Geneva Board of Education Not Schooled in Trust

Whatever the criticisms of the Geneva City School District Board of Education (they, after all, signed off on the administration’s bogus realignment plan) may be, you can’t claim that they did not reward industriousness. The vote to proceed with the misguided plan for restructuring the City’s elementary education was passed by the School Board at 10:17pm on Monday, April 6th. Within 12 hours, a series of transition committees, meeting dates, childcare arrangements and other details were all set up and outlined in a six page memo which was delivered to each school by 10:17am the next day. A comprehensive community information piece and schedule of events put together in under 12 hours? Talk about burning the midnight oil!

'Cynics' might say that the School Board’s 5-1 vote after minimal public comments by individual Board members was simply a ‘rubber-stamping’ of a ‘done deal.’ (Former Board president Ford Weiskittel, the only dissenting vote, was the only member to dig deeply into the arguments pro and con in his public remarks). 'Cynics' might also say that the series of public meetings held by the administration in the weeks leading up to the vote was simply window dressing, that the District felt shamed into at least providing the appearance of community outreach, and that none of the questions raised at those meetings were taken seriously by any members of the review committee.

Those same ‘cynics’ might also point to outrageously exaggerated and ever changing projections of cost savings. (The initial claim was $1.2 million would be saved, $250,000 was mentioned, then $150,000, and by the final discussion, that figure was lowered to $50,000). There’s also the misstated research findings (supporting the realignment with data from a study that actually rejects the K-2/3-5 configuration), the professional concerns, the faculty and staff resistance, the negative parent reactions, the numerous changes of direction, and the rush to judgment for the upcoming school year as indicators of bad decision-making.

On that basis, one might conclude that the School Board (with one notable exception) lacks a commitment to community based decision making and the courage to follow up on hard questions with due diligence, that the Board resists being guided by research and data rather than being led by emotion, to put the educational needs of the children before the emotional needs of the administrators. Why not just admit it was all a big mistake?

So what can we say to these 'cynics'? Well, we could point out that the District, in addition to its six page letter has also embarked on an automated-phone-messaging campaign, a school-counselor-advised ‘transition planning’ strategy for children, and other means of getting the word out to the community that things they are a-changin’. This, we might say, is an indication that they do know how to get the word out and make people aware of what’s going on. But the ‘cynic’ would likely point out that the District is using all the methods now that it didn’t use before the vote was taken, all the methods that might have made a difference in letting people have a meaningful, informed voice in the decision. The ‘cynic’ might say that all of this work is direct evidence of all the steps the District avoided in order to keep the decision as low-key and the people as uninformed as possible. And the ‘cynic’ might ask what the District had to lose?

'Cynic' or not, the answer is clear: The District leadership (the School Board and the Administration) in its handling of this issue before the vote, during the vote, and after the vote lost the most important thing of all: the public trust. Which makes the District leadership the true cynic in the room.