MontClairVoyant: Commencing with Commencement Before Graduating to Other Topics

1. Dave Astor once wrote, “The thought of leaves reminds me that a big beautiful tree was felled at Watchung Playground as work began on an expanded field. Sad, wasn’t it?”

   Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote him back, “The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon.”

   As one townie presciently stated, once it is built, everyone will love it and forget what was there.

   We’re just a progressive town. We have to be what we are.

   I do get easily frustrated with sloppy (lazy?) or you get what you pay for designs…and our Parking Utility doesn’t seem to care. (The parking utility is my focus this month). I love how the Central Office dictates to the Parking Utility. That is the only explanation for the restriping.
   The Watchung Plaza neighborhood commercial district is already problematic for the accessible (handicapped). This plan only puts a puts a spotlight on the deficiency. And the best part? The school’s accessibility plan ignores that is suppose to be an accessible field. That may include a group of athletes with disabilities. Nah. In Montclair? Dumb & dumber when you do things for show, rather than for values. But, the Central Office, the parents and TUM is going to get that Title IX field!
   God speed.

2. Frank, I did attend an elementary school named after Ralph Waldo Emerson. 🙂 A sad, astute quote by him.

3. “The Superintendent and Board of Education Were Rightly Criticized at the June 21 BOE Meeting.”

   That’s quite a name for a rock band. It would barely fit on the marquee at The Wellmont! When it reopens, perhaps the Bellevue could run “Jailhouse Rock.” That certainly befits the recent decision to lay-off 36 teachers and staff.

4. Ha, silverleaf! I guess the Wellmont would have to enlarge its marquee, then. 🙂

   The school district’s leaders could also listen to the Elvis song “Don’t Be Cruel”…

5. I do love how anyone that works for the district is considered an educator by the MEA management.

   I love how there were only 13 teachers cut. I love how Phys Ed classes will now average no more than 40 students. I love we chose to cut a sports trainer instead of a teacher or para. I love we cut 5 other support people that were not teachers or paras.

   The MEA can’t see a rhyme or reason to the 36 total staff cuts.
   They can’t see that 530 students dis-enrolled from the district.

   That is equal to one entire grade. Yes, one entire grade’s worth of students left the school district. Let that sink in for just a moment.

   Say we use 25 students to a class. That is 21 excess teachers. The district cut 13.

   They can’t see that there has never been a year in the last 12 where we could afford to keep the staff positions we refill every year. (Please, by all that is holy, let us hope the MEA is not teaching Economics….because they scare me,) Of course, the Central Office & the BoE always scare me because they sanction this annual ritual. Councilor Hurlock approves it every single year. Funny guy. Walks one way and talks another. Anyway, it is what it is and “it” amuses me.

   The municipal, the commercial, private education, Pre-K and the cultural aspects of Montclair are the rising boats. Our public school district & public education? Getting sucked under by the undercurrent. Their lifeguards, the BoE, chatting up their friends.
   I do love this town.

6. Thank you for the comment, Frank.

   Is that figure of 530 students dis-enrolling from the district an exact number or a guesstimate on some person’s/people’s part? How many of those students will return to the district this September when things go back to “normal”? (I think a decent number.) With some class sizes too large in the past, why not keep all the teachers so that class sizes get a bit smaller?

   Yes, I realize some of those laid off are support staff rather than teachers, but they’re contributing to the educational environment and are thus all educators in a certain sense.

7. My significant mistake…the dis-enrollment number was 459, not 530. A difference of 71 is a big difference. Instead of 21 excess teachers, it drops down to 18 excess teachers. While the district is still cutting 13 excess teachers, it is committed to bringing the excess staff back if they can find some interim, one-time funding.
   I apologize for my carelessness posting the wrong figure.

8. Here’s to Frank: “Keeping them honest”….
   “530 students dis-enrolled from the district” + other stats!

9. Thank you for your corrective follow-up comment, Frank, which I hadn’t seen when I posted my previous comment. Four-hundred-fifty-nine, if that’s the correct figure, is still a large number.

   “…the district…is committed to bringing the excess staff back if they can find some interim, one-time funding.” That’s all well and good, but laid-off staffers are still being put through a lot of anxiety — and some have, or will find, jobs in other districts before Montclair potentially tries to rehire them. Lots of experience lost, as well as the loss of educational relationships that had been built with Montclair students.

10. Thank you for commenting, sickntired.

    While Frank and I often disagree, he is VERY knowledgeable about Montclair and Montclair issues.

11. I would like our see all of our highly positioned stakeholders shift into what I’ll call “constructive opportunism” (yes, the English teachers should push back here).

    Our 7 elementary school buildings enrollment totals, pre-COVID, ranged from a low of 276 to a high of 480 students. The average was 417. Therefore, not only did we have excess instructional capacity, but excess plant capacity. Now, maybe like farming, we take one building out of circulation for a year, do all the upgrade work in an empty building and then move to the next? Maybe other opportunities present themselves, e.g. efficiencies.

    Now we all know this won’t happen. As a matter of fact, not much is doable in our school system. But, it is entertaining to see an eduction industry struggle with introspection, change management and metrics. The good news is we have no problem letting Newsweek rate our schools. Yes, that is one of the few, “standardized” metrics we accept. I seriously couldn’t make this up if I tried.

    Go Mounties!

    Dave,
    Here is one source I used. I try, when motivated, to double or even triple source.
    https://montclairlocal.net/2021/03/montclair-schools-brief-459-students-left-district-others-experiencing-irreparable-harm/

12. Dave,

    Payroll is not something one should fund with one-time revenue sources. It is not a good thing. It would simply suggest the both the BoE’s, the MEA’s & the Central Office’s fiscal responsibilities to a healthy district are no match for the political realities.

13. Thank you for the two comments, Frank. In the case of COVID and its effects and aftermath, I’m okay with funding payroll with a one-time revenue source. The pandemic was and is an unusual situation. The federal relief funds will help solve some budget problems for a year. A year later, the Montclair School District’s budgetary situation at that point can be dealt with at that point.

    Re your first comment: Even if there is excess building capacity and/or excess instructional capacity (I’m not convinced there is), that kind of thing can be very temporary. Look at the selling of the Grove Street School thirty or so years ago because it supposedly wasn’t needed; a sale that would be much regretted when student enrollment increased. Eventually, Bullock would be built for a LOT more money than Grove Street School was sold for.

14. “The average was 417. Therefore, not only did we have excess instructional capacity, but excess plant capacity. Now, maybe like farming, we take one building out of circulation for a year, do all the upgrade work in an empty building and then move to the next? Maybe other opportunities present themselves, e.g. efficiencies.

    Now we all know this won’t happen. As a matter of fact, not much is doable in our school system. But, it is entertaining to see an eduction industry struggle with introspection, change management and metrics.”

    One primary reason it won’t happen, Frank, is because the parents of said school would scream bloody murder. And the parents of other schools would barricade the doors before increasing the class sizes of their schools. Why not take a day off from bashing the union/teachers to consider the notion that buying into Montclair at these prices and with these taxes makes many, not all, think they are entitled to private school benefits with public school dollars? How else to explain them demanding unvaccinated teachers run back into poorly ventilated buildings in the middle of a winter Covid surge?

15. @MP – Agree with your primary reason. As I said, my interest is the entertainment value.

    I don’t considered my pointed criticisms of the MEA “bashing” any more than I considered your generic defense as “whining”. I must point out that I have directed pointed criticisms towards the BoEs and the Superintendents (as long as they are here). Very little towards the rank & file. And, if it has been lost on you, I am a bonafide, dyed in the wool curmudgeon with a posting habit.

    Lastly, I get the pack mentality of groups. Much of their leadership are simply megaphones. What tends to interest me is the ebbing & flowing presence of the much rarer, real leadership. The tide was definitely out last winter.

16. Excellent observations in your third paragraph, Montclair Public.

    I did want to add that there are also many Montclair parents who greatly respect teachers and did not want to reopen schools until things were safer.

17. Dave,

    Yes, selling the 64,000 sf Grove St School for $1.1MM was a mistake.

    The district’s K-5 enrollment numbers from 1988 (the year Grove St was sold) show K-5 enrollment steadily increased by 900 students (40% overall) by 2000. However, since then the K-5 enrollment has been flat at 3,000 students for the last 20 years…the last 5 years averaging 2,900. I think we have a good baseline to work from.

    In the last 20 years, we have added 109,000sf of K-5 space. About 20,000 sf between Bradford & Northeast….and the 550-student, 89,000sf, $31MM Bullock School in 2010.

    Classroom space is like closet space. Before I married, I had a ‘sports’ closet and two other, half-empty closets.

18. Thank you for those numbers, Frank.

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