Voice For Liberty

Tag: Martin Libhart

  • At Wichita Chisholm Trail Elementary School, Why is Increased Enrollment a Problem?

    Today’s Wichita Eagle reports Wichita area schools’ enrollment increases.

    Featured in this story is Chisholm Trail Elementary School, which added 112 students. The enrollment there is now 576. Interim superintendent Martin Libhart and other officials held a press conference there, presumably to emphasize the plight of this school.

    Someone has already mentioned to me today that the capacity of this school is 600 students. I looked in the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for USD 259, and the most recent report does state that the capacity of this school is 600.

    How can 576 students be a problem if the capacity is, in fact, 600?

    If 576 students are a problem, why is the capacity of this school given as 600?

    Why didn’t Wichita Eagle reporter Lori Yount mention this?

    Why didn’t a Wichita Eagle editor suggest this fact be included in the story?

  • Wichita School District: Accountability is on Our Terms

    USD 259, the Wichita public school district, wants to be held accountable. They say so. It’s a theme of the proposed bond issue, as recently stated by celebrity spokesman George Fahnestock: “…the district’s accountability is strong…” (See CARE launches Yes For Kids campaign)

    But what happens when citizens seek information from USD 259 that will let them verify claims made by the district?

    One of the things I and others have been looking at is the number of classrooms in the district’s schools. We made a records request asking for this number, and we were told this information would cost us $860. (See Wichita School District Values Its Information Highly)

    I wondered if the district actually knows how many classrooms it has. Interim superintendent Martin Libhart told me at a May 12 school board meeting “We do know how many classrooms we have, I can assure you of that.” Follow-up correspondence with Mr. Libhart revealed that the count of classrooms is a slightly more complicated issue than it might appear at first. Still, no count is available. So Wichitans are left with this message from USD 259: We can’t tell you how many classrooms we have, but we’re sure we need many more.

    Even simple requests post a problem. Asking for the definition of a “violent act” in the context of statistics for USD 259 that I collected from the Kansas State Department of Education requires weeks of waiting and follow up messages. Finally, a request to be placed on the agenda of a board meeting produced the answer I was looking for.

    On top of this, citizens who request information like this from USD 259 are made to feel guilty. That’s right. Lynn Rogers, now Wichita school board president, says these records requests interfere with the board’s mission of educating children. (Wichita Public Schools: Open Records Requests Are a Burden)

    I recently made a request for records from USD 259. It was rejected. This week I revised the request and narrowed its scope. We’ll have to see how this request is handled.

    Recently, a top investigative journalist told me that with the declining resources of local newspapers, many government agencies routinely deny records requests or slow-walk them, as agencies know that newspapers don’t have the resources to vigorously pursue requests.

    USD 259 consumes huge resources. Its budget is larger than either the City of Wichita or Sedgwick County, and it grows rapidly. It now asks for Wichitans to support even more spending in the form of the proposed bond issue. But when asked for information that Wichitans can use, the district’s answer is clear: accountability is on our terms.

  • Wichita public schools: Open records requests are a burden

    Listen to an audio broadcast of this article here.

    I recently learned that USD 259 (the Wichita, Kansas public school district) considers it a burden when citizens make requests for records. At least that’s what Lynn Rogers, vice-president of the board of USD 259, told me at a May 12, 2008 meeting when I was invited to express concerns regarding my opposition to the proposed 2008 bond issue. I suspect the other board members and administration officials agree with him.

    As a government institution, the Wichita public school district is subject to the Kansas Open Records Act, which requires it to respond to citizen requests for information. The ability to smoothly and competently, with a minimum of fuss, provide records to any requesting member of the public is a core competency that we should routinely expect of a public agency.

    It is not the fault of a member of the public if a government agency is thrown into disarray by a few public records requests; rather, that suggests that the agency has not yet developed a professional competence in records archiving and management. The budget of the school district is $544,384,275 a year (2006-2007 school year). If they spent 0.01% of that on records management, the annual amount available for records management and retrieval would be $54,438.

    I’d encourage the Wichita school district to follow the practice of District 300 in Illinois, which not only provides copies of records requested in a professional manner but posts all records requests and records retrieved under those requests on its own website, so anyone can see them. In this way the effort of the district to produce records is leveraged, and more citizens can become aware of school district information. The Illinois District 300 site may be viewed here: The District 300 Freedom of Information Act Online Program.

    In order for school districts to effectively educate their students there must be a strong bond of trust between the school and its stakeholders in the community — parents, students, taxpayers, and district employees. These bonds of trust are undermined when the school district carps about providing records to the very public with whom it needs to build strong bonds. No better example of this is the scolding that interim superintendent Martin Libhart delivered to me at the May 12 meeting. “We do know how many classrooms we have, I can assure you of that,” he said. So Mr. Libhart, why not share those numbers with us?

    Wichita school district officials say they want to be held accountable. Responding to records requests is one way for them to fulfill that desire. But the district’s attitude when faced with requests filed by citizens reveals a different attitude.

    As Randy Brown recently wrote in The Wichita Eagle: “Without open government, you don’t have a democracy.” I rely on a greater authority, Thomas Jefferson, who said: “The same prudence, which, in private life, would forbid our paying our money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the disposition of public moneys.”

  • Wichita School Bond Issue: The Election That Wasn’t, and Maybe Shouldn’t Be

    Wichitans for Effective Education wish to remind the residents of USD 259 (the Wichita, Kansas public school district) that on February 11, 2008, the board of USD 259 passed a resolution declaring that a special election was to be held today, May 6. That resolution asked the citizens of this community to approve a $350 million school bond proposal. On April 7, on the advice of an allied citizens group, the board decided the election should be delayed until some yet-to-be-known date.

    The board originally argued that it was imperative to vote as soon as possible instead of waiting for the August primary or November general elections, even though the special election would cost $75,000. As evidence, Chief Operations Officer (now interim superintendent) Martin Libhart delivered to the board on January 28 a presentation titled “Time Is Money” which explained that if the bond issue election were delayed until November, the cost of building just one high school would increase by $360,000 -– far more than the cost of the special election.

    The district also argued that if the election were delayed until August or later, the opening of the new high school would be delayed by one full school year.

    Nevertheless, on April 7, the board abandoned these arguments.

    Much effort went into preparation for the May special election. News outlets devoted extensive coverage. Three citizens groups formed to campaign for and against the bond issue. Expenses were incurred.

    Opposition groups have had to deal with a shifting landscape of facts emerging from USD 259. We relied on figures supplied by USD 259 regarding the costs of building safe rooms, only to be told we didn’t understand the true situation. We relied on figures published by USD 259 in its most recent Comprehensive Annual Financial Report reporting school capacity and enrollment, only to be told those numbers are out-of-date.

    Sometimes getting any information from USD 259 is difficult. We asked for a count of classrooms and portables for the last two school years and were told that information is available at a cost of $860, with most of that cost paying for 40 hours of staff time. Since school overcrowding is one of the reasons given by USD 259 as the need for this bond issue, we wonder why these figures are not readily available.

    The changing schedule of the bond issue election as well as the unreliable facts provided by USD 259 make it difficult to thoughtfully consider the merits of any proposal at this time. With the possibility of looming economic recession and the lack of a permanent superintendent in place to lead the Wichita schools, perhaps the best idea yet is to pull the question altogether. This would give the district time to research and locate all significant data, and then both opposing and supporting groups could base their decisions on accurate and timely information.

  • Martin Libhart is qualified in what way?

    When Bob Corkins, a lawyer with no classroom experience, was named Kansas Commissioner of Education in 2005, newspaper editorialists and education bureaucrats throughout Kansas condemned the action. How could a person with no classroom experience and no traditional education credentials possibly manage the state’s schools?

    “Bob’s in way over his head,” said Winston Brooks, superintendent of USD 259, the Wichita public school district.

    But what about Martin Libhart, the man who succeeds Winston Brooks, if only as the interim superintendent? According to a news release on the USD 259 website: “Because Libhart does not currently possess a district level leadership certificate, the district is working with the Kansas State Department of Education for a restricted certificate as permitted by the department.” (emphasis added)

    It seems that lack of formal credentials was not an obstacle to the promotion of Mr. Libhart. But Mr. Libhart has worked for the Wichita public school district for 20 years, and it seems that loyalty is now paying dividends. Evidently it is enough to overcome his lack of classroom experience and traditional education credentials — the same inexperience that made Bob Corkins, in the minds of Kansas education bureaucrats, unfit to serve.

    What exactly did Mr. Libhart do for the Wichita school district? Again, from the USD 259 news release: “During his 20-year career in the Wichita Public Schools, Libhart served for 13 years as director of the Facilities Division prior to being appointed chief operations officer.”

    It seems, however, that the facilities and operations of the Wichita school district are managed somewhat less than efficiently. I say this because if you submit a records request asking the district how many classrooms and portables the district owned for the previous two years, you may get this answer, as did one citizens group:

    The information is available. In order to prepare the information, it will require 40 hours of staff time @ $20.00 and 300 copies @ $.20, for a total cost of $860.00.

    The Wichita public school district is telling us that in order to count the number of classrooms it possesses, it will take someone an entire workweek to produce this number. Does it seem like the district is effectively managing its resources when it will take one week to simply count the number of classrooms?