It was quite some time ago that the Visigoths sacked Rome, acquiring thereafter (if not before) a bad reputation. It’s safe to say that whatever challenges Whitewater faces do not involve rampaging hordes seeking to overturn our social order.
We’ve had parents protesting over possible budget cuts, to music or other programs. You’ll see below, from a Whitewater Unified School District PowerPoint presentation, a full-room of concerned parents this spring, when the district proposed program cuts:
Why were they there? An obvious reason is that they were concerned about program cuts.
But, I’ve written before about those proposed cuts, and it’s also obvious that many parents were unaware about the district’s actual, fiscal condition: “if the district ran into a parental firestorm of surprise and frustration at the end of its budgetary process, then the district’s budgetary process was inadequate.”
(See, along these lines, The Whitewater Schools’ Recent Budget Cuts, and The Whitewater Schools’ Budget Cuts.)
When large groups of people are surprised, it’s most often because leaders have not communicated a difficult message adequately beforehand.
If while writing I fail to make my point, that’s almost certainly my error, not readers’. Responsibility for communicating rests mostly with the speaker, not the audience.
The same is true with leaders in business or government: the burden is on leaders to be clear, well in advance. It is they who should have the necessary information about prospects, and so it is they who have the burden to communicate effectively.
People aren’t stubborn a tenth so often as they are surprised.
We’re now looking at years of structural deficits for our district, but it’s not a sin to say as much.
The sky won’t fall. Lightning won’t strike. Barbarians won’t sack the city (as there are none around, anyway).
Parents may support our music programs, but they aren’t Visigoths, so to speak. It’s a mistake to see opposition from surprise as obdurate.
We’ll manage, and would have managed even better, if we had been clearer about these problems sooner.
A discussion of getting through, however, should be one about the broader, comprehensive curriculum first, about the goals for academic, athletic, and artistic accomplishment.
That’s why this district should Lead Substantively, Support Fiscally.
It’s more than a shame that the biggest story of 2014 for this district may turn out to be a budget referendum. In this year or any year, the biggest story should be what’s being done (that begins every conversation), as that’s what matters most.
Tomorrow: What’s Being Done is More than Just a (Sketchy) Number.
Even while under financial duress, on May 27, 2014, a majority of the School Board voted to award non-represented employees a pay raise this year. Only one Board member – the dissenting vote – suggested that the money should go to supporting the students’ needs and not to WUSD employees. I assume the other Board members thought: “Ah, no big deal, let the taxpayers pick up the slack [again]. I would suggest that what the Board should have done was to decree that no raises would be awarded unless and until the budget crisis was/is resolved. Now that would be a story.
there should be a plan first.