New Woodburn Community School

NEGLECTING THE CHILDREN AND THE PUBLIC

Marsh Fork Elementary, partially funded by the SBA, will be built with “sloped roofs” which “are another aspect of the plan that the School Building Authority will not fund” even though the local school “board finds [such roofs] imperative to the area’s climate.”

Furthermore, “the School Building Authority will only finance a 3,100 square foot gymnasium,” forcing the local school board which “wants to provide a gym the size of Fairdale’s” to “negotiate to make up the difference.”

So while the SBA won’t provide for the  needs and interests of the responsible local school board, the SBA will, by all that is wrong in education, enforce its own anti-educational, pro-dropout minimum class sizes. The WV SBA is the outrageous joke of the educational world.

The sooner the WV legislature reviews and corrects the anti-democracy and anti-educational effects of the SBA, maybe by abolishing it for something far better, the better off will be the students and the public.

Meanwhile in Morgantown the SBA is totally negligent in approving a dangerous, scandalously expensive, vehicle-exhaust-polluted and health damaging site for the new “Eastwood” “green” elementary school. A school that destroys nine acres of urban farmland and that both endangers and damages children’s health at exorbitant cost to the public is the furthest thing from responsible, let along environmentally or health conscious.

Such a school siting is not only remarkably stupid, it’s grossly negligent – not exactly what the public, or what the WV legislature, one assumes, desires in state agencies. The WV School Building Authority is a menace to society, anti-educational in effect, and unresponsive to the public. Read the rest of this entry »

MON BOE COMPARES ITSELF TO THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Hell freezes over. Pigs fly. Pope declares himself atheist.

Mon Schools compares itself to the National Archives.

From now on, for Freedom of Information Act requests, Monongalia County Schools is charging 35 cents per electronic page for public documents that pre-exist in electronic form.

West Virginia University, for example, charges nothing for electronic records, but comparing itself to WVU, let alone to a public school district, is not good enough for Mon Schools, which compares itself to the United States National Archives. Mon Schools Superintendent Frank Devono:

“This is just getting us in line with what other organizations like the National Archives are doing…”

Now, that’s a powerful comparison. Aim high, no?

“…as we work through all the new technology and new media out there.”

New technology and new media? Like PDF documents and email?

To say that the comparison of Mon Schools to the US National Archives is entirely ridiculous entirely misses the point. The comparison is insane.

But let’s set sanity aside for a moment and consider just what does the National Archives charge for electronic records?:

$15.00 per file.

What does a file consist of?

Well, take a random example, the most recent addition to the National Archives: the newly added Central Foreign Policy Files.

Central Foreign Policy Files
“We have added 227,201 electronic telegram records and 133,612 withdrawal “card” records to the Department of State’s Central Foreign Policy File for 1973-75 available through AAD. These 360,813 records were identified as permanently valuable and merged with the records previously accessible through AAD following completion of the appraisal of the Subject TAGS used in the Central Foreign Policy File.”

Each file (14 new ones) contains on average over 25,000 records, which comes out to fractions of a cent per record, let alone per page of each record. Plus, some of the records were converted from paper to electronic, not pre-existing in electronic form, and merged into old records. Mon Schools’ new policy charges 35 cents per page of existing electronic materials, and does not convert records from paper, nor does it create new records.

In a recent Freedom of Information Act request of Mon Schools, the requester received 14 PDF records totaling nearly 300 pages. Mon Schools did not even trouble itself to email the 14 records. The requester went into the office and copied the records onto a flash drive supplied by the requester. There was no charge. With Mon Schools new policy the charge would be about $100.00 for the 14 PDF records, of less than 300 total electronic pages.

So it is that even if anyone should accept the insane Mon Schools to National Archives comparison, we see that the National Archives charges $15 for more than 25,000 records, while Mon Schools would charge $100 for 14 records. Two real examples. One insane and illegal policy. Read the rest of this entry »

BURYING THE PUBLIC AND PUBLIC WORK

By law, the US public is allowed to see what its government officials do in its name and on its dime. But Monongalia County Schools wants to make you pay for that right, big time. Mon Schools intends to make it policy that:

“The cost of electronic duplication that involves the duplication of files on disc or thumb drive shall be thirty five cents ($.35) per page.”

The item is on the school board meeting agenda for tonight, Policy 1-02.

Two months ago, Jim Bissett reported in the Dominion Post that Freedom of Information Act expert

Pat McGinley, a WVU law professor who has extensively researched FOIA through the years, said public agencies can only charge for the cost of reproducing the documents and nothing else, which means paper and ink cartridges.

Charging for document searches isn’t allowed under the act, he said.

Not according to Mon Schools, which intends to charge the public for the work of its employees who are already paid by the public. The new FOIA request costs are to include:

“…the actual operator time and computer resource usage required to product the copy.”

As if school employees are not already paid by public funds to do such work.

Unreasonable copy fees are not legal either. For digital copies, the only reasonable fee would be zero:

A digital copy, [said Professor McGinley], technically carries no reproduction costs — unless the agency provides a disc to house the data.

“You’re just e-mailing something,” he said.

Why is Monongalia County Schools so desperate to hide what it is doing? $.35 for a single page of email, which costs nothing to copy? It’s sick. Mon Schools: Where only the monied shall be allowed to attempt to know what goes on. Read the rest of this entry »

TIME TO END THE NEGLIGENCE AND THE RIDICULOUS EXCUSES

Monongalia County Schools Director of Transportation Irv Schuetzner interviewed on WAJR on Wednesday December 15: audio link. Mon Schools needs to do better than this. First, the Director said a hiring bonus for badly needed new drivers could not be given because it would not be fair to current drivers. You have a crisis, Director, that is, the kids have a crisis: there are no drivers often to get the students home at a decent time. Or to get them to some extracurricular events. Therefore, give ALL the drivers a $1,000 bonus or more, even much more, including new hires. That should help all around, and guess what: it’s fair! Mon Schools obviously has the money. If they can blow several million on an unneeded new school site, then they can certainly spend $100,000 or $200,000 or more to help solve a busing crisis. Second, it’s dishonest for the Director to say that the bus drivers have no answers for the Director’s problems. Who is he to speak for them? One answer was given above. Listening to the drivers’ suggestions and solutions on routing and scheduling, and on safety in routing, would solve other problems. Further, as reminder, the Director, should recheck the Woodburn website to remind himself of how the bus drivers forced him to solve the problems of overcrowding on buses and of safety in busing. Third, there are ways to reduce student discipline problems on buses, which could also bring in more drivers: hire aides to ride periodically on buses, when requested by the drivers, that are having discipline problems. That way, the aides can keep order, allowing the drivers to drive. Drivers who don’t have discipline problems don’t need to request aides, but aides should be there on the occasions when drivers request them. We look forward to a future WAJR show featuring bus drivers, and maybe their union representatives, as guests.

The late buses two days before the interview:

THE BUS WORKERS IN STRUGGLE WITH MANAGEMENT & ADMINISTRATION

There have been serious problems with busing all year in Monongalia County Schools. On top of that, there is a serious labor and management conflict ongoing between the bus drivers and their supervisors.

If school board meetings would be televised, everyone could see how this has been playing out for months. (Our green school lawsuit to be heard in Kanawha County requests of the Court many things, including mandatory televised school board meetings, as city council meetings are televised.)

Mon Schools management has been making ill-advised decisions in not acting on the more informed and knowledgeable suggestions of the bus drivers on various routing matters, and other issues. In fact last year the West Virginia School Service Personnel Association (WVSSPA) took Mon Schools to court to bring Mon Schools into legal compliance on busing and safety matters, successfully pushing for a Court order agreement this past July.

Why was the current Mon Schools Director of Transportation hired? Did he have any bus driving or busing experience?

Why did he write and sign a statement allowing children to stand on the buses if overloaded by the bus scheduling for which he is responsible?

The memo is a clear violation. This blog publicized the memo and evidently helped force Mon Schools to retract that policy change. So this conflict is serious and ongoing. It’s much worse than Mon Schools failing to “appreciate” the bus drivers, as was reported on WAJR. Mon Schools too often fails to respect the bus drivers’ knowledge and their rights, which creates a safety menace and various inefficiencies, and which batters morale. The safety of the children is threatened and the value of their time and that of their parents is disregarded. And the bus drivers are ill treated.

Woodburn Elementary releases at 3:35. Sometimes the buses are a half hour late or more. The crossing guard can’t leave until 4:15 or later. Scheduling has been a mess.

It seems that the bus drivers need to publicize their numerous serious grievances through a blog, at the very least, perhaps with anonymity because they are always under threat of being fired, unlike Woodburn parents on this blog. Even so, it’s tough to get the word out.

A constant stream of information direct to the public can help clarify some of what is going on: a serious labor and management conflict over various problems, a conflict that shows no signs of going away. Read the rest of this entry »