EDITORIAL: Making Tough, Thoughtful Choices
By Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
May 16–For school districts, budget season provides a timely opportunity for a ‘report card’ check. We’ve been reviewing St. Paul Public Schools’ recent work, including the ambitious five-year plan that Superintendent Meria Carstarphen rolled out last week, and we see a lot to appreciate.
City residents, too, have given district leaders a vote of confidence. Last fall, they approved a $30 million annual levy to help with some ongoing operations and for initiatives that include all-day kindergarten and tougher math and science standards for high-schoolers.
Faced with falling enrollment, tight state funding and a potential $7 million deficit for next year, leaders are making tough decisions on keeping programs that work and dumping those that don’t. (The district also just won a national award for saving more than $1 million in energy costs.) It’s an odd position to be in — launching new initiatives with the levy money while cutting programs elsewhere. Taxpayers will be forgiven for wondering why, after they agreed to pay higher taxes, the district is making cuts. It’s all about aligning dollars with priorities.
In terms of enrollment, St. Paul remains the state’s second-largest district and one of its most diverse, serving about 40,500 students, with a minority enrollment of 74 percent. The district faces several budgeting challenges, some common to all districts, others more pronounced in urban schools, according to Lois Rockney, chief business officer. Among them: underfunded mandates — special education, for example — changing state requirements, extra costs for English Language Learner programs (at last count, there were 103 languages and dialects among the students) and rising costs for health insurance and fuel.
Many urban districts also face declining enrollment, partly due to an aging population and smaller families. St. Paul’s rolls have fallen by about 6,000 students in the past decade, Rockney says. The result is a drop in state aid and a yearly hole in the budget. The district anticipates a drop of 465 students next year, totaling $3.4 million less in state aid. (Contrary to what many might think, the proliferation of charter schools hasn’t worsened district finances in recent years, because the number of St. Paul residents choosing charters has held steady at about 4,000, she says.) The district and school board seem poised to make tough choices. The proposed budget, for example, eliminates Excel, a five-year-old program that was meant to eliminate “social promotion” by placing struggling third-, fifth- and eighth-graders in special “half-grade” programs for extra support. It wasn’t working well enough. “We have to be honest,” Carstarphen says. “It’s not enough to say, ‘We need more money’ … We have to be very deliberate about what we keep and what we change.”
The superintendent says she is proud of the recent administrative reorganization and her staff of “superstars,” most from within the system. The streamlining is aimed at better serving and supporting schools, she says.
Going forward, a top priority is making sure the levy money gets spent where the district promised. Carstarphen and Rockney have set up a financial records system that the superintendent says in effect “dyes the money” so it can be easily tracked.
“We made a commitment to the community when we asked them to support the levy,” Carstarphen says. There’s a wide range of people who recognize the worth of investing in early childhood education. The community also values a comprehensive education that includes art, music and physical education, and residents want students exposed to top-notch technology, she says.
There’s a lot to like in the district’s new plan, developed over the past year with community input. The plans lists five goals and 10 strategies to achieve them. It focuses on 12 measurable “outcomes” and details 122 action steps for the next five years. It might not all get done that fast, but it’s better to fall short of an ambitious plan than to overshoot a weak one.
As a starting point, the plan calls for a “safe, welcoming, respectful environment” for all students and then for educating the whole child. It calls for a comprehensive mentoring and tutoring program, effective programs to ease transitions between school levels, new intervention programs for at-risk students, and literacy programs that assure access to librarians and media specialists. The plan also promotes a “Go to school/stay in school” mentality essential to student success.
It also declares the district’s intention to prepare all students for higher education — a goal that would mean a ramped-up curriculum and no more students unofficially relegated to second-class status.
Carstarphen calls the goal “an essential vision for this era” — which includes tremendous impacts from the technology boom and expansion of the global economy. The district already is engaging in community partnerships to help make it happen, including work with St. Paul College to reshape expectations.
We’re encouraged by what we’re hearing and seeing, and we’re pleased at what’s been accomplished during Carstarphen’s first year. We like her sense of accountability, too: “Public education has a strong legacy in St. Paul, and my job is to live up to those expectations.”
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Copyright (c) 2007, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
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