Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Answers

1. How many kids in the district are from Columbus? How many are from Picktown? How many from unincorporated Violet Township? How many from other areas?

The Columbus connection I referenced were from voting precinct data. As some have indicated on this thread, the zip code is Reynoldsburg, the schools are Picktown, the services are Columbus (hence the precinct data). You'd have to look at enrollment for each school. Since my thesis is that economics matters, here's enrollment and free lunch for each elementary:

For 2006-2007;

Fairfield had 697 kids; 5.8% free lunch
Heritage had 675 kids; 9.9% free lunch
Picktown had 659 kids; 8.3% free lunch
Tussing had 724 kids; 25.2% free lunch
Violet had 645 kids; 3.3% free lunch

Tussing is where most Columbus precinct kids go; some are shuttled to Fairfield.

2. How do we get Columbus out of our district? Judging from the failure of a group in Groveport to form its own school district, we may have to resort to other means to keep our school district pure.

Whoa...pure? Probably the only legal approach would be from Violet acting as a homerule township (18th in state, I think) and forming its own district. Picktown's stuck due to ''win-win'' agreements with Columbus.

3. Are all Columbus residents poor? I ask because you made reference to poverty and educational resuls. There seem to be a lot of Columbus kids in the district, and I hear some of them are in gifted classes. I'm not sure what to make of this.

There's an strong correlation between family wealth and educational ability (reflected in results). Poorer families generally do not have attainment beyond high school. Ask ''Smarter than Mr. Wizard'' for details on that...I think s/he is from one of those areas.

4. How do we determine an acceptable level of income in order for families to stay in the school district? Should we require families to submit tax returns at the beginning of each school year? Should we take into account debt load, and make distinctions based on secured vs. unsecured debt? What do we do with Picktown or Violet Township families who declare bankruptcy? Maybe we can also run a credit check on residents?

Oh, and I thought you were serious about this. You give all kids the standards and try to get them to those levels. Fundamental truth - we're at Continuous Improvement because AYP is not met. AYP is code for ''not white and not wealthy.'' I didn't make the rules here - blame the Republican federal government that passed No Child Left Behind.

5. What do we do with Picktown or Violet Township kids who require special education services? Will we just be stuck with them, especially if they have siblings who excel at academics?

All kids are still our kids - the fiduciary responsibility doesn't end because they fall under IDEA (look it up). These kids with special needs should not be required to fall into NCLB standards and skew the results.

6. What do we do about girls? Statistically, girls beform below boys in math - even the former president of Harvard said so, before he was forced out by the liberal elite. Should our school district allow girls, or should it be boys only?

Those statistics are psychological - monkey say, daughter do. You don't talk like that around your daughter, do you?

7. Will this affect athletics? I hear the boundaries for North and Central were actually drawn by the Athletic Boosters. Will Central football or North girls' basketball suffer when we kick Columbus out? Do we care?

No one is suggesting kicking anyone out. I'm suggesting why the report card says what it does.

I don't think athetics should be part of schooling.

>Again, I agree with you completely. I ask these questions because the devil is in the details.

Not really. Thank you for your questions.


By Mr. Wizard

No not happy

No I'm not happy but we had to deal with a split board on this issue.

They compromised & allowed the permanent solution that two proposed temporarily which solved my problem. I don't think they intend to move kids that are already started at Lakeview. My sense in talking to the administration (yes, I know it's changed) is that they agreed with the minority on the proposal & were committed to working it out for the short term until the district could be redistricted and then hoped to solve this issue long term.

I do like keeping all kids on a track which seems easiest to accomplish by neighborhood & makes a lot of sense for the kids. They get to go to school with their friends they live around & maintain a continuity from K-12.



By Mingo Mom

Misconceptions?

I noticed a few irregularities in your answers - maybe I'm off base but here goes:

1. Pickerington Local Schools are NOT contiguous with Columbus Public Schools - therefore CANNOT participate in win-win.

For that matter we can't give Columbus kids back to Columbus either - they were never part of Columbus Public Schools.

2. PLSD did not miss AYP in the category of ''not white, not wealthy''. They missed it in Special Education & ESL (English as a second language), if I'm reading the ODE website correctly. I agree with you on the Sped Ed kids shouldn't take the test to goof up the rating for the 90% of the kids that aren't Spec Ed. But how do you do that? Is there an alternate test to take? If so how do you migrate that population to that alternate test? I am sure there are qualifications to meet in order to take a different test. I've also heard that once kids can speak English they are taken out of the ESL class (makes sense) so I want to know where are those children tested? Are the success stories of the ESL program then tested with the general population or are their scores weighted in with the program that made them successful? Seems to me you shoot yourself in the foot if you do too good of a job here. I also read that the district has 53 languages spoken in it - can that be true??

The Sky is not falling

I gather that the testing system being implemented here in Ohio is broke.

Instead of raising the standards of our students it is confusing and unworkable from a teaching stand point. Larger districts with LD and special needs children will be hurt the most in this current grading system which is subject to change.

I am a little concerned about the rate of education in the schools. My concern is that we could assume that a gifted child could absorb and retain class work at a much higher rate than a LD student. So if the AYP is based on the higher level students, then the lower level students will never measure up to THEIR expectations.

My point is that we are abusing the testing system. Tests have and should be tools to measure progress and point out to the instructors the areas that need work. As I read the discussions here these test are being used for political purposes and the school system is in the middle. When we start the talk about using income and other criteria for allowing kids into our public schools then the tests are failing there purpose.

I have a dear friend that struggled through school. He was barely a ''C'' students and to graduate High School he had to attend a career center and get much of his high school credit with working in the community at a job. After starting a family he continued to study and in his late 30s graduated college. His rate of absorbing class work was very slow but he became a very productive citizen in our community.

I doubt any teacher on this earth can change the rate that a child absorbs what they are taught. I think what many miss is that trying to reach a point where all of your learning is coming from a book and the interaction with those and the world around us are put aside only creates a person that must refer to a book to do anything in life. The early inventions of man were brought about by observation because there was nothing written about it. I am sure that man watched birds fly for thousands of years and it wasn't until the 19th century that man built a winged plane that was copied after a bird's wing.

The fact that some of these scores were one point or even ten points below the state expectations is minor when compared to the reaction of the ODE and the parents.

Believe me folks the sky is not going to fall. I would strongly suggest that the teachers and the parents continue to do your best. It my opinion; it is just as important to teach your child that they must do their chores and when classwork starts to take all of the free time away and their ability to socialize with their friends and maybe work part time jobs in the community then our nation will fail in the future.

Not everything important is learned in a book or graded by a written test.

By An old man