CBSS staff calls out Columbia Basin Herald for editorial

Thank you for your timely editorial regarding the closure of Columbia Basin Secondary School and the need for the parents of CBSS students to remain engaged with their children's academic future. We all want to meet the needs of our students, and we know that parents are the key to that outcome.

However, it is frustrating for us, the undersigned, to see our school's integrity unfairly impugned with the constant use of a certain misleading statistic. For months now the community has been told by our Superintendent that CBSS is being closed due to its on-time graduation rate. This is not true. The on-time graduation rate (the number of students who graduate high school in four years) at CBSS has always been lower than most traditional schools. (In 2003-2004 it dipped as low as 9.8%, and nobody mentioned closing us down back then.)

There are reasons this number is lower at our school. First, we take students from the regular high school who are already behind on credits. Often times way behind. So if Johnny comes to CBSS in the middle of tenth grade from MLHS, after failing all of ninth grade and half of tenth, it's unlikely that he is going to graduate on time. And if he doesn't graduate on time, he counts against our school's graduation rate. Not against the high school that sent him to us with no credits. And if Johnny does get his act together and does graduate after an extra year at CBSS, that doesn't count for us at all. So we're danged if we don't and danged if we do.

And we have lots of Johnnies. Our school was built to serve the Johnnies of the world.

In your editorial, you compared our latest graduation rate to two other alternative programs in the Columbia Basin, and once again the statistic is misleading. First of all, compare the 78% rate of Smokiam High to the typical rate at MLHS. According to your logic, Smokiam Alternative is the more successful school.

But we all know that school is more than canned curricula and waived credits.

At CBSS a few years ago we had a choice to make. Dumb down our coursework, lower our standards, and pump up our graduation rate? Or hold the line on academic integrity and produce graduates we can be proud of? We chose the latter and would choose so again. Because we all know that our school is not being closed due to its graduation rate. Even Ms. Price must admit that. We're being closed because of money. Closing our high school program makes the square footage at MLHS seem even more crowded, which will help garner state matching funds as the district works to solve its crowding issues. Also, and more importantly, Moses Lake School District has found a cheaper way to keep its alternative learners on the books. It's called online learning. Why pay for a school with teachers and educational assistants and cooks and custodians when you can have a program housed in the cloud? A "school" where one program manager can monitor 150 students? Online education is cheap, schools are not. But to us, a school is a place, not a keyboard.

So again, thank you for reaching out to CBSS parents with your timely editorial. But to justify shutting down our school because of our on-time graduation rate is a red herring argument, and an especially fishy one at that.

Gary Campbell, Myra Creviston, Sharon Douglass, Chris Erickson, Cora Fowler, Len Friedlander, Char Hedrick, Nellie Kerns, Lanny Ledeboer, Jessica Merritt, Lydia Palmen, Terri Pixlee, Sarah Sawyer, James Shank, Diane Thorne, Matt Walker, Patti Walsh, Jenny Woodall

Columbia Basin Secondary School employees