As much as I’ve enjoyed tearing into the small but vocal numbers of Innovation School supporters, I think the time has come to begin the shoring up of our own platform. Watching “man on the street interviews” with numerous decided and undecided voters in our upcoming election, one can’t help but hear the growing cry of Americans demanding candidates to “stop slinging mud” and focus on their best ideas. I agree. And in this agreement, I’ve chosen to put forth my own plan to help stop the blood loss of our students to the New Bedford Global Learning, Nighttime, Sniffling, Sneezing, Coughing, Aching, Stuffy Head, Fever (so you can legally steal 6 million dollars a year) Charter Public School and any possible Innovation School that could find four friendly votes from our School Committee.
Presently, the Global Learning Charter School (from this point forward called “the Charter School”) accepts students entering 5th grade. That’s a particularly sore point for me. If we’ve never met, “Hi, I’m the Band Guy”. You see, my role in our system is to instruct 4th and 5th grade students in our elementary instrumental program. For the last ten years, I’ve returned each September to find that my 5th grade program suffered a tremendous loss over the summer. In one particularly bad year, the elementary band program lost some 50 students to the Charter School. In that year, those students amounted to nearly 13% of ALL band kids. If you’re a middle school teacher, or above, let me ask you a question…
How would YOU like to have had those band kids stay with the NBPS and populate YOUR English, Mathematics, Science, Social or Tech Ed classes? Because you KNOW what the Band Kid brings with them, don’t you? On the whole, they attend school (bringing your overall daily attendance percentage up); they work very hard in their academics (bringing your own data numbers up); and, they do pretty darn well on the MCAS (no need to include anything in this set of parentheses, right?). Band kids come from homes who want MORE for their kids. Homes that support learning. Homes that guarantee their product quality. If I extrapolate the Band Kid bleed over the years the Charter School has been in business, we’re talking some 500 kids who you NEVER met…
500 kids…
Never. met.
Jus’ sayin’…
Now, before you paint me as simplistic and “undernumbered”, I get it…
But… do you?
Why are families flocking to a Level 3 school? (Maybe it’s just me, but my head swims just a little bit every time I ask myself that question.) Year after year, children leave our schools and head for failure. It’s like some sort of Bizzaro World Lemming Death Leap of Students…
“Yeah, it’s Level 3 and only 20% of us are going to graduate from here, but dammmmn, these guys sure throw one helluva great Parent Information Night…”
The Charter School is winning the Coke – Pepsi challenge of the public school students of New Bedford. Little matter that it doesn’t satisfy. It’s carved out a “brand” image that we’re not challenging. Hell, according to the proponents of the Charter School and the Innovation Schools, we’re not even Pepsi.
We’re RC Cola.
Once upon a time, we were THE Real Thing.
What happened then…
Let me tell you a little story. One where the names of the guilty will be removed, but the character of the tale will be illuminating…
Well over fifteen years ago, a series of cuts decimated my department. Staff was cut by more than half at the elementary level. The elementary band program was cut, the one I, along with four colleagues, had created to feed the middle level bands and the formidable New Bedford High School Whaler Marching Band; a band selected twice in my career to represent our Commonwealth in the Presidential Inaugural Parade in Washington, D.C., a band who regularly traveled to Walt Disney World to perform at The Magic Kingdom, a band whose very presence on the fields of competition created fear in every other Division V regiment. At NBHS graduations, the numbers of gold cords hung about the necks of Band Kids was staggering…
Fast forward to 2005. Along with my music colleagues, I was invited to sit in a meeting with a superintendent. When the question as to why our award winning music department had all but crumbled, it was a simple matter to cite cut after cut and redistribution of staff to cover the required need for contract-based classroom music, now taught by the previously assigned band instructors, it finally became clear…
We had blindly cut our brand in the market. And now, that once revered Whaler Band had 14 kids in it, down from a career high of 120.
And brand makes all the difference.
Kids want to be part of a known brand. Kids want to be associated with winners.
There’s so much talk about the drift in kids to these alternative schools, but the reality is, these schools have branded themselves as “THE” place to be. And we’re not competing in the “kid market”. Hey, don’t get me wrong, we’re killing it here in the NBPS, we just don’t advertise our place in the market AND what’s more, we don’t have a tailored marketing system to counteract the competitor’s claims.
But if you’re waiting for the company CEO, the Board of Directors, the brass and the middle management to carve out your niche… forgive me,
I don’t think they “get it”…
Oh, they’re concerned alright. But their degrees, titles and the fact that they aren’t actually creating, handling, packaging and shipping the product, dulls their understanding of the “branding” problem.
It’s time we begin to “brand” ourselves, and in my second chapter I’ll begin a detailed breakdown of exactly how we can begin to do just that…
3 comments:
Thank you Bill for your ongoing reflections.
It truly seems that our school system is now, more than ever, being pulled apart at the seams. Once a united, yes,a very large urban school community, compared to our neighbors, the demands on maintaining that strength by helping our students become successful and well rounded citizens in the NB is being reported as ineffective so ...here we are with "schools within schools" debate vs alternative schools such as private, charter, etc.
I seriously take offense to the implication that I'm an ineffective teacher to my students.
I know MANY teachers who strive on a daily basis to meet all their students needs, and boy do they come with "baggage". But...didn't we as students, once upon a time, also see that in our classes? The only thing is that it might have been not so obvious.
Is this movement for new educational opportunities in a different school setting more of attempt to keep in check the chaos that many of our students bring into the classroom from home? It IS extremely difficult to face the constant barrage of behavioral issues while teaching all my students to believe in themselves, that they will be successful as adults in our community.
So...please everyone, stop fighting and dividing our school system. We need to be united for our students. We owe that to our kids.
Keep these same points and this same argument in mind when City on a Hill looks to take our high schoolers away from us. Is City on a Hill better? -Nope, look at the stats posted on this very blog. Essentially if a child isn't successful they are suspended and/or cut to preserve the stats they are pursuing.
Is this the approach that best helps students? Or does it sound more like the approach that best helps the directors at City on a Hill? Schools are for kids, and let's keep our kids in NBPS so we can help them achieve their goals.
If we bring in the charter schools we are instead helping THEM achieve THEIR goals at the expense of our community.
Thank Bill
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