A Mommy Story

There’s a reason I’m hesitant to join advocacy groups.

Since I was little, if there was something I was passionate about, I hunted down every fact, exposed truths, and worked to educate others, persuading them to open their eyes to injustice and also take action. I can’t count the number of groups I was involved with in my teens and twenties: animal rescues, save the children, food drives…

It’s exhausting.

As a parent, I’ve been forced to rein in my causes to fight for, if only because I cannot expend that much energy on them while still working and being a good mom. So I’ve been more careful with my choices, although anything directly involving my kids generally comes right to the top of the list.

The transportation debacle launched school issues to the top of my priority list two weeks ago, and I started speaking out regarding the need for improvements to our district’s transportation department. We’re still in a bit of a stalemate with that.

Fast forward a week. A friend alerted me to a special meeting of the Columbus Council of PTAs on October 8, where the Columbus Mayor would be present to discuss the district’s levy issue. The levy committee was also asking for PTA members to lend their endorsement to the levy, requiring a vote.

Getting into all of the details and problems with the levy would take 3-4 posts entirely, and completely bore those of you who don’t live in this area. So I’ll sum up: the levy asks for a LOT of money from a 24% property tax hike, gives some of that money to private charter schools and private businesses, limits the power of the elected school board, makes a lot of promises with no real details on who will benefit and how they’ll do it, and still has the strong chance of no accountability if they squander the money. Again. And they’re going to cut $200 million from the existing budget, without saying where those cuts will come from.

Also, it assumes that the way to fix failing schools is to throw more money at them to make the problem go away, which definitely isn’t an answer. If you’re really interested in learning more, there’s a lot of info out there. I’d be happy to share some links.

Anyway. I’m a PTA member at our local school, like many parents, so I agreed to go to this meeting, hoping that the superintendent or someone from the school board might be there so I could talk to them about our transportation issue. (None of them were in attendance.) I made arrangements to meet Aaron after work to hand off the kids so he could take them to gymnastics while I drove to the other side of Columbus for this meeting.

The Meeting

I was nervous walking into the room. I didn’t recognize anyone there at first, and I worried about speaking up against the school district. I thought I’d be the minority in the room. My friends arrived about five minutes later, and others recognized me from my earlier blog posts about the bus, so I didn’t feel quite so afraid.

The mayor was running late, and this group of parents were ready to get things moving. They had babysitters charging by the hour and others inconvenienced by their commitment to be at this meeting. Suddenly, one of the parents announced, “I’d like to move that this council NOT endorse Issues 50 & 51.” It was immediately seconded. The president of the council asked if we wanted to vote now before the mayor had a chance to speak, and the room erupted in affirmative responses.

It was suddenly clear that quite possibly everyone there was against the levy. The president suggested discussion of the motion. At that point reasons why people opposed the levy began spilling out. There were overall concerns about the lack of detail regarding the business plan, including measuring success and holding people accountable for meaningful improvement.

Some made the point that many of the commission’s recommendations for improving the district could be implemented without any money. Others explained that they had attended all of the focus group meetings for the levy, designed to allow the public to provide input, and felt that none of the concerns expressed by parents or community members were heard or addressed in those meetings.

Then the vote was taken. All in favor say aye: “AYE” echoed in unison around the room. All opposed, nay: …silence. Not a single person said nay. We had unanimously voted to not endorse Issues 50 & 51. I was hoping there would be those who felt similar to me, but I didn’t expect a one-sided vote. Were there no parents who felt strongly enough in favor of the levy to come speak their minds and vote? Or are most parents feeling the same as us and concerned that our kids won’t really benefit from the vague language?

At that point, it was asked how the public would be notified of our decision. Another motion was made to give a public statement on the council’s unanimous decision to vote no and why. The vote passed unanimously. You can listen to it here:

Music Hosting – Embed Audio – Columbus Council of PTAs una…

Here’s the link to the audio file for those reading this on mobile.

We then waited and waited for Mayor Coleman to arrive. A little over an hour after the start of the meeting, he finally showed up, having been briefed on his way there about the vote we had already taken. I was curious as to what he might say to help us better understand the design of this plan, perhaps giving us more details about the private partners or the plans to ensure the money isn’t being siphoned to private interests with little in return.

Instead, the mayor began by expressing his displeasure and disappointment with our vote and chiding us for our decision, saying he hoped we’d reconsider and vote again. Then, when parents told him how they’ve attended all of the meeting and spoke at them, and yet the public’s input was not considered for this levy, he said this was the first time he’s ever heard that the public didn’t feel they had input into the plan. When a gentleman near me gently challenged this, the mayor erupted at him, yelling defensively. You can hear all of it here:

Play Music – Audio Hosting – Columbus Mayor at Columbus C…

Here’s the link to the audio file for those reading this on mobile.

Mayor Coleman stayed for about 15 minutes, then decided he wasn’t taking any more questions and left. He didn’t have any answers for us. He knew few details on the plan, insisting that it would be handled after the levy passes. He couldn’t answer basic questions regarding the plan’s suggestions for recruiting and retaining teachers, even accidentally saying at one point that Columbus City Schools needed to get good teachers, before backtracking once he realized the insult he had just spoken.

He also reiterated the stale talking point used in the countless commercials and near-daily mailers that business and government were ready to help, but it was time for the parents and community to “step up” for their kids’ education.

Um, PARDON? Forgive the outrage, Mr. Mayor, but don’t you think it’s a little insulting to tell parents to step up? Never mind, don’t forgive the outrage – to belittle us and try to pin the blame for failing schools on us is wrong.

If you want to blame something, try blaming poverty, or segregation, or a minimum wage so low that parents work multiple jobs and leave their older kids to raise their younger ones. Why not work on improving those issues in city government first, since you proved you’re not the education expert you claimed to be in the Dispatch three weeks ago?

It gets worse. (Wednesday)

The next day, the committee that was formed at the meeting to develop a public statement for the media ran into problems immediately. (I was a part of this committee.) The first draft, including reasons some of the individuals present at the meeting expressed for their vote, was criticized for including the reasons, despite the vote taken at the meeting including the words “and why.”

Not an hour after that first email, my home phone rang. Caller ID said it was the Columbus Dispatch. I was working, so I ignored it, thinking it was likely a sales pitch. Instead, it was a reporter who knew about the meeting vote and wanted to get more information from me. How did he know my phone number? I ignored it and continued working. Soon I had a tweet notification, followed by an email, all from the same reporter.

A short while later another parent who attended the meeting sent me a link to a Dispatch article. It was vague, but already reporting that we had voted not to endorse Issues 50 & 51, without providing any of the concerns expressed, and then provided a rosy picture of the levy. It would seem someone from that meeting had already leaked the information rather than waiting for our official release.

I disagreed with the committee over the wording, arguing that the press release had no useful information to share without giving some of the reasons that individuals voted the way they did, especially since someone had already told the media. (No, I have no idea who it was.) Then there were thoughts about whether the Columbus Council of PTAs vote meant that we didn’t endorse it (as in, we don’t support the levy, which it was clear that was the intent) or if it meant that we just weren’t taking a position.

As you can guess, that same mysterious someone had told the press that as a group we had voted to not take a position on the levy. The press release was not going to happen at this point.

So much information was flying around the back-channels that by the end of the night, I was fed up with the half-truths. I carved out some time and emailed the Dispatch reporter back, giving him the whole story as witnessed by me, as well as the audio recording of the mayor that had been provided to me by another parent.

And then today.

I woke up this morning to more emails and a link to the same Dispatch article. It had been updated with some of the information I provided to the reporter, as well as information from other parents.

It also included statements from the mayor’s office, claiming our meeting “was a small sample that does not represent the membership of the organization,” and downplaying the vote. Seriously?

They were the ones who forced this vote to happen to begin with, because they thought the PTA important enough to flaunt as an endorsement. Yet when the vote didn’t go their way, they chose to make us look like a few radical parents who secretly got together for our vote. Wrong. It was a public meeting, advertised to all PTA groups, and the importance of the meeting was stressed in the invite. If those in support of the levy chose not to attend, then they chose not to have their vote count.

That’s the way democracy works – if it matters to you, then you’ll be sure to vote. The mayor had better hope they feel more strongly about going out to vote on election day.

The other insult in the article was the Council PTA president claiming that she voted no, discrediting those of us claiming it was unanimous. As you can hear in the audio above, she didn’t vote no. She did tell us, long after the vote and during a break while waiting for the mayor, that she was in support of the levy, but that support was not voiced during either vote. It was a unanimous vote.

Look, I know our school district has problems. That’s obvious. But if a business tried to present this school plan as a business plan to request investment funding, they’d be laughed out the door at the lack of details, along with the flaws in the few details that are in the plan. We’ve tried to throw money at the district’s problems before – we voted for the 2008 school levy, also full of similar promises, and that money vanished without better schools or any benefit to our kids.

Last week, when Aaron and I petitioned the school board and the superintendent for the need to improve their solutions with the transportation office, the superintendent, Dr. Good, had this to say to us in an email response:

While I’ve very limited opportunity to craft a more thorough response to your correspondence, please be assured that I (and although I do not speak for the Board, I know they share the sentiment) am very concerned, but highly committed to finding solutions that are effective while honoring our pledge to be prudent fiscal stewards.

Well then, if being prudent fiscal stewards is the game plan for transportation, then let’s make it the game plan for the entire district’s operations. You don’t need millions of dollars more to correct the school district’s problems. Often, the best innovation happens when resources are limited. It’s time to prove they can be creative thinkers.

And, like the new Common Core standards require for all students, please show your work.