If there is one lesson that good schools teach, it is that behavior has consequences. Good behavior yields good results, bad behavior brings bad outcomes. The Pittsburgh Board of Public Education and Superintendent John Thompson have been reminded of that truth in a most dramatic way, and now the public will see if they have the wisdom to change their ways.
Three of Pittsburgh's biggest and most generous foundations made the point with all the force of an old-fashioned paddle: In a joint letter, the Grable Foundation, the Heinz Endowments and the Pittsburgh Foundation said this week that they were suspending all funding to the district immediately because of "the sharp decline of governance, leadership and fiscal discipline in the Pittsburgh Public Schools."
This action will hurt, and the pain won't lessen for having been inflicted reluctantly: The three foundations gave $4.9 million to city schools last year, and between them have provided the district with nearly $11.7 million between 1997-2001. More than $3.5 million, pre-approved but not distributed, will be denied the district right now.
As harsh as this seems, and as vital as some of the funding has been to individual programs, the loss shouldn't be fatal to the district. With an operating budget of $485.7 million, the shortfall is on the order of 1 percent. Indeed, school officials announced in June that, in response to their fiscal challenges, they had saved a further $12 million through various strategies. Similarly, this loss of foundation money might also be overcome.
In short, school board and administration may still have the luxury of stupidity, at least for now. This is as much symbol as substance, but a large one. The movers and shakers in Pittsburgh have run out of patience.
Symbolism happens to loom large in all the recent troubles of the school district, the most potent being the symbol of a black superintendent under siege by a white board majority. But the rhetoric of crisis often gets carried too far on all sides.
When the foundations say in their letter that "the board is divided, the administration is embattled, key personnel are leaving or under attack, and morale appears to be devastatingly low," they are right in the particulars but give a misleading picture of the whole. They are suggesting an apocalypse now, when what is at issue is the very real potential for a meltdown of the school district if board and administration persist in knocking heads.
In reality, despite the bickering on the board, the school district continues to educate its students -- in mass, almost never terribly and often very well. While the board has been at odds over various issues, the principal source of disagreement has revolved around closing neighborhood schools and the related issue of money. Ignoring the fact that the district has too many schools to serve a reduced population, the majority on the board has unwisely pressed for the reopening of two elementary schools and a middle school at a cost of $1.8 million annually.
That expense, not economically defensible in the first place, now becomes even more ridiculous. Whether members of the board majority will wake up to that fact is an open question because their first instinct is more likely to be a stubborn defiance.
Still, members of the board majority shouldn't feel humiliated: After all, they haven't been given an explicit ultimatum on the folly of reopening neighborhood schools, or on any other issue. The foundation letter is in the form of a pox on both your houses. It does not spell out who are the villains and who are the heroes; it includes all sides in its indictment of a lack of leadership.
It is a wake-up call for everyone. In fact, it should resound also with members of City Council who greeted Councilman Bob O'Connor's interesting plan for a new way of picking school board members with a collective "ho hum."
But complacency isn't an option now. The foundations have taken an action that can't be ignored and the bickering can't go on. We shall see if the lesson has sunk in.
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