June 1st, 2006 by Atomictumor
Well, since I missed the school board meeting on the 30th, it took until today to finally find out, in the Observer, that the school board has cut bussing within a mile of school boundaries, along with two elementary school teachers, and a few other academic roles.
I think, frankly, that the school board wanted to draw blood with this decision. I know Netmom will disagree with me (and I hope she pops in to talk about this), but I’ve said both privately and publicly that cutting the bussing is worse on a large scale than a lot of the other cuts that were proposed. It seemed that we got a horror list of things to be cut, and by god it was going to be one of those things.
Why couldn’t athletics see an axe every once in a while? Screw the people who only see the school system as a winning team, they have college football for that crap. I do understand that a proposed $80,000 athletics director position was shot down before this meeting, but I personally would have cut a bit deeper.
One man’s opinion. However, seems to me that its a pretty fair one. While I don’t like the idea of elementary schools having larger classrooms, at least these cuts are not going to result in firing anybody, just not filling open positions. Thats a good move, in a bad situation.
Here are the real barbs of the situation.
- Why the hell did it take 3 days for this news to come out? Hell, the damn Oak Ridger didn’t even see fit to print the news, instead opting for an inane piece about opium (black tar heroin, indeed. Its opium, dumbassses. Its heroin in the same way that dinosaurs are rocket fuel).
What the hell is wrong with this town that it can’t promote something like this? This will impact hundreds of families, but its not news worthy? Rock on to the Observer for printing it as soon as they could. I’ve been impressed with them lately to the point that I’m recalling my comment about them being a tool of the John Birch Society. (Not that any of you can find it, since its lost to the evil of Godaddy’s Magnethands technicians). - Like I said above, I fear the school board is using ‘the nuclear option’. Bussing has been a part of Americana for about as long as all of us have been alive, and the idea that Oak Ridge, TN, is not going to provide bussing for kids within the boundaries of the school district is a barn burner. Is it designed to get enough public opinion on their side, and have these dumb bastards on the city council change their mind?I don’t see what good that’d be, because there was an overwhelming show of support for the school board when council was determining the budget slice, so I don’t see why they’d change their minds. So does the board really, truely, think that cutting bussing is the best cut in a multimillion budget?
- Will this impact every school? How is this mile measured, as the crow files, or by road length?
June 1st, 2006 at 10:53 pm
“I think, frankly, that the school board wanted to draw blood with this decision.”
“Is it designed to get enough public opinion on their side, and have these dumb bastards on the city council change their mind?”
Probably, truly excellent statements. Welcome to Oak Ridge (School) politics AT. This is how it is done son.
June 2nd, 2006 at 6:45 am
Uh…the Oak Ridger did have an article on said bus cuts in Wednesday’s (the 31st) edition.
June 2nd, 2006 at 7:09 am
I disagree with the premise that there was a political decision to “draw blood,” in order to raise citizen ire toward Council. From a first person view, we knew that any cuts of this magnitude would bleed; it was a question of which cuts would least impact our core mission of educating students.
The change in bus service saved $279,408; eliminating 9th grade sports would have saved only about $22,000.
Before the two teaching positions were cut, there was a lengthy discussion about the impact… I think it’s fair to say that ALL of us were nervous about this one. However, it was based upon the recent completion of kindergarten regsitration, and unless the enrollment rises substantially above those who have already indicated that they’re going to be here in August, we’ll be okay. Linden will still have one teacher added (we had originally planned to add two), given that the growth in that school is expected to be greater.
I’ll post more on the bus impact on CitizenNetmom today.
June 2nd, 2006 at 7:21 am
Eaves, got a link? Are you talking the online version or the print version, because I must have completely overlooked it, and I tend to hit that site fairly regularly. Looking at the site now, I certainly can’t find anything.
NM, the teaching cuts, while unfortunate, I can live with. I feel for these teachers who’ll have a few more kids in their class, but life goes on there.
I do forsee some big problems, tho, with the bussing situation. I know families within a mile of the school with young children and one car, and no alternative but to hoof it across busy roads. That is my beef with the bussing thing in a nutshell, its going to screw over the people who are down on their luck to begin with.
Is the high school untouchable? I heard council approving a few grand for a cisco router to complete a fiber connection with ORNL, seems to me that bussing is more important than that (and I’m a geek)!
June 2nd, 2006 at 7:23 am
Oh, I’ll be damned, here it is. You were right, Eaves.
June 3rd, 2006 at 9:10 pm
The Cisco router was paid for by a grant specifically for that purpose… it didn’t come out of our operating budget, and we didn’t have the option of reassigning those funds. If we didn’t buy it, we didn’t get the money at all.
A good deal of our technology purchases come from recurring funds, since we know we’ll have to replace computers about every four years (if not sooner). This is one of the positive changes that Tom Bailey made early in his tenure here. But at this point, not all of it does yet — there just isn’t enough money in recurring revenue. For example, last Tuesday we approved the purchase of 180 desktop systems for the middle school computer labs, but that approval is contingent upon the availability of funds; some of it will have to come from one time money (other areas of the budget that are not completely depleted).
That’s one of the hardest parts of balancing the budget. It isn’t at all obvious which things are funded with recurring funds, and which are funded with one-time money. Even Board members who have been there 10 or more years have to rely on our finance director for guidance.
I wish there were easy answers. But keep trying!