Talk Back: School is in; school is out
Well, that didn’t take long. It’s only January and we’ve already had the biggest flop since ToyGaroo went bust on Shark Tank. That’s how it is with hype. One minute you’re all goo-goo gah-gah over sending the Peregrine Falcon — or was it the Millennial Falcon; we’re always getting them mixed up — on the first American lunar landing mission in the last 50 years and the next, the darn thing goes all cattywampus and springs a leak because somebody didn’t tighten the gas cap the required three clicks, the mission’s aborted, and guess what?
It’s comin’ right for us!
That’s why all those folks were shrieking, waving their arms, and skedaddling this way and that like chickens with their heads ... under their wings ... like Skylab was falling. What a kerfuffle! Fortunately, it was a crisis averted when that bad boy burned up in the atmosphere instead of crashing into Times Square.
But the aftermath was nearly as bad. For unlike the smell of napalm in the morning — who doesn’t love that — the outer stratosphere and beyond is laden with the foul stench of rotten eggs, formaldehyde, gunpowder, and burnt steak — all of which the Falcon brought earthward. The type of noxious aroma that caused famed Shakespearean astronaut Trinculo’s nose to forever be in great indignation and inspired Peter Wolf to pen the greatest J. Geils Band tune of all time.
Space stinks.
Yeah, yeah.
Yes, the cosmos is packed with malodorous intergalactic molecules that cling to Major Tom’s spacesuit whenever he ventures outside his tin can for a leisurely stroll across the universe, thereby making mandatory a trip to the delousing station upon his return. Yet one need not traverse the Milky Way some starry, starry night to encounter something that reeks almost as bad. Not a dead skunk in the middle of the road.
But the demise of your local school.
That’s what the Citizens Research Council of Michigan projects will happen as the number of students in the state drops by 100,000 — roughly 6 percent — over the next two-and-a-half decades, while Oregon, New Mexico, and West Virginia anticipate 10 percent enrollment declines by 2030. It’s the continuation of a trend that began around the turn of the century. And while the new report doesn’t pinpoint how many schools will be shuttered — nor in which districts — it paints a picture of gloomy inevitability. Whether due to low birthrate or students transferring to private, charter, or home school settings, the outcome is the same.
Closures and mergers galore as spreading fixed costs across fewer students makes school buildings more expensive to maintain on a per-pupil basis.
In the past 15 years alone, the report says some 12 percent of the state’s traditional public school buildings have shut down. And it’s not just a Michigan issue. Last month, just in time for Christmas, the Jackson, Mississippi school board pulled the plug on 11 schools — some of which were running at half capacity — and merged two others. Nor is the problem limited to inner cities or high-poverty areas as evidenced by Tecumseh’s elementary closures and grade realignment plans.
With an increasing number of couples opting to remain childless, expecting a plethora of multi-story apartment complexes to lure enough families to reverse the current trend seems pretty much pie-in-the-sky. And we’ve already told you what it smells like up there. So when it all shakes out, there’s only one thing left that K-12s are good for.
Football.
Because it’s all about the outcome. Not the numbers. And the Maize and Blue — and Honolulu Blue — have schooled their opponents but good. Super Bowl, here we come.
Go Lions!
— Talk Back with Doug Spade and Mike Clement is heard every Saturday morning from 9 a.m. to noon Eastern Time at localbuzzradio.com, Facebook Live and dougspade.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Talk Back: School is in; school is out
