its small school
Regarding the June 25 article, "Tensions
flare over fate of Sea Isle school":
I had the honor of attending the elementary
school's open house for the Marine
Museum, and I noticed that all of the walls in
the hallway were covered by-drawings and
displays made by the children of the school.
How sad it would be to break the bonds these
children have made with their friends and
teachers at this school.
The education these children are receiving
due to smaller classes cannot be, duplicated
in a larger school district such as
The Sea Isle City Board of Education needs to
think more- about the quality of education
the children are receiving in this environment.
If the board is trying to save money, why
not just send the seventh and eighth grades
to
the
about the children first. The teachers and
staff at the
doing an excellent job. They deserve some
thought in this process.
RICHARD CANTES
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Families are “In-Fashion” as Long as it’s “In-Season”
For those who venture to the
Growing up in
The fall of 2000 marked my first “off-season” experience with
Last year, the eldest of my three children, attended SICPS’s Pre-K program and I was astonished with all aspects of his education. He would come home and sing to me in Spanish, count to over 100 or until he ran out of breath, sound out his letters, and tells me about sea creatures I never even knew existed.
Like many parents in
However, the educational aspects of SICPS are not the only benefit. The community involvement and parent support is like something out of a page in a storybook. In November, my husband, a volunteer firefighter, fell and fractured his pelvis in four places while battling a large structural fire here on the island. At the time, I was 8 months pregnant, trying to finish up the fall semester, and taking care of my 4 ½ year old and 2 ½ year old. During the two weeks until help arrived, the PTA organized someone to drop off dinner at my door (many people whose names I didn’t even know), pick up my son for school, arrange play-dates for my children, do my grocery shopping, and drop off holiday baked goods.
For many years now, there has been controversy with the school and rumors of its closure. But the town has rallied, the parents have pushed, the teachers have stuck it out and in the mist of it all, the school has not only survived, but in recent years started to thrive. Because many parents agree with Lee Connor, President of the Board of Education in Morris Plains, that “in a small district, in a small town, the school district becomes the heart of the town in many ways”. Unfortunately, others have been mislead, misinformed, and down right lied to.
The four newly elected school board members ran on a campaign to save SIC taxpayers millions of dollars, even though the educational taxes, by state tax levy law are at the lowest allowed. In addition, they promised voters that SIC children would go to
Now scrambling for a Plan B, the board is trying to “sell” our students to the lowest bidder. They have sent letters to neighboring districts that could cost taxpayers thousands of dollars, not to mention compromise the caliber of our children’s education. And finally, until they can close the school, they fired our current superintendent, principle and are trying to cut the teaching staff. One Board Member wants to save money by firing the Spanish teacher and saying our children can learn Spanish by tape.
For a town that is supposedly all about families, why have so few people come forward in outrage? Where are the business owners, the real estate agents, and City Council? Property owners, are you unaware of the impact the loss of a school will have on your investment? Business owners wake up and smell the coffee; who will support your business in the winter when the families move off the island? City Council, don’t you realize the heart and soul of the community are the families, in season and off.
Sea Enriching Community through Education:
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Just as
A recent Spout Off in the Herald reads: typical Sea Isle trying to protect their teachers instead of the children, when referring to the recent failed attempts to send the SIC public school’s students to
Along the lines of cost, again the school is not the city. Many
Similar to the tax situation, people are mislead about the cost associated with
Second, given the denominator of the equation is a small number (approximately 85 students), you will always get a higher average per student than at a school with a greater number of students (for example 180 students). However, many educational expenses are standard across the board -- not affected by quantity of students. For example, a teacher’s salary is not dependent on the amount of students in his / her classroom. The school doesn’t offer the teacher half her / his salary, just because there are half the children. On the flip side, there are many cost efficient aspects of having a small town school that fulfills students’ educational needs right in their own “backyard”. The equivalent of this can be seen in the corporate world when companies are better off when they can complete a task “in-house” vs. paying to “field it out”. For instance, SIC Public School currently is able to accommodate many of the special needs for students who have IEPs (Individual Educational Plans). If students are sent to another district, the cost of any and all special needs is above and beyond the “tuition cost” per students; so is all transportation of students.
However, the cost is secondary to the educational benefits one can receive in a pre-K-to-eight school. In an article entitled “What’s Great About K-8?” the author highlights many advantages of K-8 school districts. The author, Wendi Patella states that the interaction of younger and older students helps build a community of respect and tolerance and strengthens education while building character and responsibility among school students. In addition, she states that recent studies have begun showing that test scores improve among students who remain in the comfort of an elementary school setting until 9th grade. Furthermore, the article reports that experts agree that K-8 schools eliminate the difficult middle school transitions which arrive at a critically vulnerable age;
“students that share a long history together with the same students and adults—especially during the pre-teen and early teenaged years—is ‘grounding to them for their whole lives’”.
Finally, in the article, Kline (the Teacher of the Year) added that finding the most engaging way to teach a lesson frequently involves coordinating programs throughout the school. One only had to attend the recent SIC program “Wonders of the Sea”, Friday, June 6th, to experience this concept in its full glory!
As Lee Connor, President of the Board of Education in
The four new SIC school board members ran on a ticket with the slogan “Best for Sea Isle Kids”. Although, since they have been elected, they failed to deliver their promise of merging SIC students with Ocean City; voted to fire the current Superintendent and Business Administrator; proposed to fire the special service teachers (Art, Gym, Music, Spanish, etc…); and have yet to provide teachers with contracts for the next academic year. These individuals ran on a platform to close the school because it was inadequate (without valid data to support their hypothesis) and are now left without a clue on how to implement this plan of action – merging with Ocean City may have been a viable option, but dismantling the school from within is NOT!
What is “Best for Sea Isle Kids” is a board that behaves in an ethical, moral and legal manner to provide the children with the best education available. Until the board can find what they believe to be a more suitable option than SIC Public School, they have a responsibility to provide the best education possible, not search for ways to close the school!
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Best For Sea
This letter is in response to your mailing proposing that it is in the best interest of our children to close
First, let me say that it is unconscionable that you would want to be on the SIC school board with the sole purpose to close the school. As I understand it, none of the four people who signed this “letter” have children in the SIC school. I take great offense to that as I have two children in school with two more coming in the next three years. The school board has always been a way to fight for the rights of the school, not to dissolve the institution.
This brings me to my disagreements with what you have put in this flyer. I quote,
“Our town deserves a proactive school board for our kids and for our taxpayers.”
Do you not realize that if our school closes, there will be no school board in SIC? We will have no representation on the Ocean City School Board. Your positions will be dissolved. This was discussed at previous school board meetings and one of the main reasons to keep our school open.
“This option will provide greater continuity of curriculum and administration and has the potential to reduce school taxes from 25 to 30 percent.”
I would like to know how you base these numbers. The city of
“Historically Better Test Scores”
This is another misleading statement. Your statistical analysis is skewed. You cannot compare these numbers when SIC has for example 10 students who take the proficiency test and OC has 300. One child in SIC who has a problem shows a much greater percentage reduction of proficiency as compared to a school with a larger population. Your flier does not explain this nor is there any attempt to do an accurate analysis in the first place.
“Our costs per pupil have risen to $38,000 and a recent facilities plan called for $2.2 million in required repairs to the roof and upgrade to the ventilation and air conditioning systems.”
First, you mention the cost per student, what you fail to mention is that the
To the $2.2 million renovation, I say let’s fix the school for OUR children. The problem in the past is that everyone talked about closing the school and therefore ignored the problem. I would state to you as school board members or potential members it’s time to fix the problem not close the school. I argue that if we as taxpayers don’t pay to fix the school now we will see our taxes rise even more to fix the building, as it will become city property and will still require those same repairs. This building and or land could easily turn into a white elephant at a much greater cost to the taxpayer.
“As enrollment continues to shrink, our kids are paying the price…in combined grades…in part-time administration…in strained resources.”
Our children are not paying the price. They are getting a quality education in a small class environment and yes in combined grades. I myself am a product of combined grades. Past research has shown that combined / mixed aged classes actually improve performance not the opposite. I would also ask the four people who wish to close this school, When was the last time you were in the school? How did you come up with this statement? Why you feel it is not important enough to fight to improve the school? When was the last time you got involved in school activities, volunteered, or helped our students?
How can closing the school be proactive and in the best interests of our children and our community? I would argue that:
1) Transportation to and from OC may take over an hour each way. This very well may prevent our children from participating in after school activities. This will be very difficult for our youngest children. 5 year olds should not be expected to have a 9 hour school day.
2) Our community will suffer if the school closes. It was the school that convinced my wife and I to reside in Sea Isle. If the school closes, this community will lose the reason why many younger couples with children move here. This will then turn SIC into a community consisting mainly of older people / retirees. These citizens historically have less disposable income. The continuing hikes in property taxes may very well force a lot of these people to pack up and leave. Our school is one of the main reasons that we are a community. You close the school, you lose the community.
3) Now let me add some valid research conducted by Stacy Mitchell, Research Associate, Institute for Local Self-Reliance. The below is an excerpt from a published article in 2000. It is extremely important and relevant and needs to be digested before making any rash decision.
According to the U.S. Department of Education's report, Violence and Discipline Problems in U.S. Public Schools: 1996-97, more than half of small school principals report either no discipline or minor discipline problems, compared to only 14 percent of big school principals. Furthermore, compared to schools with fewer than 300 students, big schools (1,000 or more) have 825 percent more violent crime, 270 percent more vandalism, 394 percent more fights and assaults and 1000 percent more weapons incidents.
Sense of belonging: Large schools function like bureaucracies, small schools more like communities. Small school students are less likely to feel alienated and more likely to report a strong sense of belonging. Teachers in large schools might have 150 students each semester. Students tend to be relatively anonymous and easily slip through the cracks. Small schools enable teachers to work more closely with a smaller number of students. This encourages teachers to go the extra mile and enables them to respond to individual needs. The result is that both students and teachers have a more positive attitude about school.
Extracurricular activities: Studies have found that participation in extracurricular activities improves attendance and academic performance. Students at small schools exhibit higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities and individuals participate in a wider variety of activities. In a school of 2,000 students, only the most talented will be recruited for the basketball team or the drama club. The result is that a small number of gifted students dominate the sports and activity rosters, while the vast majority are relegated to spectator status. In small schools, sports teams, musical groups and clubs depend on broader participation.
The number of extracurricular opportunities does increase with school size. But a twentyfold increase in population produces only a fivefold increase in opportunities. That is, as the school expands, an increasingly smaller percentage of students are needed to fill the available slots.
Curriculum: Even the smallest schools (100-200 students) are able to offer core curricula comparable to schools of more than 1,200. Moreover, small schools tend to be more flexible and allow teachers to exercise greater control over curricula. As a result, small schools more often apply innovative teaching methods, such as team teaching, integrated curriculum and multi-age grouping, all of which have been shown to improve student achievement.
Very small schools may not be able to offer many advanced or specialized courses, but bigness does not guarantee breadth. Researcher William Fowler concluded, "Above 400 students, increases in enrollment made little difference in improving students' access to courses or in offering teachers the opportunity to teach more specialized classes."(1)
In Conclusion, closing the school is a short sighted solution with very possible long term negative consequences. The arguments made by you, Best For Sea Isle Kids, are not totally supported by facts or proper analysis and are therefore misleading residents of
Your group only seems to be concerned with the possibility of lowering school cost to taxpayers and not what is best for our children or this community. You have not addressed the overall tax situation within SIC; the percentage of tax that is actually school tax; and the actual realized cost reduction per family for not only the year the school closes but into the future. This school tax reduction is only theory and has been used as a covert way to forward your agenda to close the school. If you are looking to reduce taxes, let’s focus on reducing our city government spending and not sacrificing our children. No formal study has been made by this group as to the short and long term effects closing the school will have on the community as a whole. This is a disservice to all.
Ronald and Marita Bretzke
FOOTNOTES:
1) Stacy Mitchell
Research Associate, Institute for Local Self-Reliance
Author of The Home Town Advantage
© 2000 Institute for Local Self-Reliance
The above story originally appeared in
The New Rules- Summer 2000
Volume 2, Issue 1
************************************************************************************************* I am writing this letter wearing many “hats”- parent, former teacher, tax payer and a SIC real estate agent. I am so sad to see what is going on in our town in regards to our Public School and Board of Education. To see this huge division of community members is very disturbing. We need both groups to make this town a successful and wonderful place to live. I know we all vary on our positions, but we need to put our differences aside and do what is truly best for our children and our community. On the community end, we are trying to develop our downtown area with the Main Street program. To make this program work and to develop businesses we need to keep our school open. How can we continue to close things and expect our town to survive. How can you have a “ I know people are complaining about our school taxes and how we have to pay over $30K a student for our public school. Well, did you know that Now to talk about our Children, I am not naïve, I know that something can happen to my children anywhere they go and nowhere is truly “safe”, but I feel, and my children feel that they are safe at our school. Come drive by at dismissal time, we have our police officers in the area, and all of the parents waiting to pick up their children watch out for all of the children. It is such a sense of community. I am truly happy with the education that my children are receiving at Sea Isle City Public School. I am not only judging this as a parent, I was a teacher for 14 years, so I know what they should be doing and how they measure up to other schools districts. I have been impressed by the teachers that my children have had and they are doing very well in all areas, academically and socially. Has anyone asked the children what they want? They want to stay at their home school in If the taxes are not going to go down, if it is good for our community development, if it is good for the businesses in town, if the children are getting a good education and are happy there, then it is a no brainer- keep the Sea Isle City Public School open!!
We will not attract new families with younger children without a school. I know people say well young families can’t afford to live here. That is not true in all cases. Recently I met two families at Open Houses who wanted to relocate to Sea Isle because they felt it would be a wonderful place to raise their children, which it is. When they asked about our school I was very honest, told them my experiences with it, and then added that we didn’t know what was going to happen and it might end up closing. Both families said they would not move here if there was no neighborhood school. We potentially lost two families of four who could have added so much to our community!
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