NEW ALBANY — Responding to NA-FC’s cost saving proposal

For a quarter of a century, I have watched the NAFC schools slip further and further away from doing what is best for their clients, the children and families of Floyd County. The need for cutting costs may be necessary, but in spending more and more money for programs to try to leave no child behind, the school system is on the brink of not only leaving more children than ever behind, but also abandoning aspects of our school system that have proven their effectiveness in student success. This may be cost cutting, but at what real expense.

Let me share just a few examples of how I see this schools system doing serious harm to the students of Floyd County and how the costs saved don’t seem to add up.

Galena and Silver Street are two small schools that succeed by any measure: parent satisfactions, test scores, state and national academic recognition, and community pride, to name a few. The two schools would seem to be excellent models for how our schools should be. Given their success, these two schools seem to be a good value for our money.

Furthermore, there will be expenses from closing schools. Both Galena and Silver Street, for example, draw from small geographic areas and require much less bussing than other schools in the district. Bussing these students to other schools will certainly cost more than the present situation and bussing costs can only be expected to continue to rise. These two schools have repeatedly proven their effectiveness. This cost-cutting plan may not.

A half a century ago, the NAFC schools became the envy of many in Indiana and Kentucky when it realized the value of early instrumental music lessons not just for those families who could afford them, but for every child who wished to participate. Rubin Sher was hired to build a string program from the ground up. For the first few decades, the program was available for students in any grade, K-12. Then, even as the program was demonstrating its power to help students succeed at many things including music, the string program was cut back a few grades at a time until now there will be no elementary string program at all.

As scientific research grew to understand that music wires the brain for further learning and that playing a musical instrument at an early age significantly improves language and math abilities, including those measurable on standardized test scores, the NAFC schools are abandoning the program.  Current students and hundreds of alumni of the program can testify to its value. Yet, the cost of the elementary string program is one full-time teaching position.

Funding one teacher for this proven program can help scores of children succeed in math, in language, and in life. Parents who know the value of early instrumental music and can afford instruction for their children elsewhere will continue to give their children the edge that this experience provides. Once again, it will be those students who can least afford to be left to fend for themselves, who will be left behind by this decision.

The task given to the school system is certainly not an easy one. However, unless there can be a renewed dedication to make what works affordable rather than trying to make what is affordable work, the real costs of the NAFCS cost-cutting plan will be less student achievement and more of our children left behind.

— Kathryn Burger Johnson, NAFCS teacher and alumni

Waste not, but pay more

One issue ignored in the sewer debate within this paper's pages so far is how the past and current rate structure at New Albany Municipal Utilities discriminates against the very customers who use our sewer system the least. Unlike other utility billings, NAMU has no base "access/connection to the system" fee which every single customer must share and pay regardless of usage units in any given month.

Instead, NAMU assesses what it likes to call a "minimum usage" charge of $10.08 (currently and soon to be raised), which affects only customers who use less than two units (200 cubic feet) in any month. Every customer using at least two units or more pays a maximum of $5.04 for each of those units used.  On the other hand, small single households, or vacant properties, or responsible conservationist citizens who manage to use zero up to a single unit are paying $10.08 for that unit they use (or for none at all). This means any monies beyond NAMU's straightforward $5.04 per unit used is coming into NAMU's coffers mainly from the very customers who can afford such a double charge the least.

Not only does this current and past rate structure unfairly discriminate against residents who strain the sewer system the least, as well as those who are least able to pay, it also offers negative incentive for New Albany households to conserve by half their wastewater usage. In fact, NAMU currently only allows for rewards to customers who wastefully use the system the most.

Before any decision is taken on how much of a sewer rate increase is needed in New Albany, or from where and how to get the funds to meet purported deficits, the discriminatory NAMU fee structure must be made equitable. Those directly involved in this decision insist the indigent will be helped out, but that is a separate issue altogether. The rate change needs to spread the cost fairly to households based upon usage, period. And, it needs to provide incentive and encouragement to those who are trying to preserve the planet for future generations.

Please look back through all your monthly NAMU bills from this last year, and please contact me if you find there is ever a "one" in the column headed “Used” (or nothing there at all in the case of vacant property) for more details on what we can all do together to correct the rate discrimination. You may send e-mail to flotsam@oivas.com.

— Kathleen Martin, New Albany