Barnes on Channel 17!

Lawrence Barnes parents will be hosting "Live @ 5:25" this Friday, June 8th, on Burlington's Channel 17: Town Meeting Television, talking about the school district's proposals for "Socio-Economic Integration" (SEI), the Unity Plan put forward by the Barnes community, and the work of the Sustainable Schools Project and the PTO at Lawrence Barnes elementary.

Unity Plan for Burlington Schools

This Unity Plan was developed by members of the Barnes community, as a proposal for how the Burlington school district can move forward on the issue of elementary schools.

The goals of the Unity Plan are:

* A long-term economically sustainable school district
* A move toward greater socio-economic integration in the Burlington elementary schools without disrupting existing school communities and pitting neighborhood against neighborhood.
* Neighborhood elementary schools that allow families to walk to school and maintain community.

We propose the following:

1. The three existing downtown elementary schools remain as K-5 elementary schools. Two become Magnet Schools:

* Barnes becomes a Sustainable School Magnet
* Wheeler becomes an Arts and Drama Magnet

2. Common registration for new families for the downtown elementary schools. All current families would be allowed to attend their current school. New families would register for the downtown elementary schools and assignments would be based on:

* proximity
* preference
* socio-economic integration

3. In order to keep the district financially sustainable, sell the Ira Allen building. The administration that is currently located there could move to Edmunds. The EEE program that is currently there could move to Wheeler.

4. Invest in the district's current infrastructure to make much needed improvements and make the buildings energy efficient. On-Top and Horizons programs remain at Taft where long overdue improvements will result in significant long term energy savings. At Barnes and Wheeler improvements are needed to make the schools more attractive, better suited to carrying out their roles as Magnets and to achieve long-term savings from energy efficiency. The funding for these improvements could come from:

a. Grants specifically designed for Magnet Schools
b. Grants specifically designed for districts to gain energy efficiency
c. The proceeds from the sale of the Ira Allen building.

If Burlington closes a school, would it have room for universal Pre-K?

This past year, the Vermont state legislature held hearings on the possibility of the state funding universal pre-K education in the public schools. It is widely accepted that pre-K education is one of the most effective ways to improve academic performance for children from low-income families.

As the chart below shows, if universal pre-K were instituted, Burlington's current elementary schools would be just at capacity. If schools are closed and buildings are sold, we would not.

Elementary	Capacity	2006	pre-k	total with pre-k
Barnes	180	149	25	174	under by 6
Champlain	320	294	49	343	over by 23
Edmunds	340	287	48	335	under by 5
Flynn	360	331	55	386	over by 16
Smith	320	279	47	326	over by 6
Wheeler	320	228	38	266	under by 54

Barnes parents' principles about "socio-economic integration"

A large group of Barnes parents (representative and socio-economically integrated) met the morning of May 16 to discuss Superintendent Collins' recent proposals for "socio-economic integration". There had been a lot of focus on the Ward 1 parents who are upset. What no one seems to be focusing on is that under all of the superintendent's proposals, Barnes is essentially closed as an elementary school for people in our neighborhood, and those of us who live on the West side of the ONE would be redistricted to either Edmunds or Champlain Schools (although which one is difficult to tell as the administration keeps changing the maps).

We agreed on a set of principles, listed below:

1. Barnes, and the other Elementary Schools should remain K-5 schools
2. We should preserve the concept of Neighborhood Schools that children and their parents can walk to
3. We should work to make the three downtown schools attractive to all parents
-possible ideas: Themed Schools (Sustainable, Arts & Music, etc) that build on what are schools are already doing.
-invest in infrastructure (maintain and green-up our schools)
4. We should carefully examine the costs and benefits of selling any current school property (Ira Allen and Taft)

We know that many people have very positive ideas that could fit into the above. We are very concerned that the current proposal alienates parents while selling district property that will result in a net short-term cost to the district.

We are holding a press conference at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 22 at Barnes to share the above concerns and principles. We will then be meeting at 4 p.m. to walk from Barnes to Ira Allen for the 5 p.m School Board meeting (1.5 miles—a shorter distance than Barnes to Champlain Elementary).

2nd grade classes visit JDK design studio

More about this trip on the "vlog" it's from, Stuck In Vermont

Op-ed on Socioeconomic Integration

Submitted to Burlington Free Press on October 18, 2006
by Jonathan Kissam

As a parent of two children who are participating in a wonderful educational environment — Lawrence Barnes Elementary School — I am concerned that the School Board is still trying to use “socioeconomic integration” as a cover for closing one or more of Burlington's elementary schools.

The evidence that children from low-income families who attend "socioeconomically integrated" schools do somewhat better on standardized tests than children who attend less "integrated" schools is being put front and center in the public discussion. It is important, however, to remember that socioeconomic integration is not a silver bullet. The supposed gains of socioeconomic integration are modest, and there are other factors which also improve test scores modestly for students from low-income families, for example smaller schools and smaller class sizes. Furthermore, most of the studies of socioeconomic integration measure students' scores on standardized tests, whose relationship to actual education has been widely questioned.

If the Burlington community is going to talk seriously about "socioeconomic integration," then we need to start with the recognition that the Old North End is an economically integrated neighborhood. If families who live in Burlington are choosing private schools or requesting variances we need to find out why and the school board needs to come up with a plan to make all of our elementary schools attractive to all families.

Many of us in the Barnes community, both parents and staff, are more than willing to do the work necessary to make Barnes reflect the "socioeconomic diversity" of the neighborhood it is located in. We are willing to reach out to all parents who are considering whether to send their children to our school, to reassure them that our children receive an excellent education at Barnes, to share the wonderful things happening at our school which are not reflected in standardized test scores, and to identify areas where we and the administration can make our schools better. This is an approach to socioeconomic integration that does not require disruptive change, and would preserve the environmental and health advantages of schools where almost all of the children walk to school.

To do this, we need a guarantee of stability from the school board. No one, whatever their income, is going to want to send their child to a school that is perpetually on the chopping block. If the school board and administration believes that maintaining six elementary schools is financially unsustainable, then they need to be open about that, sooner rather than later. They also need to level with the community about what the real savings and costs of closing an elementary school are and are not. If the board is going to distribute information about how the cost per child of educating students at Barnes and Wheeler is higher than other schools, they need to also tell the public that most of those costs — related to the special education needs of specific children — will follow those children to other schools. Then we can have a public debate about whether closing a neighborhood school really makes financial sense, and whether the social and educational costs are worth the financial savings.

Last year, the school administration and some on the school board repeatedly justified their proposal to close Barnes with the rhetoric of socioeconomic integration, yet when we attended finance committee and board meetings, it was clear that money was the driving force. After all the work of the Task Force and the public forums, it would be tragic if all this talk about socioeconomic integration just turned out to be rhetorical cover for an agenda of balancing the budget by closing one or more schools in the Old North End, a neighborhood that is already socioeconomically integrated.

Barnes Float in the Old North End Parade