LAST week, Toledo Schools Superintendent Jerome Pecko went to Washington, along with other area leaders, to discuss childhood obesity. Also last week, parents, teachers, and others packed a Toledo Board of Education meeting to raise concerns about the school district's plan to balance its budget in part by eliminating the jobs of 132 art, music, and, yes, physical education teachers in elementary schools.
The coincidence of these events might seem humorous if it weren't so serious. Toledo Public Schools has been on a downward trend for several years. Enrollment is declining, state aid has been slashed, and academic performance remains largely poor. District leaders face the challenge of reversing this trend.
It is especially hard to address performance issues when the district faces annual revenue shortfalls in the millions of dollars that require layoffs and cuts in programs from sports to bus service. Yet school officials are trying.
TPS has unveiled a plan to reorganize the school system from top to bottom while addressing a projected $37 million budget shortfall next school year. The district's task is made more difficult by the understandable response by nearly all constituents to demand that their ox not get gored.
Art educators rightly point out that their discipline encourages creativity and critical thinking. Music lovers note the undeniable similarities between music and math. Health professionals refer to numerous studies that show the relationship of good nutrition and exercise to intellectual development.
It's becoming an annual event. Last school year, parents of athletes didn't want the district to eliminate the less-popular sports their children played. Other families protested the district's curtailment of bus service.
The complaints are heartfelt and often justified. The response by school officials that classroom teachers will simply pick up the slack created by budget cuts can be disingenuous or naive.
But while complaining can identify problems, it doesn't solve them. Attacks on easy targets such as administrative salaries or unspecified bureaucratic "waste" won't put TPS in the black. Nor is griping about Columbus' failure to enact school-finance reform a way to balance next year's books.
Where are the concrete alternatives? If you don't want elementary art erased, offer an option. If you cry foul at the idea of getting rid of gym class, identify a better way to close the budget gap. If you believe the silencing of music is educationally unsound, tell school officials what you'd cut instead.
TPS officials plans to hold public hearings on how district lines should be redrawn. It's a chance for Toledoans to put on their thinking caps and come up with real solutions to this and other issues.