jon@dmcityview.com

DMPS needs to tell its own story

At a meeting early last month, when candidates for the Des Moines School Board were asked to stand up and say the one thing that they thought the school system was doing well, three of them passed. They thought, or at least wanted to convey to those in attendance that they thought the school system was simply doing nothing right. In a contentious battle for who was to lead our schools, they felt it was a smart play.

Truth be told, however, there is quite a bit going right with the DMPS system these days; and now that the election cycle is over and a new board is in place and a new year is underway, it's time to begin telling some of those stories. The naysayers and the interlopers and the litigious society continue to tell their stories, lambasting everyone and everything that has to do with the system. And sadly enough, much of what they have to say is right. Funds have been mismanaged. Lies have been told. Racism does seem to be bubbling beneath the surface. There is incompetence around too many corners.

But how about coming up for air?

How about - even just for a little while - telling a few of the good stories to show the kids and their parents that a DMPS education can be a pretty amazing thing? Some pretty smart people not only have enrolled their children in the DMPS system but are also graduates of it themselves. If it were as bad as many say, wouldn't these people be fleeing for the suburbs, for other states?

The rigorous Central Campus has been compared to top college prep programs like Choate and Exeter. The Teachers Program provides kids the chance to be a student teacher before heading off to college. The World Language program teaches German, Italian, Chinese and Japanese, which are all together not offered in their entirety by any other district in the state. And the Career and Technical program gives kids an opportunity to think - when it comes to an early career choice - outside the box, letting students study auto mechanics, restaurant management and graphic design. Sound like a good story to tell? Just ask the kids from the 29 other school districts around the state who utilized these programs last year.

Des Moines Public Schools had 23 National AP Scholars last year. In six years, fourth-graders district wide have gone from 57 percent reading at grade level to 75 percent. The Downtown School is a national model and has been tabbed one of the Top 10 schools in the country by Working Mothers magazine. And the DMPS district has three schools that provide year-round education and hopefully more heading in that direction.

Still, on the cover of Monday's Des Moines Register, the headline exclaimed: "Image battle preoccupies city schools." Why? Well, it's quite simple: The people telling the story are simply the wrong people to be telling the story.

"The sky is not falling," says newly elected DMPS School Board President Phil Roeder. "We have some major challenges (and Roeder took 30 minutes explaining them all)... However, overall I'm encouraged about the solid record of economic success in the district."

So why not tell those stories? Roeder tells me that's a very good question.
Currently, it seems that only the bad news and the missteps are being reported: Eric Witherspoon flirting with Indianapolis. Schools closing. The bad blood on the board, and a nasty election. And, as usual, the squeaky wheels are getting the grease.
Roeder says he couldn't agree more, but goes one step further.

"The frequent change in leadership and staff at the Register has hurt the paper's institutional memory and left it with people who have little or no first-hand knowledge of our public schools." And while Roeder says blaming the media is usually a copout, the lack of knowledge on Locust Street is, at the very least, partly culpable for the current attitude in the community.

So what's he going to do about it? He's the president. There are things the district is doing extremely well. The news isn't all bad. And the board, while primarily in place to pass a yearly budget, should be weighing in rather than constantly dodging bullets. Sure, you can't have Eric Witherspoon out in front, telling the stories. But can you afford to have Lynn Campbell, Nan Stillians and John Narcisse being the only ones telling them either?

When I ask Roeder if the school district can afford to tell its own story, he tells me it can't afford not to. He says the district and the board need to take a lesson in Marketing 101 and develop a plan to communicate with the public - something it has been doing an extremely poor job of.

"My kids are too important for me to stay in Des Moines another day if I didn't believe they were getting a great education," Roeder says.

To me, it's a sentiment that needs to be beaten into the public consciousness. Again, there is so much to be disheartened over, and the tales of woe will always get more run than the 23 National AP Scholars. But the dark cloud that has been storming on our school system for the past number of years has always had at least a smidgen of a silver lining. I mean, there are at least a few things being done well. Just ask those three candidates who each felt nothing was going right: All three of them lost. CV

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