Recruiting and Retention

Recruiting

There is a high percentage of residents that do not need to be convinced to send their kids to local Public schools. They pay taxes and expect that the Public education will be sufficient to prepare their kids for the next chapter of their lives. Other families, however, have means and opportunity to educate their kids through a variety of Charter, Private, and Homeschool options, and those families can be targeted for recruitment to the Public school system. The major focus of recruitment is to advertise the benefits of the Public system over the other options.

For example:

1. Extraordinary Facilities (usually paid for through local bond initiatives)

2. Mature Sports Programs (that dovetail into post-secondary recruitment)

3. Well-compensated Faculty and Staff (which limits turn-over)

4. Student Socialization

5. Targeted Standardized Test Preparation

6. Acceptance rate into colleges and universities

Retention

In addition to Recruiting, the smartest Public Schools also focus on Retention, or the ability to keep families who are already in the Public system from choosing other available options. Proactive retention programs are common with Private schools, but are not as obvious with Public Schools, likely due to funding structure differences. In any case, though, it behooves a School/District to find out what is important to their existing families and focus on providing educational services that meet those needs. In this day and age, we have a much more consumer-driven culture, and it behooves the District to be more consumer-conscious. In short, gone are the days of “build it and they will come.” Rather, Districts need to meet immediate and specific consumer needs.

When families do choose to leave the Public School, the District sometimes conducts “exit interviews” with families that have chosen to remove their kids either from a particular school or from the District’s Public School programs entirely. The District can learn a great deal from these exit interviews if two parameters are met: (1.) If the exiting family offers its honest assessment/reason(s) for leaving, and (2.) If the District utilizes that information to make reasonable changes that would draw back those families and/or make it unnecessary for future families to leave for those reasons.

The Birmingham Public Schools District was losing approximately 0.6% of its student population annually, prior to Covid (about 50 students out of 8000 per year). That means that every 6 years, the District would lose enough students to equate to a normal-size Elementary School. When Covid hit and online learning and masking were implemented, that number jumped by several multiples. Unfortunately, the District did not see a significant “bounce back” after the masking mandate was lifted and students were allowed to return to District buildings. The student loss percentage reached about 9%, which is about double the national average. Moreover, cumulative losses in the years to come are expected to continue at a higher rate than prior to Covid.

What are the real reasons families leave?

When we ask what the real reasons are for either families leaving the Public School or not enrolling in Public education at all, it is sometimes difficult for the District to publish the answers, because that would inherently invite and/or require change. Anecdotally, Public School Districts are prone to change when the impetus is from within the District, but they are resistant to change when the impetus comes from the community/parents.

Here are many of the reasons that I have heard from families that have left the BPS District over the last decade or are currently considering leaving. And, as most reporters exhort, "Please don't shoot the messenger."

1. Declining academic achievement that requires the hiring of tutors to navigate

2. Teachers inject political, social, and religious opinions into subject matter unnecessarily.

3. Language Arts contains too many “dark topics” on the reading list.

4. “Equity” is used as a tool to treat students unfairly--artificially inflating some students’ grades and artificially deflating other students’ grades.

5. Social Emotional Learning (SEL) initiatives take too much time and effort away from “just learning Math.”

6. SEL is a way that the District grooms children with socio-political ideas that are not supported by the majority of parents.

7. Science offerings are too often infused with a political bend (e.g. climate change)

8. Unfair grading practices are not corrected by the Administration.

9. Arbitrary administrative policies (e.g. twin siblings cannot be in the same class)

10. The Board of Education does not represent the parents.

11. Social Engineering is pervasive in the District and elevated to a level that mirrors religious indoctrination.

a. Critical Theory

b. Gender Identity and Pronoun Use

c. LGBTQ

d. SEL-Infused Math/Science Curricula

e. Yoga in gym class (Hinduism)

f. Mindfulness (Zen Buddhism)

12. Standardized test scores are not rising

13. The percentage of students that rank Proficient or Above Proficient is not rising

14. Poor behavior of students, especially at the Middle School level.

15. Bullying not address sufficiently

16. Complacent parents

17. The District continues to drop in rankings (e.g. Niche)

18. The District is not fiscally responsible. It is the second riches District in the State of Michigan but consistently struggles to balance its budget.

19. Perpetuating the mask mandate

20. Moving family to a different State/Country because of culture, climate, or work.

The Most Notable Reason NOT Listed

Public School Districts, such as Birmingham, are quick to retort that “We cannot compete with Religion,” meaning that if a family is set on getting a specifically religious education for its children, then the Public School District is not the place for them. In short, I believe this is a “cop out.”

Families that enroll in the Public School District are not expecting the type of religious experience that a student might get at a Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Baptist, etc. school. Rather, more than anything else, they just want to be left alone. They do not want any of the religious perspectives (including Secular Humanism, Zen, etc.) to be shoved down their throats with every Math, Science, ELA, Social Studies, and/or Gym assignment. This is not too much to ask. The Public School District needs to come clean with itself and not make it seem like families are somehow out of line, because they want a socially, religiously, and politically neutral educational experience for their children.

In this same light, a Public School District should not be purchasing curricula that engender indoctrination methodologies, such as those that are SEL compliant. These sorts of provocations (which are religious at their core) have no place in a Public School in a pluralistic society—especially in Mathematics and Sciences. The use of these invasive and surreptitious techniques in the development of school curricula is inappropriate. For example, when a Math problem starts off with a clearly social and/or political premise, it is not an example of inclusion. Rather, it is an example of the sort of indoctrination that is unnecessarily provocative. That sort of thing pushes countless families away from a Public School System that should be finding ways to keep them.

To be clear, curricula should be devoid of reference to religious figures and practices, sexual orientations, marital statuses, family dynamics, ethnicities, political persuasion, and the like—especially in Math and Sciences. In a Math class, focus on Math; in a Science class, focus on Science. In the softer fields, such as Language Arts, Social Studies, and History, extra care should also be taken so as to respect the boundaries of the pluralistic society in which we live. Moderation should be the respectful norm.

https://sites.google.com/view/bobsaadforschoolboard