I hate those stupid coughing fits that happen at the
worst possible times.
It's that terrible itch just below the back of your
throat, and you can't do anything about it but cough, and cough loudly.
It always seems to happen to me when I'm recovering from a cold and it's
the worst possible time to cough. It happens to me a lot, since Our Town
is a rather polluted area. It doesn't help that my lungs are so irritable
that I catch everything but men and money.
It's happened at work, and I can only run for the
water fountain and endure cute jokes from my co-workers: "Time to quit
smoking, eh?" "You gonna make it?"
It happened at a play, and nothing irritates me
more than jerks who come to a play and cough through it. I spent much of
the first act at the back of the theater.
It's happened during interviews, and all I can do
is choke out the most important question and try not to cough in the subject's
face. Once, it happened while I was on the phone with the governor's press
secretary. At least I was able to put him on hold.
But I was actually glad it happened at the town
meeting today, in retrospect.
It was an Our Town public meeting to discuss ways
for the school district to save money. A big list of "cost-saving measures"
(read: budget cuts) that focused on extra programs like band, choir, athletics,
the gifted program, the please-don't-drop-out program and extraneous administrators.
Halfway through the 20-odd citizens who spoke on
behalf of the gifted program, I started coughing, and discreetly stepped
outside so I wouldn't disrupt the proceedings. I went down the hallway
to cough in peace, cursing God and the Big City polluters who made this
air unbreathable.
There was a little girl there, about ten years old.
She asked me if I was okay. I was not. I asked her if she knew where there
was a water fountain. She pointed to one that was clearly visible if one
was not a stupid coughing adult, but when I headed toward it, she said,
"Wait, that one tastes yucky. Come with me."
So I followed the water savior to another water
fountain two hallways away, and drank thankfully. I popped a cough drop
and talked to her for a minute while I waited for it to take effect.
Her name was Sara, and she was one of the gifted
students. She was at the meeting because she was worried about school.
This struck me as so odd I asked her a few more
questions.
Sara had friends in "regular" classes, and she said
they were bored all the time. Classes had to be set for the lowest possible
standard so no one would be left behind.
I remember what that was like. I never lived in
the same place long enough to be tested for a gifted program. But I do
remember my third-grade teacher yelling at me in front of the entire class
for reading a book during spelling exercises. I had already finished my
spelling assignment, but I didn't say anything. She was the Teacher. And
it didn't occur to me to question her priorities for many years to come.
Since Sara qualified for the gifted program, so
she got to read a lot of books and do special research projects. Her classmates
were children of equal ability, and she looked forward to the classes she'd
be able to take next year. Second-graders were reading at a sixth-grade
level. Some of the families had moved to Our Town so they'd be able to
attend through the gifted program.
Sara had attended the town meeting with several
of her classmates. Two of them addressed the school board, obviously nervous,
with carefully prepared speeches in their hands as they adjusted the microphones
downward.
I was trying to concentrate on my work, but at the
same time, I was thinking of my two-year-old son, and how terrified I'd
be if he was a gifted student who looked forward to school every day and
he was about to be sent back down into American public school classes.
Some of the children told stories about when they were in "regular" classes,
finishing their work long before their classmates and running errands for
the teachers the rest of the period. Others became discipline cases, acting
up in school simply because they were bored out of their skins.
The parents criticized the concept of "pullout"
classes, stigmatizing the brighter kids and causing them to miss part of
their class activities. Still others asked why the state requires the district
to provide special services to children with mental and physical handicaps,
yet they are not required to offer special services to exceptionally bright
children.
Some of the parents choked up, saying they'd have
to get a second job to send their children to private school if the gifted
program ended. But although private school can be an excellent option,
there's no guarantee that a private school is any better than a public
school. It may be religious and provide moral education if that's what
you want, but it may not have the resources that public school can provide.
And I was sympathetic to the angry parents who asked
why there were major cuts in the fine arts programs, even though they were
full academic classes as well. They were angry that sports got such acclaim
in Our Town, and they were right. Although sports took a hit in the budget
cuts too, it was not nearly the percentage of its total budget that fine
arts received.
One parent said, "I don't want a basketball shot
to decide whether my daughter goes to college."
I also noticed that no one spoke up for the please-don't-drop-out
program. That's what I call it, of course; there's a much fancier acronym
for it in School-land. It takes kids who can't quite make it in the regular
high school and puts them in self-paced learning courses so they can still
earn a diploma and save themselves from careers of "Do you want fries with
that?"
None of their parents made it to the town meeting.
Not one. It told me a lot about the real difference between the please-don't-drop-out
kids and the gifted kids. My heart broke for them, too.
But I also have suffered with the school board through
months of agonizing over the massive budget deficit they face. Many blame
it on contracted teacher's salaries, but I know for a fact that the teachers
are still underpaid for the services they provide and the commitment they
share.
So I asked a financial consultant, why is this district
in trouble?
It isn't, she tells me. There's districts in the
state that are in much worse trouble. One district is $17 million in the
red, with no hope of recovery. Another district is selling all its elementary
schools. It simply can't afford to run them anymore. They're going to stick
all the elementary children in one big kid-factory. It has no choice.
Compared with that, Our Town's in great shape.
So I asked the expert, what the hell is going on?
If a math dunderhead like me can balance a checkbook, surely the geniuses
of local government can run a school district.
In most of this nation's schools, funding comes
from local property taxes. There's maybe 15 percent that comes from the
state, and a measly 7 percent or so comes from the federal government.
That's why your local superintendents don't get too excited with the Prez
says he's going to save education. Maybe it means they'll go up to 8 percent.
Woo hoo. Promising 100,000 new teachers is something like one-eighteenth
of a teacher per school.
But school populations go up dramatically every
year. They can't limit their enrollment; they can't keep the numbers static.
Then the government kicks in its quarter or so, and are they done? No!
Then they require the schools provide special education for needy kids,
and immunization programs, counselors to keep the kids from killing themselves
or each other, 21st-century computers so they won't be hopelessly lost
in the workplace, training for teachers who haven't stepped out of the
ivory towers in 20 years, and then the parents ask for extracurricular
programs, alumni want a new football stadium, the teachers threaten a strike
because they haven't gotten a raise in six years and they've got families
to feed too, and what about the roof in P.S. 12 that's about to fall down
in the cafeteria?
In short, they have no choice but to turn to the
taxpayers and ask for more money. But the 76-year-old grandmother on Elk
Street has already sent her children and grandchildren through the schools
and lives off Social Security. Why should she lose her home to the property
tax collector?
So the schools can't get more money from the taxpayers,
the state shrugs its shoulders and the Congressional Clowns are too busy
debating the design of Bill Clinton's birdhouse in his New Yawk backyard.
Where does that leave Our Town? They have to balance
the checkbook. How do you get more blood from the turnip? Do you cut expenditures
or raise revenue? Neither is a good idea for a taxing district. It's the
quintessential rock and a hard place.
I know all of this. I don't have an answer for it.
And when Sara stands at the back of the auditorium with me and watches
the debate continue among the adults, I know they don't have any answers
either. I don't want to see her sent back into the 30-student classrooms
where she will be forgotten and "normalized" until that spark, that love
of learning is crushed out of her. And I know the school board doesn't
want that, either. Neither do the teachers.
So at the end of the meeting, a decision was postponed
indefinitely. No one wants to make the first move. Sara doesn't understand
what happened here. Neither do I.
My son will be entering kindergarten in three years.
And I was choking on something more than an itch in my throat.
