Astoria seems to attract more than its share of self-appointed demigods and demagogues to its fair shores.

People in the public eye or positions of some authority or means here seem to feel destined to visit their wisdom and better judgments on the rest of us mere mortals.

Witness the recent school board/superintendent-led decision to restructure Astoria’s elementary schools, the premise being that teachers working at the same grade levels in the same buildings throughout the district will increase efficiency and streamline the budget. Of course, no research has been shown to substantiate those claims; we are just told it will save bundles of money, and as a by-product, we “should see an increase in student achievement.” Those were Superintendent Mike Sowder’s words on a KMUN radio interview a while back. He then went on to cite the “grade-leveling” success of the Philomath School District.

A quick check of the facts shows little similarity between the two districts: Philomath is a small town of 4,000 with a K-12 population of 1,800 students. A new school building was built in 2000 to house K-1 grades, there is one 2-5 building, a 6-8 middle school and a high school.

Sounds ideal. See any similarities yet? One has to assume that a new building was necessary due to increased enrollment, not the shrinking numbers that Astoria is facing. And we’re not talking about wholesale shifting of students from one part of the district to another. Here’s the best part – Philomath also has two other schools in outlying areas, one with only 40 students in grades 1-4. the other has 25 students in second through fourth grades. Anyone remember Olney? If this is grade-leveling, we’ll take it. Oh, and Philomath is only five miles outside of Corvallis, so if parents aren’t happy with the level of education in that district, there are surely other opportunities close at hand.

I had the opportunity to sit in my daughter’s first-grade class of about 20 students at John Jacob Astor Elementary School recently, and one thing that was immediately clear was just how much the teachers there relied on sixth-grade “upperclassmen” to help facilitate learning. That kind of peer-tutoring has been shown to be an extremely effective teaching strategy in any educational setting. Not only do we lose that, class sizes increase dramatically, a factor that has been shown conclusively to negatively impact student achievement.

So where are our priorities?

Astorians, please realize that this school board recall effort isn’t just some personal vendetta. There is sound reasoning involved in removing from public office officials who will not listen to or follow the mandates of the very people who put them in office, especially when decisions are made without the free exchange of ideas that democracy is supposed to be all about.

And that is the crux of the matter. It doesn’t matter whether you are an unpaid volunteer on some board of directors, a paid elected official, a corporate executive, a school administrator, just some guy with a lot of money to throw around or the president of the United States, it doesn’t give you a special dispensation to visit your self-perceived godlike ideals on the lowly estate of the rest of the human race. Not without facing some real consequences of your own when you make poor decisions.

Some of us mere mortals just might have ideas that work even better. Really.

R. Blaine Verley

Astoria