New Haven Independent

Posted by: LAFAYETTE | August 13, 2007 7:39 PM

I am glad to see Mr. Sumrall thinking creatively. But these three ideas are not the best in his policy quiver.

Mandatory "volunteer" time for parents assumes that they will fulfill this requirement by shifting time away from some less socially-meaningful or child-focused activity. This is not necessarily the case. Working poor parents might be shifting time away from paid labor or needed rest. On the other extreme, for some parents that spend the bulk of their leisure time with kids, this might actually mean a bit less time spent with kids depending on their BOE assignment. From my own experience I know plenty of good, smart kids would not benefit from having the pathologies and "drama" of their parent(s) enter the school. Overall, it's just too broad and unfocused a policy. Perhaps somebody has some data to persuade me otherwise.

Fines for skipping school are designed primarily as punishment, not as behavior modification. If we really wanted behavior modification, we would subsidize the nurturing of the right behavior and attitudes earlier in the education cycle for at-risk kids when it is the right developmental moment. This is what worked in Mexico and Brazil and Bloomberg is trying to put in place in NYC.

Finally, an elected Board of Ed in New Haven is a horrible idea. This is not a small homogenous town. It would basically mean the Board of Aldermen - and all the problems of unprofessional reps elected by small groups - would grow from 30 to 36 members. In LA, Mayor Villaraigosa tried to get an appointed Board precisely because of the dysfunction brought about by the enormous decentralization of power created by his elected Board. When that failed, he basically ran candidates against the people he didn't like on the Board of Ed to take control that way. Sound familiar? Maybe somebody from DC can tell you how much they liked their elected Board of Ed - so much they scrapped it and gave control to the Mayor so that there was some direct way for the average citizen to hold the system accountable. I'm not making a normative argument (i.e. "Democracy is always Bad.") This is empirical and based on local institutions.

I did like Sumrall's organic food and recycling ideas. So, I this is not some hit job. Just a real, substantive disagreement. I hope the Greens talk about a lot more about education, but come with stronger, proven ideas.

Posted by: Walt | August 14, 2007 9:09 AM

Attention Paul Bass

I am commenting here because your petition re Clear Channel does not provide for comments.

I checked the privacy provisions of the petition provider. You should too.

In my opinion this site is either SPAM or phishing. (I am not an expert on their definitions)

They ask for much personal info with which they can do what they wish and also try to sell a service.

I could not care less whether or not Air America's views are available, It failed because it had too few listeners, and pulled down a charity in NYC by using the charity's money, stolen by an Air America founder, to establish its network.

I understand your efforts as a progressive to get your views touted on the local radio station. but I believe you have been tricked into SPAM or phishing by the sponsoring outfit.

(I am not a fan of Limbaugh or Cristopher(sp?) either, but do believe you have been bamboozled into soliciting private info about your readers.)

Think about it.

Thanks

Walt

.

Posted by: Taxed To Death | August 14, 2007 9:57 AM

I like that you laid it all out so voters can see where you stand and what your specific priorities will be. Very few are willing to do that.

However, a couple of points: Fining parents for truant kids is pointless. Most of these families with truant kids cannot afford the $250 a day so it will be uncollectable unless you send Batman the Taxman to go seize their cars.

I like green. We recyle and think it should be expanded. I don't like mandatory government driven bans on plastic bags. It's a heavy handed approach. If you make the case, and the public is convinced it's worthwhile, they'll go along and begin to use canvass bags or whatever. Government is too involved in our lives already.

You have a number of new program ideas -- how are you going to pay for it when property taxes are already drowing us, our city debt level is at an all time high and our credit rating is sinking? What would you cut in order to implement? The school budget is huge, consumes 61% of total city spending, 65% of the general fund and at $21,000 plus per kid, money does not seem to be the answer to poor performance.

Posted by: Daniel Sumrall | August 14, 2007 11:43 AM

Lafayette, thanks so much for engaging this topic. Your comments are quite valuable and offer the opportunity to further the discussion. I would like to reply to a few of the points you mentioned because I think conversations like this are exactly what we need in New Haven and in regards to city hall especially.

In response to your first paragraph--I don't believe I never stated that the service time proposal was volunteer because mandatory volunteering is a contradiction. I believe in parental service requirements because as a teacher I've encountered far more parents that are of the 'they're the school's problem now' mentality. Also, I don't see how shifting your attention to your child and where your child spends most of his/her day is a bad thing.

You make a good point about how parents would be able to fulfill the requirement so I want to clarify my meaning. Parents and guardians would be able to fulfill the service requirement in a myriad of ways some of them painfully simple like minor administrative tasks, information gathering, or shuttling students to mention a few off the top of my head. The point is that involvement has a broad meaning and 20 hours annually means 20 hour over the whole school year which breaks down to just over 2 hrs a month or 15 minutes a day. Anyone who isn't able to offer their skills for this fraction of time to their kids' school has no ground for complaint

Also, involvement doesn't imply a "mother hen" type of mentality, but I agree some parents are too 'dramatic' to be effective in an inter-personal service capacity which is why service options would be designed to fit their personality needs. I'm offering this policy because I and, I believe, many other would always rather be on the side of action than complaint and inaction.

As to your second paragraph--No, absentee fining isn't meant as behavior modification; no one can legislate behavior. What this proposal does is create concrete, meaningful consequences for action. Students, teenagers especially, and not too few parents need to be reminded that their actions have immediate, real consequences. Kids will skip out, cut class and parents will let them and that's fine with me, but if you make that choice, you should pay for it because taxpayers already are.

And regarding your final paragraph--To compare New Haven to Los Angeles is an error in reasoning based simply in scale, but I understand your opposition. Let me say this, an elected Board of Education would provide a means to prevent the current cronyism in city hall. An elected Board of Education would thrust students, parents, and neighbors into deciding where and how the budget should be spent--whether those decisions are agreeable or not, well that's the price of an active healthy democracy.

You raise another good point when you mention un-professionalism, we need to actually pay our elected officials a proper salary in order attract quality candidates and allow those serving to devote the majority of their energy to service; an elected Board of Education should be paid and have term limits (this should apply to the Board of Alders as well). But how to do this without raising taxes? I believe such an action could be made revenue neutral. My first thought is to cut the pay of the executive and spread it around. Mayor DeStephano has become a millionaire on his city salary--there's something about that I find repulsive.

So let me say again, I understand your hesitancy and the point of view from which it's coming, but I firmly believe an elected Board of Education, one that is paid, and with term-limits I believe would go a long way to re-vitalizing community involvement and community control of the budget process.

Again, Lafayette, I enjoy hearing your thoughts because I think we all get a lot more out of the process when we actually have meaningful conversation. You brought up quite a few fair points and I hope I addressed them to your satisfaction. It's important that we know exactly where our elected officials and candidates stand. I would very much like to hear Alder Clark's point of view and I'm sure many Independent readers would as well.

Posted by: LAFAYETTE | August 14, 2007 1:46 PM

Thank you for your response, Mr. Sumrall. I don't think I will necessarily persuade you, but I thought continuing this civil policy tete-a-tete might be of some benefit to the NHI readers (and might generate another frontpage jump for you.)

Note: Please don't read my attempt at word efficiency as an intentional curt, snarky tone.

PARENTS
In listening to your response, it appears that the goal of the policy is to encourage some empathy by disinterested parents in the teachers/bureaucracy of the school. This is very different than getting parents to be "involved" in their kids' academic life and boost outcomes. It seems the link between the two has not been established, nor is there data that indicates how forcing disinterested parents will make them like NHPS more instead of resent it. What exactly is the policy goal? Is it the best way to get it?

FINES
From your response, this seems to be punishment for punishment's sakes, not as a social policy tool for better academic or social outcomes. Moreover, if people with disadvantaged socialization were rational in weighting punishment and probability, then no one would ever shoot at a police officer given the clarity of the penalties. Thus, it appears that this is measure is actually an odd form of cost-recovery intended to emotionally coddle the oft-cited "angry taxpayer." They might regret further alienating young people that don't cognitively process punishment the way the median taxypayer does.

ELECTED BOE
This seems to be turning into a normative vs. empirical non-clash. I think democracy is a political tool with real tradeoffs, not a secular deity. You theoretically argue that a democratic process would "thrust" the average, good citizen to determine funding and that the potential ensuing messiness is the price of a "healthy" democracy. Your logic suggests we go all the way and have a budget referendum. Why don't you support that? In New Haven reality, the local Democratic factions from the BoA would run candidates; instead of the Mayor picking a group that can implement his/her coherent policy, you get the politics of BoA. Finally, the empirical social science literature points to Mayor-led BoE's as being superior at providing better academic outcomes. See "Mayors Improving Student Achievement: Evidence from a national achievement and governance database," Francis Shen with Kenneth Wong (2006.)

PROFESSIONALISM
If you cut the BoA to ten people and paid each $75k to professionalize, that would be 0.001875 of a $400 million budget. That's worth it. And there's no need to demonize the Mayor's salary or his wealth...what objective data do you have to suggest his compensation is unfair or producing inferior public outcomes?

GET ON THE BUSSE
In 2004, Phil Busse was an independent candidate in Portland, OR that ran an interesting grassroots campaign focused on leveraging his city's creativity to come up with an awesome list of alternative policies. I think he ended up with about 100 ideas, some of which got co-opted. That might be an interesting direction for the Elm City Greens to go...crowd-source your policy agenda. You might find new allies and even if you lose some of the ideas will probably be taken up by the local powers that be. You could even ask the mainstream Dems to say publicly which ideas they support. But if you are all going to do it Flakey Ferrucci style, then don't even try. It'll just compound your party's local image problem as having no staying power. Ralph is an asset to this town, but he is not the best standard bearer for the Greens.

Posted by: Daniel Sumrall | August 18, 2007 1:34 PM

Great discussion, I can better understand the point of view opposite my own which is always a boon. However, I will not waver from my conviction that an elected Board of Education is necessary. A fact confirmed for me by a recent New Haven Register article, "Board Aiming to Muzzle Parents": www.nhregister.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18701999&BRD=1281&PAG=461&dept_id=7576&rfi=6

And while I see how some people think the absenteeism fine may be too punitive let me just say where the impetus comes from for me. Every semester for the past two years I've taught developmental English composition at Manchester Community College where I get to see the results of the Hartford area schools. These motivated young people realize they need a college education to make it in our society. And they have been robbed by the public school system that has failed to teach them rules of basic punctuation or grammar yet allowed them to graduate.

I realize that New Haven isn't Hartford but I suspect that because developmental courses are routinely the largest courses in the community college system that the root cause may be similar. Demanding attendance is a foundational requirement for graduating from high school with a modicum of competency. Because so much of our culture and its values are understood (for good or bad) through an economic lens in order to get 'hands off' parents to actually parent I feel such an action is needed. I'd be willing to entertain alternatives, but doing nothing pro-active about attendance weakens character and work ethic.

But honestly, these parental involvement proposals are small issues, of middling importance in my campaign.