School Board Needs New Members with Financial Skills

The School Board’s continuing discussion of Full Day Kindergarten (FDK) has been very instructive as to the workings of the school board under the leadership of board presidents Brucie Rapoport and Eric Zajac.

Remember that FDK was formerly introduced last May when Mr. Zajac required funding to study FDK in exchange for his vote for a 3.2% tax increase which we all now know turned out to be entirely unnecessary. 

It’s unclear how those funds were spent but in their November 27th meeting, the Board voted 5-4 (Board members in favor: Armstrong, Doherty, Rapoport, Solomon, and Zajac. Board members opposed: Booker, Borowski, Madden, and Michaelson.) to implement a ‘hybrid’ FDK program for 2013. They did so without any advance public notice, without a recommendation from the administration, without knowing how much the program would cost or even the implications from an infrastructure perspective. And when questioned by those opposed, the administration admitted that this initiative would result in other school initiatives being “crowded out”. This was not explored at all by the board majority. 

There was never even a discussion as to the value of the program from the perceptive of any of the stakeholders. And all of this while knowing that Radnor was initiating a search for a new superintendent perhaps with a different set of goals.

That misguided effort was eventually put on hold a couple of months later when teachers came before the board to say this could not be implemented to the standard that Radnor parents would expect. Even then, board member Solomon voted to go ahead.

That brings us to last Wednesday’s meeting. We were assured the board was following good process and that no decisions would be made. But in fact, the decision to implement FDK in the fall of 2014 had already been made. The research presented on Wednesday merely presented the implications of doing so. The report is on the web site but board member Doherty was somehow “shocked’ that there were very significant space implications in each of the elementary school locations.

Although the cost of the FDK hybrid program was never disclosed, the best guess originally was $1 million. It was clear in the presentation that the cost has already nearly doubled and that does not yet include the many millions that will be required to prepare the buildings. Perhaps most importantly, the board still does not know how many children might attend such a program. That, of course, is the main driver to the staffing and infrastructure needs. If good process were the intent, wouldn’t the board first want to address why it believes FDK is a good idea and if the answer is yes (I will leave that debate to others), wouldn’t the next question be how many people are interested? But a year after formal discussion started, no one on the board has answers to those two basic questions.

Those who have consistently been in favor of FDK without regard to cost or benefit, and without any responsible vetting process should be questioned by every stakeholder.  They deserve more than just Mr. Armstrong’s vague reference to “value”. We can all only hope that at a minimum, they at least try to explain why they want to do this when too often, classes in Wayne Elementary need to be taught in the cafeteria or in the case of music, even the hallway.