11-1-05 By Ron Bird One of the questions that came up at the October 25th candidate forum in Agua Dulce follows with seven of the candidate's answers. I have added the post forum commentary on this important issue in Green.
Question: Do you think the district should pay teachers who voluntarily choose to go to away games and also pay substitute teachers to teach their classes while they are gone? Comment on the impact on the budget.
Ron Bird: It certainly is a concern; we do have a limited budget. We would like to offer more sports programs. I just want to give you one recent example (where our dollars are not being well spent). We played Mammoth recently. Mammoth is quite a ways away - I think it's 250 miles away, so the team had to leave early in the morning. So basically they took attendance, then got on the bus and left. Some of the coaches had to go. Of course they should get paid for taking students on school business, but the point is, it is my understanding that a full set of substitutes was not hired. That day there were some classes that were combined, which is not good. Not only did our sports players that day miss a day of school, but it degraded the students who stayed behind. Some of them missed their classes because there were not adequate substitute teachers. My question on this is why are we playing a team like Mammoth, 250 miles away? Why can't we find teams of our caliber closer? If we do have to play a team that is so far away, why does the game have to be on Friday night? Couldn't it be on Saturday?
Ron's comment: Paraclete, in Lancaster, is in our division, they play football, but they are not on our schedule. Also note an issue here is more than teachers that are football coaches took the day off and attended this away game.
Fred Heslep: When a teacher is out for athletics or illness then we are obligated to get substitutes. In this particular case there were so many out that I don't think there were enough substitutes available and that has an impact on the educational process. So yes I think we should have some kind of limit on how many people go, I'm not sure how many students went, but we have to get subs. I don't think we get the education from a sub as good as we get from the teachers. A sub coming in cold does not know where the program is at. I think we have some influence on the teams that we play and do I think that should be a factor. I've gone to Mammoth and it is a long ways and takes the whole day. That is a days lost of education. It has value playing football, but I think there are teams closer that we could have on our schedule.
Ron's comment: This answer shows an understanding of the problem. He's right that not enough substitute teachers were available.
Debbie Roche: Actually I think it's really important that we look at a 1,116 dollar stipend for a coach, an assistant or an advisor and just do the math roughly. Even if they just give up two hours a day, five days a week for lets say the season ran for four months. You are looking at less than 7 bucks an hour you guys. You're not going to do that. We're not even paying them that, because they give up more than two hours a day, more than that five days a week with weekends included. I think that $1,116 is chump change. It's a budget problem and we can't take that on the back of the athletes. Those athletes are not wasting anyone's time. They have to maintain a 2.0 GPA or they don't play. That's a state law. And those coaches have to adhere to that. Teams that are in our division we have to play if we are to compete. A lot of those kids are going to go to colleges, they are going to pursue careers based on those athletic skills they have. My son says that's a football family. I'm not going to take that opportunity away. Clear up the budget problem, so we won't have to take it off their back.
Ron's comment: I guess Debbie thinks it's all right to take it out on the backs of the students that stayed behind, after all they are not part of the “football family”. Is this really a budget problem? I don't think so.
Charles Brink: The simple answer is no; we should not be paying teachers to take time off to go to the sports program. We shouldn't be paying for substitutes. This is educational money being siphoned off to pay for competitive sports. We need to pay for the coaches of course, which they have stipends to pay them for that. One of the letters from Mark Flath for example who is the parent of the first student to be transferred to Hart legally, said that 11 teachers were pulled out to go to that game and there was some dispute whether or not substitutes were hired. That's a horrible drain for almost no purpose. Let the kids have a great time, enjoy their sports, let the coaches go but if the teachers who are employed to teach other subjects in the school want to go, then dock them the salary that day and hire a substitute. Even that isn't great for the kids because a substitute teacher always does a poorer job than the teacher of the class. The story I heard also was one class was up to 75 students, by cramming them all in. It was one of these sports or die programs. That's why sometimes I get mad at the sports program. I think they played a team they could defeat in Mammoth. I much more prefer they play a team like Mojave or Lancaster. It would be much more interesting.
Ron's comment: It is true that students don't learn as well with a substitute.
Leona Sexton: As far as sports go, athletics, I think they are a very important part of education. Both of my kids were involved in sports, both JV and varsity… Not only did they have high GPA's they both graduated with 4.0 and did all their homework. There are a lot of kids that it actually helped them to keep their grades up because it gave them something to focus on. Kids need focus; they need something to do in a small town where you have not much to do. Athletics are very important. And as far as the teachers being paid to go, of course they should be. Debbie said the stipends. You are not paying much money. It's such a worthwhile thing for the kids to have. And of course we should have the substitutes to take the place of other teachers that are gone, but like I said athletics are very important. I think it gives the kids a lot to do. It teaches them working as a team and that carries on with like a professional life like in business. You have to work as a team, you can't do it all alone.
Ron's comment: No one is arguing against the merits of sports.
Mark Distaso: As usual we are dealing with the symptom instead of the cause. We're grappling over stipends. The bottom line is that if we had a budget of 17 million instead of 12 million this wouldn't be an issue. It is important that any school district and any school within that district not just be responsible for giving a formal education to a child, but offering that child an educational experience. Sports, arts, music it's all part of the offering of an educational experience. Sports specifically kids develop a value system - team work, trust building, it helps them to define community, to build individual character in THOSE who play sports. And it seems to me that we need to go to the larger issue of why we have such a systemic budget problem and deal with that to answer the question. Obviously we should have a reasonable policy of what staff is allowed to go and it should only be that staff that is necessary to take the trip. But lets start looking for larger issues…
Ron's comment: I don't think Mark has ever seen a problem that couldn't be solved via either the budget or a needs assessment, but he does claim to be able to use some Mark magic to raise our budget from 12 to 17 million. I think the larger issue is addressing the academic quality of Vasquez High.
Mike Hughes: Speaking of larger issues, I don't believe the crux of the question was the sports program or whether we should have one. The crux of the question is, should teachers be allowed to go when we don't have substitutes to replace them, therefore the education of our children suffers. This clearly shows a control problem in the classical sense. If the teachers that are required to go or need to go because of their inclusion in the program, obviously you do that. But if they are requesting days off just to go and don't participate, I assume the administration has the approval or disapproval rights to approve that, but if there is adequate notice - I believe our football schedule is noted well in advance, then plans to replace those people should have been made long before the game came up. So to me it's a control problem and an administration problem. And that is systemic of some of the issues we've identified here.
Ron's comment: Mike correctly identifies this as a management issue, not a budget issue.
My closing comments: Athletics are important and we should be spending district funds to support sports. Just like all areas of our budget we need to spend our limited funds wisely to maximize the educational benefit. Many of our students do thrive academically and have gone on to attend colleges in the UC system and other distinguished higher education institutions.
There is a perception though, that too much emphasis has been given to our athletic program and not enough focus given to academics at Vasquez High. Our academic progress scores at Vasquez fall below state averages at the same time our scores are above state averages for all of our other schools. Changes are needed, but only the right changes. We can keep our strength in sports and improve our academic programs.
Last year the superintendent reassigned the Vasquez Principal after he cut the AP Biology section, so that a coach's time could be freed up. Our athletic supports reacted by forming “Vision and Planning” headed by Leona Sexton to recall two of our Board members. Their recall campaign failed and now their little group has morphed into a well-funded political action committee called “Brighter Future”. Mark, Leona and Debbie are running on the “Brighter” slate and if elected will constitute a majority on the School Board.
From their defensive statements on this athletics question, it is obvious who the “Brighter” supporters are. They are avid sports proponents, but are not as interested in academics.
We need a fair and logical balance Please help keep our schools free from special interest groups by supporting the many qualified independent candidates that are running. You get three votes for the School Board seats.
Please make Ron Bird one of your choices. To find out more about my positions visit: www.ronbird.org . Thank you.
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