My column Feb 10

Editor: Reset Mindset

I am on my local school board and on my BOCES board. It’s Budget Season and we are trying to crunch numbers that we made crumbs of last year. We have heard from our accountants, auditors, legislators, and lobbyists that the scarcity of state funding we face is bad, will be much worse next year when stimulus money is gone, and may never get better.

At every legislative conference we discuss unfunded mandates, what state, federal, local, or NYSED law tells us we have to provide to our students and schools but does not give us a bag of gold to pay for. Unfunded mandates are misnamed: they are indeed funded, in NY by our property taxes. I cannot explain in 500 or 5000 words the fairness or efficacy of education funding but do think it is time for smart people to come up with some better ideas. In my district we lost out on grants to decrease class size because we already had small classes. Now, that is about the only place we can look for savings. Meanwhile, we are required to have a principal in every school building.

I believe small classes are good for kids. I believe teachers should make enough to be middle class. I believe music, art, and phys ed should be taught by specifically trained and certified teachers and that these subjects are critically important in child development. I don’t believe it is a good thing to return to what I experienced: overcrowded classrooms, special subjects taught by a classroom teacher with a tambourine, a jump rope, and construction paper, disabled children imprisoned in state hospitals.

I remember my 5th grade teacher: she looked 75. There were 40 kids in the room and they gave her an assistant in the afternoon. She would send one of us to the water fountain with a paper cup, take 2 aspirins, and fall asleep at her desk. I recall her wispy white wig slipping down over her forehead but that can’t have really happened, can it? The classroom mayhem was not educational and I hope we never return to an era when teachers cannot afford to retire.

The PTA issue here is what we are experiencing in our units. Our cash strapped schools expect us to come up with money for computers, books, field trips, playgrounds, receptions, awards, music competition registrations, band instruments, sheet music, prom parties, yearbooks, photographs, honor society, team uniforms, band uniforms, and on and on. None of these is essential for our kids’ education and all of them enrich their lives. None of these are appropriately provided by the PTA and most of them at one time or another are. PTA is a cash cow and should not be.

Meanwhile, membership is down everywhere.

At Founders Day, we played parlor games. One of the games consisted of a quiz to determine personality type. The types were given the name of a color. I was green: bossy, action oriented, always right. We met in groups by color and had to come up with a story. The green team’s story: Some day there will be a PTA that advocates for children, educates parents, and isn’t a bank. The End. What if we all stuck to the Three-to-One rule: one fundraiser for 3 PTA mission-oriented programs? We would get volunteer speakers, we would give 40 people coffee and cookies, we would stop buying a mug and meal for every appreciated teacher every year. We would have to raise $600 per year. The parents complaining about sending $3.50 per person to State and National PTA and clamoring for a PTO could run their own candle sales to fund the playground and the other programs the school should pay for and deal with the liability on their own. And to learn leadership and advocacy, what parenting is about, the importance of arts in education and good health, and community involvement, the PTO parents would join PTA.

From The Beacon, the newsletter of Western Region PTA. Copyright 2010.