In addition to the 17 ISD 709 staff who rained on Edison’s parade we had three recently self retired School Board members weigh in. I’ve indicated I was not impressed with their testimony. I’d like to elaborate:
Mike Miernicki’s comments mostly repeated the email arguments I swatted down in a post yesterday.
Bill Westholm’s comments were most notable about confirming Art Johnston’s frequent claim that we get $10,000 from the state for each student ISD 709 educates each year. Bill said that for every 100 students we lose we lose $1 million dollars. If, however, Bill had been channeling Supt. Gronseth he might have added “but, we also lose the costs incurred for educating those students. This implies that losing a student is a financial wash. Well, its not after investing half a billion dollars to build new schools that risk emptying out.
What Bill Westholm doesn’t acknowledge is that most of Edison’s 8th graders will probably go on to an Edison High, not and ISD 709 Senior high. We lose them anyway. Furthermore, looking into the future (something ISD 709 has been very myopic about) without an enrollment cap agreement there is nothing preventing a successful new Edison high school to build an addition in ten years time. Certainly the ISD 709 animosity could be a goad to Edison to grow at hour expense. And in a year’s time Edison won’t be an Edison school. It will be dropping its ties with what’s left of Edison and going its own way. When the public begins to recognize it as a public school, albeit one of a different stripe, its success is what will draw more kids away. Having Central High will be no more guarantee of its population staying put than the grand Red Plan buildings have been to prevent an exodus of unhappy students and families.
Finally Judy Seliga-Punyko spoke. She hinted that the public offer was sneaky, when in fact, it was the only way the public could be assured of learning of Edison’s interest. She badly mangled the truth about special ed costs and then she suggested Edison was “unconstitutional” because one state’s supreme Court had made that determination.
That allegation led me on a little search of the news to check on Seliga-Punyko’s accuracy. She missed the mark. As the NPR affiliate makes clear Washington State operates under its own constitution which has eccentric wording that does not make its newly instituted Charters compatible with the term “common school.” The legislature has just done a work-around letting their fledgling charters get funding from a source other than the State’s General Fund. Judy is barely even technically right.
