School budget would de-CAPA-tate arts
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Adapting a popular British put-down, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently described Newt Gingrich as "a stupid man's idea of what a smart person sounds like."
The former speaker of the House, who is currently leading a field of pathetic GOP presidential hopefuls, came up with a novel solution to chronic school deficits during a speech at Harvard University two weeks ago.
"I've tried for years to have a very simple model," Mr. Gingrich said, trotting out an idea that would have sounded over-the-top coming out of the mouth of one of Charles Dickens' cruelest characters.
"Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they'd begin the process of rising."
We laugh at Mr. Gingrich's Dickensian blathering because we know he'll never be in a position to jettison a century's worth of child labor laws for the sake of bizarre notions of school reform. Dragooning American kids into cleaning toilets to balance school budgets is a non-starter in the real world.
Closer to home, Pittsburgh Public Schools is running a $38 million deficit. Because a tax increase for school funding is unthinkable these days, Superintendent Linda Lane and the school board have turned to the guillotine to slice the deficit to a slightly less horrible $21 million in next year's budget.
Four hundred positions in the district will be eliminated, seven schools will be closed, two buildings will be sold and several schools will merge, but after all the dust has cleared, no one is under the illusion that this will be the end of the kind of draconian cuts Newt Gingrich would feel comfortable advocating. We may be witnessing the slow dissolution of an urban school district just as A+ Schools is reporting that the racial achievement gap is closing.
For me, nothing characterizes the self-defeating nature of much of this strategy more than the $550,000 the school board plans to cut from the 2012 budget of the Pittsburgh School for Creative and Performing Arts. Cutting that much out of CAPA's budget will rip the heart out of the school's music and drama programs.
Right now, CAPA is the only Pittsburgh school that parents in surrounding suburban school districts fight to get their kids admitted to. They're willing to pay for that privilege because their own schools, as good as they are, aren't at CAPA's level in terms of arts education.
It may sound like a terribly elitist thing to say, but CAPA is special. It is an urban school that provides an excellent academic and artistic education to all of its students. Somehow, it works the way it was designed to work. (I know firsthand -- my son Chris graduated from CAPA three years ago.)
The adjuncts who provide private lessons in various disciplines to 330 of 888 students every afternoon are a big part of CAPA's success. Music majors can't progress without daily instruction from part-time teachers who help them prepare for admission to grueling university music programs and conservatories.
They're competing with students at other creative arts high schools for slots at the best colleges and universities. Without these teachers, they're at a profound disadvantage, especially if their families can't afford to pay private tutors.
CAPA may get $2.1 million a year above the standard allocation for schools, but that isn't the whole story.
I understand that folks who attended high schools with subpar music programs or none at all are probably playing tiny violins right now. The difference between those who consider music an unaffordable extravagance in public schools and those who are willing to bet their lives on being artists is the difference between complacency and passion.
Every student at CAPA had to audition to get in. By competing for those slots, the students have declared what's important to them. They're pursuing their dreams with every ounce of heart and soul they can muster. They shouldn't be penalized at this stage of their artistic development. It would be more intellectually honest not to have a program at all than to have one without resources to teach it.
Local officials recently tried to coax Saks Fifth Avenue into staying Downtown with $8.6 million in tax credits and grants. An intact CAPA is far more important to Pittsburgh than Saks ever was.
Treating one of the best public schools in Western Pennsylvania like a snooty stepchild is as Dickensian as anything Newt Gingrich ever proposed.
First Published December 2, 2011 12:00 am
