Clay Bennett cartoon from the Chattanooga Times Free Press

With school starting up for the year,  everywhere I turn somebody is talking about standardized testing in schools. Oak Ridge schools are making TCAP test scores count for a fraction of kids’ grades (not the school board’s idea — it’s a state mandate!), Tennessee is requesting a waiver from the No Child Left Behind requirements, and Clay Bennett’s editorial cartoon from the Chattanooga paper reminds us that testing often seems to be what today’s schools are all about. Outsiders and residents both evaluate a community on its kids’ test scores, and I have no doubt that test scores are increasingly affecting kids’ sense of self-worth. I was pleased to read that the State of New York is working to improve its standardized tests by eliminating “gotcha”-type multiple-choice questions and requiring use of a readable font. I hope that other states (like Tennessee) follow suit. As a kid, I was a “great test taker” who was good at those “gotcha” questions, but as an adult I’ve learned that multiple-choice tests can be a minefield for many  students who are well-prepared — particularly those with dyslexia or similar challenges. Making tests more straightforward is one small step toward reducing their tail-wagging-the-dog dominance of our school systems.

Senn and Moreno telling Altrusa about ORHS Masquers

Publicity in town hasn’t exactly been overwhelming, but Thursday night the Oak Ridge High School Masquers organization takes the stage again for the first time in several years, performing “Better Football Through High School Chemistry” in the ORHS auditorium. Different sources give different schedules, but I think the show starts at 7 pm 7:30 pm Thursday (11/11) and Saturday (11/13). There’s a matinee performance on Sunday at 2 pm, preceded (according to the ORHS website) by a “tailgate party” at 1 pm (burgers, chips, and soft drinks).  Tickets are $5 for students, $7 for adults. Chemistry teacher Vidal Moreno, who is a faculty sponsor, and Samantha Senn (ORHS ‘06 and a UTK grad with a theatre major), who is working to revive Masquers this year, told Oak Ridge Altrusa all about it on Wednesday.

Ashley’s tragic death in early November focused attention on the safety of our children when they travel back and forth to school.

City Council cannot tell the school system how to operate its busing program, but all of us have a right to an opinion on the subject. Some people are saying that every child should be able to ride the bus, regardless of where they live. I don’t share that view. I think it’s healthy (both physically and economically) to encourage kids to walk, if (and only if) they have a safe walking route to school (something that not all of our kids have right now).

When the schools cut out busing for kids within a mile, I was disappointed that the schools did not tailor the bus zones so that kids would not need to cross dangerous streets and intersections. Further, it was clear to me from the walking-zone street lists that they had been developed without much ground-truthing (for example, Mona Lane — which was eliminated several years ago — was listed as a walking street for Linden School, and my house was apparently eligible for bus service to Linden because we are a mile from the school by street, although the walking distance is much less than that because there’s a sidewalk-only back entrance to Linden from Montclair Road). That indicated to me that the lists were made by an automated process, and no responsible adult had investigated the situation from a kid’s perspective to make sure the new plan was reasonable.

I’m relieved that elementary school kids now have (limited) bus access (although I’ve told Dr. Bailey that it was silly to place a bus stop on Montclair Road at the back entrance to Linden) and that kids in the “garden apartments” (Rolling Hills apartments) area can now ride the bus to Robertsville, so they won’t have to cross Oak Ridge Turnpike. These changes address the most hazardous situations in which children were being asked to walk. I’m also relieved that there is now a “school zone” speed limit on Illinois Avenue near Robertsville Road, but that intersection is still a treacherous one (as Trina has frequently pointed out). If there are particular issues in other areas, I hope that parents are telling school officials about them.

However, instead of protecting kids by putting them in buses, my personal long-term vision for the city includes making it walkable and bikeable — for our kids and for all of us.

By coincidence a few days before this accident I noticed announcements of other Tennessee communities’ receiving grants for “Safe Routes to School” measures, and I inquired if Oak Ridge had applied. (We had not done so. These grants are available to municipalities, schools, PTAs, etc. City and school system staff say there will be an application this year.)

In skimming online information about the “Safe Routes to School” initiative, I was chagrined to see that several of the “what’s wrong with this picture” situations could have been illustrated by photos in Oak Ridge (for example, photo on the right, which was captioned “Elementary school children should not have to walk across wide, complex intersections like these for their school commute” on the Tools to Reduce Crossing Distances for Pedestrians page.) See What’s Wrong With This Picture for more photos that could be from Oak Ridge, such as cars parked on the sidewalk and bushes overgrowing the sidewalk. The bottom line is that there are many opportunities for improvement here in Oak Ridge!

Regardless of physical infrastructure challenges, the Safe Routes to School folks recommend education as the primary ingredient of a Safe Routes to School program (see http://www.saferoutesinfo.org/guide/education/index.cfm). In the aftermath of Ashley’s accident, I think that our schools should be taking near-term measures to help our kids learn to be safer pedestrians, both to reduce the possibility of future tragedies and to help restore kids’ feelings of self-confidence and personal well-being that have doubtless been undermined by this incident. I know that the “safety city” activities have been successful here (however, I don’t know if they are still happening) in teaching kindergarteners the basics of pedestrian safety, but kids need to learn to deal with increasingly more complex situations as they get older and become more independent, and our schools no longer have programs like the safety patrol that instilled safe behavior in so many of us when we were kids. I am pleased to hear that the Police Dept. school resource officer is helping to conduct school assemblies and other programs to coach kids on safe pedestrian behavior (it seems to me this should include what might be called “defensive walking” and “defensive biking”).

Another Safe Routes to School recommendation is to map “safe routes” for kids. A “good example” on the Safe Routes to School websites tells that “The city of Phoenix, Arizona, works with parents and schools to create Safest Routes to School Maps. The maps are used to show parents and students the recommended walking routes and crossing locations for students living within the walking attendance boundary. The maps help city officials identify priorities for sidewalk repair. If the missing sidewalk has been included in a walking path on the Safe Routes to School (SRTS) walking plan, the city builds the missing segments. Through this process, several miles of missing sidewalk segments have been built.” I would like to see Oak Ridgers create “safest route to school” maps to help parents and kids, inject some reality into the school system’s walk zone lists, and help identify and prioritize needed improvements to sidewalks and intersections, at the same time that we start to implement the many additional excellent suggestions that are being compiled by residents and city officials.

Pseudonymous forum participant “CrackerNation,” who sometimes represents him/herself as a knowledgable city insider (and who also posts comments here under the alias “Cracker”), has suggested that this is perfectly OK: “Who cares which tax fed money into reserve funds if they are replaced before the money is needed for other purposes?”

It’s not OK. As I pointed out over there, in 2004 Oak Ridgers voted

“…to increase the local option sales tax rate in those portions of the City of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, that lie in Anderson County, Tennessee, from 2.25 percent to 2.75 percent; provided, however, the revenue from such increase shall be appropriated and expended for the purpose of funding and paying for construction, renovation, purchase of capital equipment, and/or retirement of school construction debt service for the Oak Ridge High School…”

Nowhere in that ballot question did it say that the revenue from the tax increase could “be appropriated and expended for some other purpose that city leaders think will probably increase overall city revenue enough to fund and pay for construction, renovation, etc., at such time as the bills come due.”

I believe that if the City Council decides to use this money for the Crestpointe project or another commercial development, the action could be challenged in court — and that legal challenge would have a high probability of success. Furthermore, I am sure that many citizens who voted for that 2004 referendum would conclude that the City had violated the public trust. The tax approved for the high school should not become a slush fund for City officials, and the City’s governing body should not take deliberate actions that subject the City to serious litigation risk.

There are valid reasons for limitations and controls on the expenditure of public money. Without restrictions on investment of public funds, the logical next stop in CrackerNation’s reason would be to say that Oak Ridge citizens should not care if city staff withdraw money from the city treasury and take it to Las Vegas to “invest” at the roulette table, as long as they expect to replace it before the money is needed for other purposes. Subsidizing a private development with money dedicated to a school project is a large step down that dangerous path — let’s not take that step.

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UPDATE on Monday, June 4:

One of our local news outlets (the News Sentinel) has finally picked up the story of the city’s intention to get some of the funding for Crestpointe from money dedicated to the high school rebuild project. Hurray for Bob Fowler! (Hindsight indicates that COR should have gone to Bob Fowler with the story earlier, instead of concentrating on trying to convince The Oak Ridger to run the story.)

It is clear from staff statements in the article that the mysterious “reserve fund” that they would use for Crestpointe is (at least in part) money from the tax increase that voters agreed to accept with the proviso that it be used only for rebuilding the high school. Here are some quotations from the article:

“I am positive you can loan this (debt reserve) money to yourself and pay it back, and that’s what we’re talking about here,” Deputy City Manager Steve Jenkins said.

“Even assuming they’re right, it just changes the mode of financing,” City Attorney Ken Krushenski said. “It’s not a deal-killer.”

City bond counsel Mark Mamantov said the city’s sales tax increase for schools “has been supplanted” by a county sales tax increase approved in a later referendum.

It is interesting that Jenkins said “you can loan money to yourself and pay it back.” Anyone who has ever borrowed money knows that it needs to be paid back with interest. When one city fund borrows from another, the money should be paid back with interest. However, Jenkins has claimed in earlier discussions that this is not really a loan (and therefore need not be paid back with interest).

Krushenski correctly says “it’s not a deal-killer” (presumably meaning that if the bond issue referendum passes, the city could go back to its original plan of borrowing the full $6 million and using it for this project). However, the city continues to promote the idea of a full payback from property tax alone over just 15 years, which depends on (among other questionable premises) the false notion (promulgated by city staff) that the city can borrow $8 million from itself interest-free.

Regarding Mamantov’s comment, back in 2004 it was expected that the county would supersede sooner or later (for example, see my earlier comments at http://www.ellensmith.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12), with the result that annual income to the school debt service fund would drop off after the first few years. Unfortunately, the county superseded sooner instead of later… I don’t recall anyone telling the citizenry in 2004 that after the county superseded the tax, the city’s use of the money would no longer be restricted to its dedicated purpose.