Dear Editor:
Irony: Your part-time school has a yearly surplus that for years has helped in funding a small deep-in-the-red school in your district, and when that school becomes so unviable that it must be closed and your school relocates to its old site, many of the parents blame you and your part-time school, and the community newspaper publishes a letter from one of them blaming you and your school, and now many of the public blame you and your school.
Stupidity: You cut an aide from your district’s part-time school, directly resulting in the loss of an IEP level-1 funded student to a school outside your district – a significant net financial loss to your district – and the next year you make a similar cut to the same school and you expect a different result.
(An IEP Level-1 funded student brings a school district about an additional $18,000.
New West Home Learners runs three two-month terms, minus a week each term – about 22 weeks last year. Students attend for four hours, two days a week. At a high rate of $30/hour a one-on-one SEA for the student who departed would cost the district this year 22 weeks x 8 hours/week x $30 hours = $5,280.
Think I might be lowballing this number?
Double it and the district has suffered a financial loss. Triple it and the district has still suffered a financial loss.)
Why is the public perception of a school that operates at a profit and gives its surplus to help fund all the other schools in the district so negative?
And why is the New West School District strangling the goose that lays its golden egg?
Bryant Ibbetson,
by email
