St. Paul Shows the Value of Smaller Schools
Tuesday April 17, 2007
Coalfield Progress
Francis Matthews Wall
I am a 1968 graduate of St. Paul High School. I taught at my alma mater for 26 years & last year I retired. So obviously given my background, I have a strong bias for SPHS.
I don't live under a rock & I resend the flippant remakrs Mr. Roberts and other have made in their appeals for consolidation. Mr. Roberts' egregious manipulation of statistics can only lead me to on conclusion. He, like many other consolidators, does not want to look closely at the facts about consolidation--financial or educational.
St. Paul High School opened its doors in 1973, not in the 1950s. Yes, our campus could use some improvements, but there are much less expensive ways to update our school. My goal is not to say "I told you so" with misleading facts and statistics, but to give you facts and statistics that can be supported if one wants the truth.
Buses
First let me give you some irrefutable statistics about the buses used to transport St. Paul students. Five buses are assigned to the St. Paul schools. Three are used full time in Wise County. The other two are driven by bus drivers who reside in Russell County. One bus driver leaves her house with two students and picks up one child before she reaches the West Hills section of St. Paul. The other driver who lives in Russell County leaves her home with two children and picks up eight others before going to the Honey Branch section of Wise County. There are no buses that drive even one extra mile to pick up a Russell County student. The bus runs are filed with the assistant principal, the director of transportation and the school superintendent. These facts are easy to check.
Money
St. Paul can justify its existence for many financial reasons and educational reasons. The money follows the students. That is a no-brainer. We do have a fiduciary responsibility to manage funds, but somewhere the best interest of the child has been lost.
Here are some facts about funding:
*State aid per pupil: $3,967
*State sales tax aid per pupil: $656
*Federal aid per pupil: $ 1,258
*Local share of aid per pupil: $1,613
*Total aid per pupil: $7,494
*Total non-local aid per pupil: $5,881
*Subtract the total local share of aid from the non-local aid, and the total new worth of "out-of-county" students is $4,268
*St. Paul High School population: 198 (125 in-county, 73 out-of-county)
*Net monetary gain for out-of-county students: $311,564
*St. Paul Elementary population: 336 (235 in-county, 101 out-of-county)
*Net monetary gain for out-of-county students: $431,068
*Net gain for both schools: $742,632
Where is the egregious misuse of taxpayers' money?
Achievements
SPHS graduates have attended and graduated from the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, William & Mary, Hollins College, Radford University, Emory & Henry College, Virginia Commonwealth University, Randolph-Macon, The University of Virginia's College at Wise, Ferrum College, Roanoke College and MECC, SWVCC, Highlands Community College and many other community colleges throughout the state.
Our students have gone to Davidson College, Yale University, Williams College, Hampshire College, Duke University, King College, the University of Kentucky, ETSU, Tennessee Tech, Appalachian State University, Union College, Moorehead State University, West Point, the Naval Academy, the University of North Carolina, New York University and many other colleges and universities throughout the nation.
I wonder what these SPHS graduates would think of consolidation! Currently we have one student living on the lawn at UVa. She is a senior with a double major who will graduate summa cum laude. We have two students who are juniors at Duke University. Last summer one of those students studied in New York with the Broadway internship program. This year our valedictorian was accepted early decision at Duke University. She is now a finalist in the Scholars Program funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Scholarship. Two of our students are in the engineering program at Virginia Tech and one is in graduate school there. We have two students studying at VCU, one majoring in art history and the other in social work. Our graduates are teachers, doctors, engineers, data analysts, financial analysts, officers in the armed forces, pharmacists, principals, chemists, environmentalists, attorneys, executives in the corporate world, state troopers, cartoonists, veterinarians, nurses, certified public accountants, social workers, therapists, and they excel in a myriad of other career fields. When our students graduate from SPHS, they are prepared for college and they are successful in college.
Consolidation
I honestly don't understand how consolidation could or would help the quality of education for St. Paul High School students. We pay lip service to the phrase "best interest of the child"? when really what I have witnessed is "the best interest of the pocketbook."? Many times if we just research, we might find that our first assumptions about cost could be erroneous. Could there be more than just money behind the attempts to "get rid of"? at least three Wise County schools? Small schools are in "the best interest of the child."? At St. Paul High School, any student who wants to play a sport gets the opportunity. We never cut athletes from our teams. Actually most of the time our students play more than one sport.
Consolidation would end all of that. With consolidation we might have powerhouse teams, but the athlete of average ability will get lost in the shuffle. Or what about the student/athlete who lives 24 to 30-plus miles from that consolidated school? What do you think are his or her chances of getting to participate in extracurricular activity? Academic or athletic"?this mileage is a reality for the students who live at the top of Honey Branch in Wise County. Is that in the best interest of the child? Yes, it is a long bus ride for our students to attend the Vocational/technical School and the students do lose valuable teaching time. SPHS has nine students attending the vocational school. If we consolidate, all of our students will have that long bus ride. For some students it will add as much as three hours of non-teaching time to their days. Best interest of the child? How could consolidation help our PACE academic team? The PACE academic competition has been in existence since 1983, and in those 24 years, SPHS has won 13 regular season championships and 11 tournaments. In most of the other years, our team has been runner-up. The smallest school in the county consistently has the best academic competition record.
When I look at the average SAT scores, I am reminded of Kathy Hensley's story (a special education teacher who succumbed to cancer) about her nieces and nephews who went to a much larger area school. When they tried to get SAT forms, they were first told that they needed to wait, and when they returned, they were told they were out of forms. When you encourage only the best students to take the SAT the scores will obviously be higher than when you encourage everyone to take the test. We encourage all students. Our guidance counselors have always been there for all students. We deny no one a form because it might lower our scores, and our scores are on par with the state. Our SOL scores are excellent. The scores at SPHS are certainly above the average score in Virginia schools"?large or small. Our departments repeatedly have passing scores, many times scoring 100 percent with the majority scoring advanced proficiency. How would consolidation improve our SOL scores?
SPHS offers a solid academic curriculum. In any school there is room for improvement, and SPHS is always looking for ways to improve.
Estonoa is a testament to what hard working students of all abilities can accomplish. Teresa Kelly O'Donnell is legendary for her ability to teach calculus. Students who take her calculus class have no trouble with calculus in college. Mrs. Penland and Mrs. Hensdill work countless extra hours teaching technology, keeping both the students and teachers up to date. From Boggs to Willis, all of our departments have qualified excellent teachers. Students do have access to a curriculum with diversity. Sure some of our classes are virtual. But the classes are small and the students have access to the teacher. Yes, different schools offer different electives. No school large or small can teach all classes. Just as one textbook would not fit all schools in Virginia, one curriculum would not fit all schools either. What we do have is state-of-the-art technology through fiber optic classrooms which facilitate expanded curriculum offerings.
St. Paul High School must be doing something right. In how many other high schools do you find students who want to come back and teach at their alma mater? We do. Our administration, faculty, and staff are represented by SPHS graduates"?a proud tradition. I also am appealing to the supervisors and school board members for the sake of quality of education and financial responsibility. Look at the research, look at the facts and respond with both reason and emotion.
In closing I would like to offer an excerpt from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation"?High School for the New Millennium:
"Today's large impersonal high schools were designed for a different era and a different economy and they are leaving far too many young people behind. We are asking teachers to succeed in a system that is broken. Today's high schools were conceived at the beginning of the 20th century to prepare students to work in an industrial economy that looked very different from the economy we have today. Large comprehensive high schools were designed to educate all of a community's students efficiently, providing different programs, or tracks for students based on their perceived academic prowess. Top performing students were guided through a relatively challenging academic to prepare them for college. Other students"?almost always poor and minority students"?regardless of their knowledge and skills were guided into easier academic courses with the assumption they were not college material. It is time to rethink the purpose and structure of the American high school. Today's large comprehensive high schools are obsolete. "They prepare a privileged fraction of students for college while placing many students on tracks to nowhere."?
It goes on to state that students in small high schools score higher on tests, pass more courses and on to college more frequently than those in larger ones. Moreover, these results appear to be the greatest for low-income students.
Consolidation is a concept that is a step backward.
The small community is a concept of the future. And it is "in the best interest of the child."?
I've waited for a week since this article was printed to see if anyone was going to post it on this board since everytime something about consolidation appears in the coalfield it appears here, but not this article for some strange reason. I think we all know what that reason is.
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