Educating the Educators: Kaine’s Vision for Transportation & Land Use Has Major Implications for Chesterfield Schools Thursday, January 19, 2006
Posted by Conaway B. Haskins III in Uncategorized.trackback
South of the James Guest Writer
Shelly is the mother of 3 future Virginia leaders attending Chesterfield County Public Schools. She is also a leading voice with Go West Chesterfield, an education advocacy group working to get a middle school in western end of the county. A frequent commenter on South of the James, this is her first post.
I, Shelly Schuetz, resident of Chesterfield County spoke on Tuesday, January 10, 2006 at the Chesterfield County School Board on the 2006 -2012 Capital Improvement Plan. As I contemplated my remarks, I couldn’t get out of my mind the recent article in Sunday, January 8th edition of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. This article written by Tim Kaine, then our Governor- elect, put into great perspective the decision before the School Board. I have included some of his statements taken from the article featured in Sunday’s Commentary Section.
Kaine writes about how his new administration will focus on roads and schools. Our problems aren’t just in Chesterfield, but state wide. As a locality in Virginia, we need to approach our decision as responsible Virginians. We must look at the bigger picture that faces both Chesterfield and Virginia. Kaine states that he is “excited about the opportunity to work with leaders from both parties and every part of Virginia to find solutions to the everyday challenges our families face.”
Citizens are seeking solutions. The key elements of the approaches that our state government will take on the issues that matter most to Virginia families are “finding common sense transportation solutions, improving our public education system, and making health care more affordable.” As Chesterfield County School Board, they had the opportunity to focus on 2 of these 3 issues also facing Chesterfield families with the allocation of funds from the 2004 Bond Referendum for new school projects.
The new Kaine administration will focus on three specific areas.
First, accountability in performance. Kaine states, “Taxpayers have a right to expect that their money is being used efficiently to provide the services they demand.” Our local government bodies must work together more efficiently.
Second, financial accountability. When state monies are taken from transportation to be used for other priorities, these decisions hurts the credibility with its voters and delays projects and makes them more expensive. This also holds is true for Chesterfield.
Third – better connecting land-use and transportation decisions. The article stated, “We cannot simply tax and pave our way out of our transportation problems.” Kaine urges us to better connect land-use and transportation planning. Chesterfield is one of 134 cities and counties individually make land-use decisions. Virginia then makes transportation planning decisions. “This flawed arrangement means we are forever playing catch-up, and the additional time that we spend in our cars, instead of on the job or with our families, is a testament to its failure”. Chesterfield County 3 boards – Board of Supervisors, Planning Commission and School Board – decision in choosing the correct site location for new schools could better connect land-use decisions with transportation in order to help alleviate traffic congestion and travel time.
Transportation is the most urgent issue facing Virginia, and the state will be judged on how effectively it tackles this challenge. Our local government officials are also judged by their decisions. Chesterfield County will probably not be high priority when the state allocates transportation funding. Other areas like Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia have greater transportation needs. Chesterfield has to be realistic about the future state funding that it will receive. We have been crying the woes for some time about the lack of state funding, but we continue to contribute to our problems by choosing school sites with no infrastructure.
No roads? No water? No sewer? No power? We increase our costs!
Who will pay the cost of this new infrastructure? We, the taxpayers!
As Governor, Kaine will approach these challenges by understanding that success will require bringing people together while casting partisanship aside. Chesterfield needs to bring its 3 boards together to work for the betterment of Chesterfield. Our new governor elect will embrace these challenges and he has asked for our help (leaders and citizens) as we seek solutions to keep Virginia moving forward. Citizens of Chesterfield want accountability from our 3 county boards and board members need to stop pointing the finger at one another and work together for the betterment of its citizens. It is not enough for the school board to say we didn’t want the middle school at Centerpointe. The School Board had an opportunity with the approval of the 2006-2012 CIP to determine how the 2004 bond monies will be spent to tackle our overcrowding issues with new school projects as well as its impact on our local transportation problems.
As a Virginian and a Chesterfield County resident, I boldly requested our leaders to put politics aside and do what is best for Chesterfield and Virginia. Are we going to continue with business as usual in 2006 or will we embrace the vision of Kaine for the future. There are limited amount of funds and we must wisely spend each and every dollar. I requested that the school board to spend the bond money in a manner that keeps an eye on transportation and education. Delay building a middle school at Centerpointe and put the school where the majority of the students reside.
Unfortunately, Chesterfield County School Board voted to approve the CIP as submitted. Chesterfield will build the school at Centerpointe and increase our transportation cost. Chesterfield could better connect land-use with transportation decisions. In the future, maybe Chesterfield officials will listen to their constituents about providing services that they need in the location that best will serve the students while looking to the bigger picture.
Stop with the reforming of public schools already! If you really want school reform, then kick the State out of the business of education.
Fifty years ago in America, there were children, there were schools and there were guns. But there were no “school shootings.” Now there are.
Many things contribute to this situation. The popular culprits to blame are violence in the movies and on TV, video games, the preponderance of guns, drugs, the Internet and busy parents. Millions of children are exposed to these things but only a few shoot their schoolmates and teachers. In the final analysis, children shoot up schools because they decide to do so. If we really want to know why, we might consider the following:
* Children are dependents. Regardless of whether they are treated badly or well, children are the prisoners of their parents and their schools.
* Schools are prisons, to which children are sentenced by compulsory education and truancy laws. School-prisons may be used to serve the following purposes: teaching literacy and mathematics–a goal that can be met in six years, or by the time a child is 12; vocational education or preparation for a higher education–goals that are not justified, and in fact, are hindered by, compulsion; social control, which requires and justifies compulsion and is antithetical to giving teenagers a choice about school attendance.
Using schools as institutions for social control makes them de facto criminal-psychiatric facilities, depriving children of liberty and, in some cases, labeling them with a psychiatric diagnosis in order to facilitate current and future social control.
Fifty years ago, there was no drug education in schools. School personnel did not forcibly administer drugs to children, and children did not use or abuse drugs, legal or illegal. Children also received neither sex education nor condoms in schools–and there were fewer teen pregnancies.
Fifty years ago, school children did not suffer from attention deficit disorder or depression, rarely killed themselves, did not go on shooting sprees and managed to grieve without “professional” help.
Fifty years ago, the people in charge of public schools took for granted that their main responsibility was to teach academics; safety was a given. Today, the people in charge of public schools assume that parents aren’t competent to teach their children life lessons, that only “professionals” are qualified to teach children “sex education”, “drug education”, “interpersonal skills” and “conflict resolution”.
The “educators” also believe that it is their duty to control what children put into their bodies and to ferret out what is in their minds. The main function of the public school is not education but social control. The result is that the schools are unsafe and test scores are dismal.
Fifty years ago, most people did not sentimentalize childhood as an age of innocence and worry-free happiness. Adults recognized that adolescence is a time filled with intense sexual urges doomed to
frustration. Today, adults deny the intensity of adolescent sexual needs and try to control them through sex education and condom distribution–measures that invade privacy and confuse the adolescent’s sense of personal integrity.
Fifty years ago, people believed that some children were good and some were bad. Now everyone knows that all children are good, but some are mentally healthy and others are mentally ill.
In words and deeds, young people today tell us that they do not like being patronized, made to feel useless and baby-sat in day-care prisons called “schools.” School administrators, teachers, child psychiatrists, child psychologists, social workers, grief counselors, pharmaceutical companies and the many other businesses that profit from the education racket are not the friends of children as they proclaim. The economic and existential self-interests of these do-gooders are inimical to real education and rational discipline.
“Protect me from my friends; I will take care of my enemies,” says an old proverb. American children today have nothing but friends. Is it any wonder they are bored, frustrated, angry, troubled and poorly educated and that, occasionally, some of them engage in desperate acts of destruction?
Believe me, I’m not advocating for public schools. I have 3 children and I understand the problems of our public education system. I understand what it feels like to be a prisoner to the system. I would love school choice.
I would welcome having an amount of money that would be designated to each child so I could choose the school that would meet the need of each individual child.
As a state, we are not at that point. Too many adults are not advocating for school choice so I must work with the system that is available to me. Private education is not a choice for many families. We are one of those families. Why…..we can not afford private school for three children and my children don’t quailify for special programs.
I am requesting fmy officials to provide schools in the location that is supported by the data. I don’t what to hear that the school site was denied in the location that was orginally supported by the Public Facilities Plan. Officials know that they can promise one thing and then change the language to meet a different want. Instead they locate a school to boast developement in another area and cry “sprawl”. Then the officials complain about the high cost of building roads and increased transportation cost.
Homeowners all over the commonwealth purchase homes with the expectation that the infrastructure is coming to support the new developments. We are not told that we will pay taxes for over 10 years patiently waiting for relief for overcrowded schools and congested roads, then we are told they can’t because a schools encourage sprawl.
Even though a high school, elementary school and thousands of new lots have been approved in the same area that the middle school should be built.
I’m asking my local officials to work with the state officials to solve our local problems…… transportation, and education. Otherwise, we will continue to suffer….I’m asking for local change.
As a student at James River High School, I’m particualy able to relate to your comments about better connecting land-use decisions with transportaion when choosing the sites for new schools.
James River sits on a piece of property off of Robious Rd. just east of the Powhatan County line. When the school was built, Robious Rd. was still two lanes well east of the school. Since then, as more and more developments (such as the newest monstrosity of a neighborhood, Tarrington) have sprung up along Robious, the road has been widened up to the top of the hill at the edge of the Powderham subdivision.
Because of the topography of the land just east of James River, it would be extremely difficult and expensive to widen the road anymore. Going to school everyday takes me 30 minutes because of the bottleneck where four lanes merge into two. Without the school traffic, it takes half that.
As more developments spring up, however, the bottleneck will get worse and worse. With subdivisions springing up on each side of the school and the addition of route 288 just west in Powhatan, people who travel Robious Rd. in the morning are going to face much more traffic in the future than they do now. Without the topographical resources to further expand Robious, this new traffic will just keep piling up.
My point, I suppose, is that a better location should have been selected for James River High School.
It would be wise of the county to construct new schools in areas that are immediately accessable by more than one major road or at least in areas where current roads have room to expand to handle new traffic.
shelly schuetz does more harm than good
This is an interesting comment from an anomymous writer two months after this article posted….you obviously have an issue with me but unwilling to debate me on topic.
Most residents would disagree with your vague statement.
If you have a personal issue with me, please contact me at my personal e-mail address. I assume you know how to contact me.
Sincerely,
Shelly Schuetz