The evening news says that Thursday night the Rochester school board will be voting on budget-balancing job cuts proposed by the superintendent.
That’s kind of true, in that that is what will happen. But it’s only partly true, in that it means so much more.
This vote, understood completely, is a seminal juncture in district history, the point at which it decides what its future will be.
More of the decades-long educational failure which has rendered Rochester one of the worst performing districts in the nation, or an upward course where hard things are done and young lives are empowered by the provision of a quality, basic, public education.
Here’s the dynamic.
Incompetent and scheming previous superintendents, oblivious board members, completely malfeasant senior staffers, and an autocratic and self-serving teachers union. That’s the context. Then in comes a new superintendent. Some Boy Scout out of Washington, D.C. And, lo and behold, he turns out to be a straight shooter, a guy who does it by the book, and a guy who can do math.
And so he discovers that the last administration had buried a $30 million land mine in the ill-kept district books. Thirty million dollars and he’s got a couple of months to figure out what to do.
And that, in the short term, is job cuts.
The administrators union came up with concessions, to pare down the number of its members who got pink slips. Repeatedly given the same opportunity, the teachers union did not.
Instead, the teachers union and its hoary president went nuclear. Accustomed to wrapping superintendents and boards around its little finger, the union called for daily protests – mostly student and parent marches – and two days of work-to-rule threats before the school board vote. Instead of conciliation, it was mockery, the union president’s disrespect for the superintendent spit out with ever bitter word.
The union demanded that the cuts be put off, that some appeal to magic money from the state capital be counted on, that public pressure be put on the board members to reject the superintendent’s plan.
Even though the price of doing so would be high.
A one-month delay in implementing the cuts would mean more than $1.6 million in additional deficit. A three-month delay in implementing the cuts means that the district becomes insolvent in March – paychecks would bounce by St. Patrick’s Day.
That’s what’s at stake monetarily.
What’s at stake institutionally is this superintendent and the school board itself.
If the school board rejects the superintendent’s cuts, it might as well fire him, because he will be fatally wounded as a leader in this district. In the first standoff, if the board backs the teachers union instead of the superintendent, there won’t be another standoff, and there won’t be any forward motion. The union president is the one constant in a history of decline, and choosing him merely chooses more decline.
If the school board rejects the superintendent’s cuts, its members might as well clean out their desks, because the mayor and the state will take over before Dr. King Day. Already under scrutiny from various officials astounded by its failings, the board is living on borrowed time, and if it fails to make this difficult decision, it won’t be making any more decisions. A state master – coordinating to one degree or another with City Hall – will take over both academics and economics. The board will be flushed.
And it will deserve it.
Because this decision is that big.
It doesn’t matter how many teachers wear red, it doesn’t matter how often they prompt their students to skip school and march down the sidewalk, it doesn’t matter how many parents shout into bullhorns. It matters that the books balance, and that this district be run by grownups, and that Rochester children have a chance at a real education.
But instead of embracing that opportunity, too many people and institutions cling greedily to their entrenched interests and failed habits. Some are driven by avarice, some are blinded by naivete, all are leading the district off a cliff.
It turns out that regurgitating union talking points into a TV camera doesn’t really change anything.
But standing up and doing what needs to be done does.
And what needs to be done is this board must back this superintendent.
He’s got a big mess to clean up, and countless young futures to save.
And obstructing him is morally wrong.