Robert Maranto asks "why are public schools closed to the public?", but he fails to mention what is, to me, a key consideration.
This occurred to me when, like any good parent, I called the principal's office at my local public elementary school to check it out before sending my son. Alas, despite spending $20,000 per child, our school had trouble returning three phone messages left during normal business hours. On my fourth try I reached a live person, and had a brief conversation:Although I'm sure parents can be difficult to deal with at times, my guess is that the main reason the public isn't allowed to wander around inside schools is because of safety concerns. Would Mr. Maranto want to send his son to a school that was open to any member of the public who happned to want to drop by? I doubt it. Although it should certainly be possible to arrange a visit for the parent of a prospective student, I'm not at all surprised that the principal didn't want a strange man meandering through his halls."Hi, I'm Bob Maranto. I'm a parent who lives in [your school's] attendance zone. My son will be old enough for kindergarten next fall. He's actually right on the edge, so he could go next fall or the following fall, and I was wondering if I could come visit the school sometime."
"We don't have any visiting this year," the administrator replied. "We're doing construction and a lot of things are going on."
"Could I watch a class in session?"
"No, even when there's no construction you could not watch a class."
"Well, could I meet my son's teacher?"
"No, the teachers are busy teaching all day and then they go home."
As we used to say when I was in government, this is customer service worthy of the Internal Revenue Service. It also corresponds to playground gossip about this school, which has test scores lower than nearby schools.
A mere five months and 22 phone calls, faxes, and e-mails later--to the superintendent, school board, principal, and various other "public servants"--I was allowed to visit my son's likely school. Someday, I hope to watch a class.
But must it be so hard? Why not open public schools to the public?
We deal with a similar situation with our kids at church. For safety reason we do our best to keep non-approved adults out of the areas where we run our children's programs, including parents. It's not that we have anything to hide, it's that we think it's wise to keep strange adults away from our kids. We take safety and security very serious, and soon we'll even be running background checks on all our workers before they're allowed to work with children. We're always happy to show the parents what we're doing, but we escort them (and any visiting adults) rather than just let them wander around alone. When someone complains (and some do) we just remind them that the measures are in place to protect their child.
While serial killers and pedophiles fire the imagination, I would guess that the more common problem is with child custody. There are lots and lots of bitter divorces out there, where parents feel wrongly excluded from their children's lives. School is a logical place to try a snatch-and-run.
As an non-teacher employee of a public school district, I have some insight into this matter.
Our district welcomes visitors. Being the public school district of a city with 8,000 people in a rural setting, all we ask is that visitors report to the office and sign in. Only the entrance by the office in each school is unlocked during school hours.
In the case you mentioned, MW, I think you're right. Security is the primary concern.
What's interesting to me is the $20,000 per child figure he mentions. Our district spends a little less than half of that per child and our ST (standardized testing) scores are pretty good. We're a debt-free school as well (one of only 5 in the state of Wisconsin)... with the lowest property tax levy in the immediate area. And yet, we worry about passing a facilities and maintenance referendum... to address various issues that really need attention. ... But I digress.
As someone who supports the seperation of school and state, this is just another reason to avoid the whole public school industry altogether and invest in private school or homeschooling.
After all, can you imagine a private school acting like this? Not returning calls? No tours? No interviews with teachers? It is preposterous. There is no difference between the two setups, except that a private school wants the parent there, and the public school has no reason to want them.
So long as private schools are not able to refuse admittance to someone based on race, gender, handicap, religion, or sexual orientation... it's okay for them to receive public dollars.
Private schools are more successful, on average, than public schools because they don't have to accomodate everybody like public schools do.
And yet, Mark, the Catholic schools pretty much take anybody. It's not like there's an admissions test.
It's true, though, that the private schools do not have to =keep= the students in school. They can expel with impunity, more or less, due to bad behavior (though where the parents are richer, there are more threats of lawsuits... it's still easier to expel from a private school than a public school).
It would be extremely easy for the school to verify that Maranto did indeed live in their district-- all they'd have to do is ask to see his driver's license. But I don't think their stonewalling had anything to do with security, because they wouldn't arrange for him to meet the teacher either. If they were worried about security, they could have taken down his contact information and had the teacher contact him.
I don't think, however, that the teachers or the school felt they had anything to hide. Most teachers and administrators are good, hardworking people who really do care about children. But the ones who care more about status, statistics, and preserving the status quo are the ones in charge, and they set the policy. In my school district, no one dares to so much as wipe their nose without permission from On High. And the higher up, the less they care about children.
My best guess is the first refusal was motivated by district policy based on fears of parental interference, and the remainder of the refusals were based solely on bureaucratic indifference to parents' needs. IMHO it's this indifference that is the most problematic. Just for the record, we don't have this problem at the charter school where my daughter goes. If we didn't let prospective parents in to tour the school, it would adversely affect our enrollments. Public schools in places where there is no school choice have no economic incentive to let parents in.
sorry, but this is ludicrous. there's a difference between "wandering through the school" and being allowed to sit in a classroom for an hour after you signed in at the front desk and were escorted to that room.
but any school that is so large that the principal doesn't know all of the children by sight and all of the parents is already too large to be effective.
teachers that are too busy to meet a prospective parent will be too busy to meet a current parent.
and lastly, if schools allowed adult teachers to carry guns, they would be able to defend themselves and their students, too.
public schools are abominations. private schools handle all of these problems and still allow parents to sit in, walk around, interview other children, meet all of the teachers, etc. why don't those schools have the same "safety problems"? all of the reasons you will cite are the same reasons your child should go to a private school or be home schooled.