Michael Flaherty reads the Globe, too: After reading yesterday's article about the city's awful school athletics, he demanded the mayor immediately tackle officials from the region's pro sports teams and get them to help remedy the situation:
Now more than ever we need be creative about how we fund our important programs and carve out more opportunities for our BPS students. That's why I am calling on Mayor Menino to immediately broker partnerships with all the major sports teams that call Boston home -- the Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins, Patriots and the Revolution - and ask them to step up to the plate and help bolster BPS athletic programming.
Technically, the Patriots and the Revolution don't call Boston home, but you get the idea. His complete press release:
Flaherty Says "Status Quo" is failing Our Youth
Calls on the Mayor to partner with Colleges, Universities and major sports teams to support BPS athletics.We will never win the war against youth violence unless we begin to make real investment in alternative options for our youth. Chronically underperforming schools, dead-end jobs and a non-existent BPS athletic program will not be enough to save our children. Simply put: If we don't want our kids to fail, then we must not fail them first.
For the better part of Mayor Menino's 16-year tenure, he has presided over the city during good economic times when real investments were more than possible. Blaming the current economic crisis for the city's dismal athletic programs in BPS is only the latest illustration of the fact that the Mayor is dangerously out of touch with the needs of Boston's youth and our growing gang problem.
Now more than ever we need be creative about how we fund our important programs and carve out more opportunities for our BPS students. That's why I am calling on Mayor Menino to immediately broker partnerships with all the major sports teams that call Boston home -- the Red Sox, Celtic's, Bruins, Patriot's and the Revolution - and ask them to step up to the plate and help bolster BPS athletic programming.
As taxpayers, we pay for the celebratory parades each time our home team wins and we provide the additional police presence required to maintain the public's safety during each of these games. Mayor Menino has missed yearly opportunities to demonstrate real leadership and engage our major sports teams in mutually beneficial partnerships.
In addition, the colleges and universities need to pay their fair share as well. That's why I am reiterating my call to reform the PILOT system to increase revenue for the City. I am also imploring Mayor Menino to ask all colleges and universities to join our effort to increase our investment in our public school's athletic programs by sharing their field space, providing coaching assistance and contributing funding for team equipment and uniforms.
Youth violence is a community-wide problem and it's up to the community to be part of the solution.
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Comments
Why doesn't Flaherty
By Pete Nice
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 10:19am
simply call up and as the Boston AD why he doesn't get this stuff done?
Actually the Patriots and NFL have put in hundreds of thousands of dollars into youth sports in Boston and several pop warner programs.
And many fields get built but the city never wants to maintain them and never let other groups use them! (Jim Rice field)
Don't tax you, Don't tax
By NotWhitey
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 1:59pm
The owners of the Boston teams already pay taxes, don't they? Do gas stations have a responsibility to help cover the city's fuel costs? The city's income is fungible - they can move it wherever they want. The money needed to pay for school sports does not come out of taxes on sports businesses, any more than funding for firehouses comes from fire alarm companies.
The question to ask is, why is it that Boston was able to fund sports in the past, and it can't now? Why was the city able to pay for music lessons and orchestras, and it can't now? To ask it another way, what is the money being spent on now that used to go to funding extracurricular activities?
Hint: check the city's special education budget.
Flaherty: Sox
By anon
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 2:31pm
NotWhitey:
I could not agree more, in fact, I think you just hit it out of the park!
Hmmmm, I think the Boston Symphony needs to come to the fore now and start funding the music programs in the schools as well.
i checked
By anon
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 2:41pm
Holy cow are you right.
BPS spends $169 million on "regular teachers."
It spends $107 million on special ed teachers. Plus another $22 million on aides. Plus $22 million on special education vans (compared to $30 million for the regular buses).
Special ed by itself has grown in the budget so it is now much larger than the combined teacher salaries of Brookline, Newton, Somerville, and Cambridge.
EVERYTHING -- not just sports -- is clipped as a result.
Of course if the money were reasonably well spent, most folks would be just fine.
But the special ed system has so many unintended consequences, that nobody -- not kids, teachers, aides, parents -- are happy.
special ed vs sports
By EM Painter
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 3:19pm
Just shooting from the hip here: if I remember the mandates for special ed came with extra money from the state and the feds. So if your town was able to classify more students as special ed (which would not be hard for Boston) that was a way to collect extra money from the taxpayers, basically in wealthier communities.
I'm not sure if it was ever "fully funded" but I remember fights over this going back.
Flaherty is ambulance-chasing here...
I'm a little annoyed at the direction of these articles too. It sounds like the sports program should be funded so a few gifted athletes can make it out of their terrible violent neighborhoods into pro sports. No. Competitive sports should be funded as a broad-based effort to keep kids healthier and introduce them to life-long exercise. Kids have a much better chance of getting into college, and financial aid for college on their academics than they do in sports.
As for their neighborhoods, as I've writ to death, the city economy fails these people. Someone from the Sox should talk to Flaherty about how to make a product that people want to buy, instead of guilting them into paying for your failing system. Fix that and sports will fix themselves.
Fully funded?
By Sock_Puppet
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 3:32pm
Don't think so. Last I heard, these programs were being funded at around 15 percent instead of the promised 40 percent.
I don't think it's in the financial interests of any town to classify more students as special ed.
different in different states?
By EM Painter
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 3:45pm
Is it 15% all over?
Where?
By bph
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 6:29pm
Where did you check? I'd like to see those figures.
people pay for school sports in the burbs
By EM Painter
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 3:38pm
Also lost in this debate is the fact that parents pay athletic fees in the burbs which they don't charge here in Boston.
Parents have to pay in the
By NotWhitey
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 4:15pm
Parents have to pay in the burbs for the same reason - special ed has eaten up so much of the budget. Special ed has become the third rail of public education in this country - no one wants to touch it.
So Whitey, Your Solution?
By SwirlyGrrl
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 4:18pm
Are you advocating a return to schools being able to say "not my problem" to kids with learning disabilities and physical challenges?
There is a reason these laws were enacted: they pay dividends down the line, be it fewer jail inmates or reduced care needs for severely disabled persons.
Last things first: I
By NotWhitey
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 5:36pm
Last things first: I seriously doubt the dividends equal the up-front costs in the long term. For some, sure. For the entire population, I doubt it.
These laws were enacted to help kids with serious problems. What we got was every parent with a borderline kid pushing them into special education to get the goodies. And the goodies are worth getting. By law, every child anointed with special needs must get all possible help. There is no such requirement for "normal" children - they're on their own legally. This means that a single child can cost as much as a classroom full of his neighbors. Regardless of what I think, this budget requirement takes away from the majority of students. Kids have been put into special needs programs to get them "off the books" of the schools they go to, and to just get kids with behavior problems off the teacher's backs.
You don't have to be mean-spirited to understand the concept of a budget. There is this much money available. What you give to one, you take away from the rest. Anyone in the business would tell you - off the record - that the special needs laws have done a lot for a small number of true special needs kids, while devatating the budget of the system as a whole. In my town of Dedham, 2-3 kids can add $100,000 to the budget in a single year. Bottom line: you can't be generous without limit on limited funds. That's exactly what the current laws require.
Problem... Solution?
By Sock_Puppet
Tue, 06/23/2009 - 8:34am
I agree with your analysis of the problem. That's two of us grabbing the third rail.
Yesterday's Supreme Court decision is only going to make the problem worse. I wonder if we'll see a gold rush of rich parents with kids in private schools claiming retroactive nebulous disabilities to get their snowflakes' tuition comped. Doctors used to whoring for referral fees will be happy to supply a diagnosis-for-hire industry. And you can say goodbye to the science teacher.
Projecting current trends into the future is chilling. It's the secret terror of every small district superintendent that a child with severe special needs will move to town.
That said, do you have any solutions?
sped
By Pete Nice
Tue, 06/23/2009 - 9:11am
A friend of mine works in a sped classroom and told me a few things about the issue.
The school (or people hired by the school) decides who gets sped services or not. Most places if the parents push (or sue) hard enough, they will get their way. Some of the most costly services are the home services that many special needs children get at various stages of development (after 3 or 4?)
I would assume that if the parents and/or lawsuits get too out of hand, the school department will have to step in and simply start fighting them leagally.
My friend also works in one of the top school systems where people move to just so they can get the sped services. You especially see this in towns like Newton, Brookline, Wellesley, Weston, Sudbury etc. Many town employees that work but dont live in those towns will send their sped kids to the town they work in just for the services. And the towns aren't allowed to charge for sped kids. And the cost do rack up. One on one aids go for about 20K+ a year along with the integrated classrooms and different minimum staffing levels per state law (6 students to 1 teacher or something like that?)
About to change
By Sock_Puppet
Tue, 06/23/2009 - 9:30am
That part where the school (or people hired by the school) decides who gets sped services or not is about to change.
In the case, the district found the student ineligible for an IEP, but the parents sent him to a private $5200 a month school on their own initiative, had their own private specialists diagnose him, and were retroactively compensated.
The decision of who deserves sped is now irrevocably out of schools' hands.
That still happens in MA
By Pete Nice
Tue, 06/23/2009 - 9:44am
But it still starts with the school diagnosing them. And The school department could still challange the private specialist and the courts ruling if they think a parent is abusing the system.
Im just saying that if if gets out of hand, the school system could challange the "specialists" findings.
It looks like the court case you cite deals with a school that did not properly diagnose the child in the first place. So thats the schools fault if the kid had an actual learning disability and they were unable to diagnose it. It looks like the kids got screwed in that case.
For Good Reason
By SwirlyGrrl
Tue, 06/23/2009 - 10:02am
On the minor end, our son does well academically but cannot write legibly. We didn't get any attention to the matter, despite evaluation requests, until the MCAS writing portion became an issue. It wasn't like he needed much, he just needed a program to follow (he did have early intervention for sensory integration issues as a preschooler, so it isn't like this was a surprise!). We were getting blown off until it became in the school administrator's best interests (to hell with the kid) because he would not have even passed - let alone raised the school's average, without the attention.
On the MAJOR end, our friends have a daughter with a genetic syndrome that means that she will never be able to talk. The district pissed around for nearly a year of her early childhood, when language development is crucial, and then refused to hire a specialist for a few hours to train her teacher so her teacher could work with her. This lost time will mean that she will likely need more costly intervention in the future.
We also have friends with a severely dislexic child. The "solution" to his needs was to pull him out of every single class for "tutoring" in isolation, then bitch and moan about his social problems and how he wasn't passing his classes. His parents sent him to the Carrol School, which specializes in his disability, and got a court order requiring the district to pay. He made more progress in one year than he had in three of highly interrupted cheap-out b.s.
Special education SOMETIMES costs a lot, but pissing around and blowing of kids with issues and cheating kids can ultimately be more costly. The schools should absolutely not be the ones evaluating the kids. The state should be doing it. Access to independent evaluation should be universal, and recommendations for services not subject to gatekeepers on a mission from God to enforce short-term financial stupidity.
I guess it depends on the school system then.
By Pete Nice
Tue, 06/23/2009 - 10:08am
I got the impression that the teachers at my friends school (in a great school system) wanted to properly diagnose kids with special needs and then give them the best services possible. Thats why the school system has specialists, doctors, physcologists etc on staff.
What's your prediction, Swirly?
By Sock_Puppet
Tue, 06/23/2009 - 10:33am
Currently, the costs for special education are rising at a much faster rate than for standard education, almost twice as fast. At some school districts, such as Amherst, spending on special ed is already equal to spending on the other children.
Do you think this rate of increase is going to continue, or will it level off at some point?
One state's solution
By SwirlyGrrl
Tue, 06/23/2009 - 11:06am
Require an individual education plan for every student. Kids with issues are identified and dealt with, and parents don't have to play the games.
While it is true that there are new things that are being found - Asperger's students are identified and given help now, not medicated and ostracised like my brother was, I suspect the amount spent will level off at some point. Why? Because prenatal and neonatal care has improved a great deal, meaning fewer children with severe difficulties. Because rebuilt schools are accessible, so kids can go to class and not be tutored one-on-one at home. Because lead paint and leaded gasoline and other heavy metal exposures have been reduced tremendously.
Then again, if some school districts actually bothered to listen to parents once in a while, there might be more generalized education improvement rather than diagnosis shopping and lawsuits to get kids what they need to do well.
sign of uninspired mayoral campaign
By david_yamada
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 6:20pm
1. Read newspaper.
2. Learn about problem from the newspaper.
3. Think, "gee, how can my campaign capitalize on this, given that we have no big ideas of our own this week/month/decade?"
4. Fire off press release with less-than-well-developed idea that mentions the city's iconic sports teams.
Is the problem that
By neilv
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 6:29pm
Is the problem that candidates aren't capable of great things, or that they feel they have to present as milquetoast to avoid alienating a diverse electorate?
exactly...
By Pete Nice
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 6:32pm
How many years has Flarehty been working with the city? He only knows now about the Boston athletic situation?
Is it me or do these people that run against Menino simply refuse to hire the right people to handle their campaign?
At least Yoon makes some noise throughout the year about various things. He doesn't stand a chance for other reasons I dont think, but Flarehty is bugging the F out of me.
Another suggestion for Flaherty
By adamg
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 7:52pm
Hire a proofreader for God's sake.