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The campaign for Cincinnati City Council and the mayor’s race might have center stage, but the vote for the Cincinnati Board of Education could play just as big a role in the city’s future.
The school board is working on major reforms that backers hope will turn the district into a city asset, instead of a liability — possibly one that will help stop the city’s steady population drain.
Cincinnati has lost about one-third of its residents since 1960, when it had 502,550 residents. Ask real estate agents what families want in a neighborhood, and “good schools” is one of their first responses.
The next board’s agenda includes significant decisions: which schools will be renovated, which will be closed and which will be rebuilt entirely. The new board has to finish the high school restructuring program. The district’s new teacher evaluation system, tying salaries to performance, faces a final vote by the teachers in May.
Eight candidates, including three incumbents, are competing for four seats on the seven-member board. Lynn Marmer, who joined the board in 1994, declined to run again. Because many board votes are 4-to-3 decisions, this election could establish a new balance of power.
Evaluating the superintendent
Almost all the candidates praised School Superintendent Steven Adamowski’s first three years in the job.
“I think it’s pretty clear that the guy is pro-free enterprise,” says Ed Rothenberg, a Realtor and real estate broker. “And I think that’s one of the ways there will be substantial improvement in the schools.”
Frederick Suggs Sr., chief executive officer of Tri-State Talk Magazine, says he wasn’t sure about Adamowski until he saw the superintendent listening to the community.
“The things he’s doing — they’re great,” Suggs says. “I wouldn’t say there’s too much of a down side.”
But some say Adamowski has tried to implement reforms without public input and consent. Candidate Melanie Bates cited the debate about closing the Hughes Center in Clifton.
Closing the school seemed to make sense because of the small number of students it serves and the building’s condition, according to Bates, who is executive director of the Hamilton County Democratic Party. But Adamowski underestimated how much the community values Hughes and wants to keep it open, Bates says.
Sometimes people get the impression Adamowski is stubborn, according to incumbent Sally Warner. A former teacher who is now business manager for her husband’s architectural firm, Warner sees Adamowski differently.
“He has an unwavering focus on the vision,” she says.
Incumbent Catherine Ingram, who teaches at Northern Kentucky University, says she supports Adamowski, especially his focus on early literacy. But the board still needs to question the superintendent’s ideas so there’s a better product in the end, she says.
Only Roy McGrath — a perennial candidate for school board and the Hamilton County Commission — held a generally negative view of Adamowski, questioning his credentials and whether he deserves all of the credit he’s received.
Reforms under scrutiny
The candidates offered a wide array of perspectives about the school district’s strengths and weaknesses.
Incumbent Harriet Russell, who retired after teaching for 30 years in Cincinnati Public Schools, says the high school restructuring plan is an asset. At Taft and Aiken high schools this year, instead of traditional classes, ninth and 10th graders are in a “preparatory academy” with groups of 75 to 90 students taught by four teachers. Taft is now a technology institute and Aiken a university high school. Eleventh and 12th graders are joining groups of 200 to 250 students to focus on the core standards and begin a specialized career focus. Similar reforms are planned for other high schools.
This, Bates says, should allow students and teachers to develop closer relationships.
The plan included a lot of parent and teacher input and a couple of revisions, Warner says.
“The model for creating this is really good,” she says.
Suggs was more skeptical.
“It remains to be seen whether it’s actually going to work,” he says.
Some students are in higher grades than they should be, so it will take time to figure out who should advance and who needs more help. Passing students without merit has been a major problem in the past few decades, Suggs says.
What happens when a student doesn’t qualify to make the transition to 11th grade, Ingram asked.
Rothenberg says a key weakness in the district is its difficulty in firing bad teachers. He also believes the administrative budget is too high, arguing the district spends more per student than Catholic schools do. More charter schools would benefit the district, he says.
Russell says CPS needs to stay in touch with the city of Cincinnati to make schools after-hours learning centers. Ingram says the school district needs to maintain better communications with the community on what CPS is doing.
Warner says the challenge now is to bring the teaching reforms to every school in the district. That’s going to take 75 principals who are great leaders, she says.
Suggs says the district isn’t teaching the basics children should learn in each grade.
McGrath says the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers has a monopoly in the district and that needs to change. He also supports charter schools.
Rothenberg says the district needs to get parents more involved by copying a Sacramento, Calif. program that requires teachers to visit students’ homes at least once each year. He also says high school students would perform better if classes began at 8:40 a.m., instead of 7:15 a.m., citing by a Minneapolis program begun in 1997.
Teaching the teachers
Putting the district’s Teacher Evaluation System (TES) into practice hasn’t been easy. Earlier this year the teachers elected a new union president after many complained the system was moving too quickly.
Now the evaluations are being phased in over four years, initially applied to fewer teachers and with more extensive preparation, including videotapes illustrating what the district considers good teaching. By 2005 all teachers will be extensively reviewed every five years.
“The main thing is that (teachers) can make more money,” says G.R. “Sam” Schloemer, a retired sales representative who has attended board meetings for several months.
Higher pay is a powerful incentive in business, and it should prove to be in schools as well, he says.
“I think what was negotiated is a better piece of work,” Warner says. “It’s going to take us longer to get there, but maybe it should take us longer to get there.”
Rothenberg says the revised TES is weak, but is a start.
“You have to be realistic,” he says.
Rothenberg acknowledges he is unfamiliar with some issues in the school district.
The district also needs lots of repairs in its deteriorating buildings, says Schloemer. Hartwell Elementary’s new windows are the first exterior improvements he’s seen at the school in nine years of driving by it, he says.
Warner says the district’s architectural team, working with state officials, have finished evaluating elementary schools and expect to finish high schools in December. Warner expects the renovation plan to take a decade to finish.
Suggs wants the state to end mandatory proficiency tests, arguing they sometimes have nothing to do with the curriculum, causing teachers to tilt their lessons away from basic academics to information that will help boost test scores.
One test should never be used to decide if someone graduates from high school, Ingram says. She knows a senior at Morehouse College — which only accepts students from the top 10 percent of each class — who barely passed most of his proficiency exams.
CPS already uses more than standardized tests, Russell says. Teachers must keep portfolios of students work, which are passed on each year. She believes those should be given as much weight as test results.
Back to court
Nearly a decade ago, a coalition of 550 Ohio school districts sued the state, accusing it of not providing equal access to education. They won at the Ohio Supreme Court. Now the state is assembling a third plan to address funding inequities.
But despite the victories, few — if any — of the board candidates believe the court battles are finished. The new formula still relies heavily on local property taxes to fund schools and provides no new money for fixing aging schools.
Russell says the state is only providing 23 percent of the expected $800 million in facilities funding. The rest still comes from local property taxes, she says.
“At this point, I do not think the latest (decision) has any significant benefit for the Cincinnati School District,” Russell says.
Ingram predicted more appeals to the Supreme Court until state legislators make serious changes.
“It will go on and on,” Ingram says. “Everybody knows that something needs to be done. … But nobody seriously honestly wants to pay for educating someone else’s child if they don’t get something out of it.”
“Somebody had to bite the bullet and get some funding for schools,” Schloemer says.
The state erred by using suburban schools to calculate the cost of a good education, Warner says. No one knows what it costs to equally educate poor students, Warner says. The state’s solution “really hurts urban districts,” she says. ©
This article appears in Oct 10-16, 2001.