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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2008 > July
July 2008
Dog? Check! Pony? Check!
(Gov. Ted Strickland’s “conversation” on education in Dayton Tuesday)
Tuesday’s “conversation” in Dayton between Gov. Ted Strickland and a hand picked audience was quite a dog and pony show. Besides the friendly audience, the event featured a polished professional host, a promotional film touting Ohio’s education gains and strict discussion limits that kept big elephants in the room (funding?) from making it into the conversation.
There were few hard questions and even the mildly hard ones were basically not answered by Strickland. Today’s editorial cites one of the few examples of spontaneity when a city high school school student asked about the problem of getting to school without buses this year in Dayton. Strickland didn’t really get was he was asking and clearly didn’t know that high school busing had been cut. Thus he gave another non-answer.
Strickland said the event was to gather feedback and ideas for reforming the state education system. But if you really want ideas, wouldn’t it be good to get some from people who don’t necessarily agree with you?
And some of Strickland’s own ideas were just not worth discussing if funding can’t be part of the conversation. How can you, for instance, really consider the merits of extending the school year by 18 days — an idea Strickland floated — without also talking about the huge associated cost and the problems of paying for it?
He’s got eight more of these conversations yet to come and in March Strickland is due to unveil his big reform plan. It will be interesting to see if any of the feedback or ideas from the floor at these events make it into the final plan. Or was the whole thing just for show?
(Image credit: Jim Witmer, DDN)
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Strickland: Give me feed back on education reform ideas
(Gov. Ted Strickland at Tuesday’s event in Dayton)
Gov. Ted Strickland outlined 10 ideas for education reform — some of them controversial — in the latest in a series of forums seeking feedback as he builds a wider plan to overhaul the state’s education system.
Strickland has promised a plan by next March and said Tuesday there would be follow up meetings to talk specifically about school funding. This time, he laid out what he called his “mission and principles” and asked for feedback.
“Every parent, student, teacher, educator, business person and taxpayer — every Ohioan — has something important at stake when we discuss education,” Strickland told a room of more than 100 people at the Dayton Convention Center. “We want to hear their voices and your voices as as we seek to improve our system of education. It cannot be changed overnight.”
In his opening remarks, Strickland touted the same guiding principals he laid out in his February State of the State address — stronger public schools, better links between schools and economic needs, building on existing strengths, using top teachers to guide the process, more personalized instruction and improved assessments.
He went on to list reform ideas, ranging from longer school days and more hands-on learning to tougher teacher training programs and giving more power to principals.
During the question period, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Walter E. Rice asked Strickland about charter schools.
“Distrust and antipathy between traditional schools and charters is mostly over competing for a share of finite funding,” Rice said. I would hope you would preside over a small summit to try to get the groups on the same page around reform.”
Strickland agreed but stopped short of committing to the summit.
“If we have the same goals it would be possible to find a significant measure of common ground.”
Bryant Scott, a student at Belmont High School, cited the city schools recent decision to drop high school busing as a concern.
“With longer school days our dropout rate is going to be higgher because we have no more transportation to get to school,” Scott said.
Strickland responded by highlighting a program he launched to try to raise the graduation rate of black high school students.
“We are very concerned about those who drop out of school,” he said.
Here are the reform ideas he mentioned:
—Interdisciplinary teaching. The idea would be to teach students several subjects as part of each assignment or task.
—Hands-on learning. Rather than require memorization, student would need to apply lessons for several disciplines in their work.
—Longer school days. Strickland raised the idea of 200 school days a year rather than 182, with classes continuing through the summer and later in the day.
—Use different tests. The PISA international test uses more open ended questions and requires more analysis than the Ohio Graduation Test.
—A focus on major skills. There are key “life learning” skills that are wrapped around all subjects and themes, Strickland said.
—Redefining teacher training. A system more like medical school, with an internship after classes but before moving to a full-time job, could be a benefit, he said.
—Tie “value-added’ tests to teach compensation and tenure. Value-added test compare where student score at the start and end of the school year.
—Give principals more authority. Principals could be given control over budgeting and other key decisions.
—Performance agreements. Schools that met their goals could get more funding while those who do not could face quicker state takeover.
—A focus on collaboration. Using academic and social skills together is what employers want students to be able to do, Strickland said.
This was the fourth of 12 forums Strickland is holding around Ohio. For more information, go to a Web site he set up for this issue at conversationoneducation.org.
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Stanic: Dayton levy won’t exceed 6 mills
Kurt Stanic
Interim city school Superintendent Kurt Stanic promised an upcoming November levy will be no more than 6 mills, or one-third the size of the district’s 2007 levy try.
In a meeting with the Dayton Daily News editorial board, Stanic said he would never support a levy the size of the 15.17-mill levy that was soundly defeated in May of 2007.
“Somebody convinced them they were asking for what they needed,” Stanic said of the school board last year. “There is a political reality to this.”
Stanic said he wants a levy that will cost the average city homeowner about $10 a month and he will craft a “recovery” plan for the district to adapt to a new financial reality whether the levy passes or fails.
“We need to be plain to the public about what is going to happen,” he said.
Stanic also commented on several other issues facing the district, including:
—Report card rating. Stanic said the district is still reviewing its test data from the school year just completed but that he expected the district would be rated in “academic emergency” when the state issues district report cards next month.
Two years ago, Dayton leaped from the bottom of the state rankings to the middle of five rating categories before falling back one spot to “academic watch” last year. Slipping another rung down the ladder returns Dayton to the bottom of the state’s rankings.
—Labor relations. The school board and teachers’ union have a tentative agreement on a new one-year labor deal that will give teachers a 2 percent raise. Last year, teachers got no raise following the levy defeat.
Teachers’ union President Pat Lynch said she hopes her members will vote on the agreement Aug. 7.
“There is nothing on paper at this point but there is a tentative agreement and our members do not have it yet,” she said. “Hopefully it will be out on our Web site in a couple of days.”
—Central office reorganization. A new central office structure that will eliminate several unfilled positions among other changes will be announced next week, he said, and will save the district about $2.2 million.
—Priorities. Stanic listed three major priorities for the district for the 2008-09 school year: passing the levy, improving discipline in the classroom and refocusing administrators and teachers on instruction.
He said a new discipline code will be put in place for the upcoming school year and that he will expect principals to enforce it or he will personally investigate problem schools. For teachers, Stanic said he wants them to use data to target student weaknesses and tailor instruction to meet them.
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A lesson in living
Maybe you’ve heard this story, but I hadn’t until Randy Pausch died yesterday. Pausch, a terminally ill professor and researcher in virtual reality computer programming at Carnegie Mellon University, became a YouTube star when his “last lecture” video was viewed by millions. Here is a very nice obituary story about Pausch from the Chicago Tribune.
The video is long, but worth every minute. I watched it with my eight-year-old daughter and she was not bored. That alone is a tribute to Pausch’s engaging teaching style. This is also a good reminder to value the teachers in your life. Check it out.
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Ouch! Gordon Gee rips Checker Finn
Remember a few weeks ago when charter school champion Checker Finn unloaded on Ohio? The native Daytonian wrote in the Wall Street Journal that his home state was getting “poorer, older and dumber” while ripping Gov. Ted Strickland and the state’s education system. (a hat tip to editorial page Editor Ellen Belcher who first pointed us to the WSJ piece.)
Apparently Ohio State University President Gordon Gee was not amused. While visiting the DDN today, Gee shot back at Finn.
“Checker Finn is a bad academic, always has been,” Gee told the editorial board. “I don’t appreciate the fact that he would say something like that. He needs to have his data a little bit better.”
Ouch!
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Brathwaite follows Mack to Columbia
City schools deputy superintendent Debra Brathwaite has resigned effective Aug. 1 and will join her former boss as his top deputy in Columbia, S.C.
Brathwaite will follow Percy Mack, her boss in Dayton for five years, in a similar role in Columbia. She will be deputy superintendent for academics and finance.
“It’s a time in my career where it is time for a change,” Brathwaite said. “I am very pleased with what I’ve done here. It’s not an easy decision but I think it’s the right decision for me at this point.”
When Mack announced he was leaving in June, school board President Yvonne Isaacs approached Brathwaite about serving as interim superintendent while the district conducted a national search for Mack’s replacement. She declined, saying she would only accept the job on a permanent basis. The board then selected Kurt Stanic as interim superintendent. Brathwaite has been a finalist for several superintendent jobs, including Lorain, Akron and Princeton school districts.
Brathwaite said she liked Stanic and that he asked her to stay.
“He’s a good guy,” she said. “He respected my decision. I wish everyone well.”
Another top administrator, assistant superintendent Rebecca Lowry, was named a finalist recently for superintendent in Jackson, Miss., and Pinellas County, Fla.
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Lowry a candidate for top jobs
Rebecca Lowry, an assistant superintendent at Dayton schools, appears to be aggressively looking for work — and getting interest from some interesting places.
In Ohio, she’s gotten a look in Lorain near Cleveland and in Clark County’s Northwestern school district.
Last week, she became a finalist in Jackson, Miss. and in the course of an Internet search today I discovered Lowry also was a finalist in Pinellas County, Fla., near Tampa.
Given all the interest in Lowry elsewhere it’s interesting that the Dayton school board never seemed to express interest in Lowry as a candidate here.
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ETS’ test scoring going over like a lead balloon in Great Britain
Wow. The British are getting ready to throw the Educational Testing Service out of the country after massive screw-ups in the scoring of key gateway exams there. ETS, the makers of the SAT, were late delivering the exam results and now that they finally delivered the scores schools are finding huge problems and inconsistencies. So much for ETS’ European division.
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Now that’s a great idea — a state board of ed blog
(Haverkos and Grady’s cartoon likenesses)
I think this is pretty cool. Susan Haverkos, a state board of education member who represents about half of the Miami Valley, an her board colleague Colleen Grady have launched a blog where they will write about state board business and statewide education issues.
I don’t know why more elected officials haven’t started blogs. It’s a great way to communicate your message and interact with the voters who elected you.
I just have one complaint about the Haverkos/Grady site. Ladies, when you cite another blog, whether your are complaining about it or praising it, the custom online is to link to the post in question. They have a post up that takes issue with my criticism of a state board press release that begged Ohio newspapers to give free advertising, saying the state cannot purchase ads due to “budget constraints.”
Or perhaps state board members are also unable to connect to Ohio newspaper blogs due to budget constraints?
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State can’t afford to advertise for superintendent?
A press release came my way Tuesday announcing that the consultant the state board of education hired to find a replacement for former state superintendent Susan Zelman is getting it’s search off the ground.
But at the top of the press release was this curious note:
“Due to state budget constraints, no classified advertisements for this position will be placed in Ohio newspapers. With this in mind, the State Board of Education would appreciate your publication covering this important news story.”
Seriously, we are to believe that Ohio is so broke it can’t afford to buy a few classified ads to try to find a strong candidate for school superintendent from within the state?
The release goes on to give a flavor of what the consultant said Ohio will be looking for in its next superintendent. The successful candidate, the release said will:
—Be “student centered” and have a strong understanding of public education, and have the desire, passion, energy and charisma to be a visible statewide advocate and “cheerleader” for public education
—Have strong administrative skills to manage a department of 650+ people and an operating budget of $11.2 billion
—Be an independent thinker capable of building consensus and possess the necessary political skills to negotiate compromise to bring together stakeholders on key education issues
—Lead and effectively build trust and confidence in Ohio’s public education system among many key groups such as citizens, local boards of educations, teachers and superintendents.
—Preferably have experience as a superintendent, but other applicants not possessing this traditional experience will be considered if they possess a strong knowledge of public education and educational reforms.
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Cheat on the SAT? No big deal
Testing companies that administer the SAT and ACT college entrance exams like to talk about how vigilant they are about security. If that’s so, then the must be REALLY tough on kids who are caught cheating on the exam.
So of course they notify the colleges the cheaters apply to and the high schools they attend, right? And they ban them from every taking another entrance test, I’m sure. They probably even try to prosecute the kids, don’t they?
Nope.
Here’s what happens to the cheaters: Nothing.
That’s what the L.A. Times reported, that the punishment for cheating is an invalidated score and an opportunity to take the exam again.
Wow. That will show ‘em!
Why don’t the companies take harsher action? Well, their higher priority is keeping test security breaches confidential. It certainly doesn’t serve a testing company for people to learn there is significant cheating going on on the SAT or the ACT.
So they keep it quiet.
What can be done about this? Well, colleges and states could start requiring more disclosure about cheating on these and other standardized tests.
What do you think? Should test companies be required to take more action against cheaters?
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Obama and the idea of “new tests”
Yesterday, I got a lucky break. I managed to tag along with our political reporters to cover a speech by Barack Obama at Dayton’s Stivers School for the Arts and, prompted by a question from the crowd, Obama repeated a chunk of his position on education.
He didn’t say anything he had not said before, but he did repeat something he’s been saying that peaked my interest. Here is the comment in question:
“We need to change how measures of progress works. A standardized test given at the beginning of year would give teachers a tool to know where kids are starting. If they want, they can have another test at the end of year to see how they end up. In the middle, let teachers do what they do best, which is teach. We need to work with teachers to develop other assessment tools to be sure we are making progress.”
Several times now, I’ve heard Obama call for “new tests” or “new testing technology” designed for 21st century learning. So here is the question I’d like Obama to answer — exactly what do you mean by “new tests” and what is your vision of how these futuristic tests would look like?
Here’s where I suspect these statements by Obama might be coming from.
When you talk to standardized test makers, many will acknowledge that standardized tests are based on old technology that could be improved. And some of the researchers at the big test making companies are excited about the idea that new test technology in the future could better serve students and teachers. But there is a problem. Those advances are pretty far off from being implemented on a wide scale.
But on a small scale, you are seeing some of the techniques employed. An example is computer software programs that adjust to the students. For instance, some district use computer-based assessment programs that offer questions up to kids and as they answer, the computer offers up easier questions when they get wrong answers and harder questions when they get right answers. That technology could have useful application for state exams.
But those sorts of programs require something that is not readily available to every student in every classroom — a computer. If Obama has ideas for new testing technologies, won’t those new tests require a computer? And if they do, does Obama have a plan for scaling up technology across the nation so those new tests can be widely administered?
That’s the question I’d like to ask.
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Obama gives his take on education at Stivers
Obama speaks at Stivers School for the Arts Friday)
Here’s the good news: Dayton Daily News political reporter Laura Bischoff got a one-on-one interview with Barack Obama following his speech today at Stivers School for the Arts in Dayton.
Now the bad news. She walked in for the meeting and an Obama handler literally held up a stop watch and said, “You have five minutes. Go!”
Five minutes isn’t time to cover much ground. This is the second time a DDN reporter has gotten a one-on-one interview with Obama since the campaign began. My colleague Lynn Hulsey got five minutes to ask him questions a few months ago during the primaries.
In both cases, I hopefully slipped a couple education questions to Hulsey and Bischoff. But in both cases, questions about the economy were priority No. 1 and there wasn’t time to get much beyond that. I know time is precious to a presidential campaign, but really, five minutes is not being fair.
Thankfully a teacher from Cincinnati bailed me out Friday.
During the queston and answer period after Obama’s speech on energy, he called on a woman with an Obama T-shirt who identified herself as a Cincinnati teacher who asked this question:
“What would you do to correct president Bush’s ‘every child left behind’ policy?’”
That brought a roar from the crowd, but also an extended answer about education policy from Obama. Here’s what he said:
“It’s important to try to be fair. The basic concept of No Child Left Behind was a good one. We should raise our standards so every child succeeds. And I agree with the notion that we should have a qualified teacher in every classroom. We are not competing, the folks here in Dayton, just against kids in Chicago and Miami. You are competing with kids in China and Bangalore.
The problem was in the execution. What the president did was he left the money behind for No Child Left Behind. We are asking schools to do more but not devoting more resources. The second problem is higher standards are measured only by a single high stakes standardized test and that test was administered sort of midway through year. It wasn’t measuring progress. That made teachers and administrators worry that they needed to teach to the test because even if they do a good job, it may not show up on the test. That made it more difficult for teachers and less inspiring for students.
Some schools even eliminated art, music and foreign language. You know, I said something other day about foreign language and Republicans jumped on it. Let me be clear. I Absolutely believe immigrants need to learn English. But we also need to learn foreign languages. This is an example of problems we get into when somebody attacks you for telling truth. We should want kids with more knowledge. That is a good thing. I know because I don’t speak a foreign language. It’s embarrassing.
We need to change how measures of progress works. A standardized test given at the beginning of year would give teachers a tool to know where kids are starting. If they want, they can have another test at the end of year to see how they end up. In the middle, let teachers do what they do best, which is teach. We need to work with teachers to develop other assessment tools to be sure we are making progress.
There are some other things we need to do. We need to invest in early childhood education to close achievement gap. If they start behind they fall further behind as time goes by. We need to pay teachers more and give them more support. We need to expand after school and summer programs so young people have place to do homework and are not on the street getting into trouble. In many cases today, you don’t have a choice for one parent to stay home. You have to have two parents working and kids need some place to go with supervision.
We also need to make college affordable. My plan is for a $4,000 tuition credit every year of college in exchange for community or national service by joining the peace corps or teaching in inner city school or joining the service.
Let me say something else. The government can do all kinds of good things. I can fix No Child Left Behind but if parents don’t care then it is not going to work. Parents, you need to turn off TV set once in a while and put away the video game and met with your child’s teacher and make sure they are doing their homework and have a curfew.
And if you child gets in trouble at school, don’t curse out the teacher. We need some home training to go with a more intense effort by government.”
(Image credit: Lisa Powell, DDN)
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Obama to talk at Stivers
My colleague Jessica Wherman is reporting Barack Obama will speak Friday at Stivers School for the Arts.
With a school venue, it seemed hopeful Obama might be talking about education policy? Nope. Turns out he is talking about energy.
Tickets are available through your local Democratic Party headquarters. Jessica’s post has more details. The event begins at 10 a.m.
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The issues surrounding privatized busing
There’s been a lot of conversation here at GOTB about this whole notion of privatized busing since a group of independent bus companies this week made their pitch that Dayton schools should outsource transportation.
The private bus companies made some bold claims, promising they could handle Dayton’s busing at a cost that is 40 percent below what the district is spending right now. For a district that is struggling with budget cuts, a potential multimillion dollar savings is quite enticing. And Lori Ward, the district’s business operations chief, responded by inviting the companies to make proposals to a group that is studying the district’s transportation operation in search of savings.
But a decision on this is not imminent. Dayton’s busing situation is very complex and unique. A ton of questions remain about what an outside company could and could not provide and at what cost. The district also is still smarting from its last outsourcing effort with ServiceMaster, a custodial contractor.
Dayton’s transportation cost are incredibly high. Of that there is no doubt. Certainly, some of those costs are due to wasteful practices. Some are also due to factors beyond the district’s control and other costs result from purposeful acts by the district that school leaders know will raise costs but do anyway.
Here are some points to consider:
—Charter schools. Dayton has the highest percentage of kids attending charter schools of any city in the U.S., outside of New Orleans. Dayton also has a vibrant private school sector, fueled in part by state-funded vouchers. State law requires the district to bus students who attend any school — public, private or charter — and the district must absorb the costs.
Other cities like Columbus and Cincinnati that use private busing options also have charter schools, but no city has a charter school movement as big or complex as Dayton’s. The growth of charter schools has dramatically raised the district’s costs for transportation.
—Special education. Last year I wrote extensively about Dayton’s unusually high percentage of students in special education. Many of those students ride special buses the require fewer students per bus. This, too, drives up the districts busing costs.
—Exceptions. Former Superintendent Percy Mack told me this story earlier this year. A woman called him at the beginning of school year and asked if her elementary school-aged granddaughter’s school bus stop could be moved closer to home. The woman was the child’s sole caretaker (no parents were in the picture) and she was blind. The bus stop for the child was three blocks from her house, but a sexual predator lived just a few houses away.
OK, put yourself in the superintendent’s chair. How can you tell the blind grandmother no? Could you honestly tell this woman the kid will have to take her chances? Can you imagine how the superintendent would be criticized if something bad happened to the little girl after he said no?
Dayton makes tons of these sorts of exceptions. They are constantly reworking routes to avoid having bus stops near heavily trafficked roads, sexual predator’s homes or in response to parent requests and complaints.
The district could save a ton of money by telling everyone that there will be no exceptions and then building routes solely based on efficiency without regard to the safety or convenience of students. It doesn’t do that, in part because school leaders don’t want to alienate their customers.
The companies say they make money by being ultra efficient and using systems honed through experience in many districts over many years. Here are a couple of examples.
Consider bus purchases. First Student, which was represented Monday, is a huge company and a company official at the meeting said it is the biggest school bus buyer in the world, having just completed a billion-dollar bus purchase this year. When you buy buses in huge volume you get deep discounts. So the companies can put vehicles on the road for a much cheaper price than any single school district can.
Or consider the issue of idling. One company official told me their studies showed it is better for drivers waiting to pick up students in cold weather to let buses idle. In the summer, they should turn the buses off. That’s because it uses more fuel to re-warm a cold bus than to idle. The companies train drivers in bunches of small efficiencies like these.
Still, the big savings comes in what is called “route efficiency.” That is doing exactly the opposite of what Dayton does now when it comes to exceptions. To really drive down transportation costs, companies use sophisticated software to design routes that minimize stops and wasted gas (UPS famously designs routes to avoid left turns, which burn more gas.)
The more efficient the routes, the more can be saved and the more profit for the outside company. The company has high incentive not to deviate from those routes. Of course this can conflict with the district’s customer service needs. As I stated above, customer service is the main reason Dayton deviates so often from the most efficient routes. Privatizing busing puts those decisions in the hands of an outside company, creating an inevitable tension where a balance will need to be struck.
Privatization in the past. In recent years, the district has explored the idea of outsourcing busing, but they have not done so. One big reason is that many administrators are still smarting from the 1990s experience the district had when it outsourced custodial work to a national company called ServiceMaster, a contract that was a total disaster.
Here’s what school officials say drove them crazy about that contract. First, there was a breakdown in authority. If there was, for instance, a mess at a school and the principal wanted it cleaned up he could ask the custodian to take care of it, but the custodian’s supervisor was not a DPS employee. So if the mess did not get cleaned up, the best the principal could do was complain to the ServiceMaster supervisor. He could not discipline the custodian.
Also, administrators were frustrated by the rising cost of the contract. ServiceMaster initially underbid what the district was spending on custodial work, but over a few years those costs escalated to surpass what DPS paid for the service in house. At the same time, administrators say service declined as ServiceMaster provided less personnel and fewer supplies and materials each year. Again, school officials were limited in their power to demand more.
When Stan Lucas came in as treasurer, one of the first things he did was propose scrapping the ServiceMaster deal. In fact, DPS paid $1 million to buy out what was left of the deal and rid themselves of the contract. Some administrators are wary the same issues could arise with outsourced busing.
—Neighborhood schools. There seems to be a misconception out there about this. Folks, court-required cross-town busing ended in Dayton in 2002 and all Dayton kids are currently permitted to request enrollment at the school closest to their homes.
When that policy change was made, the district braced for a slew of transfers. The 2002 school board won a big victory for its bond issue by promising neighborhood schools and nothing polled higher during the bond levy campaign than the desire among Dayton voters for neighborhood schools.
But guess what? Given the option to switch to a neighborhood school, Dayton families stayed put in huge numbers. Few transferred. The reasons why are many. Parents wanted their kids at schools where they knew the teachers, or where their siblings attended, or that were close to their homes, workplaces or day care.
Even before charter schools, Daytonians have been conditioned to expect choice in education. Going back into the early 1980s, the district’s integration plan included magnet schools and parent choice options. The genie is out of the bottle and it is hard to put it back in.
At this point, trying to force neighborhood schools onto a city that has come to expect its choice options is problematic and risks angering the district’s customers (and its voters). But it would save a lot of money on transportation.
Instead, the district is trying to use its school construction program to redefine school boundaries. When schools close, they try to reassign kids to the schools closest to their homes and they have set boundaries around the new schools and kids nearby get first choice to enroll.
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Special ed in a small town
I’m on vacation for a few days in northern Michigan (not the Upper Peninsula, which the locals call the UP). The Leelenau Peninsula, north of Traverse City, is a great lakefront getaway. But the local, year-round population is small and, as such, budgets for government services are modest.
In Northport, the small town where my brother and his wife have a cottage, they had a long-running debate about whether to install a sewer, which will cost each landowner in this tiny town of less than 700 full-time residents a pretty penny.
Recently, I stumbled across school-based example of the challenge of maintaining services in small jurisdictions like Northport.
Special education is a sticky issue for all school districts. Living up to the federal requirement that all student receive an appropriate education can cost a district significantly. In Dayton, for instance, there are a small number of profoundly handicapped students that cost the district more than $50,000 each for services each year.
And when disputes arise about what services are needed, the ensuing court cases can be very costly for everyone involved, including the school district.
Christine Samuels, who writes about special education at Education Week, recently highlighted Northport on her blog as an example of this.
It seems the district has had to set aside more than a quarter million dollars to fight a legal case over a special education student. That is a chunk of change when the total district budget is just $3.5 million. And get this — the suit was filed by a member of the school board, who is essentially suing himself!
I bet school board meetings in Northport are plenty lively these days.
(Image credit: Flickr.com)
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Meet Kurt Stanic, interim superintendent
(Kurt Stanic is sworn in as interim superintendent Tuesday.)
On Tuesday, the Dayton school formally introduce and swore in Kurt Stanic as interim superintendent. And for the first time, I got to speak with him face-to-face.
It was an interesting conversation. Here some first impressions:
—Style. Personality-wise, Stanic strikes me as an interesting mix. He projects a very calm, approachable demeanor. At the same time, it’s clear he has a type-A personality. I jokingly asked him what he had against retirement, since this is the third time he has unretired to take a superintendent job.
He gave a reflective answer. Stanic said he really should have thought out the process of stepping down from a superintendency. He said he found it difficult to move on suddenly from a high energy, high profile job like superintendent.
So not long after he retired from North Olmsted schools after five years in 2007, he got a volunteer job to keep busy. But this was not a typical old-guy retiree job like seating people at the local theater or policing a golf course. Stanic managed the re-election campaign for the mayor of Euclid, the city where he lives. After managing so many school levy campaigns through the years, he said he was intrigued by the challenge of managing a candidate and the mayor was an old friend.
—Accessibility. From my point of view as a reporter who writes about Dayton schools, I was impressed that Stanic did not hesitate to give me contact numbers and an email address right off the bat. This may not sound like much, but you might be surprised at how often folks in leadership positions are squeamish about access to the press.
He said communication with the community and the staff is among his highest priorities and he believes improvement in that area could help the levy effort this fall. Stanic also described himself as something of an old school communicator, noting he is not a big fan of e-mail and prefers to do business face-to-face whenever possible.
He also said he and his wife are spending some time looking for an apartment to rent this week and he believes they are close to settling on a place to live locally.
—Priorities. Stanic talked a good game about teaching and learning, a mantra he repeated several times as his primary focus. He gave the strong impression that when it came to educating he had ideas about instruction, not just management. He doesn’t have much time to affect change in that area if he is only staying for a year.
And instruction is the purview of Deputy Superintendent Debra Brathwaite, who has made it clear she wants the permanent superintendent job here and declined the opportunity to serve in the interim role before Stanic jumped at it. How the Stanic-Brathwaite relationship plays out will be interesting to watch. Will they become close partners like Mack and Brathwaite were, or will they act like rivals?
Dayton’s budget. After having been in a couple of DPS finance meetings this week and seeing the money people sweat their way through the end of the fiscal year, I asked Stanic if he had seen the budget for Dayton.
“I have seen the budget and I cried all weekend. It’s a sad story,” he said jokingly.
Then he got serious. He said he had confidence in the district’s financial management and he was convinced of the need for a tax levy to generate more operating money.
“This district has done an especially good job of holding down increases in expenditures or they would not have been able to go 16 years without a levy,” he said. “If you have seen one financial forecast you have seen them all. When the amount of money you generate remains the same and the cost of business increases, that causes problems.”
—Connections. Because of his long tenure as a superintendent in Ohio (20 years in three jobs), Stanic is well connected. He dropped the names of several local superintendents he knew during our conversation.
He also mentioned he was a leader in the 1990s in the statewide push for more equitable funding in Ohio. When I asked him if he was hopeful about Gov. Ted Strickland’s promised overhaul of K-12 education, Stanic reacted like someone who has been through the wars. He basically said he’d believe it when he saw it and noted he had been disappointed four times before, referencing the four Ohio Supreme Court decisions that failed to bring dramatic change.
—Future. This was interesting. I asked Stanic if he was interested in the permanent job here. He paused for a very long moment and said that wasn’t the first time he had been asked that question. Then he made a short speech about the opportunities he and his wife had to do things together after he retired last year and he said he had promises to keep to her.
But I noticed he never actually said he was not interested in the permanent job. At age 56, Stanic is the same age as Percy Mack. He is certainly young and vibrant enough to run another school district for five to seven years. The press clippings on his departures from Lorain and North Olmsted were very positive — he remained well liked upon leaving those places after pretty long tenures.
If Stanic impresses in his year here, will he emerge as a candidate for the permanent job? Stay tuned.
—A curious note. I hesitate to even point this out. But did anyone notice Dayton just named its first white superintendent in more than 20 years?
This is interesting to me because it has been such a non-issue. Race, in the past, has been a key factor in the selection of superintendent candidates.
Beginning with Franklin Smith in the mid-1980s, Dayton schools have had four consecutive black superintendents — Smith, James Williams, Jerrie Bascome McGill and Mack.
By the 1980s, Dayton’s enrollment had a strong majority of black students and through that decade the board also became majority black. For most, if not all, of those superintendent hires, the board’s desire for minority candidates was a pretty high priority. Some on the board felt black children in Dayton needed a role model in the superintendent’s seat who looked like them.
But as time has passed, black school leaders are no longer a rarity. Heck, we even have a black candidate for president. So perhaps all that has reduced the urgency for a black role model at the top for Dayton schools.
And, with time, circumstances and priorities change.
Back in 2002 when the district resolved its desegregation case by mutual agreement with the NAACP and the state, I was talking with a then school board member about the danger that schools could resegregate, making all-white schools in some neighborhoods and all-black schools in others.
If that happened, would the danger exist that resources could again be doled out unevenly, which led to the first desegregation order?
The board member responded by pointing at the school board. At that time, a strong majority of the board —- five of seven board members — and the superintendent were black. The board member said this made the possibility of discrimination remote. When I noted that things can change, the board member said the demographics of the city didn’t suggest a significant change in the future.
Hmmm. Let’s look at the situation today. A slim 4-3 majority of the board are black and the district has a white superintendent. Who would have expected that in 2002?
Let me quickly add that I’m pleased to say I don’t believe race is a factor at all in the the choice of Stanic or in hiring decisions at DPS these days. I just thought the shift was worth noting, given the city’s difficult experience with integration and racal politics in schools over the past 40 years.
Note: I corrected this entry to reflect that Stanic lives in Euclid where he was previously superintendent and ran the mayor’s campaign last year, not Lorain.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Finn unloads on education in Ohio
Checker Finn
Over at the opinion page’s blog, Editorial page editor Ellen Belcher noticed that Fordham Foundation President Checker Finn, a Dayton native, unloaded on his home state for its education policy under Gov. Ted Strickland in a column that was published in the Wall Street Journal.
Even for Finn, who often ruffles feathers with pointed commentaries, this column has raised eyebrows. There is no love lost between Strickland, who has professed high skepticism about school choice, and Finn, who is perhaps the nation’s most important school choice champion.
And to some extent the column is a pre-emptive strike against Strickland’s promised education overhaul, due next year. Many school choice fans fear Strickland’s main goals will be to dismantle as much of the 1990s Republican efforts at education reform as possible, which could threaten the future of school choice programs. Fears are especially high after Strickland successfully forced out state Superintendent Susan Zelman, who implemented much of the Republican agenda over the last decade.
Take a look and let us know what you think.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, Schools and Politics
