Editor's note: School's out!
Published: July 1, 2010
By the time Alice Cooper’s greatest hit came out he was already a nostalgia act for me. After all, I’d seen him get guillotined and hanged—almost everything you’ve heard about those legendary concerts was true—and it’s hard for a headless man to top himself, even if his neck has been stretched.
Little did I know that “School’s Out” would still be pounding in my head more than three decades later. But there it was, blaring in my brain at the art meeting where CSBA’s writers, graphic designers and editors brainstormed concepts to illustrate this issue’s features.
It wasn’t my idea.
We were discussing a serious and substantive article staff writer Carol Brydolf had written to advise governance teams faced with shuttering schools, usually due to a combination of declining enrollment and tight budgets. Seeking some visual shorthand, we soon came up with the idea of a school message board proclaiming, “SCHOOL’S OUT.” Heavy head-banging commenced. One wit even suggested adding one of those high-tech greeting card sound chips, so that Alice’s gravelly voice would sing the exultant chorus when the magazine was opened:
“School’s out for summer, school’s out forever!”
The topic of the article is far weightier than that heavy metal anthem, but in a way it’s appropriate to riff on a song from the original shock rocker. After all, “Shock waves were rocking the community” when rumors began circulating in the Vacaville Unified School District of possible school closures to help deal with drastic state budget cuts, David McCallum, a member of the school board, told Carol.
“I am a strong believer in neighborhood schools, and I wouldn’t close any schools if I could avoid it,” McCallum said. “But we needed to establish some objective criteria and take a hard look at all the data” before the school board could even begin to consider any closures. He and other veterans of that difficult process share their insights and experiences in “Seeking Closure.”
Whether the subject is closed schools or homeless kids, the repercussions can be traumatic, as staff writer Kristi Garrett explores in “Recessionary Tales.”
“Any time you displace a child or adolescent, there is some effect on them in terms of their schooling—academically and socially,” Mark Yost, foster youth and homeless services director for the San Joaquin County Office of Education, told Kristi.
“Educators are increasingly asked to become de facto social workers, caring for their students’ essential needs before they can tackle instruction to meet ever more stringent accountability standards,” Kristi wrote, broadening her topic to other serious social problems afflicting the children that come to our schools. “Although mushrooming homelessness, hunger, and physical, oral and mental health issues are straining most schools’ resources, there are school districts and county offices of education that are finding ways to respond to these critical needs.”
CSBA is helping to find those ways on a number of fronts. Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin lays out our latest strategy, and briefly describes the years of planning and preparation that went into it, in his column, “CSBA Files Historic Lawsuit Against the State.”
Citing “the dramatic imbalance between the state’s high academic standards and its anemic school funding,” Scott wrote, “we’re asserting that California’s system of school finance is unconstitutional, and we’re calling on the courts to order the governor and Legislature to remedy their failure to provide the funding necessary to meet those high standards.”
Our “other” Scott—regular contributor Scott LaFee—weighs in with a feature on disaster preparedness (“In Case of Emergency”) that’s complemented by one of our “Class Acts” that focuses on the Napa County Office of Education’s School Emergency Response Team. On a more upbeat note, Kathy Walker, the director of curriculum and standards in Bakersfield City School District, gives a first-person “Perspective” account on how technology is helping with teamwork and professional development in California’s largest elementary school district.
So rock on—I mean read on! After all, school may be out, but as John Dewey said, “Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself.”
Brian Taylor is the managing editor of California Schools.