Christina, Author at A Mommy Story

Oct 18, 2013

It’s Still Non-Fiction, Right?

October 18, 2013 By Christina

Four nights of the week, part of Cordy’s homework is to read a book for twenty minutes, then fill out a paper that asks her to summarize what she’s read. Two of those nights, it’s a fiction book. The other two nights are non-fiction.

It’s been a lot harder to get Cordy to do the assignment with non-fiction books. She’s far more interested in getting lost in the world of a fiction book than having to face the real world and all of its limitations.

A few days ago, I got the kids off the bus and we started the usual homework routine. I asked Cordy if she brought home a non-fiction book for her homework or if she needed my help to find one in our house. (Despite our overflowing bookshelves, it’s harder than you might think.) She enthusiastically said, “Oh yes, I have a GREAT non-fiction book for tonight. Here, I’ll show you!”

She ran to her backpack and dug through all of the books she insists on keeping in it every day. Then she pulled out a book triumphantly, walked back to where I was sitting, and proudly presented the book to me:

A dictionary?

“Um, Cordy, I don’t think this is what your teacher meant by a non-fiction book…” I tried to explain.

My concerns over her choice of book sent Cordy into a fit of, “I can’t do ANYTHING right! I’m horrible at picking books and this homework is just TOO HARD!”

I calmed her down and tried to explain why her book wasn’t a good choice. “Your book isn’t fiction, but it isn’t really non-fiction, either.”

“Of course it’s non-fiction,” Cordy replied, “It’s a dictionary, and dictionaries only tell you about words that exist!”

At least I didn’t need to worry that she expected a coherent story from the dictionary.

And really, I couldn’t argue with her logic.

So I gave in. I told her she could use it for her non-fiction reading. She does four of these a week, every week. If she loses credit on one worksheet, it won’t be that damaging. Hopefully her teacher will find it amusing, too.

She read through her dictionary for twenty minutes (skipping around a bit) and later that night she completed her worksheet.

I’m especially fond of the main idea:

Perhaps, in the weeks ahead, her class will begin learning more about the select group of books known collectively as reference materials?

Filed Under: Cordy, school

Oct 15, 2013

Testing Update (& A Bit More School Politics)

October 15, 2013 By Christina

Sorry for the not-so-brief trip down education politics boulevard. Well, I’m not all that sorry, to be honest. I dislike seeing people try to force action by spreading fear and half-truths, and I’m glad I have the platform to tell the story of what really happened at the PTA meeting I attended. If the district is upset, they only have themselves to blame – I wouldn’t have been at that meeting if it wasn’t for the transportation issue.

And now it seems I’ve unintentionally positioned myself as part of a mini-revolution against the school district’s status quo policy of spending more to get the same results. People are saying I should run for school board. They clearly don’t know just how unorganized I am.

I never thought my post would be shared as much as it has been. Thank you, Columbus, for taking notice and agreeing that our kids deserve better. If/when the levy fails, I hope you’ll all stay just as mobilized to demand better from our school leaders.

Also, quick shout-out to a group of parent volunteers who set up the website It’s Okay to Vote No. I’ve helped them with this project (mostly helping them get the site up & organized), and will continue lending a little of my time when I can to write for them. Locals, go check them out. Right now it looks like they’re the WikiLeaks of the school district.

Moving on.

Because of this school drama, I completely forgot to let everyone know how Cordy did last week on her state testing! We don’t have the results yet, of course, and really the score results don’t matter as much as the results of how she did taking the test.

Despite the stress, despite her anxiety, she went to school that day ready to take the test. Her teachers told us that she seemed anxious when she got there, and they tried to relax her as best they could. She had her special needs teacher with her during the testing period, and her teacher gave her glittery pencils to use for the test. Cordy loves anything that glitters or is shiny, and apparently she calmed down quickly once they explained the schedule wasn’t going to be all that different from her usual class day.

All of our interventions ahead of time worked. Teachers and parents together, downplaying the stress involved, reminding her that there’s no score she has to beat on the test, asking her only to focus and do her best – it all worked. Her teacher reported that once the test began, she was focused and worked very hard.

Because of her IEP, she has the option of taking frequent breaks between sections of the test. I wasn’t sure if she’d take advantage of those breaks to not let the test get to her or if she’d forget. She was reminded that she had breaks available to use, but we were told that she chose to keep going as she finished each section.

The third grade OAA test is two and a half hours long. Cordy finished in just under 45 minutes. Seriously, less than 45 minutes for a two and a half hour test! That’s my girl, racing to the finish line just like I did as a kid, as if finishing before everyone else earns you additional points.

When I was told how quickly she finished, I confessed that I was worried that she didn’t read the questions fully. Her teacher, who sat right with her for the test, reassured me that Cordy was carefully checking her work and, she suspects, did very well on the test. We’ll know for sure when the results are released next month.

Of course, finishing the test early meant that Cordy got to have some free reading time, which is the best reward you could ever give her. And after that she got to watch part of a movie, too. When I got the full report at the end of the day, Cordy told me how AWESOME (all caps for her emphasis) the day was, and how she loves taking tests if she gets free reading time and movies after each test.

I’m incredibly proud of her for overcoming her anxiety so she could focus and do well on her OAA exam. It sounds like she aced the test, and no matter the score, she gained greater control over her anxiety that will hopefully carry forward to future schoolwork. That’s a win for me.

Filed Under: Cordy, school

Oct 10, 2013

This Is What I Get For Joining The PTA

October 10, 2013 By Christina

There’s a reason I’m hesitant to join advocacy groups.

Since I was little, if there was something I was passionate about, I hunted down every fact, exposed truths, and worked to educate others, persuading them to open their eyes to injustice and also take action. I can’t count the number of groups I was involved with in my teens and twenties: animal rescues, save the children, food drives…

It’s exhausting.

As a parent, I’ve been forced to rein in my causes to fight for, if only because I cannot expend that much energy on them while still working and being a good mom. So I’ve been more careful with my choices, although anything directly involving my kids generally comes right to the top of the list.

The transportation debacle launched school issues to the top of my priority list two weeks ago, and I started speaking out regarding the need for improvements to our district’s transportation department. We’re still in a bit of a stalemate with that.

Fast forward a week. A friend alerted me to a special meeting of the Columbus Council of PTAs on October 8, where the Columbus Mayor would be present to discuss the district’s levy issue. The levy committee was also asking for PTA members to lend their endorsement to the levy, requiring a vote.

Getting into all of the details and problems with the levy would take 3-4 posts entirely, and completely bore those of you who don’t live in this area. So I’ll sum up: the levy asks for a LOT of money from a 24% property tax hike, gives some of that money to private charter schools and private businesses, limits the power of the elected school board, makes a lot of promises with no real details on who will benefit and how they’ll do it, and still has the strong chance of no accountability if they squander the money. Again. And they’re going to cut $200 million from the existing budget, without saying where those cuts will come from.

Also, it assumes that the way to fix failing schools is to throw more money at them to make the problem go away, which definitely isn’t an answer. If you’re really interested in learning more, there’s a lot of info out there. I’d be happy to share some links.

Anyway. I’m a PTA member at our local school, like many parents, so I agreed to go to this meeting, hoping that the superintendent or someone from the school board might be there so I could talk to them about our transportation issue. (None of them were in attendance.) I made arrangements to meet Aaron after work to hand off the kids so he could take them to gymnastics while I drove to the other side of Columbus for this meeting.

The Meeting

I was nervous walking into the room. I didn’t recognize anyone there at first, and I worried about speaking up against the school district. I thought I’d be the minority in the room. My friends arrived about five minutes later, and others recognized me from my earlier blog posts about the bus, so I didn’t feel quite so afraid.

The mayor was running late, and this group of parents were ready to get things moving. They had babysitters charging by the hour and others inconvenienced by their commitment to be at this meeting. Suddenly, one of the parents announced, “I’d like to move that this council NOT endorse Issues 50 & 51.” It was immediately seconded. The president of the council asked if we wanted to vote now before the mayor had a chance to speak, and the room erupted in affirmative responses.

It was suddenly clear that quite possibly everyone there was against the levy. The president suggested discussion of the motion. At that point reasons why people opposed the levy began spilling out. There were overall concerns about the lack of detail regarding the business plan, including measuring success and holding people accountable for meaningful improvement.

Some made the point that many of the commission’s recommendations for improving the district could be implemented without any money. Others explained that they had attended all of the focus group meetings for the levy, designed to allow the public to provide input, and felt that none of the concerns expressed by parents or community members were heard or addressed in those meetings.

Then the vote was taken. All in favor say aye: “AYE” echoed in unison around the room. All opposed, nay: …silence. Not a single person said nay. We had unanimously voted to not endorse Issues 50 & 51. I was hoping there would be those who felt similar to me, but I didn’t expect a one-sided vote. Were there no parents who felt strongly enough in favor of the levy to come speak their minds and vote? Or are most parents feeling the same as us and concerned that our kids won’t really benefit from the vague language?

At that point, it was asked how the public would be notified of our decision. Another motion was made to give a public statement on the council’s unanimous decision to vote no and why. The vote passed unanimously. You can listen to it here:

Music Hosting – Embed Audio – Columbus Council of PTAs una…

Here’s the link to the audio file for those reading this on mobile.

We then waited and waited for Mayor Coleman to arrive. A little over an hour after the start of the meeting, he finally showed up, having been briefed on his way there about the vote we had already taken. I was curious as to what he might say to help us better understand the design of this plan, perhaps giving us more details about the private partners or the plans to ensure the money isn’t being siphoned to private interests with little in return.

Instead, the mayor began by expressing his displeasure and disappointment with our vote and chiding us for our decision, saying he hoped we’d reconsider and vote again. Then, when parents told him how they’ve attended all of the meeting and spoke at them, and yet the public’s input was not considered for this levy, he said this was the first time he’s ever heard that the public didn’t feel they had input into the plan. When a gentleman near me gently challenged this, the mayor erupted at him, yelling defensively. You can hear all of it here:

Play Music – Audio Hosting – Columbus Mayor at Columbus C…

Here’s the link to the audio file for those reading this on mobile.

Mayor Coleman stayed for about 15 minutes, then decided he wasn’t taking any more questions and left. He didn’t have any answers for us. He knew few details on the plan, insisting that it would be handled after the levy passes. He couldn’t answer basic questions regarding the plan’s suggestions for recruiting and retaining teachers, even accidentally saying at one point that Columbus City Schools needed to get good teachers, before backtracking once he realized the insult he had just spoken.

He also reiterated the stale talking point used in the countless commercials and near-daily mailers that business and government were ready to help, but it was time for the parents and community to “step up” for their kids’ education.

Um, PARDON? Forgive the outrage, Mr. Mayor, but don’t you think it’s a little insulting to tell parents to step up? Never mind, don’t forgive the outrage – to belittle us and try to pin the blame for failing schools on us is wrong.

If you want to blame something, try blaming poverty, or segregation, or a minimum wage so low that parents work multiple jobs and leave their older kids to raise their younger ones. Why not work on improving those issues in city government first, since you proved you’re not the education expert you claimed to be in the Dispatch three weeks ago?

It gets worse. (Wednesday)

The next day, the committee that was formed at the meeting to develop a public statement for the media ran into problems immediately. (I was a part of this committee.) The first draft, including reasons some of the individuals present at the meeting expressed for their vote, was criticized for including the reasons, despite the vote taken at the meeting including the words “and why.”

Not an hour after that first email, my home phone rang. Caller ID said it was the Columbus Dispatch. I was working, so I ignored it, thinking it was likely a sales pitch. Instead, it was a reporter who knew about the meeting vote and wanted to get more information from me. How did he know my phone number? I ignored it and continued working. Soon I had a tweet notification, followed by an email, all from the same reporter.

A short while later another parent who attended the meeting sent me a link to a Dispatch article. It was vague, but already reporting that we had voted not to endorse Issues 50 & 51, without providing any of the concerns expressed, and then provided a rosy picture of the levy. It would seem someone from that meeting had already leaked the information rather than waiting for our official release.

I disagreed with the committee over the wording, arguing that the press release had no useful information to share without giving some of the reasons that individuals voted the way they did, especially since someone had already told the media. (No, I have no idea who it was.) Then there were thoughts about whether the Columbus Council of PTAs vote meant that we didn’t endorse it (as in, we don’t support the levy, which it was clear that was the intent) or if it meant that we just weren’t taking a position.

As you can guess, that same mysterious someone had told the press that as a group we had voted to not take a position on the levy. The press release was not going to happen at this point.

So much information was flying around the back-channels that by the end of the night, I was fed up with the half-truths. I carved out some time and emailed the Dispatch reporter back, giving him the whole story as witnessed by me, as well as the audio recording of the mayor that had been provided to me by another parent.

And then today.

I woke up this morning to more emails and a link to the same Dispatch article. It had been updated with some of the information I provided to the reporter, as well as information from other parents.

It also included statements from the mayor’s office, claiming our meeting “was a small sample that does not represent the membership of the organization,” and downplaying the vote. Seriously?

They were the ones who forced this vote to happen to begin with, because they thought the PTA important enough to flaunt as an endorsement. Yet when the vote didn’t go their way, they chose to make us look like a few radical parents who secretly got together for our vote. Wrong. It was a public meeting, advertised to all PTA groups, and the importance of the meeting was stressed in the invite. If those in support of the levy chose not to attend, then they chose not to have their vote count.

That’s the way democracy works – if it matters to you, then you’ll be sure to vote. The mayor had better hope they feel more strongly about going out to vote on election day.

The other insult in the article was the Council PTA president claiming that she voted no, discrediting those of us claiming it was unanimous. As you can hear in the audio above, she didn’t vote no. She did tell us, long after the vote and during a break while waiting for the mayor, that she was in support of the levy, but that support was not voiced during either vote. It was a unanimous vote.

Look, I know our school district has problems. That’s obvious. But if a business tried to present this school plan as a business plan to request investment funding, they’d be laughed out the door at the lack of details, along with the flaws in the few details that are in the plan. We’ve tried to throw money at the district’s problems before – we voted for the 2008 school levy, also full of similar promises, and that money vanished without better schools or any benefit to our kids.

Last week, when Aaron and I petitioned the school board and the superintendent for the need to improve their solutions with the transportation office, the superintendent, Dr. Good, had this to say to us in an email response:

While I’ve very limited opportunity to craft a more thorough response to your correspondence, please be assured that I (and although I do not speak for the Board, I know they share the sentiment) am very concerned, but highly committed to finding solutions that are effective while honoring our pledge to be prudent fiscal stewards.

Well then, if being prudent fiscal stewards is the game plan for transportation, then let’s make it the game plan for the entire district’s operations. You don’t need millions of dollars more to correct the school district’s problems. Often, the best innovation happens when resources are limited. It’s time to prove they can be creative thinkers.

And, like the new Common Core standards require for all students, please show your work.

Filed Under: politics, school Tagged With: Columbus, Columbus City Schools, PTA

Oct 8, 2013

3rd Grade OAA Test Day – Here’s Your Pencil & Your Xanax

October 8, 2013 By Christina

Today is a big day for third graders at our school, and all third graders in our district. It’s Test Day. I don’t mean a normal spelling test or math test, but the BIG test for them. The OAA third grade achievement test. The district already puts an enormous emphasis on this test already, since it influences each school’s state report card, but a new state policy called the Third Grade Reading Guarantee will this year automatically hold back any students who don’t pass the test.

That’s a lot of pressure for eight and nine year olds over a single test.

Last month, the papers starting coming home about this test. The kids have been working on practice tests and focusing on homework that develops their answers to match what is wanted for the test. I won’t even get started on how maddening the Common Core standards are, especially for a child who can’t show her work because there was no work to show – her brain just moves that fast to the answer.

Cordy did well on the practice test. They said she was finished with it before all of the kids had even received their tests, and despite zipping through it at breakneck speed, nearly all of the answers were correct. That gave me hope that she’ll do well on the real test.

This may solidify my status as strange, but I’ll admit I loved taking standardized tests as a kid. It was a game to me – a challenge to prove I could beat the test and show how smart I was. School was maddeningly boring for me. I spent most days reading ahead in all of my textbooks, starting assignments before the teacher was done explaining the lesson, and getting a pass to go to the library when I finished my work ahead of everyone else so I could browse what books I wanted to read next. From second to fifth grade, I spent one day a week entirely in a gifted ed classroom, and that was the only thing that kept me from giving up on school entirely.

But whenever we had a standardized test, with its little scan-tron bubbles to fill in with pencil, I got excited. After all, it was my first standardized test in first grade that led to me being placed in the gifted ed program, so I saw these tests as a chance to earn something by showing them I didn’t belong in my current class.

As soon as my teacher said “Go,” I flipped open the first page of the book with excitement, knowing the first few questions were always the easy ones and wanting to move past them as quickly as possible. I never went back to check my answers – I’d carefully check that the answer I chose matched up with the bubble on the scan-tron, make sure it was filled in completely, and then didn’t look back.

I did feel some pressure, but it was all internal. I was competing against myself, and no one else knew it, which made it all the more fun. But the scores didn’t really count for much. The teachers didn’t have any pressure, either – these were nothing but aptitude tests, and no district report cards were hanging in the balance. Back then, the districts knew there was more to each student than just a test score, and there was more for a student to learn than just the test materials and test strategy. I happened to be good at these tests. Other kids had different strengths, and those strengths were valued in the classroom, too. (If anything, my strengths were not all that valued.)

Sadly, there were no rewards beyond the first grade test. I never got to skip a grade, and no black car pulled up to the school to take me to a more interesting school. I still enjoyed seeing my accomplishments on the tests, though. I’d never be talented in sports, but I could pull 97th percentile and higher scores in all standardized tests, so that was my source of pride.

Cordy has had similar reactions to standardized tests so far. When she was given the IQ assessment earlier this year, the psychologist remarked that she seemed to be having fun with the test, even showing pride when she realized she was doing better than expected.

But the build-up to this test has been hard on her in the past two weeks. Test taking strategies are being taught, and the kids brought home a Test Pledge that we had to review with them and sign together. This pledge included such things as “I’ll get a good night’s sleep the night before the test,” (of course you will, with that much pressure on you!) and “I’ll carefully read the entire passage before answering questions.”

Papers came home for parents, too, urging us to make sure the kids went to bed early on Monday night and had a good breakfast this morning. If we couldn’t provide breakfast, they reminded us that free breakfast was available for all students before the start of school. And, of course, there’s this tip: “Remind your child that your love does not depend on how well he or she scores on the test.” Gah! Really? People really put that much pressure on kids?

Damn, even I’m feeling anxious about this test now, and I’m not the one taking it.

It’s no surprise, then, that in the past few days Cordy has become increasingly anxious about this test. Last night, she started to panic at bedtime, saying she was worried about the test. “What if my teacher isn’t there? What if there are questions I don’t know? What if there are 400 questions and I get too tired to answer them all?” she asked.

Aaron and I tried to soothe her worries, reminding her that our definition of doing well on the test means staying focused and trying her best. If she did that, then she did well on the test for us and we’ll be so incredibly proud of her, regardless of her score.

I also tried to get her back into feeling confident: “But Cordy, you have no reason to worry, because I know a secret about this test.”

“What is it, mama?”

“This test? It’s only testing you on third grade material.”

“So?” she replied, curious as to why that mattered.

“So,” I explained, “you have nothing to worry about, because you know WAY more than third grade stuff!”

It made her smile, which was a victory in my mind. She then tried to compare the test to a Skylanders battle, and I went along with it. Whatever it takes to make her feel better.

It also disheartens me to see so much of what is taught directed towards The Test. And now, with the state basing all decisions on holding a child back in third grade on this assessment, it’s more important than ever. A child’s entire third grade experience is more than a score on a standardized test. The test puts too much pressure on the kids and the teachers to perform for this single day event, with future performance for both groups linked to these scores.

I truly appreciate the teachers in my daughters’ lives. They have talent and passion for what they do, and I wish they had greater freedom to teach their students without the test pressure. So much gets left behind when you’re stuck hammering home key points and strategies for The Test.

I’m hoping Cordy does her best today, and that she somehow finds a way to enjoy this test.

Filed Under: Cordy, school

Oct 4, 2013

An Update on the School Transportation Debacle

October 4, 2013 By Christina

When we last left this saga with Columbus City Schools taking three hours to bring our daughters home with no notice, we had emailed the superintendent and the school board about what happened to our family last Friday. The superintendent had replied to the email agreeing that the incident was inexcusable and let us know he had asked the deputy superintendent and director of transportation to investigate and follow up with us.

The next day, as I was driving to pick the kids up from school (Mira had asked that I pick them up that day, saying she was still a little nervous to ride the bus home for fear of being on it for another three hours), my phone rang. I recognized it as a Columbus City Schools phone number, but it wasn’t the number for our school, so I ignored it because I was driving. When I arrived at the school, I listened to the message – it was from their customer service department, asking to speak about the transportation/communications screw up on Friday. I texted Aaron and found out that they had called him as well.

He spoke to the customer service representative. She apologized for the incident and then tried to shift the blame onto the school, especially the principal, for “not realizing” that the kids would be on the bus for so long and notifying parents that two bus routes were combined. I was livid when I heard this.

Look, I don’t place even half an ounce of blame on the school. They have always been amazing and the communication between our school and us has been exemplary. The school didn’t make the decision to combine routes, and they don’t have easy access to the route maps to see how that combined route would take the kids into all four quadrants of the city of Columbus. The school’s principal is responsible for the school – her job is not transportation, nor should it be. That’s why they have an entire department for transportation.

And now that I’ve brought up that department…let’s discuss what happened next. After that call, Aaron then received a call from the director of transportation to set up a meeting. We agreed to meet on Wednesday morning, right after our annual IEP meeting.

I know – transportation meeting right after the IEP meeting. Talk about an intense morning, right?

The director of transportation began by apologizing and stating that they had failed on Friday. He showed us the route for the bus our kids take, as well as the route they combined with on Friday. That second route covered a large portion of the other side of Columbus. It’s easy to see why it took so long, considering they received a tour of the entire city, but didn’t excuse why we weren’t notified, given the chance to pick up our children, and couldn’t get through to the transportation phone number.

He explained that they have no ability to contact parents in these cases. What?? They have no robo-call technology, or any technology to send out emails or texts. They do have a Twitter account that is not publicized on their website (@ccsbuses) but he admitted that they don’t respond to anyone tweeting them and when they’re short on staff or really busy – times when you’d likely need the Twitter account the most – they don’t update it. I checked the account – last Friday, they listed some buses running late, but ours was never listed.

So why did no one answer when we tried calling over and over last Friday? Because no one was there. They were so short on drivers that the entire office staff were out driving the buses, leaving one person (the director) to be dispatcher to all of the buses carrying thousands of students, and answer a phone if he had time.

Here are some facts I learned about the Columbus City Schools Transportation. On any given day, they transport over 32,000 students to and from schools. They have over 800 buses that do this. But in their office, do you know how many call center operators and bus dispatchers they have to manage those enormous numbers?

Four call center operators, and two dispatchers.

And that’s on a good day when no one is being called to go drive a bus at the last minute. Think about that for a minute. Four operators for 32,000 students and two dispatchers to stay in touch with 800 buses.

A friend on Twitter did some of the math for me to prove the absurdity of this: if 2% of parents need to call the call center any given morning or afternoon, that is roughly 640 calls. Spread between four representatives, that is 160 calls per representative, almost all of which will likely arrive in a one hour window. It’s obvious that there simply are not enough people available for parents to have any reasonable expectation of reaching someone in a timely manner.

It turns out the district does have a Lost Child number to call, but that number is not published. I asked why it wasn’t published, and the answer was because if parents had access to that number, they would call it whenever they couldn’t get through to the regular number. (Perhaps because they need to FIND THEIR CHILD?) Can you see the problems here?

The director of transportation did share with us some of the technology they have partially running at the moment. All buses are equipped with GPS tracking devices. However, the district deems it too costly to provide parents their own individual logins to the software to check in on where their child’s bus might be.

I was given a login to see how the system works yesterday, and after using it last night while my daughters rode the bus home I can declare that it’s not ready for prime time by any means. The software is glitchy and unreliable. It logged me out several times while checking. If a bus is not on the mapped out route – say they take a different street to avoid construction, for example – the system reports that the bus is not running its assigned route.

If it worked reliably, it might be useful.

If the bus stops for 60 seconds or more, it disappears from the map with no last location displayed and only displaying the student’s drop-off location, losing all sense of where it was. Since buses are using city streets, with traffic lights that often last more than 60 seconds, it’s impossible to see where the bus is on the tracking map unless you catch it at just the right time.

Also, should there be any mechanical issues where they have to swap a bus out for another bus, it’s unable to track the route because they can’t reprogram the software to assign the route to the new bus. The software also has no ability to display messages for the route, updating parents on any potential issues that could cause a delay.

We also learned that about half of the buses are equipped with RFID readers, and they had an idea to assign RFID cards to students and then track them on the bus. In this system, parents would be able to log in on a smartphone app to see where and when their students swiped the card when getting on the bus, and where and when they swiped it getting off the bus. This system also requires funding, though, and at this moment there’s no guarantee it’ll happen.

So there are some half-done technology solutions in place, but half-done is nearly the same as not done at all – the only difference is for half-done, money has been invested to still have no solution.

At one point I mentioned that no parent should ever have to resort to calling the police to find their child’s bus. I was then shocked to hear them say they work with the police a few times a year for these types of issues and they’re grateful for the help the police provide. Ummm…I could be totally wrong about this, but I’m not so sure the police are as grateful to serve as the district’s response system and safety net when parents can’t get through.

The message we received from this meeting over and over was that the transportation department has no funding to improve services and that their hands are tied regarding communication and safety improvements for their office. He stressed several times that they have been asking other school districts how they manage their communications issues regarding transportation, and have also reached out to non-school places like the airport for their ideas on logistics.

It took a little while after that meeting for me to process everything I’d heard and tie it all together. Once I did, I realized that there are some enormous problems at play here that the school district can’t keep ignoring.

It’s obscene and shameful that the largest school district in the state of Ohio, and the 8th largest in the entire U.S., has such limited resources for their transportation department. There are plenty of smaller districts that have more call center operators to help parents and better technology to assist in making sure everyone is aware of where the students are at all times once they get on those buses.

After we met, I realized that several times it was mentioned that they were looking to other school districts and transportation services, asking them for solutions. I was also told yesterday that they met with the company who provides the GPS technology for the buses shortly after meeting with us to discuss the problems with the software and ways to improve it.

But wait – if they knew of the problems with the software, why did they wait until now to start asking for fixes? If I’m paying for a big piece of software, I’d be asking for changes as we discovered any limitations. And why are they just now looking for ways to improve the entire system? They didn’t JUST start moving students around by bus these past few weeks – they’ve been managing transportation for some time. Surely our bus issue last Friday didn’t suddenly open their eyes to flaws in the system. They’ve known about these flaws for some time, but perhaps it took an angry parent to make them start addressing it?

Columbus City Schools prides itself on teaching children to be leaders and innovators, and yet their own administration is failing at doing just that. Asking other school districts how they do things is fine, but really, shouldn’t larger school districts be the pioneers for creative, proactive solutions that allow them to work smarter, not harder, and put technology to use to help deal with limited funding? They shouldn’t be following behind other districts, begging for ideas, but should rather use their own resources and talents to blaze ahead and create successful models for other districts to follow.

One final point: in November there is a controversial school levy on the ballot. It’s asking Columbus residents for a steep increase in property taxes to fund building improvements, academic initiatives to improve test scores (’cause only test scores matter with Common Core and the state report cards), and, sadly and unfortunately, provide money to select private charter schools, despite the entire reason charter schools were approved was because they wouldn’t take additional public funding.

I’ve read the tax levy wording and inspected the detailed breakdown on the district’s website. Nowhere does it specify any dedicated additional funding for Transportation. If the charter school issue hadn’t swayed my opinion of the levy before now, this issue may have made up my mind and set my course on which side to advocate passionately for.

Before we left on Wednesday, Aaron and I both expressed that we didn’t want to be against the district on pushing for new policies and procedures for better communications with transportation, but would rather be advocates alongside them. We’ve echoed the same sentiments to the superintendent and school board. Our words were met with polite courtesy in our meeting, but I’m not sure they were fully accepted. I drove the point home before we left, though, letting them know I will remain in touch and this issue will not drop until changes are made.

And it won’t drop. We’ve already emailed the superintendent and school board again regarding what we learned in our meeting with the director of transportation, and our expectations from here. I have a few weeks before the next school board meeting, and will start gathering up as much data as possible.

It’s time to request budgets and deconstruct them line-by-line. Time to call other school districts and find out how they allocate transportation funding. This isn’t my job – and it shouldn’t be my job, because OMG I have enough to do already – but if a squeaky wheel is required to force some changes so parents can have some peace of mind about their children riding buses home from school? Consider me your loud, angry, squeaky wheel. I’d rather use our situation, which thankfully turned out well in the end, to enact change rather than wait for a situation where the ending isn’t so happy to make the district put the time and resources into solutions.

I’d love to hear in the comments (or email me if you don’t feel comfortable leaving a comment: amommystory at gmail dot com) more of what other districts do to keep your kids safe? What types of services would you expect to see from a school district’s transportation department if you needed to find your kids or if the bus was running very late or had trouble?

(And if anyone in this district wants to help me spread the word far & wide or help prepare a presentation for the school board, I’m happy to accept help!)

Filed Under: big issues, school