Stop, Drop and Roll

18 January 2008 | AUSD, Alameda Community | John Knox White

I had lunch with a friend the other day. A supporter of charter schools in general, and possibly a supporter of the upcoming Renaissance Leadership charter application.

As one who has always subscribed to the idea that different kids learn differently, and therefore we should teach kids in different ways, I think I might be a natural ally of charters.

And yet, as I look at the budget realities of AUSD and the level of education that they are providing in difficult times, I’m having a hard time reconciling these conflicting thoughts. What occurs to me is that Alameda loves it’s neighborhood elementary schools. And I don’t think I’m just projecting my own love of them onto the rest of the city. These schools come with two major costs.

First they are more expensive to operate for the district. It’s one reason newer suburbs have larger elementary schools that are usually no where near where most of the students live (Alameda will need to wake up to the fact that if we want to keep this arrangement, it is probably going to cost us more and we’ll have to support the increase).

Second, the neighborhood schools increase the financial impact of charter schools because they take a couple of students from each school instead of a classroom worth of students from a single school. The district has to keep all of it’s teachers, because they still have a near full class at School X, but they lose the funding because the state of California believes that it is cheaper to teach 19 kids than it is to teach 20.

AUSD’s elementary schools are excellent. There are a couple of schools who’s test scores are low, but its my understanding that that is more a function of population than the education the kids are receiving.

That said, the middle schools (three for the whole island, and possible two after this year (look out Wood!)) and the high school are not neighborhood serving, the serve a large majority of the city. Removing students for individualized instruction is much less costly (financially) to the district. This is also the period of time when some students will benefit the most from more individualized instruction. (Which is not to say that we don’t have good middle and high schools as well).

Alameda, at some point, will be faced with do we care about our neighborhood elementary schools, or do we want a more consolidated system with charter elementaries? I’m not convinced that we can have both without a huge influx of cash.