirements and do not have requirements to take EVERY child. It’s easy to get great results with only the children you’re willing to take. To me, comparing private to public doesn’t make sense.
You should go to FundTheChild.org and read the stories linked there. These stories lay out many examples of how charter and private schools save taxpayers money while providing education to the very students public schools are not teaching. These disadvantaged children are being taught, some are even getting jobs to pay for a better education.
The insistence that only public schools can meet the need of every child is ludicrous. If the money was available there would be schools created to specialize in the areas needed. In fact there are private schools that do specialize in kids withs disabilities.
Teachers complain that they have to teach everyone, and yet they fail to teach many students because they force every student to learn the same way. They complain parents are not involved enough, yet school choice has been proven to increase parental involvement.
Let’s cut to the chase. Private schools are cheaper. They pay their teachers less and are run as a business yet seem to receive on-par or slightly higher scores compared to the average school. Everybody who is crying foul are those who are pro-private pro-voucher so the other side is never heard. Think about it though…
The teachers are being paid less. As a teacher fresh out of college, am I going to look to private schools as my first choice to work? The answer is no. Private schools typically get the worst teachers that exist in the educational field and there are no requirements that private school teachers are highly qualified. You could have practically anybody in those classrooms…so why do those schools succeed?
The answer lies with who is attending the schools. You’re dealing with primarilly higher economic higher educated parents who probably do a better job as PARENTS and are able to provide funding for tutoring or can tutor themselves. These students could be successful anywhere you placed them and practically are teaching themselves in private schools. Private schools have the safety of keeping the riff-raff out of their school and that is why people put their children there. The other 99% of the public is kept out and get to go to those public schools. I’ve seen private school teachers transfer to public education and you know what…they stink.
Looking at it this way, those slight differences in test scores seem pretty amazing at the public education standpoint. Think about it…they take ALL students regardless of intelligence, regardless of financial or socio-economic backgrounds, regardless of what kind of parents there are, and they not only equal the scores of many these private elite institutions but do so with what those people attending the private schools consider inferior students.
Maybe you should leave public education alone for awhile and try to get private schools to function better. Maybe insist that THEY take state tests so that we can really compare them. I have a feeling that they aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. This one-sided argument where public education is held up to a microscope while private schools are simply placed on a pedestal need to be given light weight and less value to the public until private schools are held to the same standards. I’m pretty sure that once the laws that public schools follow are applied to all schools…those private schools are going to dry up pretty quick.
Yes, there are some elite private schools. The majority however accept virtually all comers. As I stated before, the same poor kids in Helena, Arkansas had their scores improve dramatically once they were given an alternative. Poor children on the Southside of Chicago were given an alternative and the parents clamor for it because it works. How about the teen in SC who got a job to pay for a private school because his school was miserable?
These are just a few examples of how alternatives help the very students you claim the public schools are teaching so well. Sorry, but the evidence is contrary to your generalization of private schools.
Secondly, the laws governing public schools are created by the teachers unions to force more money in to the pockets of teachers and administrators and not for education. If you want see how competition works with private schools let’s disencumber both from the unnecessary mandates with the plan that follows:
* Designate an equal amount of money for each school-aged child
* The parents then choose which school their child will attend
o Public – in or out of current district boundary
o Private
o Charter
* Remove all current mandates
* Require all financial data to be on the internet for all public/charter schools
* Require yearly testing of all students – all schools
* Require raw and aggregate testing results to be on the internet in a timely manner, i.e. in time for school selection for the upcoming school year – all schools
* Abolish NCLB, it will no longer be needed
* Abolish the Dept. of Education, it also will no longer be needed
If public schools are doing as great a job as you believe, they’ll get all the students and the money.
I am the mother of a special ed child returning to Big Hollow after being transferrd for two years to another school district because Big Hollow could not educate my child because I refused to put her on stimulants. Now that she is returning I am very scared of the way my daughter will be educated/treated. Ms. Lori Pappas, the head of special ed for the middle school has assured me that all will be fine, my daughter will get everything she was previously getting in the other school. I find that hard to believe when they are re assigning teachers, music and art to teach other classes. Will my child and other children that need a “specialized teacher” be getting taught by an art teacher? Has anyone checked the school website? Of course they have notified us of the increase in school enrollment fees if not paid by Aug 17th but they do not even have the 07/08 school calendar in the handbook or the hot lunch fees for 07/08. All information is from last year. I think the school board should pay each family a late fee for not having the information available to the families! Take a look and you will see.
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