Schools-Rauterkus-planks

This official statement comes from the Elect.Rauterkus.com campaign.
Please post comments on the associated "discussion" page. Only campaign workers should edit this page.

Personal Relationships with Education, Schools and Community

Mark Rauterkus cares about schools and education

• Attended to graduate school and was a graduate teaching assistant with funding in a School of Education.
• Worked and coached in many education settings including:
  • Public School
  • Private University
  • Religious University
  • Government Parks
  • City Government
  • Private Clubs
  • abroad and in many states
  • etc.

• Published many books, software programs and other titles that are targed to the school, teaching and coaching marketplace.

• Volunteers in extensive ways with various educational projects and institutions

• Use voice and has spoken on school issues in many different forums throughout the past decades.

• Visits many at school programs and at school meetings every season.

• Send both children to public school since Kindergarden.

• Wife is a professor at the Univ. of Pittsburgh, medical school and at UPMC.edu.

• Father is a retired teacher from the Pittsburgh Public Schools.

• Many in the immediate family are or were educators including:
  • sister, brother-in-law, uncle, cousins.
  • Grandfather, Joseph A. Rauterkus, Ph.D., founded the Duquesne University School of Music.

Global Concerns

District Size

There are advantages and disadvantages to size. Pittsburgh's size can be a valued asset. Pittsburgh's size should be leveraged as an advantage when it makes sense to do so. Likewise, Pittsburgh's bigness should be buffered so as to be made small when size becomes a negative aspect. Small is not always the best solution.

• The size and complexity of Pittsburgh Public Schools presents problems. The district is too big and too bureaucratic when contrasted with other school districts in the region.

Pittsburgh sits next to Brentwood. Pittsburgh also borders Wilkinsburg.

Smaller schools have been part of Pittsburgh's history

Dormont High School merged into Keystone Oaks School District.

Homestead High was closed and merged into Steel Valley High School.

Edgewood once had its own, small school district.

Swisshelm Park was a small school within the Pgh Public Schools. It closed.

Families in Pittsburgh could have school choice unlike that of anywhere else in the region. A family could choose to send a high school student to one of ten public schools and another dozen or so private, charter and religious schools without needing to change residence.

• Pittsburgh Public Schools and the City of Pittsburgh do poorly size management issues. Merger talks are that of legend in this region. Changes and talk of size of district, school, classroom need to always be concerned with the impact upon the individuals and families. Size concerns need to be re-tooled and re-framed throughout the district and city.

• The size of the district in grades K-8 is too great and its bulk works to isolate parents and community in a critical area: involvement in the educational process of our children.

• I advocate a system re-tooling that splits Pgh Public Schools with one horizontal cut so that it remains one district for dealing with grades 9, 10, 11 and 12. However, the district split three to five ways into K-8 districts.

http://lh6.google.com/mark.rauterkus/RvfyuvRYDXI/AAAAAAAAIQ8/DqcX861GjKU/s400/school-size.jpg

• In Illinois, the New Trier School District has been named the best public high school in the USA. The New Trier school district's mission is to educate kids in grades 9 to 12. Other districts in the same geographic region have the duty of education for students in grades K to 8. This model would work well in Pittsburgh too.

• I support a call to discussion and the eventual referendum to and changes to codes and laws to permit such a model where the Pgh Public Schools is broken apart into smaller districts with more local control.

Class Size

• Class size are too large in early elementary grades. I advocate smaller class sizes in grades K to 4. Thirty kids to a classroom is too many in those settings. I'm in favor or reducing class size.

Build on what works well now.

Percentions: Elementary, Middle, High Schools

• The Elementary Schools in PPS are great.
• Middle Schools within PPS are questionable.
• High Schools within PPS is where the trouble resides.

So, what happens?

• The Rightsize Program was only devoted to Elementary Schools, the place where help was needed the least.
• High School Reform has yet to occur.
  • The first suggestion from the High School Reform task force was about post-secondary education and the Pittsburgh Promise. That dealt with paying for college education. While it was a hoped for carrot on a long stick for motivation to high school students and families of Pittsburgh, it had nothing to do with the pressing topic of High School reform.
    • Talking about funding college education misses the mark in terms of high school reform.

• • The first action that is going to make for a real change to the PPS landscape in terms of high school reform is the proposed opening of a school for grades 6, 7, 8 and 9. Only 1/4th of the students in that school that first year are in high school.
    • Talking about and opening a science and technology middle school misses the mark in terms of high school reform.

The Magnet Program retains residents in Pittsburgh and helps to sustain school success for many families

• The magnet program among some elementary schools has been a key to keeping the city alive.
  • Without the magnet program in the past 30 years, Pittsburgh would have been much, much worse than it is now.

• The magnet program can't take a back seat to the ALAs. The magnet program needs to be retained as a choice for families. I'd even suggest it needs to be expanded because it works.

Foreign Language Classes, in Magnets, and elsehwere, are often weak in some places.

• Learning Spanish, French, German (among others) is important to our global economy, to development of learning and language, and as a measure of academic progress by others. (Colleges require foreign language mastery for admission and graduation.)

• Language education opportunities in Pittsburgh are great on paper. The the real world, language education is without rigor and accountability. In certain classrooms, language classes are great.

• • For students, effective teaching of languages through PPS is hit or miss, year to year. Often students regress as they mature and move through the system.

• • Language education should be made to be competitive.

• • • Test students. Then test again some weeks later.
    • Reward the top ten in each class, grade, school and district.
    • Students in German should compete against students who study Spanish, for example. Pit top, mid and lower groups of kids against each other in language tests, challenges, bees, and community wide celebrations.
  • Move the better prepared and higher performing students into classrooms with other better students in that language.

• • • Some homes are bi-lingual. Students who are fluent in Spanish are now stuck in classrooms with others who are not.

• • • Some language elementary schools are good and the students that advance to middle school years are far ahead of the students of other schools. Those scores on entry exams and repeated tests should be published and used to better track students.

Gifted Education works in Pittsburgh

• The Pittsburgh Gifted Center works well for grades 1 to 8.

• Pittsburgh should seek to open a new Gifted High School.

• • The gifted programs retain and attract new residents.

• • Only those that are promoted in good standing through the middle school years should be given eligibility to attend the Gifted High School.

• • Pittsburgh Public School should allow for students from other school districts to attend the Pittsburgh Gifted Center, as space permits, as fees are paid.

• A second gifted center could be opened.

I am against all types of "overlords," even within our schools.

We need self-determination and autonomy, not bailouts from others. We must break the begging mentality. We should not teach our kids how to be beggers. After we take our kids out of their roles as pawns in the political process, and value and treasure the youth as the excellent resources they are, Pittsburgh will be able to retain its youth.

• Keep a democratically elected school board.
  • I stood against the plan to appoint board members.

• We need elections so as to pick our school board members by ballot with votes from informed citizens.
  • As an elected official, I pledge to play significant roles in every school board election.
  • As a citizen, I have hosted school board candidate forums and helped to inform fellow citizens about school board elections.

• The school board and the school districts should be autonomous and apart from city government and county government.

• • The controller and controller candidates should not have any conflicts of interest with the school district.
  • Being a board member of A+ Schools, a booster group for the Superintendent's agenda, presents a conflict of interest.

• Elected school board members should be blocked from entering the ballot for any other elected race while a member of the school board and for up to five years following the resignation from the school board seat.

Benchmarks

• School performance and school ranking data and formulas must be revealed in methods similar to open-source software.

• • In the future, performance of principals and teachers could be made public.

• • • If elected as controller, I'd insure that performance scores of departments, clusters, principals, schools, classes, teachers and administrators are made into benchmarks and made public.

• A robust and visible job-ticketing system should document all comments from citizens.

• • The Parents Hot Line is a one-way, closed communication pathway. I favor open communications with documentation that all can witness.

• • • Of course names can be scratched from ticket systems to protect personal privacy.

• Updated change logs are necessary in all school developments. These change logs display how and what the administration is doing to make adjustments to various plans for our schools. The change log documents the tinkering.

• • When the right-sized plan was deployed, there was NO change log, sadly. One was requested.

• Too often a Divide and Conquer process is used with citizens.

• • Meetings with small group break outs and butcher paper flip charts are organized and structured to keep power in the hands of the administrators, not the citizens and parents.

• I will work with others or begin serious efforts to discuss and document the school buildings that are not in use. The closed school buildings make serious neighborhood impacts and must be thought about again and again.

• We need to have much easier access to both our open and closed school buildings. Much of the efforts are described in the past in prior position paper that called for a Pittsburgh Park District.

. PPS acts are too abrupt for families.

• The school year should begin the day after Labor Day.

• • The attendance at the ALS in the first weeks of class is poor.
  • A voter referendum could be put to the citizens asking that the school year begin after Labor Day.

• • • The school district has been hiding the data.
    • The weather in August is too hot for the children.
    • To air condition the schools in August is expensive and puts a strain on the power grid.
    • Many of the schools are without air conditioning.
    • There is a time for school and a time for summer. The economy needs the families for patrons to parks and more.

• Schools that are to open and close need more time for the phase in and phase out of services. More transition times need to be part of the plans so as to not jerk around the citizens and families.

• • The details of a new Science and Technology High School are unknown as of October 2007. However, an opening day of August 2008 seems to be the intention of the district. That's not prudent.

• The hardest to sell schools and schools in crumbling or fragile neighborhoods should be made a top priority. Pittsburgh's urban fabric can not continue to allow the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. So, this means that the school in Knoxville gets sold or put to re-use before the one on the South Side.

• Peabody High School and Westinghouse High Schools should be turned into single-gender schools. Put the girls on one campus and the boys at another.

• Varsity sports teams should transition to the WPIAL.

• The costs of the Crossing Guards should be a part of the City of Pittsburgh budget, and NOT a part of the Pittsburgh Public School budget.

• The RAD money taken away from Pittsburgh Public Schools by state legislature with the flawed bail-out of the city should be returned to the PPS accounts.

• Schenley High School is a high achieving and diverse school. The schools performance is strong as is enrollment. Moving Schenley out of Oakland is a threat on many quality of life fronts. Keep Schenley open in Oakland.

• The stately building known as Schenley High School is in sound condition, and like every other older building, can be updated.

• As a compromise plan, it would be okay to move Schenley High School out of Oakland for one or two years, until a building rehab takes place. Then return to the Oakland location.

• Schenley HIGH SCHOOL was removed from the "Right-Sizing" PERFORMANCE-based school closure plan slated for school board votes in February 2006. The future of Schenley High School can then be evaluated (along with all other City of Pittsburgh high schools) in due time with community input.

• I would not support any additional Anti-Strike Bills for school teachers. Teachers should be given the freedom to strike a certain number of days each year. They should NOT strike and hold the kids a pawns. However, if they can not strike, worse things can happen. Strike notice should occur, but that is a matter of responsibility, not a law-makers duty to force.

• As an elected official for Template:SSI-job-title, I would become a great resource for the young journalists in our local schools.

We need to train students at home, and around the world, with new programs like those at the Daniel Pearl Foundation. The PEARL World Youth News is a news service by and for young people 14-19 and the articles they write, peer edit and then publish on the web are available for downloading and reprinting by student newspapers anywhere in the world. The key component is building local journalism skills and capacity through the PEARL Certification course that young people anywhere in the world can take to become certified reporters. The course takes them through the various components of journalism and article writing and editing. It was designed in collaboration with the New York Times and Columbia University's School of Journalism. The writing assignments are mentored by Columbia and NYU graduate students.

After certification, students receive formal recognition of the accomplishment and they submit articles to editorial schools responsible for news, features, entertainment, music/performing arts and managing. The initial youth editorial teams in these four areas are at schools in Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon, Uzbekistan and USA. In each country professional journalists visited these schools and spent 2 days with the students to train them in journalism editing.

We can't allow the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer, as Pittsburgh is too small to allow for some neighborhoods to crumble because of empty school buildings.

Excellent Partnerships Exist

• Pgh Zoo
• Kennywood / Sandcastle

Links

• Schools
• Education
• Student journalism
• Mark Rauterkus delivered this message to the School Board: To_PPS_on_2-13-06