Pocahontas High: How to Close a School (in 90 Minutes or Less)

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This won't be very long because the truth is that I'm tired...

I attended the continued meeting of the Tazewell County School Board this evening and some questions were answered - kind of.

One question that got answered was how much will be saved by closing Pocahontas High School. Between $1.5 million and $1.8 million, according to Dr. Brenda Lawson, who said she was willing to stake her job on that figure. We weren't allowed as citizens to actually examine the financial numbers. They were mostly read to us, but not until after we'd been dazzled by a gajillion other statistics, so that the average person was "number numb" by the time money got discussed. The problem I saw (I should say "heard") was that "savings" seemed to be defined based on the amount of the PHS budget while most teachers at the school (about 85% of the costs) will simply be transferred to other schools. That's not savings; that's sleight of hand...

Another question that was answered: how is efficiency measured? I talked here about the Virginia Code passage that School Board chairman Mike Dennis read earlier this month when the public hearing was opened. Closing a school is supposed to "contribute to the efficiency of the school division." Efficiency (or the lack of it, at least) was defined tonight. It is disproportionate cost per student. That cost is determined by taking a school's budget and dividing it by the number of students at that school - a process obviously slanted against the county's smaller schools. I hope to have a chart next week some time for you of the cost per student at the county's remaining schools.

I find it difficult to believe that Board members really considered the numbers with any seriousness. I can't understand why the numbers weren't made available to the public before it came to a closure vote. But that's what happens: the first indications that there'd been any math done on the school closure came an hour or less before the vote to close the school. That might be legal, but it's not ethical. It's not open government.

School Board Member David Woodard correctly stated that the process of closing a school ought to take month. Instead, closing Pocahontas High took a few weeks.

Two final notes...

The award for most naïve person in the room goes to board member Steve Davis. Steve told the crowd that he had to take Dr. Lawson's numbers at face value, had to trust them. Wake up Steve! Assuming the best about Dr. Lawson's intentions, everybody occasionally makes a mistake (and having a doctorate doesn't make you immune to that). So Dr. Lawson's best work could have problems and you were elected to look at those numbers.

And the pettiest moment of the night was the refusal to allow State Delegate Dan Bowling to speak. Bowling was in Richmond during the public hearing - fighting to get the school board money in the state budget process. Chairman Mike Dennis didn't want to let Bowling speak tonight because he was "just a citizen" at the meeting and the Board didn't want to reopen public comment. I think we'd have been safe to allow all state delegates present the opportunity to speak. I used to like Mike. Oh well...