Needs improvement: On school system's basic services, much remedial work remains

Overcrowding. Underenrollment. Teacher and bus driver shortages. Heck, it wasn't that long ago we were struggling to keep our buses roadworthy.

Any wonder why so many of our schools are failing and parents are seeking ways to further their children's education outside of the school system?

In recent weeks we've taken a microscope to the Wayne County Public Schools system and identified several areas where improvements are needed.

Hopefully the school administrators have been reading along. So too, we hope, have the school board and county commissioners.

A long-needed look is finally being taken at redistricting. And that's fair, given that a year from now legislation mandating smaller classrooms will be enacted to further burden our underpaid teachers and underfunded schools in the county. The Wayne County Board of Education is actively working out how to shore up loose transfer guidelines and figuring ways to reduce the overcrowding in our elementary schools while simultaneously examining the underenrollment at our city high schools.

It seems many of the students who want to get to school can't, or are routinely late or left behind after school because there aren't enough bus drivers to run the routes smoothly.

A raise in pay for existing bus drivers does nothing to bolster their ranks.

Nor does spending $20 million to rebuild Meadow Lane Elementary, while giving no thought to Carver or Brogden. Neither does throwing $20 million into a new agricultural convention center do anything to enhance the lagging teacher supplement meant to pad the already weak salary of teachers paying out of their own pockets to supply their classrooms with learning materials, not just at the start of each new year, but throughout.

Now, we don't take lightly our platform to chastise those in authority and we hold our tongue more often than we loose it upon those who fall short of the mark.

But a serious look must be taken at how some of these votes are going each year -- who is raising their hand and who isn't -- when funding measures or recruitment and retention plans or redistricting strategies come before our governing bodies.

Before anyone cries poor to our hardworking teachers and school administrators in the trenches, might they have to look some of these beleaguered parents in the eye, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base-affiliated and those who aren't, and explain to them why all the money is gone when it comes to paying for little Johnny's bus, books, teachers, classrooms, art supplies and band equipment.

Published in Editorials on September 4, 2017 7:39 PM