Derek Clary, 20, drove from Maine to identify the body of his mother, Bridget Clary, 42, who died Sunday night (October 1, 2006) after a fire in her home in Gloucester. Because of cuts that eliminated a fire station, the response time was slowed. (Michele McDonald/ Globe Staff)
Gloucester is a financially-stressed city. It was so badly stressed in 2004, they closed fire stations to the point of having an 11 minute response time. From the Globe:
A Gloucester death from blaze brings home budget-cut realities
Loss of fire station slowed responseBy Kay Lazar and Raja Mishra, Globe Staff | October 3, 2006
GLOUCESTER — Gloucester firefighters took more than 11 minutes to reach a burning house late Sunday, only to find a 42-year-old woman dead inside, 1 mile from a fire station that had been closed recently because of budget cuts.
City officials said yesterday that the victim, Bridget Clary , an aspiring screenwriter, might have been saved if the city had not been forced to close two full-time fire stations after residents voted against a proposed tax increase.
Instead, fire crews stationed in downtown Gloucester had to drive more than 5 miles along slick, winding roads to the fire in the city’s northernmost neighborhood. This resulted in a response time nearly double the 6-minute benchmark set by national fire authorities, officials said.
Gloucester police officers, who are not equipped for fires, arrived at the scene first, but intense heat and smoke stopped their rescue effort. Clary was found unresponsive in her bed, surrounded by a blanket of smoke, officials said.
Clary was pronounced dead shortly afterward. The cause of the fire was under investigation yesterday.
“The paramedic was frustrated because he believed if they had gotten her out earlier, she would have had a good chance to survive,” said Captain Tom LoGrande of the Gloucester Fire Department.
The fiscal issues underscoring the tragedy have resonated in cities and towns throughout the Commonwealth, where residents weary of property taxes have been forced repeatedly to choose between higher taxes and reduced municipal services.
This incident, about a month before the 2006 election, drew the following responses.
The issue has spilled into the gubernatorial race.
The Democratic nominee, Deval L. Patrick, says that irresponsible tax cutting by the state has caused a financial crisis in municipalities.
The Republican, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, argues that taxes have become overly burdensome.
The independent candidate for governor, Christy Mihos, says that municipal aid, after years of cuts, should be strongly increased.
Fast forward to today’s Gloucester Daily Times. The new State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, filled with Deval Patrick’s appointees, voted to impose a charter school on the City of Gloucester. The mayor wasn’t happy.
Mayor Carolyn Kirk reiterated her concerns about the charter school’s financial impact.
“Well, Gloucester just got handed an annual bill for $2.4 million,” the mayor said in a statement, referring to the annual amount projected to be steered to the charter school once the state’s start-up charter reimbursement funding runs out.
“It’s not due today or tomorrow, but the bill will come due,” Kirk said. “The state has just granted an elite education for 240 students at the expense of the other 3,200.”
This is bad news on top of bad news. Earlier this month, the mayor wrote:
Starting immediately, and then for the upcoming fiscal year which begins on July 1, Gloucester can expect to lose about $2 million in local aid funding from the commonwealth.
Local revenues are also down as a result of the down economy. And expenses are up.
There is no way to sugarcoat this – city departments will experience further reductions in force, and residents of Gloucester will experience a further erosion of city services available in the months ahead.
Gloucester has negative free cash. Reserves are thin. The FY09 budget was built in large part by cuts through attrition. These cuts included positions from the Police, Fire, Public Works, Legal and Purchasing departments as well as Sawyer Free Library.
Current mid-year cuts will be partially absorbed through cutting vacant positions held open as a result of the hiring freeze. These positions include firefighter/paramedics; Public Works personnel; and city engineers. I have advised the School Department to plan on a mid-year cut of $200,000. Going forward, there are very few options except to further reduce the work force involuntarily.
Into this environment, made worse by the governor’s local aid cuts, comes a charter school supported by the three people placed in leadership positions by the governor.
BESE chair Maura Banta
Education Secretary Paul Reville
Special Education Advisor Dana Mohler-Faria
It is time for the legislature to put the brakes on the board’s ability to raid local aid accounts for charter schools that do not have the support of the municipality’s elected leaders. The legislature must abolish the provision that prohibits educators from serving on the governing board for K-12 education. Banta, Mohler-Faria, and Reville should resign and open their seats for K-12 education professionals who have some understanding of the financial pressures faced by cities, towns, and local school districts in the Commonwealth.
For example, 100% of the board of the Committee for Public Counsel Services [CPCS] are attorneys, almost all of whom accept murder appointments – the highest paid of all appointments or are or were employed by CPCS. Most state Boards are like CPCS and composed of stakeholders.
The language you object to in Chapter 15 Section 1E was there before the 2008 amendment, and was there, unchanged, after the amendment. The last time I checked, the Governor does not write legislation, the legislature does. If someone wants that legislation stricken, they should write a bill, get a sponsor, and push it through. Did the Governor veto an amendment to Section 1E? He can’t veto existing legislation.
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p>Any why are people in Gloucester seeking out this charter school in the first place? What’s up with that? I don’t recall that the Governor ran on an anti-charter platform.
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p>If you read the mayor’s quote closely, it is clear that she is talking about funds the City might lose in the future, not current cuts in local aid.
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p>What exactly does a 2006 fire have to do with the Board of Education? I guess its a heart rending picture, so you wanted to use it.
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p>Its up to the fire chief to explain to town govenment the need for the other fire station, if in fact it is needed. Its up to the town government to explain the need for more revnue to the voters. Its up to the local voters to decide how much taxes they want to pay and if they really need a fire station. If the revenue is not forthcoming, its up to the City’s budgeting authority to decide if other City needs are more important the keeping the fire station open, or not.
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p>You will note that the City is dealing with the cuts, in the first instance, by cutting vacant positions–that means taking out of the budget money for people who are not actually working.
The governor rewrote Chapter 15, Section 1E in his reorganization of the three education boards. This reorganization was approved by the legislature on a straight up or down vote (it was approved) last year. The governor could have simply deleted this toxic provision from the law by removing it during the reorganization. He didn’t.
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p>You also can’t make up for a $2 million local aid reduction and a $2.4 million charter garnishment by eliminating vacant positions – probably necessary but unfilled due to the bad budgetary climate. My point – if the state wants a $2.4 million charter school in Gloucester, which may be a very good idea, the state should pay for it. The city clearly can’t afford to pay for it.
You single-handedly knocked Caroline Kennedy out of Senatorial contention. Isn’t that enough? Don’t some of those Gloucester kids need more than just cod?
If Gloucester can’t afford a fire house, how can it afford a charter school? Can we have a ballot question, what would you rather have a charter school or a fire house? I know the answer, you know the answer, the city doesn’t want the charter school and they shouldn’t have to pay for it by cutting other things.
From today’s Gloucester Times:
He’s better on education than Deval Patrick!
I too am disappointed about the Gloucester charter school. the recent Boston Foundation study has settled the charter argument. We need more of them now in troubled communities like Gloucester. A fiscal trigger included with the board’s approval could delay the school’s opening despite state reimbursements that would result in the city making money for three years from students attending the charter school. There would be no negative fiscal impact on Gloucester until the 2013-14 school year — if ever. God help us all if we’re still in this fiscal mess then.
Despite your broad claim, the overwhelming national research I’ve seen shows little, if any, difference between charter and non-charter outcomes. Once you control for the self-selection of the charter student body, I’m not entirely sure there’s that much difference…
Here’s a link to the study. http://www.tbf.org/uploadedFil…
You’re correct about charter schools nationally, but they have been far more effective in Massachusetts. The study controls for the alleged self-selection you reference.
The study controls by screening-out the failing charters based on wait-lists. Skews the results.
Nice try, but not true. Read the study. It uses two methodologies, a controlled study of all charter middle and high schools and then a lottery study that compares those chosen in the lottery charters have to select students when a school is oversubscribed. Among the schools included is Uphams Corner, which was just closed for underperformance.
By the way, I do see merit in charter schools, but not in the current funding formula – which the governor promised to fix. The fact that the state can impose a charter on a community that can’t afford it, that’s the problem. The charter industry has resisted all efforts to move any element of charter school funding into a line item in the state budget. If this is a valuable state program, let the state fund it. Either that, or allow local districts to charter a percentage of buildings as a matter of right, without setting up expensive new little school districts running one charter school.
Would you like to move your community’s school funding to a line item and have it subject to the budgetary chopping block each year? All charter schools want is to be funded the same way as other public schools. In 2004, districts recommended changes to the formula. They were made, resulting in 8 percent less on average being transferred from districts to charters. District supporters still aren’t happy and still make believe the three years of state reimbursement doesn’t exist.
Chapter 70 appropriations – subject to legislative whims.
Local appropriation – subject to the whims of Town Meeting.
I just read the Pioneer Institute’s website. Look at this!
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p>Charlie, didn’t you create this problem? Do you want to use the charter formula to destroy public schools and divert the money to the non-union privately-run charter schools?
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p>I mean, if you have a dog in the hunt, please disclose your involvement.
Wow, what a piece of work. Clearly full disclosure [read: honesty in offering commentary] is high on Mr. Chieppo’s priorities.
Clearly, you are paying attention to this issuen and know the players.
Chapter 70 is subject to legislative appropriation, but once the amount is set, it’s distributed by formula. Taking charters out of the formula subjects that line item to an additional round of potential cuts to which other public schools aren’t subjected.
Commonwealth charters are little school districts. Fund them like any other school district. Fund the suburbans like a regional school district, and allow movement across districts under school choice. That would work for me.
Do charter schools do well because they put their students in a better place to succeed, or do they do well because the students who attend charter schools would suceed (when compared to their contemporaries) regardless of whether they attended a traditional public school or a charter school?
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p>My guess is its the latter.
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p>If a parent goes through the trouble of signing their child up for a charter school isnt that parent demonstrating a strong interest in their child’s education? My guess is that those students do better in school anyway than thsoe whose parents don’t take a hands-on approach to their education.
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p>I would prefer to see charter schools used more for at-risk students that don’t have that parent looking over their shoulder to make sure their homework is done.
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p>Also, I have yet to see a study that explains WHY charter schools, supposedly, do a better job teaching students. The closest I’ve heard is this explanation that there is a closer working relationship between the educators, students and parents. Well, duh. That’s the situation in almost all successful schools.
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p>Why isn’t this possible to achieve in a traditional public school staffed by members of the evil teacher’s union?
Once again, look at the study. The Boston Foundation study controlled for exactly that issue and found that attracting more motivated/advantaged students is not the reason why Boston charter schools dramatically outperform their district counterparts.
This isn’t a Boston charter school. It’s in Gloucester. Guess the study doesn’t relate to non-Boston charters.
To base an entire statewide policy on a Boston-centric study, I think, is bad policy making. It’s like saying because a study showed that Boston firefighters benefited from high-rise rescue training, every fire department statewide should undergo high-rise resuce training.
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p>Frankly, the bar is set so low in Boston that any change could result in a noticable improvement in test scores.
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p>Again the question comes back to, what is “working” in Boston, and can it be applied on a statewide basis? If not, then why should it become the basis for expanding charter schools statewide?
Where’s your answer? South Shore has your number!
My opinion is that there is a flaw in that study; they tracked kids who entered charter schools versus kids who applied but didn’t win the lottery.
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p>That fails to recognize that a motivated kid in a public school with a lot of unmotivated kids is very clearly in a different environment than a motivated kid in a charter school with very few unmotivated kids. At best, the teacher has to spend more attention on the kids who aren’t doing so well, and can’t pay attention to the motivated kids.
“This research design compares the outcomes of those who were offered a slot in a Charter or Pilot school to those who applied to the same schools and were not offered a slot.”
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p>Is this an adequate control? The entire comparative population consists of families who are active enough to enter the lotteries. No “hard” families. And your comparison students at public schools are those who, on some level, don’t want to be there and don’t have confidence in their school. Not an even playing field.
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p>The key question: do charters do a better job with the same student population that regular publics must accept — remains untouched.
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p>The answer this study gives is: charters do better with students who want to go to charters.
asking not in jerky tone…
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p>just not sure whether to answer your question assuming you’d read the sections that answer your questions and didn’t find them convincing,
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p>or if you only had time glance at the summary and therefore didn’t know that your questions were addressed elsewhere…
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p>i’d be the first to say there are a bunch of limitations to the study.
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p>actually the second. because the others themselves describe all the limitations themselves.
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p>but anyway.
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p>* * * *
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p>shorthand version…
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p>the economists who did the study showed a slide. wish i had it. it wasn’t in study itself.
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p>my unreliable memory is that they said —
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p>
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p>i happened to be sitting next to former senate president birmingham when the study was presented…and his jaw, like many others, dropped to the floor.
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p>* * *
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p>i think this stuff is hard to believe unless you visit some of these schools and actually talk to the kids. if i were you and didn’t work for a charter, i’d be just as skeptical as you, so i don’t begrudge it.
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p>what made clinton and obama et al into big charter believers was, in part, just seeing it in action and making a judgment, not just the data and the lobbying….
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p>*the idea that there were no “hard” families….not true. think of it this way. the average boston student is roughly the 20th percentile in Massachusetts on MCAS. the average boston charter student arrives to that charter as roughly the 22nd percentile in Massachusetts. they are not EXACTLY the same. but close.
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p>the study found the charter lottery losers remained at around the 22nd percentile years later, and the charter lottery winners moved above the 50th percentile….
No I didn’t read the whole study, and I was sincere in my “tell me if I’m wrong” subject, b/c I knew there was a chance I was missing something. Also I was responding to Mr. Chieppo’s triumphalism about it (which I see he’s walked back from now). I’m glad the authors are more humble about their findings, but that’s not how they were reported.
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p>Am I correct in reading your comment as just saying “go read the authors’ own explanations,” or are you also summarizing their points? Because I’m not sure it clears things up. So the kids who go to these charters defy their statistical fates. I’m not sure those stats capture the difference between aspirational homes and rough homes, the “street vs. decent” divide people like Elijah Anderson talk about.
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p>I know that charters do wonders. I support them, not because they are inherently better than public schools, but because I don’t think it’s right to deny the families who seek them that lifeline out of the regular system and away from the social problems that drag it down. I think there’s a cost involved, though, that kids from the least functional homes pay by being concentrated together, and that we’ll pay later in the criminal system. I think we ought to admit that.
Thought experiment.
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p>What if I had 20 kids in a room. Ten kids randomly chosen from a charter. Ten kids randomly chosen from nearest traditional school.
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p>You get unlimited access to ask them any questions. About families, where they live, family ed history, prison history, whatever you want. You can visit their homes. You can see how many books they have in the house. You can meet family. You can see payroll records.
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p>Any question except what school they go to.
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p>You think you’d sort them pretty well into who attends charters and who attends traditional?
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p>For what (little) it’s worth, I think you’d be shocked at how utterly unable you’d be to distinguish them….
Where’s Goldstein?
Has anyone notice that the governor placates the noisy opponents? He goes on the radio and the charter school people get out the astroturf and flood the lines, next thing you know Deval is lifting the cap and telling his people on the board of education to approve the charter school.
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p>If you want something from Deval, being friendly doesn’t count. He ignores his friends, the people who helped to elect him. If you want something from Deval, you need to get angry and oppose him.
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p>TIM MURRAY FOR GOVERNOR!
What’s Tim Cahill’s position on charter schools and local aid?
Sorry for dropping out of this for a while — work sometimes intrudes. Where to begin? I certainly make no apologies for my long-time support for charter schools, nor am I trying to hide it. My “agenda” is my 8- and 5-year old kids who attend public schools.
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p>As for the Boston Foundation study, it’s hard to dismiss, given that the overwhelming majority of Massachusetts charters are in urban areas. But even if we put it aside, how about the 2006 DOE study that found that charters outperform their sending districts, or the fact that a number of urban charters (Lawrence Community Day, Roxbury Prep, Excel Academy) outperform even affluent suburban schools, or the number of charters that were tops in the Commonwealth on 2008 MCAS results. I could go on and on, except I had my kids late in life and I’m old, so I’ve got to go to bed.
The 2006 DOE study found no statistically significant difference between charter/non-charter schools. Any difference was statistical noise. And again, the only standard being used is MCAS scores, which are riddled with problems.
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p>I would also note that you will find charters greatly overrepresented at the bottom of the MCAS scale as well.
Per the Globe
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p>and
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In a case where I was a GAL for education [before the AOTC took out its pre-emptive 9c macete and eliminated that protection for kids] a mom was told her child needed special education.
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p>The school wanted the child, also, to get after school tutoring.
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p>Mother moved the kid to a charter school. Three eyars later, child is back in public school – five years below grade level and cutting school because she was too embarassed to look stupid.
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p>I get appointed. Turns out that Charter [not naming the Charter or city] “did not believe in Individual Ed Plans or stressing families” and kid was able to doodle for two years, near as I can tell.
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p>I am sure that there is good – and bad – in both Chater and Public schools … but the absence of local oversight disturbs me, as does the funding…and even more…the doctrinaire and downright weird attitudes I have experienced from “some” charter schools as in the anecdote, above.
…but the point is, any unexamined space, or under-regulated enterprise is going to develope some problems – whether mice in the ceilings, or “go along to get along” education.
How about a discussion on the differences between charters and traditional schools rather than the study?
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p>Here is what I have seen from experience (my daughter attends a charter school). BTW – I went to Everett public schools and NU.
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p>1. Flexibility in curriculum.
2. Longer year
3. Longer day
4. Tracking
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p>I’m sure there are others? Then the question is if these are good things why can’t they be incorporated into traditional public schools. Some say unions, but I don’t know. Any thoughts?
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If you want an example of the problems with the current charter school finance structure, try doing this math for your community.
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p>Go to the Charter School Finance page
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p>Under FY 2009, look for the files posted 12/22/2008 and download the Preliminary Charter School FY09 Tuition and Enrollment – by District.
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p>Open the Excel file. Find your community. Divide the (4) Local Payment (Column J) by the (1) FTE Pupils (Column E) to get the local payment per pupil.
(Arlington example: $94,620/8.00 = $11,828)
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p>Go to the Chapter 70 Trends page, and look up your community.
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p>Find the Foundation Enrollment and the Net School Spending values for your community.
(Arlington example: Foundation Enrollment = 4,469 – Net School Spending = $48,599,512)
NOTE: Arlington’s Town Meeting appropriation, including Chapter 70 aid, was $37,878,871. The rest of the budgeted Net School Spending consists of town-side expenses charged to the schools in the report to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
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p>Now multiply the Charter School local payment per pupil by the Foundation Enrollment, and see how much the town would need to pay if EVERY child went to a charter school.
(Arlington example: $11,828 * 4,469 = $52,857,098)
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p>So, Arlington (by the most generous calculation) spends $48,599,512 for schools. This includes trailing retiree health care obligations and out-of-district SPED placements. If you were to close the schools and ship all the children to charter schools, you would be $4.25 million dollars short before you even consider the costs of residential placements and children with substantial special needs.
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p>Your math may vary, but it clearly shows charter schools get a premium price. I’m just thinking of the improvements we could make in Arlington with an additional $4.25 million.
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p>I don’t have a problem with charter schools. I just want a level playing field.