January 16, 2008

Parent Post

And how about that wonderful redistricting that our lovely Superintendent Becky Wilkinson did? You know the one that has the buses driving 20 minutes plus and passing another grade school to have students bussed to an overpopulated Rose Union.  Brilliant!  And with gas so high - look at what it has cost us!  We also wouldn't have wasted so much money on portables and all of their issues if she had redistricted us correctly. 

NO EXCUSES either - some of the neighborhoods that she put south of 164th on Council, Rockwell and MacArthur that are bussed all the way to 220th and pass right by DCES on 164th are NOT new neighborhoods.  They are well established and no excuse.  It also doesn't take a brain surgeon to count the number of kids in those districts compared to the "potential" of new ones.  Don't you add those up first? 

Had she simply done the math - the existing neighborhoods would have filled the DCES at the low number she has it at now WITHOUT the gas costs of driving several busses to pick up kids that far away! So she costs us on gas, portables expenses that are still accruing - and our board thinks she is doing a great job!  Why do we need change in the school board?  Go figure!

Our Reply

At the Board meeting on Monday Night Superintendent Wilkinson said that DCES has 18/class.  She went on to state that Rose Union and Prairie Vale had 19/class.  Sounds pretty fair and equitable on the surface but there are a few facts that she left out.

1. What was the raw data used to come to those numbers? 540/30 and 360/20 both give me 18/class
2. How many classes can each school hold reasonably? If the school was built to hold 25 classes you would look at the result in number 1 differently.
3. Lastly, did she subtract the special needs classes from the equation since they skew the numbers by having fewer students in each class?  Let’s say for sake of argument that Rose Union has 600 students in 30 classes total.  The ration would be 20/class.  But if remove 10 special needs students which accounts for 2 classes per say, then the equation would be 590/28 which comes to 21/class.   

We will never know for sure how she came up with those numbers unless she tells us.  But in the end it is just another example of how people can manipulate numbers to make a situation look better then it really is.   

Note: The numbers is in our examples are fictitious and are only used to make a point.