RI's Education Woes Aren't Lack of Money - It's Lack of Leadership: Guest MINDSETTER™ Schoos

RI's Education Woes Aren't Lack of Money - It's Lack of Leadership: Guest MINDSETTER™ Schoos

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been confronted with data about the state of public education in Rhode Island and various measures of our performance vis-à-vis other states. Putting it bluntly it isn’t pretty. From an imbalance of budget priorities, to the possible closing of a venerable elementary school, to our ranking with other New England states, to an exposure of our overall mediocre educational performance, we have to confront the fact that we have a public education system in distress.

Some of this is about money, and we’ll get to that in a minute. But it is also about lack of focused leadership and happy talk that only serves to obfuscate and detract. The lack of overall planning and direction was emblemized by the Governor’s leaving it to the cities and towns to determine safety protocols for a targeted late August re-opening. Not surprising, reports indicate that the local plans are inconsistent in their scope and depth. I feel sorry for those school administrators. For example, the once simple classroom seat arrangement has become an exercise in advanced calculus. 

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Throwing this preparation planning to the local school districts is like the passengers on the Titanic drawing straws to see who gets on a lifeboat. This little bit of snark has a very serious point.  Like the Titanic, the state of education lacks both broad consensus and adequate resources, which we can only begin to repair with strong, clear, direct leadership at the state level. Specifically, the executive and legislative branches have ignored the deterioration of public schools until they hit a critical mass, as happened in Providence and Central Falls.

Sadly, that leadership seems to be focused elsewhere, and I’m not just commenting on our current Era of Pandemic Pandemonium.  Rather, I focus on issues prior to COVID-19 exposing the weaknesses of our system. At this point, before I continue, let me point out that prior to becoming an attorney, for a lot of years I taught history, economics, and political science in a public high school in Massachusetts.  

As recently reported in GoLocalProv, Massachusetts’s public-school system was ranked #1 by WalletHub. Four New England states ranked in the top 6 states nationally. Rhode Island ranked 27th. Going from bad to worse, Rhode Island ranks 47th in median SAT scores, part of the high cost of allowing mediocrity. 

As an example of lack of leadership, I give you the situation at Henry Barnard Laboratory School at Rhode Island College. From the school’s website: Since 1898, The Henry Barnard Laboratory School has served Rhode Island College and the people of Rhode Island as a non-public, independent, elementary school. Our learners, most of whom live in the greater Providence metro area, range in age from preschool through grade five. Our school is a department of RIC’s Feinstein School of Education and Human Development,[sic] and is located in the heart of the College campus.

Multiple press reports have revealed that parents of children at Henry Barnard became concerned about the possible closing of the school. There were numerous indicators, such as declining enrollment and an interim principal remaining in place for several years, a situation that will continue into the coming school year. 

Evidently some parents reached out to the college’s administration to learn whether their fears were founded. After ignoring numerous requests for information, RIC president Frank Sanchez finally relented and held a Zoom meeting with parents. My understanding is that the meeting was less than informative, leaving the parents no alternative than to seek documents under the state’s Access To Public Records Act. Although these records have already been indirectly paid for through all of our tax dollars, the college has put a price tag of $2100 on the work required to retrieve and release these documents. The college also reserved the right to redact portions of these records.

There’s a strong rumor that the HBS school building is to be closed in its current iteration and transferred to a charter school. If true, then the price tag and timeline for the production of the information/documents that the parents need to make decisions for their kids appears to be an attempt at stonewalling in order to conserve another year’s tuition before the proverbial boom is dropped – presumably in the beginning of September. This leaves parents scrambling to find placement for their kids for the following year. 

Put another way, this looks like the college is trying to cash in before telling their HBS students to get out. But the real payday would come when the college no longer has to spend $4.26 million as budgeted this year for HBS, a sum which equals 2% of the college’s operating budget. Only the Student Union, at 1%, consumes less than Barnard. It looks like it really is all about the Benjamins after all.

Turning attention to the “Benjamins” as they relate to leadership and financing, a recent report disclosed the disparity between spending on public school kids and on prisoners housed at the ACI.

According to a survey conducted by GoBankingRates, Rhode Island ranks fifth in the nation in the spending disparity between per-pupil and per-inmate costs. In stark terms, Rhode Island spends an average $15,531.56 per student compared to an average of $58,564 per inmate. For those like me who are math challenged, that is a difference of $43,032.44. 

Some may say that, as a society, we need to pay the price necessary to keep us safe. But are these dollars really keeping us safe? According to information published by the Rhode Island Department of Corrections, 50% of inmates released will be reincarcerated within three years. That’s about shooting par for the national average.

Compared to this, the high school dropout rate looks like a massive success. According to the Rhode Island Department of Education, in 2017, 84.1% of high school students graduated within four years. Digging into the numbers and putting aside the fact that 16% don’t graduate “on time,” students with disabilities or who are English learners take longer to matriculate from high school. But we also know from data supplied by RIDE that English learners, low-income students, and Hispanic students are the most likely to drop out of school. According to RIDE data, fourteen percent of all high school students in Rhode Island’s core cities drop out of school altogether. With the state’s overall dropout rate of 7% in the same year, this screams for immediate targeted and sustained action.

Taken together, we seem to be overfunding a public function that, to be charitable and for many other reasons beyond mere incarceration, isn’t working, while underfunding a system that appears to be working, but could definitely use more resources, direction, and commitment.   On the one hand, we get platitudes about “great schools,” “world class standards,” “excellent educators,” and “wise investments.” On the other hand, we hear about “institutional community programs that provide a range of control and rehabilitative options which facilitate successful offender reentry.” In both cases, these platitudes do not take the place of comprehensive plans to fix a broken system. In other words, both programs could use the articulated and accessible vision that can only come from real leadership.

A budget should be about how the allocation of resources is prioritized, whether at the macro level for the state, or the micro level as seen at Henry Barnard. If nothing else, we know that those who determine this allocation of resources favor the status quo over the hard work to repair broken programs.

Too often, public officials in the executive and legislative branches ignore the legitimate concerns of the people they serve. Too often, these officials become mired in the operations of the past and are blinded to the needs of the present and the possibilities of the future.  Too ensconced in their positions, they fail to feel the duty to act, or are too tenuous in their positions that they are timid to act. Either inures to the detriment of the people they have a duty to hear, heed, and serve. 

The leadership that we deserve will need to do something creative to stem the funding disparity between education for kids and incarceration of adults. By closing the budgeted spending gap, we can address the needs of kids that, in turn, create opportunities for them as they mature.  Such a focus would result in a safer and more prosperous society where we wouldn’t need to spend so much to incarcerate people. 

Geoffrey A. Schoos, Esq is the past President of the former Rhode Island Center for Law and Public Policy.      

His most recent book, "Access to Justice on the Outskirts of Hope," is now available online and can be found on his website here.