I blogged about this earlier, and now there’s a Chron story about the controversy surrounding HISD magnet schools and the costs of transporting students to them.
In recent weeks, HISD Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra has proposed limiting busing to magnet schools as a cost-cutting measure, and, behind the scenes, his administration has discussed ending the Vanguard magnet programs for gifted elementary and middle school students.
The thought, Saavedra said in an interview, is that the advanced students could attend gifted programs in their neighborhood schools.
Saavedra’s ideas have set off a fiery debate about the role of magnet schools three decades after their launch.
The magnets, whose themes range from fine arts to math and science, draw money away from neighborhood schools, and the free bus rides cost the district $16.6 million annually.
That’s about $1 million more than the amount spent on the magnet programs themselves.
[…]
About 39,000 students, or 20 percent of those enrolled in HISD, attend magnet schools. And nearly 12,000 of them take advantage of the free transportation.
Saavedra, during a sparsely attended school board workshop last month, presented four options to reduce magnet busing costs, which represent about 1 percent of the district’s $1.6 billion budget.
One plan would have eliminated the busing entirely, but trustees immediately killed the idea.
Saavedra’s other proposals would end busing for students who live more than 10 miles from their magnet school or set up bus stops closer to the magnet — meaning parents would have to drive farther.
“I’m concerned for working parents,” said Amy Tehauno, who drives her 6-year-old daughter to Lovett Elementary’s fine arts magnet. “For those people that have no car, who are single parents, people need access to these programs.”
I can see what Saavedra is getting at here. Even if this is a relatively small portion of HISD’s overall budget, it is still costly, and is exactly the sort of thing that squeezes things when gas prices spike, as they did earlier this year. I can certainly understand the desire to reduce limit the exposure on this.
But on the other hand, we are talking about a one percent expenditure on nearly 20 percent of the HISD student population. Surely there are better ways to economize than making cuts in one of the district’s most successful and popular programs. At the very least, Saavedra needs to make a better case for this, and needs to do more to assure people that what he has in mind really won’t adversely impact the students who need this the most.
My concern at this point is that it’s not clear to me that any savings that could be achieved by this kind of change would be worth it. In the end, I think Saavedra’s statement that it would be better if the students who are being bused long distances to Vanguard and magnet schools had equivalent options closer to their homes makes a lot of sense. Of course, it’ll cost a fair amount of money to make that happen. Maybe if we did a better job of funding school districts in the first place, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Nothing new about that, unfortunately.
We clearly need to do a better job of educating our students.
But Saavedra is way off base here, in that I think he believes that if you force kids to their neighborhood schools then the schools will magically improve.
I don’t think there’s a one-to-one mapping. It is the magnet programs that have kept many families in the district instead of going private or moving out. If that choice is taken away, then you will see families making different choices.
This leads to several problems. One, some of your high-performing kids and the ones that brought up your testing averages are now gone. A chunk of your active volunteers and fundraisers (and boy do we fundraise) are now gone–these people and their dollars made up for cuts in the school’s budget. And then, you get in a situation where there are certain neighborhoods that no one with kids will move into. And what do you think that does to property values and your tax base?
Saavedra is picking a fight here that the school board has no stomach for. He’ll be gone by this time next year, I predict.