The PEL reports, which cost $18,000 in consulting fees, provided key findings, including the observations about our dropping enrollment rate, along with the recommendation that Methacton evaluate the potential closing of Arrowhead and/or Audubon Elementary schools for the 2015-2016 school year (and, presumably, for the foreseeable future beyond that, since the enrollment trend is expected to continue downward over the next decade) in order to cut costs and best use its resources. According to the reports, Arrowhead and Audubon face the highest costs of recommended repairs and updating to ADA code.
No serious public outcry came about until the February 3 meeting, in which the capacity study piece was presented along with its findings and recommendations. It was at this meeting that the Board voted practically unanimously (one member was absent) to begin the process of considering the closure of the two schools. No parents were at the meeting to protest that decision.
As word spread among the parents of children attending both Audubon and Arrowhead that the school board was taking this recommendation seriously and had scheduled public hearings about it, disbelief and anger quickly galvanized into action as parent and civic groups at each school organized to voice their displeasure and to attempt to convince the school board members to reverse one or both proposed closures at the February 23, 2015 (and potentially February 25) public hearing.
But for those looking to assign blame for why shutting these schools down may have to happen, we need to look back in time, before the current board was seated. Some parents are blaming the focus and funding being expended on turf fields and lights, and that may or may not be true, but there is more to it than that.
A handful of concerned
citizens from both Lower Providence and Worcester Townships tried, since circa 2005-2006
when the concept and plans for the new 5-6 school began to solidify, to sound
the alarm that enrollment trends were already trending down, contrary to the
assertions of the Methacton School Board seated at the time the vote was taken
to build it*. And, further, that trend did
not support the construction of the Grade 5-6 school eventually named “Skyview
Upper Elementary School” nor the approximately $50+ million (across three
bonds) in debt the District incurred to build it. This is debt for which the District doesn’t
even begin to start paying down
principal until 2018. In fact, we can’t even attempt to refinance the first one
until 2018.
The District based future
enrollment projections back then on a previously projected population for the
then-current year, even after the actual
population for the current year was known to be less than that estimated value. Thus, the school
district is left with growing consequences of long-term overspending across
several different Methacton school boards that only continues to grow.
While belated vindication
may be sweet for the residents who expressed concern back then, given that their
assertions were borne out with the passage of time, their contention now is
that the Skyview project and related soft costs are arguably the primary reason
why the closure of two elementary schools is now up for consideration. They say
residents were lied to in order to get Skyview built, and told enrollment was
trending upward in order to justify the spend. Now, Skyview is at 75% of capacity and can absorb some of the elementary school students.
Meanwhile, as Facebook pages have sprung up (Save Arrowhead
School, Save Audubon School), yard signs and unity tee shirts are being
ordered, and parents at these schools are mobilizing their forces, I can’t help
but wonder if people were paying more attention to those sounding the alarm
back then, and perhaps doing some of their own homework on the issue, it’s
possible this expenditure would never have happened and this conversation would
not be necessary now. Each elementary
would have been spruced up and life would have gone on – and we’d be in much
better position to be able to pay for things like turf fields and teacher’s
contracts today without the specter of raising taxes.
Total District enrollment when Skyview was built was at
5338 students and expected to climb to 6500 students. That never panned out -
we’re at approximately 4974 now and enrollment has dropped every year for the
past seven years. The PEL reports give compelling justification for the
downward trends that jives with what I know to be true about what’s going on in
each of the member townships as far as development projects and demographic
trends is concerned.
Perhaps we should try to get our money back from the
consultant used to come up with those terribly flawed projections (EI
Associates, in combination with enrollment projections the school board
developed internally at the time). It’s also worth noting that Methacton’s
superintendent at the time, Dr. Jeffrey Miller, listed EI Associates as one of
his sources of income on ethics reports filed at the time.
Even if you buy that alleged crowding at the elementary
schools at the time warranted a new school, we were already getting by with
modular units at some of the schools and the need for that temporary flex space
would have gone away. When enrollments dropped, we could have eliminated the
lease cost of the modulars and be done with it, instead of paying long-term for
a significantly empty "upper elementary" 5-6 school.
For example, Worcester resident Dr. James Mollick** put
together a nearly 70 page document (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 ) with supporting facts and data for school
board review as to why they should not approve the 5-6 school. He was ignored,
laughed at, mocked, and called a ‘kook’. **
However, the PA Dept. of Education took Mollick’s concerns
seriously and on the basis of a complaint filed by Mollick which included that
same document, voided Methacton’s original submission based on problems with
Attachment C of Methacton’s application (which included details such as enrollment
and capacity projections). The school district was forced to reapply as a
result.
John Andrews of Lower Providence, a former, actual rocket
scientist for GE / Lockheed-Martin who worked on NASA projects (a graduate of
Princeton and MIT) and a master at compiling and analyzing data, has appeared
at practically every single school board meeting over the past ten years, many
of which were spent attempting to get the Board to understand that Skyview was
not needed and was an expense the school district could ill afford. He ran his
own enrollment data (which he has updated frequently and provided to the school
board regularly over the years) which was in direct contravention to those
provided by the school board at the time. In March, 2008, Andrews was quoted by
the Times Herald as calling Methacton’s enrollment projections “unreliable and
fictitious”.
Mr. Andrews has also been treated with a degree of derision
over the years by various board members (for this as well as other matters he
has spoken out about). The PEL report has largely validated Mr. Andrews’
projections at the time and since.
Candy Allebach, another LP resident whose property is
adjacent to Skyview/Arcola, has been very vocal over the years and quoted often
in the press questioning the school district on various matters, but most
particularly related to opposing the construction of Skyview – from the cost,
to the validity of the enrollment numbers proffered by the Board at the time to
justify it, and to the traffic impacts an additional facility would bring to
Eagleview Road.
I’ve seen and heard a lot of angst about class sizes since
this story broke. Personally, not only am I a Methacton alumni but I put two
kids of my own through the District. As part of the ‘Baby Boom’ generation, it
wasn’t unusual when I attended Woodland, Arcola or Methacton to have as many as
35 kids in a class. The vast majority of us turned out just fine and are
upstanding, productive citizens contributing to society. Many of my teacher
friends tell me that times have changed substantially in recent years such that
a large number of kids are on IEPs – so they are hardly being lost in the
shuffle regardless of class size.
Ideally, we’d love smaller classes and more individualized
attention; turf fields and all kinds of bells and whistles. The reality is, just
like with our household budgets, we can’t afford everything we think our kids
deserve. We elect people to help figure
out what should be prioritized when it comes time to make tough decisions.
We’re in a tough economy and education is heavily regulated with many mandatory
spends. There’s not a lot of wiggle room, even in a budget that’s a tenth of a
billion bucks.
Bottom line, our residents have been misled in the past. We
had a board led by several people who stayed on for years, and considering that
there has been a history of 30+ straight years of tax increases, they were spending
boards. Several current board members, along with some of those prior board
members – are still trying to
silence the voices of those who were outraged at the unnecessary spending to
build Skyview, saying ‘that’s in the past’. Well, perhaps, but it’s relevant because
residents were misled in the past, significant money was spent that arguably
didn’t need to be, and it’s an important part of understanding what we are
dealing with in the present.
More troubling, several of the individuals who served on
the ‘Skyview board’ are still active behind the scenes in selecting and
mentoring future school board candidates and helping to shepherd them through
the election process. A positive consequence of the proposed school closing
announcement has been an increase in the number of folks looking to run for
school board in the May 2015 primary. Fresh faces may well be in order.
In recent years, our school board has already trimmed any
low-hanging fruit: T1 classes have been eliminated, after-school late buses
have been eliminated…then ALL our buses were eliminated when transportation was
turned over to First Student, along with our fleet. The cafeteria workers were
furloughed and Aramark brought into replace them. And in that time, so far, teacher salaries and
pensions have NOT been touched. If schools are not closed, serious cuts will
need to be negotiated there.
While money certainly isn’t the only consideration when
evaluating closing schools or redistricting, here’s what we save if we do this…the
approximate $11M in school refurbishments to correct deficiencies at the
neediest two facilities identified in the study, Audubon and Arrowhead. If you
take the average cost per square foot to do so noted in the study ($200 per
square foot, and multiply it by the 55,000 square feet total between the two
schools) you arrive at the $11M number. On top of that, there are savings to be
had in teacher salaries and pensions and in the costs of keeping two extra
facilities open, heated, lit and operating each year.
We’re at critical mass – mandatory PSERs (Public School
Employees’ Retirement System) debt/increases to the tune of $12M is on the
horizon beginning in the next two years, which Methacton is obligated by law to
fund, and that will only continue to grow going forward. A new teacher’s
contract will need to be negotiated as well. Room in the budget needs to be
made to accommodate these.
In the alternative, should the school board raise your
taxes 15-20%, driving our tax base right out of the school district, or is
there something else we can do about it so we don’t have to take that step? We
all know that if put to a referendum vote, such a huge tax increase will never
pass, which is why school districts generally avoid the kinds of tax hikes that
by law have to go up for referendum.
What else should be cut to accommodate keeping these
schools open? Contrary to what some
politicians would have you believe, there is no infinite supply of money. Even
lobbying the Commonwealth for more money, like Philadelphia does, still results
in more money coming out of each of our residents’ pockets to support this, at
a time when cries for property tax reform are growing louder in Harrisburg. Any
funds that come from the state are obtained from taxpayers first…the same
taxpayer pool paying local taxes too. People are tapped out, especially our
seniors on fixed incomes.
We’ve redistricted several times over the past thirty
years, as have many other school districts, and I don’t believe anyone has
suffered dire, life-changing consequences or loss of quality of life as a
result.
It is long past time for the adults in the room to stand up
and come clean with parents. The public
has finally been told the truth: enrollment is down, and there is too much
capacity at Skyview. Anyone who wanted to expose what was going on before
Skyview was constructed, and disagreed with the need for it, was shut down,
disparaged and silenced.
I applaud the current board for having the courage to have
the hard conversation now and for having the fortitude to consider making very
difficult, unpopular choices NOW to avoid even more difficult, unpopular choices
later
Notes:
*school
board members at that time were: Jim Van Horn, Joyce Petrauskas, Marijane
Barbone, Michael Simeone, Dan Sattler, Ted Chylack, William Kazimer, John Lynch
and Wilson Bohanak.
The
first five voted to build Skyview; the last three voted against. Chylack was
absent for the vote.
Shortly after that vote was another election; some of the individual members changed and voted on subsequent items such as putting it out for bid etc. It was during this time that disgraced and departed former superintendent Quinn was hired.
Shortly after that vote was another election; some of the individual members changed and voted on subsequent items such as putting it out for bid etc. It was during this time that disgraced and departed former superintendent Quinn was hired.
**I note with a bit
of hilarity the schadenfreude -
and delicious irony - going on over at neighboring local community blog, www.worcesterpapolitics.org , which, while anonymous, is rumored to
be authored by David Brooks, the spouse of Worcester supervisor Susan Caughlan,
and/or Art Bustard, and/or John Harris, recently of child pornography arrest
fame. Dr. Mollick is a frequent subject of attacks on the site, primarily for
daring to question them about anything.
Worcester
Township and Dr. Mollick have been at odds for several years over a number of
issues, so there’s no love lost between them, but since Worcester Township is
also locked in combat these days with Methacton over (primarily) the stadium
lights issue, and thus happily taking shots at Methacton of late, they
begrudgingly admit – without naming him, of course – that Dr. Mollick was one
of those who was right to sound the alarm about enrollment and Skyview, noting
“At the time, several residents complained at public meetings about these
projections, but their complaints were ignored”. How it must kill them to
realize that the one person who consistently calls them out on their shenanigans
was right about Skyview.
Links:"Dozen Methacton School Board Hopefuls Slated to Appear at Candidates Forum" - April 2007
"Space Occupies [Methacton Candidate] Forum" - May 2007
"Slim OK to Seek Bids for 5-6 School" - March 2008
"Board OKs bids for 5-6 School" - May 2008
"Skyview Construction on Schedule" - June 2009
"Is Methacton Really Growing?" - August 2014
"Without Change, Methacton to See $12M Deficit by 2019" - September 2014
"Methacton's Enrollment Study Shows Continued Declines in Student Populations Over Coming Decade" - January 2015
