October 24, 2001 News & Views » Citizen Servatius

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Citizen Servatius 

Missing: Textbooks and Common Sense
School board would do well to focus on basic needs first

Ever watched a hamster running on its wheel, alternately exerting a burst of speed and then straining to keep up with the momentum it has created, exhausting itself while getting nowhere? Then you're fully qualified to understand the psychology of public education in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.

The frustrated single mother who called me two weeks ago understands that psychology perfectly -- far better, I'd say -- than most of the half-lucid, racially obsessed blockheads who sit on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board. Unlike them, she doesn't have enough free time to obsess over making all school facilities physically equal. She doesn't give a rip if the county spends $803 million wiring classrooms for the internet or updating the decor of a cafeteria.

What she wanted to know was what it would take to get the school system to teach her son math. When she called me, the first quarter of school was nearly over, and her son had not yet received a math book. His math teacher, who had quit the first week of school, had not yet been replaced, so, along with other eighth graders in his class, he had been pushed upon other teachers and substitutes without managing to learn a thing.

The mother's multiple conversations with Kennedy Principal Jo Ella Ferrell got her and other parents nowhere. They were told that the books had been ordered that summer, but had not arrived and that no one had any idea when the math teacher might be replaced. So on October 3, I called Ferrell to inquire about when the school planned to begin teaching the kids math. She was very rude, wouldn't answer the question, and seemed to be more interested in which parent had ratted the school out than with the actual problem.

Maybe it was only coincidence that Ferrell sent a half-coherent letter on the subject home with the kids that same afternoon, or that the kids quickly received tattered, used old math books someone surely could have scrounged up eight weeks before.

"Please know that we have worked every minute of the day to rectify these problems," Ferrell wrote.

It gets better. A new math teacher would be starting the next week, the letter said, and to make up for the lost time, the kids would take double blocks of math. To make room for this in their schedules, the kids would skip science.

"There will be no penalty to your child for science during this double block," the letter said.

The frustrated mother says her son now goes to science class twice a week. For over a week, I've waited for a return phone call from school system officials who are looking into the matter.

Missing schoolbooks are nothing new at CMS. Perhaps the math teacher wasn't replaced because the 22 percent teacher turnover rate this year across the school system makes sudden vacancies hard to fill.

Or could it be that some of those teachers are leaving because of the pervasive institutional attitude the parent who called me has fought throughout her child's career at CMS?

Reporting has taught me that you record what people say, but you build your story around what they actually do. That's what makes the above story so telling. Folks like School Board member Louise Woods, who sent a mailer to my home last week, promise to achieve fairly abstract goals like mentoring for new teachers, competitive teacher pay, "incentive pay for targeted schools and strategic teaching needs" and "to supply sufficient technology, smaller class size and adequate planning time."

But how could any of this possibly have any effect if we can't find a way to make sure kids get textbooks -- and that school officials care enough to take care of the basics without a lobbying campaign by parents?

Last year, when the end-of-grade test results came back from the state, the school system praised its own and the news ran shots of the county's smiling little academic achievers.

This spring, one way or another, the eighth graders at Kennedy will have to pass the same end-of-grade test to move on to the next grade.

But I guess as long as their classrooms are wired for the internet and the decor in their cafeteria is updated next year when they return to repeat the eighth grade, everything will be just fine. *

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