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Televise the RUSD school board meetings? Wish I had thought of that…. Wait, I did. For any of you (especially the board members) who personally know me, you would know this is a recurring (and sometimes annoying) request from me.

We finally got the “board packets”, the informational handouts at the board meeting, available to us online – now please finish the job and start televising the meetings.

I do not believe we need to add staff for this, a remote camera (such as the one used to televise common council meetings for the city) would work nicely. If that is not an option, please consider using volunteer students. They all need community service hours to graduate, how about utilizing some of our own “resources”?

Only 7 more days...

Is anyone else completely and utterly turned off by all the partisan mudslinging? Why can't the candidates focus on the issues?

Both the Democrats and the Republicans, along with those nasty 527's, are to blame for voter apathy. Please DO go out and vote for the very important referenda next Tuesday, but I urge you to consider completely ignoring the heated partisan races of governor and state senate. Neither party or candidate deserve any votes!

If we continue to condone their behavior by voting for them anyway, how will anything ever change?

Mill Rate Myths Part 2

I would like to this opportunity to remind everyone that the RUSD budget has very little to do with the assessed mill rate. Even with a paltry 1% increase in the mill rate, the budget passed last week will increase the tax levy by $62.3 million; the new budget will be in the excess of $271 million and the proposed increases for this school year are again rising faster than the rate of inflation.

Will somebody please look at our “above the norm” expenses such as busing and administrative costs?

RUSD Budget Increases

The RUSD 2006-2007 draft budget is available online today; I thought I would give it a quick glance. One line item really stuck out to me – in the General Management Expenditures (page 32) there is a whopping 935.5% increase in the category “Other”. There is also a notation denoting there was an explanation, so I returned to the beginning of the budget to see the reason for this massive increase.

This is the explanation, in verbatim: “Additional allocation for school training and development per Board policy”.

Are these are the same training sessions that they keep telling us are “corporate funded” and paid for by our “business partners”?

I know in the grand scheme of things, this money is an insignificant part of the overall budget, but it hacks me off to no end when we (the public) are told one thing and they do another. I do not understand how this district can condone this spending when children have to share textbooks and curriculum offerings have been reduced!

Bill McReynolds Balances budget - cuts funding for special ed?

“Unfortunately he balanced the budget on the backs of special needs education kids....but I guess they don’t vote”.

The above comment was recently posted to a Journal-Times weblog in response to an article discussing the proposed Racine County budget – but is this an accurate statement or is just the usual pontificating of the average JT blogger ?

Way back in May 2003, the Racine County Board decided to dissolve the Racine County Children with Disabilities Education Board (RCCDEB) which for decades had provided special educational services to the children who live in the western end of Racine County. The resolution allowed the affected communities time to prepare for providing these services in their respective school districts. As of June 30th of this year, Racine County is officially out of the special education business.

Given the fact that McReynolds was not voted into the County Executive’s office until April 2003, and government bodies are known to move slowly on any kind of legislation, I would venture a guess that McReynolds had very little to do with the initial resolution that was passed a mere month after he took office.

But I have come to expect nothing less from the people of this community - apparently it is completely acceptable to blast someone that is “unpopular” without knowing all the facts.

A question for Bill McReynolds...

This question is for Racine County Executive Bill McReynolds…

Can you please show the RUSD board and administration how to live within their budget? They may need your expertise and experience in maintaining a budget (within levy limits) in a few weeks when they make out their budget!

Truancies down, but is that enough?

The Journal-Times has recently published on an article on the Racine Police Department crackdown of truants; I applaud both the Racine Police Department and RUSD for taking a stand on truancy. I know that in my high school day, I may have returned “late” from an off-campus lunch once or twice but I would not have if there was a chance I would be handcuffed, fined and returned to school!

With that said, I cannot help wonder if forcing the truly habitual truant back to class is the right answer. I really can’t believe I’m about to suggest this, but perhaps the mandatory attendance age should be lowered from 18 to 16. Why should these children, who realistically are probably not going to graduate, be forced to attend school until their 18th birthday? Why not just allow them to drop-out? Wouldn’t it make our schools and classrooms easier to manage?

I wonder if it will affect graduation rates all that much, considering the following information.

This data is from the most recent Manhattan Institute report on our nation’s schools and graduation rates and a report from the internet resource site infoplease.com:

- Iowa has the highest graduation rate (93%) and the compulsory attendance age is 16.
- North Dakota ranks 2nd (88%); their compulsory attendance age is also 16.
- Wisconsin ranks 3rd (85%); compulsory attendance age is 18.
- Nebraska ranks 4th (85%); compulsory attendance age is 16.
- Vermont ranks 5th (84%); their compulsory attendance age is also 16.


So 4 out of 5 of the top graduate-producing states only mandate that a child attend school until their 16th birthday; I think we could cautiously assume that changing the mandatory attendance age would not necessarily make Wisconsin’s graduation rates go down.

Limited access to teaching materials = Poor results

Keeping with my current discussion of the inadequacies of RUSD’s curriculum and textbooks, I thought I would share some other parents’ experiences. Due to last year’s textbook reduction, many classrooms in our district have to share textbooks. In one school’s 9th grade US History class, the books are not allowed to come home since the district could only afford 35 textbooks for the entire school.

What is a parent to do if a child is out for an excused absence but cannot take the book home to complete the missed work? If the learning tools are not available, how can we expect our children to succeed?

One solution would be for the district to purchase textbooks that are available online. I know one of my child’s textbooks is available online. (I wish that all of them were!!) Having an electronic version of the book available could eliminate many of the frustrations parents and teachers face on a daily basis.

Forget the BHAG

Tomorrow evening, the RUSD board and administration will be holding a study session – the topic will be the district’s BHAG. For those not familiar with the RUSD lexicon, BHAG stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goal. While I applaud their efforts at setting goals for our district, I am fearful that any goals they may set Monday evening will not be attainable. Therefore, I respectfully suggest that they change the meeting to discuss what I like to call SHAG – Small Hairless Attainable Goals.

In order to help jumpstart the discussion I suggest one of the following:

SHAG #1 – Have more retreats with the Aspen Group. While our district leaders have exhausted how they feel about trees, the topics of rocks and dirt have yet to be explored.

SHAG #2 – Hire more consultants to “clear the path of any obstacles that may impede progress”.

SHAG #3 – Come up with a new excuse on why our children’s test scores are still so far below their peers from across the state.

Imagine the increased self-esteem our board and administration would feel if they could just successfully reach one goal – that would be, in the words of Austin Powers, “completely shag-a-delic, baby”!

RUSD curriculum sucks - most RUSD teachers do not!

Before I continue my tirade about the sub-standard curriculum RUSD is using at the middle school level, I like to take this opportunity to state this is no reflection on the staff at my son’s middle school. They did not choose the curriculum, and I do not have a “beef” with any of his teachers, especially his “core” teachers.

One of his core teachers (the one he has for 3 subjects) has done everything in her power to make my son’s transition into the “real world” much easier. She is very open to discussing him and often communicates with me outside of her “normal” working time.

I only wish every teacher in RUSD was as dedicated as she …

RUSD Curriculum - Part 1

One of the reasons my oldest child is having a hard time adapting to middle school, I believe, is getting used to the curriculum used at his school. You see, he has always been at the one of the district’s magnet schools where the standard curriculum is enriched with outside activities. Those supplementary activities explored the concepts taught above and beyond what was covered in the classroom text.

He is no longer at a magnet school, and is using the districts standard curriculum. Now I see the curriculum for what is really is; social engineering. Most of the tests, quizzes, and assignments are very subjective. There are many questions on how they feel and what their opinion is on certain subjects. While I assured him that his thoughts cannot be graded, I am really not too sure why questions like this are included.

I understand that these kind of subjective assignments should be (and are!) included in language writing assignments, but I feel they have no place in subjects like math, science or geography. Unfortunately, these subjective questions are included in these subjects.

And to top it off, the textbooks are lacking in basic facts – but that is another story for another time.

I'm back (again)!

I know it has been a while since I posted anything, and I apologize. This last month has very hectic in our household. The new school year has proven to be more challenging for my oldest and any “free” time I may have is devoted to trying to keep him on track academically. Middle school is a whole new experience for us….

I will be posting a series of entries (over the next week or so) revolving around the textbooks and curriculum RUSD is currently using. I believe I may have discovered why RUSD students continually score below their contemporaries in other neighboring districts.

Please check back soon…