Race to the Top?
More like a wrestling match.
Gov. Chris Gregoire continues to chase support of Washington’s 295 school districts as the state prepares to bid for $250 million of federal money from Round 2 of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top education reform plan.
Convinced that uniform support is crucial to Washington’s chances, she’s pressed each district to ratify the state effort prior to Monday’s filing deadline.
Statewide, just 73 districts had inked support by midday Wednesday, however.
In Clark County, response has been tepid, at best — at times, downright ornery.
Many local educators blast the regulatory strings wrapped around the federal Race to the Top money. They complain the state still flunks its duty to fully fund public schools.
They ask if the dollars — far less than the amount Olympia has stripped from their budgets the past two years — are even worth the bother.
For La Center school Superintendent Mark Mansell, the answer is a resounding “no.” Which is why he refused to even raise the notion with his school board this month.
Clark County’s other nine school districts have signed on to Washington’s plan. But only after many agonized over the decision.
“Any time you chase money and not an idea, it’s not meaningful change. It has no real impact,” Mansell said. “That’s the thing that makes me really, really upset about this. We’re chasing after money.”
Dismissive of both state and federal proposals, he’s dubbed the effort “Race to the Trough.”
And a shallow one, at that: A winning state bid would bring La Center a paltry $34,000 per year, for four years, under the best of outcomes.
For Mansell, federal help meant to fuel school innovations and boost student performance is poor substitute for millions of dollars cut from schools to stem the state budget’s bleeding.
He’s not alone in his ire.
Evergreen district Superintendent John Deeder said Gregoire has watched legislators gut supplemental classroom spending authorized by voter-passed Initiative 728, without much of a fuss.
“With one stroke of the pen, we eliminate $480 (state funds per student, per year),” Deeder lamented at Tuesday’s school board meeting. “And now we’re supposed to jump through all these hoops, for $24.49 (per student)?”
At Evergreen, the biggest district in Clark County and the state’s fifth-largest, leaders slammed the bid process and strong-arm politics.
“This is really repugnant, in many ways,” Deeder told board members.
But they agreed potential political risk of not signing outweighed a desire to send a strong contrarian message.
Preserving options
Deeder warned that backlash could build among Olympia legislators when Evergreen makes its annual case for the state to more fully and equitably fund schools. They could ask, “How could you turn down a shot at federal money, then come to us and beg for more?” he said.
A snub also could damage Evergreen’s hope to win money in the next round of Race to the Top funding: That’s when districts can submit their own bids for support of innovative schools and other reforms.
Evergreen officials believe they’ll compete well in Round 3, given a well-regarded Clark County Skills Center, online and other alternative learning programs, and the Health and BioScience Academy it plans to construct near the Southwest Washington Medical Center.
“I’m OK to sign on, so as to not take us out of the running,” said Victoria Bradford, board president.
Vancouver ‘burned’
Similar complaints also were heard Tuesday when Vancouver district board members acted on Superintendent Steve Webb’s recommendation.
Fresh on their minds were new teacher cutbacks triggered by a ninth straight year of belt-tightening and losing out on state grants to pay for Jason Lee and Discovery middle schools reforms, after both Washingtons slapped each campus with a failing label.
“Having just been burned by the state School Improvement Grants … I’m pretty skeptical of the process, skeptical of the reforms, skeptical of the ulterior motives at the federal level,” said board member Mark Stoker.
He was willing to abide Webb’s counsel because “signing it doesn’t obligate us to anything,” he said. The district would need to revisit changes later in order to cash in, should the state win the grant money.
‘Gun to our head’
Evergreen board members didn’t let the matter drop with Deeder’s signature. They asked him to draft a letter to Gov. Chris Gregoire expressing deep reservations and frustration.
Deeder and board members had hoped to badger Gregoire directly during her planned visit to Union High School on Monday. But her trip was canceled to meet instead with Boeing Co. and union leaders who seek a prized military tanker plane contract.
Evergreen leaders are incensed the governor and legislators have yet to address a Feb. 4 King County Superior Court ruling that found the state shirking its constitutional “paramount duty” to fund basic education.
That pivotal ruling affirmed what they and other districts have claimed for years.
“I wanted to have the conversation with her yesterday,” Deeder told the board: “Where’s the advocacy, when you’ve been told you have to do something on this?” Instead, her pressure to join the Race to the Top herd has “felt like you held a gun to our head,” he said.
Slim prospects?
Now, La Center’s Mansell said, the state is ready to pass along even more mandates.
“Here they go again doing the same song and dance, and they’re not funding it,” he said.
That’s only if Washington state’s bid comes through, though. The federal Department of Education is to name grant winners by Sept. 30.
Olympia officials concede the state’s case is not strong, Deeder said. That’s despite changes legislators voted this year to sweeten its bid. Senate Bill 6696 allows the state to intervene in schools that are failing, changes how principals and teachers are evaluated and clears the way for nonprofit organizations to issue teacher certifications.
But Washington still doesn’t allow charter schools, a probable sticking point for President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
However slim the prospects and onerous the new rules — more tracking of student outcomes, new teacher and principal evaluations and new training, certain to add more administrative burdens — smaller districts in Clark County have chosen to abide Gregoire’s wish.
The Camas district has eyed innovative cluster grants, available if the state wins. Dollars could enhance its Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics program and develop creative ways to address career and college readiness, said Tanis Knight, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction.
Hockinson Superintendent Michael Grubbs said new money can salve bad feelings over some loss of local school control.
“In this economic climate, it’s hard to pass up funding sources even though there are many strings attached,” Grubbs said.
Howard Buck: 360-735-4515 or howard.buck@columbian.com
Marissa Harshman: 360-735-4546 or marissa.harshman@columbian.com.
