Carson school board: 'F' for policy-making

The Carson City School District's mission is to "contribute to the development of successful young adults who will make healthy contributions to themselves, their families, the State of Nevada, our great nation and the world."

The duty of the school board then, as elected officials, is to set policies to provide each student with an equal opportunity to learn and succeed. Instead, school trustees are poised to undermine our children's educations.

This budget cycle, possibly the most important in the district's history, demands unprecedented leadership to preserve the integrity of our schools, yet trustees abdicated their policy-making roles by allowing Superintendent Richard Stokes to create a tentative budget which they agreed to vote on as a package despite public outcry for scrutiny of all components.

The board apparently settled on this course of action without a vote. In a Nevada Appeal article on March 10, Trustee Norm Scoggins disclosed that board members "expressed their opinions where we wanted to go" and had "indicated what we wanted."

In ordinary times, this might suffice; but because of the consequences of precipitous decisions during this critical time, the board should have debated, approved or disapproved individual budget components. Scoggins called this important policy-making process "cherry-picking."

Instead of asserting their roles as guardians of our children's futures, the board simply gave Stokes instructions to save money. Scoggins added, "Now it's up to Stokes to work out the details."

And the devil is always in the details.

When policy-makers drop the ball, administrators in effect set policy by working out "the details." The trustees " elected officials who supposedly represent their constituents " dismissed public demands to determine where best to cut costs by scrutinizing everything. So Stokes simply slashed the amount to be saved from the easiest target. The result? Teacher and aide layoffs, including grades K-4, the foundation of our children's educations.

But something more egregious is afoot.

Under the guise of saving a few thousand dollars, Stokes put Fremont School on the chopping block, asserting that changing Fremont from year-round to traditional was necessary to the budget.

But he didn't do his homework: Low-income students, nearly 50 percent of Fremont's students, benefit from year-round school. Research shows that traditional schedules set up low-income students for failure " with long-term consequences for communities " and even more affluent parents argue that their students benefit from year-round schedules.

Though changing Fremont's schedule may ease the superintendent's scheduling burden, it isn't in our students' best interests.

In fact, reverting Fremont to a traditional schedule runs counter to national and international trends. Studies indicate that the traditional agrarian schedule is antiquated, and alternative scheduling such as year-round should be available in every school district. Because the number of low-income students is higher at other Carson City schools, trustees should plan to change at least two other schools to year-round, no matter how inconvenient it is for the superintendent.

School districts throughout our nation manage traditional and year-round schedules; maybe Stokes should step up his game, and maybe our trustees should start being leaders.

More to the point: Changing Fremont's schedule demonstrates no savings after all.

Nevertheless, changing Fremont's calendar may now be scheduled for Tuesday's school board meeting as a separate action item " not even giving the community the courtesy of a heads-up.

We believe, based upon the shell-game that has played out in the past few weeks, that the trustees have already decided to break the promise they previously made to the community: that because Fremont's alternative scheduling had overwhelming support, the community would not have to revisit this issue again.

We wonder how the board will rationalize their search-and-destroy mission at Tuesday's school board meeting.

- Marilee and Ron Swirczek served on the Carson City Board of Supervisors in the 1980s.