For years, the QCSD directors and administration have been whistling in the dark as they pass by the district's graveyard, also known as Quakertown Community High School. Not just because of the uncorrected fire and building code problems. Not just because the school should have been replaced 10 years ago. Those are relatively minor issues by comparison. But because they knew that if the scores on the 11th grade PSSA's, and district-wide terrible financial planning, didn't improve, there was the growing threat of state takeover.
PA is now one step closer to actually forcing the long-needed educational changes. Not just in QCSD, but in hundreds of schools across the commonwealth.
State Senator Jeffrey E. Piccola of Dauphin County, the chairman of the Senate Education Committee, has introduced the Education Empowerment Act, which lays out a series of steps through which underperforming local schools could be closed, converted to community-based charter schools, or even have their boards replaced by state-appointed overseers. This could take several years, and is initially aimed at mostly urban districts in deeper doo-doo than QCSD, but the same remedies would be available everywhere.
Underperforming districts, and individual schools, could also be placed under the control of non-profit, or for-profit, management organizations. Not a bad idea around here, based on the years of financial mismanagement. Our looming $8 million deficit, coupled with the lowest PSSA and SAT scores in the area, say it all. Eventually, parents could petition the State Education Department, which would make the final decision.
With so much legislation coming out of every level of government, from small towns to large states (and, of course, the feds), it is impossible to keep track of which would do what to whom. But a clue as to whose ox is being gored is often found in the identities of the organizations that are opposed to a particular proposal. In this case, at the head of the objection line, are the PA School Boards Association, and the PA State Education Association, the state's largest teachers union. Does that tell you anything? When the school boards and teachers union are in agreement, it spells trouble for everyone else.
Jim Testerman, the PSEA president, told The Inquirer "The law overreaches. I think it will end up being disruptive in communities and school districts where good things are already happening for kids". Does that tell you anything? The phrase "good things" is like athlete's foot cream - apply as needed. For instance, here in QCSD, many elementary school parents undoubtedly feel that good things are happening. Test scores are high, and teachers seem to be earning their top-10-in-the-state salaries. Testerman, and the PSEA, would be beaming.
And yet parents of students at Haycock Elementary, the top-performing school in the district, are fighting to leave QCSD, and join neighboring Palisades. That kind of unprecedented action just doesn't occur where "good things" are happening....
Reason number one is the backbreaking taxes in QCSD, necessary to fund the horrible financial decisions over the past dozen or so years. And reason number two is the dramatic decline in student performance as the kids move from elementary school to middle school to QCHS. Year after year, a large percentage of our 11th graders are failing the PSSA's. Twenty-five percent can't read even to the ridiculously-low state minimum. A full one-third can't do basic math. Year after year. Yet we continue to fruitlessly pour tax dollars into ever-increasing teacher salaries and bonuses, requiring no accountability in return.
That is exactly the problem which the new state law would address. QCSD isn't specifically named in media reports of endangered districts, like Chester or Norristown (Superintendent Andrejko's prior gig), because our elementary schools balance out the high school, and result in "Adequate Yearly Progress" for the district as a whole. But families in the community know the score. The longer our kids stay in QCSD, the poorer their performance becomes. We whistle past the graveyard, hoping that a miracle will occur, and somehow the problems will be cured before our son, or our daughter, gets to high school.
Hearings on Piccola's bill are already underway in the Senate, but there is no timetable for a vote.
But there is a timetable for another school-related event much closer to home, one that will please many angry QCSD taxpayers. Business Manager Sylvia Lenz has announced that she will be retiring after the current budget is finalized.
Lenz has been at the district's economic helm for nine years, during which time school taxes have increased over 70 percent, and the administration came under fire for questionable fund balances, multi-million dollar budget deficits, and poor spending practices, long before the national economy tanked. Families in Richland's Regency Manor accused Lenz of a conflict of interest when she refused to permit school buses to pick up and drop off students in their subdivision because of a dispute over the streets, while she allowed the buses into her own nearby subdivision with the same issues.
And back in November, despite the huge deficit facing the district, superspender director Kathy Mosley suggested to the board that they raise Lenz's salary just prior to her retirement so she could receive a bigger pension. Not surprisingly, her scheme was roundly rejected.
Technically, the administration searches for a replacement. But this is a "cabinet position", and the school board has previously interviewed candidates for principals, and other prospective cabinet members. Hopefully they will take charge here, especially since Lenz is already pushing for a successor that has a school spending background, rather than the dispassionate business outlook we have been so sorely lacking.
And, hopefully, they will select someone who will not be another lapdog for the superintendent, but rather a watchdog for the community.