Article published March 16, 2010
TPS concerns heard; parents, students speak against proposed cuts

Trina Willis advocates keeping Ella P. Stewart Academy girls-only. Her daughter Taeyana, foreground, is a fifth grader there.
( THE BLADE/LORI KING )

By CHRISTOPHER D. KIRKPATRICK
BLADE STAFF WRITER

Toledo resident Donna Cassady said she feels like a blackmail victim when it comes to public school funding.

School leaders want her and other voters to approve an income tax increase to raise $18 million annually to save popular school programs, including sports.

Ms. Cassady, a nurse, whose son attends East Broadway Middle School, is tired of tax increases. But if sports and other programs go away, her son will suffer, she said, more students will leave the district, and property values could decrease even more.

“I feel like we’re being blackmailed,” she said. “Show me, as a mom of a good kid, an athletic kid, who performs well in school, why I shouldn’t take him out of TPS.”

She spoke during a public hearing last night on the $30 million budget deficit that the school system projects for next fiscal year.

About 75 parents, school employees, and students attended the meeting at Waite High School. Their comments were recorded for consideration by the Toledo Board of Education.

Board members must choose from a menu of programs and teaching positions eligible for trimming or elimination because they’re not required by state law.

The list - which includes laying off more than 300 teachers, closing Libbey High School, and scaling back bus service - has prompted broad protest from the community.

Before the hearing, a group of community leaders and parents held a news conference objecting to a proposal to merge Lincoln

Academy for Boys, an elementary school with 147 students, and Ella P. Stewart Academy for Girls, which has 230 students.

The group said the proposal, which would save $344,000, would be devastating because the students have performed better without the distraction of members of the opposite sex.

For example, in 2002, the year before Stewart became all-girls, 15 percent of sixth graders there passed the state reading test. Last year, 96 percent passed.

“With boys, there are distractions,” student Taeyana Willis said during the news conference. “There are boys liking girls, and we don’t get anything done.”

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