Preoccupation with nonsense destroying Springfield schools, neighboring districts beware

There is a lot working against young people right now. Growing up is difficult and uncomfortable. That will never change.

Add in pervasive screen addiction, growing cultural turmoil and diminished economic prospects, and it is reasonable to believe navigating the most formative season of life is as complex as ever. For many students, especially those facing lower socioeconomic conditions, school is the last line of support to aid in becoming a conscience-filled, contributing member of society.

Home is the front line for developing the building blocks that predict successful life outcomes: basic fluency in reading, writing and math; emotional intelligence from in-person social interaction and highly supported extracurriculars; resilience of spirit through experiencing success and failure, joy and disappointment. The public schools were once great partners with parents, widely supporting these efforts and ideals. Today, not so much.

Springfield Public Schools remains ground zero in the Ozarks for the devolving institution. Things that matter and work have long been replaced by meaningless catchphrases, administrative bloat, groupthink and nonsense. High classroom standards and expectations gave way to cooked statistics on grades and graduation rates; zero-tolerance discipline policies became "safe spaces" where frontline staff no longer have deterrence; and hard work, competency and merit have been replaced by therapeutic endeavors and victim culture.

Are students to blame? Certainly not. Nearly every young person will aspire to the expectations they are held to. This is an enduring truism. How about parents? Nope. There is no parent of sound mind who hopes and dreams for a child to have or achieve less than they did. It has to be the teachers, right? Wrong again. I have never met a teacher who got into the trade for anything less than to inspire young hearts and minds. The teachers are simply tired of babysitting kids staring at cellphones and laptops.

There are a few choices left pointing to where things went awry.

How about the purveyors of victim culture? These are people who categorize everyone as an irredeemable victim or victimizer based on their immutable characteristics. This practice is abhorrent and amoral, period.

Or there is the grifter. This is someone who gains great financial benefit from the taxpayer-funded budget of Missouri's largest public school district, adds little value for students and might not even live in Springfield. If they have kids, they certainly would never sniff letting them attend an SPS school north of Sunshine Street.

Finally, there is the wannabe elite. These are individuals who have the means to live wherever they want and send their kids to the school of their choosing, but are compelled to atone for some misguided sense of guilt through virtue signaling. The key is, they never directly suffer the effects of their own dysfunctional ideologies.

This “secret” has been out for years, as families have steadily fled the city to rediscover things that matter in more traditional neighboring communities and home, private and religious educational alternatives. Yet, the SPS administrative class and their beneficiaries continue tripling down, endlessly repeating trendy words of the day at the expense of the young people and community they supposedly serve. Call it inequity for equity's sake.

A few courageous people remain in the mix. These individuals stepped up in recent years to replace parts of the old guard who during the last decade oversaw declining performance and widening gaps between the haves and have-nots in SPS. These much-needed leaders are easy to pick out, as they often run contrary to the group; ask lots of questions; are much maligned in the local media; and find themselves in the oddly unpopular position of attempting to refocus the district on things that matter: curriculum, character, discipline, balanced use of technology, higher classroom standards and expectations and cutting budgetary bloat to have more means to support teachers.

At current trajectory, where this leads is crystal clear. If the go-along-to-get-along, soup du jour crowd continues getting its way, look out below. The steady decline of academic and extracurricular achievement in SPS accelerates, more families flee, repeat. Within a decade, buildings will close. Accreditation will be on the brink.

But, it does not have to be this way. Where merit, academic rigor, traditional values, zero-tolerance discipline and all other things that matter thrive, not surprisingly, so do more of the students. If you live in one of Springfield's neighboring communities, where the schools are functioning at a high level, heed the warning SPS provides. Demand your school boards and district administrators continue promoting a winning vision and the traditional, proven values and practices that got your district to where it is today.

I want nothing but the best for all SPS students. All they really need is for the adults in the district to return to things that work. A good first first step might be for more parents, teachers and leaders to simply start saying "no" to the victims, grifters and wannabe elites.

Cameron Eoff lives in Nixa.

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Preoccupation with nonsense destroying SPS, nearby districts beware