Leaked, but never published

March 18 letter to the Harrisonburg School Board and City Council (mentioned in several local newspaper stories, but never actually published except here)

After two and a half years of debate and discussion the School Board has unanimously endorsed a school building plan they believe will serve the city until build-out. If a vote were held today on funding the plan, City Council would vote 4-1 at best against the plan. That level of disagreement on such an important issue is not healthy for the community. A strong and unified population can hold debates on important issues. However, when two bodies are polarized at the outset, the outlook is for argument, not debate; and Harrisonburg is less unified and perhaps weaker than it was before being racked by debates on the golf course and the new high school.

The City Council and School Board are slated for a joint session on April 29. On March 11, following what was, in spirit if not law, an unannounced City Council meeting, council members directed me to arrange a meeting of the Liaison Committee to deliver the message that council will reject a school plan that hasn’t been presented to us yet. The suggestion of a Liaison Committee meeting followed my question of whether we were ready for another divisive debate, or a “municipal bloodbath” as I termed it then. I still believe that more discord and conflict would be bad for the city. But there is some question whether that is reason enough to deal with this issue out of the public eye.

Private discussions with board and council members have suggested to me that the issue is being viewed on two levels: one is the policy level, the other the personal. Some members of each body believe they are doing what is best for the community while the other body is taking a purely political approach. Personally, I don’t question the sincerity of any of the 11 people involved in this decision; but I do question whether a majority of either body can claim their judgment has not been colored by the tone and length of the debate. 

The Liaison Committee meeting is scheduled for April 1. I am reluctant to go into that meeting to present a fait accompli, especially one decided privately. I suggest that instead members of both bodies consider what I propose below and let me and the School Board representative to the Liaison Committee know if the idea is tenable.

We need to establish somehow what the city wants from its school system, and what goals the City Council and School Board share for the schools. Only then can we decide how the city as a whole can attain those goals. The process in recent years has been, unfortunately, more trial and error, with the City Council waiting to see what the School Board will present, and the School Board presenting three long-range building plans in as many years. The School Board is seen by some council members as looking only at school needs and not at the financial situation of the city as a whole. The City Council is seen by some board members as trying to avoid the political difficulty of a tax increase that might be necessary to fully fund those school needs.

I suggest that we first need to decide, jointly, what goals for the schools the city wants and can afford. The questions should include, but not be limited to:

·          Do we want to continue the K-4 configuration?

·          Do we want to continue the K-5 configuration?

·          Do we want to eliminate trailers, or mobile classrooms, at all city schools?

·          Can we close or sell the old high school building? Was the $11 million project on HHS ten years ago a mistake we should write off?

·          Can we, or should we, agree on a taxing/funding formula, wherein council gives up some responsibility for allocation of city funds, but gives the school board more control of its own fate?

·          Do we want to continue keeping our teacher salaries in the state’s top quartile?

We have discussed some or all of these issues over the past few years, but we have never truly seriously discussed any ideas that are off the beaten path. The model we have followed is rather simple and hasn’t changed: The School Board asks for a project and the City Council decides, Yes or No. When both bodies agree, we call it cooperation. But regardless of which way the discussion is going, it has always been limited to the ideas and experiences of a dozen or so people here in Harrisonburg. And all of those dozen or so people can remember the first Wednesday in May one year when they woke up and realized that being elected doesn’t make you a damn bit smarter than anybody else.

We have the background, we have the history, and we know, to some extent, the population and demographics. It’s time to hire an outside consultant, perhaps chosen with input from the State Board of Education, to review the School Board’s current plan, the past building ideas, and the city’s immediate and long-range outlook. We don’t have to commit to follow the consultant’s recommendation, but we do have to admit that we are no closer to a permanent solution that we were before we agreed to spend $42 million. We don’t have to give up our responsibility to understand and try to meet the city’s needs, but we can acknowledge that we’re not the first city to deal with these issues. Somebody has dealt with these same issues, examined similar numbers, and studied comparable school needs. It would cost a lot less to hire strangers to examine those numbers and issues than it would to have another divisive public debate, and to flirt with the possibility of making a multi-million dollar mistake.

I hope members of both bodies will contact their Liaison Committee member about whether we should discuss this possibility at the April 1 meeting with an eye to putting it on the agenda for the April 29 joint meeting. To the best of my knowledge, the alternative is to have City Council reject two and a half years of discussion on a 4-1 vote. It’s time to stop the whole process and take another look before we get locked into a mistake. Admitting we’ve all been too close to the debate could be the difference between provincial and visionary.

Last Revised: 08.01.03    Publisher: Joseph Gus Fitzgerald