Spearfish High School will have a new English teacher this fall. Eric Lappe is leaving the prairie comforts of teaching social studies in Wilmot to come teach Spearfish youth the joys of literature, research, and composition. This work is important: every student has to take English, a core subject area that is key to all the standardized tests that will be used to rate our school and our teachers. Lappe will have the opportunity to work with almost every student who goes through Spearfish High School, to directly contribute to the skills they will need to learn, to communicate, to persuade, and to appreciate and enhance the vast wealth of Western culture.

But what’s the front-page story in last night’s local paper?

Black Hills Pioneer screen cap, 2012.05.10

The Black Hills Pioneer staff devote four words to Lappe’s new full-time assignment as an English teacher. They pour out ink discussing his additional part-time assignment as the new girls basketball coach. Interested parents learn nothing about the skills he will bring to the classroom, his particular interests in certain literary genres or periods or the application of social media to research and collaborative writing—you know, the kinds of things that will benefit a hundred-plus of our kids every day. But the press highlights the full coaching resume, right down to the fact that Lappe played for the 1992 Class B state champion Harold Cardinals and won a Mr. Basketball award for his high school hoop-shooting.

If we take the Black Hills Pioneer‘s ink spilled at face value, the efforts Lappe will exert for a couple hours a day during a few months of practice and games with a couple dozen physically elite girls will add far more value to the community than the far larger efforts he will make all day, every day throughout the school year for a much larger and more diverse crowd of our girls and boys.

Teaching English is a vital function of our public schools. Coaching basketball is fun but peripheral to our mission. In headlining Spearfish’s latest hire’s coaching duties and ignoring his teaching portfolio, the Black Hills Pioneer sends exactly the opposite message. BHP is boosting the jockocracy and marginalizing what matters to many more students and taxpayers. If reporters can take the time to research a coach’s list of basketball awards, it can take the time to compile a list of a teacher’s much more important list of classroom achievements.

Welcome to the show, Mr. Lappe. I look forward to hearing your kids gripe about all the heavy reading you assign and helping your kids proofread their really big research papers.

I like open enrollment. It’s the closest a sparsely populated rural state like South Dakota can get to offering practical school choice without shortchanging lower-income students and gutting the public school system (which is really what voucher fantasists want to do).

But the nice folks who voted for open enrollment in 1997 (including then-Senators Dennis Daugaard and Mike Rounds) have sent us down a path that many schools do not like. Thirty public school districts have proposed a measure to make open-enrolling students ineligible for varsity sports for one year. Currently, students who open enroll and join a new school on the first day of school can participate in all SDHSAA activities right away. Students who change schools by open enrollment during the school year must sit out games for about nine weeks.

Interestingly, the amendment text and ballot include a rationale for approving the change but no summary of opposing views. Here’s is the rationale offered by the thirty sponsoring schools:

1. Transferring greatly affects parity. Schools are classified by enrollment, yet someone could grab the best athletes from other towns and compete in the class their school falls under according to enrollment. Right now there is absolutely no deterrent from stopping people from “loading up” and essentially creating all star teams that would in essence be competing against teams that have been built in more traditional manners, or worse yet, have been depleted because solid athletes have left to join these “assembled” teams.
2. We are just tipping the iceberg with the detriments of full fledged open enrollment with no obstacles in place for transferring. The practice of recruiting, whether it is by a coach, parent, booster, or team members in a summer league or traveling team must be curtailed to keep the competitive balance and protect the integrity of school teams. Other states have discovered this as well and have taken similar steps to accomplish those goals.
3. Help keep teams stable.
4. Keep threats to leave under control. The way it is now, if an athlete doesn’t like something or was disciplined and the parent does not agree the parent holds the trump card by saying if you do not change something, we will open enroll to another school.
5. Make students and parents deal with problems instead of running from them.
6. The original intent of the open enrollment statute was to provide academic opportunities for students who may not have been afforded those opportunities in their home school district. It does not appear that this is the case anymore. Open enrollment must be considered much more carefully or we will have a continued decline in the very things we should be teaching our students in co-curricular activities. Things like loyalty to your school, teammates, coaches, and community. We are facilitating the “ME FIRST” society and the attitude of “I’ll do what is best for me”—we should not. I question whether we are teaching students the correct things by letting them go to where things are set up better for them to win a state title—that should not be what we are all about [Proposed Amendment #1, SDHSAA Annual Meeting Agenda, 2012.04.17].

I have no data on just how extensive athlete recruiting is in South Dakota high school athletics. But the rationale for this amendment appears to be focused too much on state titles and not enough on the core issue of student participation. If supporters of this anti-open-enrollment amendment can demonstrate that open enrollment is taking away student opportunities to participate, then they have a good argument. But there is a difference between offering students equal opportunities to play basketball and ensuring “parity” in the chance to win a state trophy. (If that “parity” were a primary goal, we’d make West Central’s running backs wear ankle weights.)

Rationale #6, on loyalty, smells of the same misguided sense of school “ownership” of students that motivates Madison’s support for restricting the free travel of buses from other school districts. What loyalty do students and parents owe to a school where they feel they are not getting the best education available? Why should we punish students and families who decide in good conscience that the best solution for their problem is not to keep forcing their square-peg kids into the round holes of their current school district but to seek a different educational setting?

Madison is among the thirty schools pushing this restriction on open-enrolling students. (The SDHSAA lists 31, but KJAM says Oldham-Ramona is incorrectly included on that list.) Seventeen of those thirty schools saw net losses in student numbers due to open enrollment in the 2009-2010 school year. But the amendment also has support from Chester, a destination for many sporty open enrollers from Madison.

Note that the proposed restriction isn’t as bad as it could be. Open-enrolled students would only have to sit out varsity games. They could still practice and compete at the freshman and junior varsity levels… assuming that the school to which they are open enrolling has a large enough program to muster freshman and JV teams alongside the varsity squad. And of course, open enrollers could still participate immediately in the activities that will really boost their test scores and get them into college: the amendment does not restrict participation in debate, music, and other fine arts activities. The omission of fine arts activities from this debate probably reflects as much the merit of fine arts coaches who don’t let competition cloud their number-one priority of serving their students as it reflects the inordinate preoccupation of some administrators with athletics.

The South Dakota High School Activities Association approved putting this measure to a vote of its members schools at its April 17 annual meeting. Schools have until May 29 to discuss the matter and submit their votes to SDHSAA. Whichever way you lean, if you consider open enrollment, school choice, and student participation important, now might be a good time to jawbone you local school administrators and board members.

Speaking of sports, the Sioux Falls School District wants to make more money on its games. The Sioux Falls school board will give second reading April 12 to a new activities broadcast access fee policy. Media outlets would pay the following amounts for play-by-play broadcast rights:

• Volleyball, Football, Wrestling, Girls Basketball, Boys Basketball, Track, Cheer & Dance Competitions — $125 per event
• Double-Headers (boys & girls on same night, or football), Dakota Relays, President’s Bowl, Festival of Bands, and all tournaments (day long or multi-day) — $250 per event
• Entire Sports Season for all schools (includes all home games, double-headers, and tournaments for one sport {e.g. boys basketball is one sport}), excluding Dakota Relays, President’s Bowl, Festival of Bands, and postseason tournaments which are contracted by the South Dakota High School Activities Association — $1,000 per season

The new policy would impose no fees on highlights or live updates… which makes me wonder: suppose I suffer a traumatic brain injury and decide to spend my evenings going to high school sporting events and live-blogging and Tweeting. I would assume that activity would fall under “live updates” and thus not incur a fee. But suppose I’m really fast at the keyboard and my Tweeting becomes a play-by-play. Does SF Lincoln’s Jim Dorman come over to the bleachers and ask me to fork over $125?

Now part of me thinks charging the media to cover high school activities is counter-productive. Schools can use good publicity; a radio or television broadcast puts the school’s name and mascot out in front of the parents and voters in a relatively positive, feel-good event. And aren’t the things our kids do in our public schools matters of public record that everyone should be able to see and enjoy?

I guess we do charge folks for tickets to games and plays and concerts, so it’s not beyond logic for schools to assert that their extracurricular contests are an entertainment service for which they can charge users a fee. And sports draw a big enough audience that the Sioux Falls School District can likely find some media takers who know they can recoup that fee with just one 30-second ad.  But don’t expect towns any smaller to make much headway with similar policies.

Eager viewer Michael Black was telling me last week that I needed to drop everything and watch Patrick Lalley talk about education on last week’s podcast from that Sioux Falls paper. Mr. Lalley has spared me the trouble and published his commentary, which consists mostly of the observation that we can solve education’s woes (but again, what woes? how are South Dakota’s schools failing?) by getting rid of high school sports. Lalley’s colleague Josh Verges offers some supporting numbers, such as the $46-per-resident cost of extracurriculars.

Is that all?

The Displaced Plainsman drops bombs on the Lalley-Verges distraction:

Students will expend the same effort, if not more, on club sports that they currently spend on co-curricular activities.

Eliminating sports will lead to the elimination of other extra-curriculars like music and debate.  The former has been shown to help develop math skills; the latter helps develop critical thinking.

Eliminating sports will do nothing to change the testing for the sake of testing focus that Pierre has adopted from Washington.

I suspect that Lalley and Verges proposal will have at least two bold effects.  Small towns will find ways to close down “public schools” and create education development commissions that fund private schools with sports programs.  Larger communities will see parochial or private schools proliferate while public schools die.

Lalley correctly asserts a successful future depends on the ability to think critically.  Unfortunately his proposal doesn’t exemplify critical thought.  Focusing on way to change the culture so that it values education instead of devalues it would be a good place to start [LK, "A Bold Proposal That Wasn't," The Displaced Plainsman, 2012.03.21].

I’m not prepared to wholly dismiss Lalley’s suggestion, but his point is at best unclear. Lalley says something about “the vicious creep of intellectual mediocrity,” but he focuses on less-than-satisfactory student test scores. If “mediocrity” in public schools comes from kids spending too much time on sports, then, as LK points out, privatizing sports won’t have much effect on students’ academic performance; it will just separate the rich kids from the poor kids more. It will also remove the leverage schools have to use sports to encourage kids to keep their grades up. When schools run sports, they can enforce no-pass-no-play policies. Totally privatize sports, and those coaches will be completely free to ignore failing grades and put their big bruisers on the field.

If Lalley is concerned about intellectual mediocrity, perhaps he should turn his focus from those darn kids to the people teaching and coaching them. Permit me to step on the thin ice Lalley avoids: maybe the problem is not that schools offer students extracurricular sports, but that the schools over-prioritize sports in hiring decisions.

Consider: Madison High School had a veteran high school social studies teacher, Rick Jensen. Last year, somewhat to Jensen’s surprise, the school board moved him down to teach middle school social studies. This move made room for the school district to hire new teacher Adam Ericsson to take over Mr. Jensen’s high school position… and to coach girls basketball. Now I don’t have the test scores for Mr. Ericsson’s students handy, and his school website is locked up behind a password, so I can’t speak to any intellectual mediocrity. However, Coach Ericsson did lead the Bulldog girls to a 3-18 record.

Madison had experience and talent in its high school social studies classroom, yet it moved those qualities out of the way to make room for a coach. And I know from my experience applying for teaching jobs that schools often couple their academic needs with their desire for sports coaches. I also know this focus is not as strong in hiring debate or interp or theater directors. Schools often tap their English teachers for such duties, even if the teachers have no experience formally coaching such activities, assuming that their regular teaching experience with essays and plays will carry them through coaching those speech activities (and often, with a little enthusiasm and stick-to-it-iveness, those skills do make a decent speech coach).

So is it possible that, if there is some dreadful “intellectual mediocrity” in our K-12 schools, it comes in part from overlooking some top teaching candidates and hiring teachers whose classroom skills may be good enough but who can also each dribbling and tackling? That’s not to say that everyone who coaches sports lacks academic chops. Those skill sets can overlap, but they don’t always, and a system that prioritizes hiring coaches won’t always get the best of both worlds.

I’m not sure how big the problem of hiring coaches instead of teachers may be. If HB 1234 isn’t referred to a public vote, maybe the South Dakota Education Reform Advisory Council it creates should investigate the consideration of academic and athletic credentials in teacher hiring.

…and other, less important spaces.

Last September, Madison High School principal Sharon Knowlton claimed that gym space is as vital to education as science labs. A local fundraising committee agrees with The Displaced Plainsman and me that Knowlton’s claim is absurd. In a report on naming rights to be submitted to the Madison Central School Board at its Monday, January 9 meeting, the folks hoping to raise money for the new gym/high school renovation project contend that gym is actually ten times more important than science:

$350,000 for the gym, $35,000 for the science wing. The market speaks: gym matters ten times more than science.

Now let’s be generous: the exact words attributed to Knowlton by the press were “the proposed new gym space is as vital to the school as space for the music programs, updated science labs and renovation to the school’s auditorium.” Add up all those spaces—science wing, science class rooms, band and chorus rooms plus practice rooms, auditorium—and you get $310,000. Add up the new gym and its locker rooms, and you get $405,000. So really, according to the committee’s read of the market, all that gym space is only 30% more vital than music, science, and a good auditorium. Knowlton was likely just rounding down to minimize harsh blog coverage.

Also noteworthy: given the locker room prices, we apparently consider our boyhoopsters 33% more valuable than our girl hoopsters. Your Title IX interpretation of that difference is welcome.

Noteworthy by absence: the opportunity to sponsor the glittering and spacious new bathrooms, which Knowlton considered a pretty vital selling point during her sales-pitch tours of the building. I was hoping $100 would put “MadvilleTimes.com” over a toilet… which is pretty close to where Sharon would like to put it.

The board still has to discuss just how these naming rights will be realized. Classroom sponsors, don’t settle for a mere plaque on the wall. Demand the kind of live broadcast requirements that big sports facility sponsors get. No longer should the morning announcements say, “Math quiz bowl team will meet in Mr. Thurow’s room.” The announcements should have to say, “Math team will meet in the Radio Shack Math Room.” When students need to come to the office, the secretary should have to hit the P.A. with, “Ludwig Lutz and Ingrid Ingqvist, please report to the Prostrollo Motors/Coca-Cola Adminiplex.”

Boy, those corporate classroom names would have posting rounds for the Mundt Debate Tournament overwhelming. Good thing Madison got that problem out of the way.

Both Madison and Sioux Falls voted to spend big tax dollars on sports arenas last night. The victors in big government sports spending are bubbling with language of progress and moving forward. In Madison, at least, I find it difficult to view succumbing to the extortion of administrators and voters who won’t put education and safety above their lust for a bigger gym as a sign of progress.

So as the Madison Central School District puts my tax dollars to work building someone else’s sports fantasies (and let’s watch now to see whose names are engraved on our new temple to the jockocracy), I turn elsewhere in the country to find signs of progress. And indeed, Election Night brings more hopeful signs of real cultural progress:

• Mississippi voters rejected the absurd notion that a fertilized egg is a person. (Next up: applying that same notion to repealing corporate personhood.)
• My friend Toby got to help Ohioans reject Governor John Kasich’s effort to strip public workers of their collective bargaining rights. Good vote, Toby!
• Maine voters rejected their Republicans’ effort to make it harder to vote.

So while sports fans in Madison and Sioux Falls celebrate their taxpayer-funded ability to sit together in bigger crowds, voters of all stripes around the country can celebrate the democratic defense of much more important liberties in Mississippi, Ohio, and Maine.

Update 06:38 MST: Oh yeah, and Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, the guy who wrote Arizona’s really bad anti-immigration law, lost his recall election last night. Rejecting xenophobic scapegoating for seeking common ground: now that’s progress!

Update 06:44 MST: Penn State reminds us what enabling the jockocracy gets you.

Update 07:18 MST: Dr. Blanchard points out that Mississippians did pass strong limits on eminent domain for private development. Hooray for property rights!

Orland organic ag mogul Charlie Johnson served on the Madison High School renovation committee this summer. That committee discussed the financing and campaign strategy for the new gym and renovation plan on which voters will issue judgment tomorrow. In this guest column, Johnson discusses the benefits and risks of the financial plan offered by the school district.

When I agreed to be part of a study committee to review possibilities for the renovation of the Madison High School, I made a personal pledge that I would not advocate a pro or con position on a final proposal coming forth from the committee. I saw my involvement being one who could offer advice and perspective. That is my intention here with this open letter to Madville Time readers.

The request of Madison voters to approve 6.3 million in general obligation bonds is part of an overall financing package for a 14.6 million renovation project at the high school. The other portion will be financed with 8.3 million in certificates of capital outlay. For the present time until or unless major amounts of private money are secured, the total project will be 100% debt financed secured by the taxable valuation of real estate property located within the school district. The total debt burden by property owners will be approximately 14.6 million. The annual debt service for the project will run about 1.45 million for four years (1 million capital outlay plus around 440,000 for the bond redemption payment). After 2016, when the elementary school is mostly paid off, the annual debt service will be about 1.14 million(700,000 for capital outlay plus the 440,000 bond payment) for the next 16 years. The proposal last February called for 16.9 million in bonding with 1.12 million in annual debt service for 25 years. As you can see our annual debt service will be about the same with each proposal for years 5 through 20. The earlier proposal would have called for payments years 21 thru 25.

What does all of this mean? The patrons of the school district are being offered a 14.5 million project with annual payments for 20 years versus the earlier proposal of 16.9 million payable over 25 years. In each case, the total cost is financed by property tax dollars upfront until or unless fund raising dollars occur.

What the school board is offering is a type of “bridge financing” so that we can finish payments on one project and begin construction soon on another. This is in contrast to the earlier proposal which called for bond financing for the entire amount. There is some inherit risks with this approach. Again I remind you that I was part of the discussion and input to this financial package. The risks are two fold in part. A bond issue is like a one punch meal ticket. Use it and you can be assured there is little or no chance for a second issuance until the first one is paid off. The second risk is committing a major amount of capital outlay revenue to annual debt service. For 20 years the board will sacrifice some flexibility to address future major projects or provide tax relief in the form of lowering the 3 mill max on capital outlay levy. But keep in mind we have financed the middle school and elementary school with capital outlay revenue for 20 some years already. With this proposal we will be doing the same for another 20 years.

I think the study committee came up with a better plan for voters this time around. Whether it is a good enough plan? That is for voters to decide. The need for school and classroom upgrades is very apparent. The choice for some major changes and extra foot print to the school requires patrons to approve additional debt financing. That is why we have an election. We seek to secure the wisdom of the voter. For one special day, you have more decision making power than the school board or the administration. Please exercise your right and, yes, carry out your responsibility.

—Charlie Johnson, Orland, SD, 2011.11.07

Charlie’s right: it’s your money, your responsibility. Discuss the issue with your neighbors; check the blueprints, your budget, and your priorities; and get out and vote tomorrow!

Contrary to Bob Mercer’s confusion, I remain a registered voter in Lake County, like hundreds of other registered voters spend much less time and have much less stake in my home turf.

Last week I exercised my right to vote in the Madison Central School District’s latest bond election. (Mitch! Don’t lose that envelope!) I voted the same way I did in 2007, when the Madison Central School Board asked me to do pretty much the same thing: spend about six million dollars to build a bigger gym. The difference is that this time the gym boosters are trying to hold necessary architectural improvements hostage, saying that I must approve their 2500-seat sports arena in order to get the science labs, better lighting, fire safety upgrades, and other fixes for the high school.

I don’t respond well to such coercion.

I also don’t respond well to absurdity. I don’t respond well to a high school principal asserting that a gym is as important as science labs and the arts in fulfilling the academic mission of the public school system. I don’t respond well to labeling a 2500-seat spectator arena a “physical education classroom.” I don’t respond well to protecting spectator seats at the expense of real classroom space.

But most of all, I don’t respond well to a school administration that refuses to consider alternatives and peddles its preferred plan as the only possible solution to real problems. There are always alternatives. I continue to wait for the Madison Central administration to find a better one…

…like the one staring us all in the face: Madison Central has found $8.3 million in existing debt capacity that does not require a public vote to spend on capital outlay improvements. We could replace a lot of lights, remodel a lot of classrooms, and build a lot of fire doors with that money. Let the gym wait; take care of needs right now.

Election happens tomorrow, Madison neighbors! Get out and vote!