No reason to keep Pappas schools open

The recent decision of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to seek the closure of the Thomas J. Pappas Schools for homeless children has sparked a backlash from teachers and other supporters with a flurry of last-minute accusations to distract the public from the serious concerns that underlie the supervisors’ actions.

So it’s important for Valley residents to remember two things. First, finances at the Pappas schools have been managed so badly that the county regional school district has built up operating debt of $2.7 million. And second, the Pappas schools are failing at their primary purpose — properly educating the students.

In a guest column on these pages Wednesday, Pappas volunteer spokeswoman Beluah Montgomery wrote the supervisors are ignoring the special needs of homeless children that these schools address. The selling point of the Pappas approach always has been that teachers and volunteers can focus on the problems unique to homeless families, including not enough money to buy clothes and reading materials and a lack of access to health care or even to a shower or bath before school.

But this special attention is meaningless when it translates to classrooms full of students who still aren’t learning what they should, and could, if they went to school elsewhere. The 600 students at the Pappas schools make up 5 percent of the estimated 12,000 homeless school children in the Valley. Most attend district schools, primarily in Phoenix and Tempe.

As we first noted in December, average test scores for Pappas students are far lower than homeless students in other settings. The Pappas experience reflects national research suggesting that segregation of homeless children damages their education.

Montgomery also echoed a claim from county Superintendent of Public Instruction Sandra Dowling that the five county supervisors want to close the three Pappas schools so the land can be sold to the highest bidders for private development.

Dowling has been locked for years in a vicious feud with the county board, which led to a sheriff’s investigation and a series of felony indictments along with the stripping of her authority over the regional school district. Dowling has gained sympathy from some corners recently as most the criminal charges against her have been dismissed.

But reports this fall from the state auditor general confirmed earlier county findings that Dowling and her staff spent far beyond their means, inappropriately paid salaries and benefits to people who didn’t work for the regional district, and mishandled donations intended to support the Pappas schools.

If the county were to keep the Pappas schools open, the supervisors and regional district still would have to tackle the budget problems. That likely would require the county to scale back on what Pappas offers and remove those elements that make the campuses special.The better answer for the students and their education — which should be the real point of this debate — is to shut down the Pappas schools at the end of the year and direct those children to join their peers in other classrooms.