Discriminating Shoppers

An article in the August 21st 2009 Gazette tells of $5.8 million in federal grants being awarded to Colorado Springs school districts where the military population is growing. The article says this:

“Four Pikes Peak region school districts have been awarded Defense Department grants aimed at assisting schools where the military population is growing.The area districts ­— Academy School District 20, Falcon School District 49, Harrison School District 2 and Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 — received $5.8 million to use on programs over three years. The districts will use the money to improve student achievement, and Falcon and Harrison have targeted math programs in particular.The Department of Defense Education Activity awarded $56 million nationwide, and was able to make awards to all qualified districts, said spokeswoman Connie Gillette. The grants are for schools with at least a 15 percent military dependent population, but the programs can serve all students in the school.”

Over 10,000 new soldiers and airmen will be flowing into the Colorado Springs area over the next couple of years, so these grants were not unexpected.

Take another look at the districts that are receiving these grants and take note of the district that is not receiving the money. D11, the largest district in the region, does not qualify for the federal funding. When military families move to a new location, the parents tend to be discriminating shoppers when it comes to the education of their children. It is apparent that very few military families would place their children in a school district that spends little effort on educating kids.

Not only is D11 losing millions of dollars annually from students choosing to attend school elsewhere, but it is losing military families who take the time to research local school districts and who discover that D11 is a district that is best kept at arms’ length.

.0005 – Or .05%

According to the 2009 Quantum Performance Group (QPG) report on the state of School District 11, the district loses over $6000 per year in state funding for each student that leaves the struggling district. With a migration out of the district totaling about 400 students per year, D11 obviously loses over $2.4 million each year. With these types of financial losses mounting year after year, one would expect that district leaders would finally see the need to make some hard budget decisions.

In a recent Gazette article on new D11 superintendent Nicholas Gledich, it was pointed out that Gledich already trimmed some fat from the ailing budget. And what amount did Gledich trim? $242,000.

Consider that the annual D11 budget approaches ½ billion dollars and you will find that this trimming of the fat equates to a whopping .05% of the budget. It is hard to imagine how Gledich and his staff reconcile the fact that their budget “cuts” are not going to address the annual budget losses that are 10 times greater.

Gledich found his $242,000 “cut” when he decided to leave an Executive Director (ED) position vacant. D11 never had a need for 5 Executive Directors in the first place, so don’t expect that the quality of educational services will be impacted in any way – either positively or negatively. Gledich decided to allow Deputy Superintendent Mary Thurman to handle the duties of this departed ED, which is not a bad idea in itself because it was never clear that Mary Thurman was all that busy in the first place. She has traveled from a job as Deputy Supe for Curriculum over to Personnel. Now it appears that she has migrated back to her old job yet again. When a person is performing at a high level of proficiency, that person is usually left in their job or even promoted. One has to wonder why a high paid executive would be moved around and around the admin building year after year. Better yet, one has to wonder about the performance of the person who is continuously moved and is never given a duty description that will allow for accountability of that job.

We also learned from the Gazette article that Gledich has designed a new logo for the district. What the article does not mention is that Gledich has declared that all written correspondence throughout D11 will now be conducted on stationary containing this new logo. All stationary with individual school logos is now forbidden, meaning all schools must spend money to use the new stationary. This seems like a frivolous waste of dwindling resources in a cash strapped district, and it calls into question the true priorities of the new D11 leader.