District Administration - October 2010 - (Page 52)

The Price of a Good Education that so far is limited to providing two sets of laptops to cover three grades. The Davis School District, north of Salt Lake City, which has a $6,400 perpupil expenditure, has the distinction of having none of its 84 schools on the Needs Improvement list, notes Superintendent Byron Bowles. Davis has a robust IB program at several middle and high schools and over the past two years has launched Chinese, German, and French immersion programs to go along with an existing Spanish program at six elementary schools. Last spring, Davis High School, which has 2,500 students, administered nearly 5,000 AP tests to juniors and seniors who took AP tests in multiple subjects and who achieved an overall 87 percent passing rate. “Our decisions are always based on ‘How do we get as much money to classrooms without hurting the support services they need?’,” Bowles says of his schools’ record of success. Although the district’s elementary and middle schools—which serve as many as 1,000 students—have no assistant principals, Bowles fills the void by supplying lower-paid principals-intraining to handle the workload. Davis teachers, meanwhile, have become adept at teaching large classes, from the mid-20s at the elementary level to the high 30s in high school. “With that low a per-pupil expenditure, Utah has the highest class sizes in the nation,” says Stephen Ronnenkamp, who just retired from Salt Lake City’s Granite School District in September after 14 years as superintendent. “But where the larger problem rests is that the teacher is doing more work with very few resources and very little support for that class.” A typical Granite elementary school has 600 to 1,000 students and one principal, he notes. “No assistant principals, no math specialists, just a half-time reading specialist, and no physical education teachers,” he says, adding that it leaves classroom teachers handling remedial math and P.E. Ronnenkamp, a former president of the Utah Association of Superintendents, points to 2006-2007 census data that www.DistrictAdministration.com Students perform experiments in the Granite (Utah) School District science lab. The district has one of the lowest per-pupil spending nationwide and is on the NCLB “needs improvement” list. shows per-pupil expenditures for school administration and staff averaged $348 in Utah, compared to $535 nationally. Although the Granite district itself, which has a $6,427 per-pupil rate, is on Needs Improvement under NCLB, Ronnenkamp points out that none of its more than 80 schools have been on that list for more than two years. Every high school offers 12 to 14 AP courses and concurrent enrollment courses for dual credit with Salt Lake Community College. Two high schools offer IB programs. “We’re lean and mean and we’re on the cutting edge of trying to save money,” Ronnenkamp says of his per-pupil expenditure. Transportation is another cost-saver. School buses run three to four routes, for instance, which reduces the total number of buses and drivers. And the district has Diversity in Utah While the student population of the Davis and Alpine districts is more than 85 percent white, less than 30 percent economically disadvantaged, and barely 5 percent ESL, the Granite district is considerably more diverse, with 30 percent of the students Hispanic. Almost half of all students are economically disadvantaged and 25 percent are ELLs. And Salt Lake City, once a mild enclave of the Mormon devout, is becoming increasingly urbanized, with growing problems from poverty to gang violence, imported from the West Coast and even from Pacific Islands such as Tonga. “Our performance has been pretty good so far,” Ronnenkamp says, “but the more that Utah becomes demographically like the rest of the country, we’re beginning “Our performance has been pretty good so far, but the more that Utah becomes demographically like the rest of the country, we’re beginning to pay a price.” —Stephen Ronnenkamp, former superintendent, Granite (Utah) School District aggressively sought partnerships with local businesses, which provide everything from supplies to volunteers. “One of the things about the culture here is that we get tremendous support from parents and grandparents,” Ronnenkamp says. “It’s kind of a way of life here to step forward and help.” But he adds that Granite’s schools are straining under an influx of non-Englishspeaking students. “We’re getting kids who never had one day of formal education, and they walk in as 16-year-olds. How do you get these kids up to speed when we have such limited resources?” to pay a price.” The large districts in New York have used their advantage in per-student funding to meet the price of educating a diverse and economically poor student body. And while the superintendents in Rochester, Yonkers, and Buffalo have had to trim expenses in the still-tough economy, they could learn something from their Utah counterparts in making education dollars go further. DA Ron Schachter is a contributing writer to District Administration. October 2010 52 http://www.DistrictAdministration.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - October 2010

District Administration - October 2010
Contents
From the Editor
Letters
News Update
Curriculum Update
Facilities Update
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Conversations
The Price of a Good Education
Dividing Arizona
Making Your School Future-Proof
Connecting Curriculum with Community
A Small District’s Big Innovator
New Books
New Products
Product Focus
Tech Disruptions
Superintendent’s Insights
Online Edge
Professional Opinion

District Administration - October 2010