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

Note: Visit my education blog, The Green Cup

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...

Academic Performance in Tazewell County, Va. (and the Absence of Real Reasons to Close Pocahontas High School)

Note: Visit my education blog, The Green Cup

If we were to have a sane, rational data-driven discussion in Tazewell County about how our schools are doing, academically, a couple of things would become clear.

1. The high school with the best academic scores in the county (as measured by the Virginia Standards of Learning test) is Graham High School.
   
2. Pocahontas High School's SOL scores are significantly better than the scores at Tazewell High School, and (when taken as a whole) not much different than the sightly better scores at Richlands High School.
   
3. The middle school with the best SOL scores in the county is Graham Middle School.
   
4. The middle school grades at Pocahontas are doing quite acceptably - significantly better than Richaldns Middle School or Tazewell Middle school.

The conclusions is simple: there's no academic justification for closing Pocahontas High School. It would be easier to justify closing Tazewell Middle School or Richlands Middle School for academic reasons.

2006-07 Middle School SOL Scores	PHS	GMS	TMS	RMS
Math 6	73	57	37	38
Reading 6	91	89	82	77
Math 7	52	58	50	53
Reading 7	71	88	70	77
Math 8	73	84	81	78
Reading 8	86	92	81	81
Writing 8	86	91	92	91
Average	76	80	70	71

So, how do I know that SOL scores at Pocahontas are qualitatively different than Tazewell High, Tazewell Middle, or Richlands Middle? I know because the Commonwealth of Virginia say so. You see, Pocahontas is fully accredited by the state, while THS, TMS, and RMS are not.

You can read erport cards on any school in the state right here. But to make life a little easier, I've put together a little chart for you...

2006-07 SOL Scores for Tazewell County High Schools	RHS	THS	GHS	PHS	RMS	TMS	GMS
English	96	94	88	87	82	84	90
Math	87	66	96	75	66	67	70
History	88	74	95	89	78	84	79
Science	84	81	93	90	90	82	94
Average SOL Score	89	79	93	85	79	79	83

Open Letter to the Tazewell County School Board

Members of the Tazewell County School Board:

I write this letter to suggest to you that your authority to close Pocahontas High School is limited. As I read the code, you may only close the school if doing so increases the efficiency of the county school system in some significant way. That has yet to be demonstrated in any convincing manner. More important than the issue of whether closing PHS will improve efficiency, I believe that you owe it to the county to have an coherent policy that is open and transparent on when school closures and consolidations are to take place - a policy that can be applied county wide at the conclusion of this current process.

School Board Chairman Mike Dennis opened the public hearing on March 3rd by referring to a passage of code that gives the school board the authority to close a school. The key concept seemed to be “efficiency.” And I think the section was #4 22.1-79 of the Virginia Code.

A school board shall:

4. Provide for the consolidation of schools or redistricting of school boundaries or adopt pupil assignment plans whenever such procedure will contribute to the efficiency of the school division;

As I understood what was read from the code, the Board has the authority to close a school IF closing that school makes the county school system more efficient. And as a corollary, that authority does not exist if you fail to show improved efficiency.

As I listened to that section of code being read on March 3rd at the public hearing, it struck me that closing Pocahontas High School is not a simple matter of the Board’s discretion. It seems you have to justify (and, by inference, document) how the closure will make the county more efficient. The purpose of a public hearing is NOT to convince you, the Board, to do one thing or another; instead the hearing provides information that may help you as board members decide whether or not closing the school will improve the efficiency of the school system. But at the end of the day, you as Board members (not the public) have the burden of being persuasive.

Nationally, school closures usually relate to one of three issues. Either a school is closed because the facility is in decline; or because the academic health of the school seems beyond repair (that reason rarely stands alone, since changing the personnel at a school can often solve that problem); or because running that school is an expensive burden that can be alleviated through consolidation.

The facilities at PHS are not in decline. The school’s SOL scores are higher than the SOL scores are Tazewell High School. This is especially true for children with disabilities. Anyone can compare the two school by looking here at Pocahontas High data and at Tazewell High data.

That leaves finances. Before voting on the closure of any school, I think your Board is obligated (ethically, at least) to produce a comprehensive analysis of the financial impact of closing that school. How many teaching positions will be eliminated in order to save money? Will new positions have to be created elsewhere? How will transportation costs change? How will utility costs change at schools accepting students from the school being closed? And so forth…

How you could vote on the issue without such a document to inform your decision is beyond me. Such a document should be produced and released to the public, and the public should be allowed to comment on that document before there is a vote. If you vote without such a document, you will be simply closing your eyes, gritting your teeth and saying “I don’t know why, but this seems good to me…”

At the end of this process, whether PHS is closed or not, I think you have a responsibility (now that this can of worms is open) to produce something like a policy or a set of guidelines for making these decisions. If PHS is closed for financial reasons, we need to be able to say unequivocally that you could NOT have saved more money by closing Raven Elementary or Springville Elementary. Reading programs under No Child Left Behind focus on grades K-3; and yet in the Bluefield area the third grade at Graham Intermediate is physically separated from grades K-2 at Dudley Primary. Is there money to be saved by consolidating those two schools into a single elementary school?

There needs to be some rational, objective, measurable process for determining when a school needs to be closed. Student population will decline and facilities will age over the next decade or so. You need to be able to point to a process that you can use to determine which school is closed next - sacrificed to efficiency. If you can’t justify the decision to close PHS in a publicly available document on finances, facilities, or academics, I’d suspect that closing the school violates the state code Mike read at the beginning of the March 3rd public hearing – and that you could possibly be in some way liable.

Greg Cruey