I’m a student at Doss High and I think that busing is a good idea for JCPS students. This is because it gives some students a chance to see what they haven’t seen or experienced before. I think that there are some things about it that kind of makes people rethink because of the long bus ride from home to school, but other than that, there are great advantages.
For schools, it would do a lot. It would raise the schools test scores like ACT and SAT tests to let parents think about sending their child to the school. Either resides or school of choice, it will be a good reflection. Busing would also balance out the race in the school because there are people coming from all parts of Louisville to go to a school. This will make it a nicer environment for all students to see other races they probably haven’t seen or been around that much before. This also makes parents think about how open that school is so there isn’t any racism going on or kids being mean to each other about their race.
Another advantage is that it gives students more of an opportunity to be in other programs that other schools might not have. Like our school has the Class Act Credit Union, there aren’t that many schools with that, so kids can learn about how to take care of money and prepare for the future. The programs are either to have something to do, or prepare for the future. Nursing programs aren’t in some schools, but if kids are being bused to other schools, they have a chance at it. The other schools that kids are being bused too might have more money and more updated things like computers, etc. This can make students want to learn a lot more if they have something that they’re used to, or new to. This might also want kids to think about college because if you’re in a nursing program, this can make kids want to go to medical school, or make up their mind about what they want to do and experience things earlier.
So, if you left the busing where it is, then the students would have a better opportunity to see the things that they have never experienced before and can benefit them for the future. This will also let them go to a school with more money and more programs that could help with their future. It would help the school by raising test scores and racism would not be around in the school, this would make it nicer and help people get along better. The students would also have more experience in computers and other things. That’s why I think busing would be successful for JCPS.
Hey! My name is K.M. and I am a 14 year old Doss High School student. I want to talk to you about JCPS busing. I’m not for busing because nobody wants their kids on an hour bus ride. Like for example racial integration is worthy goal, and busing is an easy mean to achieving that goal. Children in higher socioeconomic areas naturally have more opportunities than children who do not. Putting children in schools that’s in their neighborhood is not a good idea, some neighborhoods is mostly blacks and others is mostly white and putting them all in one school is going to cause segregation.
Far away schools is not working for the parents is either, parents cannot be involved in school if it is too far from their home. Parents are forced to send their kids far away from home for a good education.
Busing was started in the 1970’s to ensure that schools were not all black or all white. African American’s lived in the west end, while whites lived in areas like St. Matthews or the country. The whites would have a long ride to and from school every day like an hour or 2 ride. The west end kids would go to school far from where they live to, like some might go to school far like Seneca.
Busing causes white flight where families move their children from public city schools to private and suburban institutions. They put all whites inside the same school that causes more and more fights same with African American’s it’s going to cause more and more fights.
It also gives students the opportunities to go to schools in areas with more money. On the other hand busing too costly for school districts that must purchase the buses to establish the program. Example staying after school and buses have to take you home and you live far away that is going to cost a lot of money.
I’m L’R B and I attend Doss High School. My opinion on busing is that it should continue. I bring this up because my Civics class gave me a task to write a letter to JCPS arguing for or against busing using the evidence I found from my research. I think busing should continue because it helps racial integration, it gives students opportunities to go to schools in areas with a better environment, and it eliminates racism. I will come up with a better student plan to help busing continue.
Busing brings great experience to lots of students. You meet people of all kinds teaching you that a difference in race doesn’t matter. Also busing shows a student in a poor environment a look at how it is to live well. Students from different races get to learn from each other. It brings everyone together.
If I could solve the problems people have with busing I would change a lot. First thing I would do would be change the school time to later hour so students have more time to be picked up. I would also add community schools for parents who want their children close. Students who have trouble getting along, I would have a counseling for them to get better. If the student likes the counseling I would continue, if not ill switch their school.
Overall there’s a lot of good things busing allows us to do. I’ll say the bad opinions against busing aren’t good enough to stop it. Busing is wonderful for everyone and lots of people enjoy it, let’s not repeat history by basically segregating schools. I hope this letter gives you a view on how some students feel.
We had waivers for the deviated teaching timeline so that things would be taught at the age appropriate time as well in an age appropriate way. We also had waivers for testing due to the deviated teaching timeline. Why, did we not use them. When parents ask, we are told it was an Administrative decision. Who in the Administration made those decisions? Where is the documentation?
According to the Catalpa Model School of Innovation contract with the Kentucky Department of Education they had 5 years before an audit was to be performed. Why did the District allow them to be audited prior to the 5 years that is in the School of Innovation contract, and I believe law?
If you change the teaching model at Maupin from what was in the Catalpa Model School of Innovation, aren’t you in breach of the contract that was given to the School of Innovation design which is a 5 year contract with the Kentucky State of Education?
According to the Administration they want to change the model since Maupin has so many students that are transient. The School Board chose this school to place the program in. This should have been a non-issue since they knew that when they placed the program here.
When is the Administration going to release the add on funds that pay for our Magnet Coordinator, retired teachers as well as some special area teacher positions? These are part of the Catalpa Model School of Innovation proposal and was agreed to for the 5 year, minimum? How do you expect a Magnet school to succeed without a Magnet Coordinator? Wouldn’t you be setting that school up for future failure? Again, aren’t these positions part of the KDE School of Innovation contract with the District for Maupin, a Catalpa model school of innovation?
The School Board chose this program and chose the school it was to be placed in. What positive support, other than paying for the building, keeping the lights on and paying teacher/staff salaries, have you provided to Maupin, a Catalpa model school of Innovation to help ensure its success? How are you supporting my child and what is in her best interest?
Who is reviewing the questions and concerns that were submitted to Maria Holmes (Principal) and/or Joe Leffert (Asst. Superintendent)? When will the Parents get answers to their many questions and not just be briefed on what we already know via the many news outlets who have already provided that information? Parents need to know what direction this school is making, so they can plan for their children’s future. We need a definitive answer now.
The Board does remember that this is a Magnet School, so it’s not just an issue of concern for families in the 1st District but for many others. The parents, voters in the many different Districts, are also the stakeholders of this Magnet School. It’s a JCPS Magnet School so it is a JCPS concern.
I don’t want an apology from MAG. I want an apology from Dr. Hargens.
To make a public spectacle about cutting teachers’ pay (and being forced by the union to grant years-of-service Steps) based on erroneous data is unacceptable. ( Why weren’t the figures given to department heads to compare to actual payroll data? It would seem SOMEONE would cross reference the salary figures, in at least a few departments, prior to recommending something so drastic as cutting pay.) This action alone is enough to diminish trust in the district’s ability to make sound decisions. Honestly, I lost trust long ago.
Click to play.
But, Dr. Hargens’ statement that this $40 million mistake is the cause of teachers feeling undervalued and unappreciated is what I find absolutely unforgivable. It’s not just a feeling. It’s a fact that teachers are undervalued and unappreciated, specifically and precisely, due to this district’s policies that create over-worked, exhausted, paper-pushing teachers; a fear-based, top-down administrative approach, and policies that strip teachers and students of time, creativity, and a voice.
Clearly the atmosphere in our communities and in our schools has changed dramatically – violence, drug use, poverty. high-stakes testing, budget cuts. Teachers’ roles have changed and responsibilities have spiked. JCPS’ policies have failed to acknowledge, much less support these changing roles and THIS is the cause of teachers’ reality of being undervalued and unappreciated.
Magnet “programs” will not be protected under this new law. Many families will lose out on choice.
Be sure to see where your board members stood on this discussion prior to the unanimous vote to support local control over student assignment (opposition to HB151).
Chris Kolb speaks on the detrimental impacts of HB151 (16:00 mark).
Remarks on HB151
Dr. Chris Kolb
JCPS Board of Education Special Called Meeting
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
I’d like to share an email I got from one of my constituents this morning.
One of the reasons my family returned to Louisville to raise our children is JCPS’s vibrant system of magnet programs. My daughter’s middle school will prepare her for wherever she wants to go next—she’ll have the academic preparation if she wants to focus on language at Atherton’s IB program, she’ll have arts experience if she wants to pursue art at YPAS or Manual; if she’s interested in learning more about law and politics, Seneca, with its legal work magnet, is her resides school. What a great selection we have! Thanks to JCPS our city is full of people who want to venture into new-to-us areas. My children go to school with kids who have similar life experiences and kids who don’t. Thanks to JCPS families have been allowed to choose the educational approaches that will best help them succeed. Please don’t allow Frankfort’s legislators limit my kids’ friendships to those we already have met. Don’t send us back to our isolated islands, segregated again.
Thirty-eight days before I was born, white pro-segregation rioters in Louisville burned school buses, threw rocks, and attacked police. The Ku Klux Klan organized and led several such riots in Louisville, all in the name of “neighborhood schools.” Many in the all-white crowds held Confederate flags while they threatened, harassed, and assaulted black children.
But our city persisted, led by the courage of African American parents and children. And thanks to their sacrifices, I was able to attend high-quality, integrated public schools in Louisville, as have my children. Thanks to their bravery, I have lifelong friendships with people from all over the city I never would have met. I am extremely grateful for their sacrifice and struggle.
But now we are facing the very real possibility that the hard-won progress of the last 42 years will be undone through government overreach into local affairs by state legislators, the overwhelming majority of whom do not live in our community.
House Bill 151 threatens a core principle of our democracy: local control of our school system. It’s curious that many of the lawmakers who just spent eight years consistently complaining about what they perceived to be federal overreach of the Obama Administration are now some of the most vocal supporters of state overreach into local issues.
The voters of Jefferson County elected the seven of us you see before you. I would ask our state legislators to remember that seven of the fourteen candidates for the JCPS Board of Education in 2012 ran on a platform of “neighborhood schools.” They were all defeated, most of them handily. The voters and families of Jefferson County have spoken on this issue time and time again and the state should respect the democratic will of Jefferson County voters. It is simply not acceptable for state legislators with little or no experience in Jefferson County to undermine the democratic will of Jefferson County voters in dictating where our kids can and can’t go to school.
In addition, there are several reasons why HB151 will have significant negative impacts on our families. It will lead to less choice, less predictability, less equity, and wider achievement gaps. These are not debatable points. This is what data, evidence, and logic tell us will happen.
But on top of all that, HB151 will not even accomplish what it sets out to do. For instance, if HB151 is implemented, the closest school with guaranteed openings for some students who currently attend Shawnee will be Waggener. Instead of a 1.9 mile walk or a 19-minute bus ride to Shawnee to participate in after-school activities, these students will endure an hour and a half ride on two different TARC buses to do so. While Waggener is over eight times farther away than Shawnee, Waggener will be the closest “neighborhood school” for many kids.
Families who live as little as 0.8 miles away from King Elementary will not be guaranteed admittance, nor will families living 0.73 miles from the Academy at Shawnee, 0.9 miles from Frayser, 0.84 miles from Rutherford, or 2.6 miles from Carrithers. And these boundaries will change every… single… year. The only way to guarantee you will get into your neighborhood school is to move, literally, across the street from it. On top of the dozens of other reasons HB151 is unwise, HB151 is not even a neighborhood schools bill.
In closing, I want to share something from an article in the Atlantic magazine in 2015 comparing Louisville to Detroit. In 1974, Detroit largely abandoned school desegregation efforts.
By 2000, … the average black Detroit student went to school with less than two percent white students, while in Louisville, the average black student went to a school that was half white. In 2011, 62 percent of Louisville fourth-grade students scored at or above basic levels for math; only 31 percent of Detroit students did.
As researcher Gary Orfield states,
Go to Louisville, go to Detroit they’re just different planets today. … These are places that had the same percentage of black people, they had the same percentage of poor people, they were almost identical, racially and socially. And Louisville is thriving. And Detroit’s collapsed.
HB151 is a threat to local democracy, to school choice, to student achievement, to a more integrated community, and to the economic livelihood and the very future of our city itself. Decisions with this level of impact on our community must be left to the people who actually live here, pay taxes here, and who vote for School Board here.
Why is it that the females in our schools are punished more severely than the boys? I have been in the JCPS system for years, and every year when girls act up, their punishments are almost 3 times as harsh as when boys do the same “crime.” I used to coach for a boys athletic team here, and even though I finished the season with them, they were horrible. Lack of discipline and respect for the teachers Continue reading “Are Men Better Than Women?”→
On the topic of continuous improvement, I bring you a question, a suggestion and an invitation.
Question
In May of 2014, state Auditor Adam Edelen published a report that found a few areas where improvement in our district was recommended.
It found:
JCPS ranks at or near the bottom in teacher staffing and expenditures for instruction, while ranking highest in the categories of administrators, support staff and instructional aides.1
Specifically, he found that the district pays 369 administrators more than $100,000 a year.2
JCPS also had the second-highest student-to-teacher ratio,
JCPS ranked the lowest in instructional spending, (at 53 percent of its budget (four of the other five were 60 percent or higher), while ranking highest in administration and operations spending, at 31 percent of its budget.)
JCPS students face more restrictions on access to textbooks and had the lowest textbook budgets. More than half of teachers said students couldn’t take home textbooks.
JCPS provides inadequate instructional resources for all students (taken from a survey of more than 1,500 of JCPS’ 6,400 teachers)
90 percent of teachers spent personal funds to supplement classroom resources.
Question: How are we doing with these numbers today?
Suggestion
Also in Edelen’s audit was a recommendation to add an at-large board member. As a district of choice, we have a need for broader representation. I believe it is time our school board move forward with this recommendation and add not one, but two new positions (in order to keep an odd number for purposes of voting). Have one of those members be from the community at large, and one of those members be student voice.
Invitation
Having attended the KDE work session on charters yesterday in Frankfort. I found the presentation to be factual but I felt that the facts that were presented leaned more toward favor of charters, and may have omitted some of the risks and downsides some of the groups opposed to charters have identified. This is concerning and presents an opportunity for education of our community members if we want to ensure legislation that will not undermine the success of our existing public schools.
Because legislation can move quickly, and the topics can be complex, it is imperative that we begin now educating and informing our community about trappings and pitfalls of charter school legislation and learn from other states that have gone before us.
Our organization is part of a coalition with Save Our Schools KY, which is a pro public education advocacy group that seeks to educate and inform members of our community about pending charter legislation in our state and to empower and mobilize constituents to communicate concerns with their elected officials in order to ensure quality legislation.
On January 5 we will be hosting the first of many screenings of the film Education, Inc. We also invite other organizations to join in the coalition for a more informed and mobilized community.
If you would like a flyer, please see me afterwards.
Since I still have a few more seconds, let me add:
It is important that the things that make Louisville and Kentucky special not be lost with any charter legislation, and I would like to recommend these topics be included with your legislative agenda. For example, SBDMs should be part of every public school. In addition, charters should not take funding from public schools. Also, JCPS is already a district of choice, so clarification of “what problem we are trying to solve” with charters should be communicated to legislators.
Dear JCPS,
