Thursday, March 30, 2000
Buenger Commission's impact still felt
BY JAMES PILCHER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Nearly a decade after he led a commission that recommended a massive overhaul of city schools, Clement Buenger's impact is still being felt in classrooms throughout Cincinnati.
“A lot of people have forgotten how dramatic some of the recommendations were and their initial impact on the district,” Cincinnati Public Schools treasurer Richard Gardner said shortly after hearing that Mr. Buenger had died earlier Wednesday. “But those recommendations have helped shaped the changes we have made and the district as we know it now.”
In 1989, Mr. Buenger, then chairman of Fifth Third Bancorp and a member of the Cincinnati Business Committee, organized nearly 200 top executives to form the CBC Task Force on Public Schools at the request of Cincinnati Public School officials.
Known as the Buenger Commission, the volunteer group studied the district and released its findings in a scathing September 1991 report that also has become commonly known as the Buenger report.
The district has since implemented about two-thirds of the recommendations laid out in the Buenger Report, which said the district should run itself more like a business.
Specific recommendations that have since been implemented include:
• Shift to site-based management (schools began handling their own budgets this year).
• Cut central office staff by more than half (staff was cut from more than 600 to less than 300 in the two years following the report).
• Use a team-teaching approach.
• Implement mini-districts that use a format of kindergarten through eighth grade.
J. Michael Brandt, who was superintendent of Cincinnati Public Schools during the Buenger Commission work and its aftermath, said the report was the beginning of a major reform movement in the city.
“It wasn't just a tough report,” he said. “It was geared to his strong belief that we give the best possible service to children. The need for a blue-chip school system for the city of Cincinnati.”
Besides providing a sound business plan, Mr. Brandt said, Mr. Buenger orchestrated the support necessary to implement the report. His insistence that the district be accountable for implementing the report was key to passage of a levy in 1991, Mr. Brandt said.
“We had calls and visits from people from all over America looking at that model,” Mr. Brandt said. “The bottom line was it set up a national model on how the city and business community can support a school system without being intrusive.”
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