Yet another bored meeting report for September 6th, 2007

Hi, all,

I'm experimenting a bit with a new format for these messages. They can get rather long, so I'm trying to find a way to make reading them more manageable. My initial thought it to have a table of contents with links to the interesting sections, so people can jump to what they're interested in reading.

If you have any strong feelings about this organization, please let me know.

Table Of Contents

• Enrollment Numbers
• Superintendent's Blog
• Superintendent's Update
• Long Range Planning Committee report
• Online Community Store Demonstration
• Remaining Issues

The full BOE met this past Thursday, Sept 6th. As is their usual pattern, there was to be a short, 15 minute open session, an hour long closed session, followed by a resumption of the open session. The initial open session, however, lasted for over an hour, which forced the board into a 20 minute closed session, which they continued after the second open session. I have some opinions on why this first session took so long that I'll discuss in another post soon.

Also, I apologize for the length of this summary, but it is only a reflection of the length and level of detail seen in the meeting itself.

Enrollment numbers

First up, Shirley Broz spoke about updated enrollment counts. The original intent of this report was supposed to be about secondary student figures, but the board asked about elementary figures as well, so Shirley included those as well. Summarizing what was said, enrollment is up more than projected. Residential growth is fairly close to their models, which is expected year after year. Voluntary enrollment, which is made up of Voluntary Transfer Students (VTS), however, is up much more than was expected. This seemed to disturb a portion of the board (think the Gang of Four). Most of the rest of the report centered around why the number of VTS children was not dropping as rapidly as the Board had specified, where the students were going, and how to bring the numbers down to where they were intended to be.

Dr. Art McCoy helped Mrs. Broz explain what was happening, and his explanation made a lot of sense. According to actual, measured data, the district used to experience a loss of about 150 VTS children during the first semester of each year, and students previously only stayed in the program for 2-3 years. This has stopped happening, as these children and their parents are choosing to stay in Rockwood for longer. As this trend in the data has changed, this has caused the spike that we're seeing now in VTS. Dr. McCoy further explained that Rockwood only accepts elementary students into VTS, with the exception of accepting older siblings of previously enrolled children. This amounted to about 15 high school students for this school year. Mary Battenberg explored a bit, eventually arriving at the fact that most of these secondary VTS children ended up at Lafayette High, and was more than a little curious why. Dr. McCoy explained that Lafayette was part of Zone 2, which is a section of the city that is specifically assigned to Lafayette and its feeder schools. Zone 2 is larger than other zones in the city, so it makes logical sense that more of the city transfer students would end up at Lafayette. Mary seemed less than satisfied with this explanation, but they eventually moved on. (Mary had more questions later specifically about the number of counselors who rotated through Lafayette and its feeder schools to help counsel and advise the VTS children in that region. More on this later).

In the end, Mrs. Broz reflected on the projections that she used to come up with these numbers, describing the parameters to the projections as something that she was directed to use by the board many years ago. These parameters are directly responsible for the results in this year's projections, and she invited the board to help her set new parameters. There was no closure on this issue, but the board did decide to freeze the numbers of VTS children in an effort to get down to their intended levels.

This conversation took about 1/2 an hour of the 15 minutes planned for the first open session. A large part of the time was consumed with one Board member in particular examining each and every detail of each and every statement made. Both Shirley Broz and Dr. McCoy acquitted themselves admirably under this questioning, seemingly always having the information in their heads that was needed to answer the questions. Truly a job well done.

Dr. Larson's Blog

Clearly, if you are here reading this, you know what a blog is. You have seen at least one, and have at least rudimentary knowledge of how they work. (By the way, I have a professional blog as well, where I write about software development issues, project management, organizational change, team building, cooperation, and other soft-skills) I, personally, have been blogging since 2004, and I keep up to date with about 50 blogs a day on those same subjects. The reason I'm stating these facts is that I want to establish myself as at least knowledgeable about the subject, if not an expert. This characterization of myself as someone in-the-know about this topic puts me far ahead of most of the current Board.

Kim Cranston, Director of Communications for Rockwood, brought a proposal to the board suggesting that Dr. Larson be allowed to publish a weblog (kind of like this one, but managed more tightly) for internal and external use. Mrs. Cranston made an excellent, well-thought out and defended case for why the Board should allow this blog. She brought in sample blogs from other commercial bloggers (this blog is a personal blog, but there are other blogs out there that are written and run by corporate insiders, for the purpose of putting a personal face on the corporation) and blogs by other superintendents. She mentioned examples of blogs run by other school districts, teachers, students, and classrooms. She included information about blogs from the American School Board Journal, who made the point that blogging is a way of establishing direct communication with the community and enhancing transparency (which incidentally leads to trust. See my other blog for stories about this.) Mrs. Cranston then tied blogging back to Rockwood's stated goals of enhancing communication with its community through use of social media tools. In short (can I say that at this point?), the Director of Communications made an excellent case for allowing the Superintendent to blog, backed up by experiences of other superintendents and districts, research from other school boards, and the district's goals.

The Gang of Four, however, was not convinced.

In fact, each of them had their own reasons why this was just not a Good Thing.

Bill Adams wondered how it was different than the Ask the Superintendent email link on the district web site. Mrs. Cranston explained how this was more interactive and would allow people throughout the district to watch entire conversation threads as they took shape through comments to the blog and responses from the Superintendent. The Communications Department has come up with and entire operational plan to keep these comments manageable, relevant, and appropriate, involving mandatory registration for commenting, content filtering similar to how Rockwood filters email for keywords, and final human approval necessary for comments to be posted. She went on to explain how the volume of email now is fairly low and manageable (around 10 per week or so). In my opinion, and those of my readers who have emailed me and commented to my post asking about the Superintendent's Blog, I believe the number of letters and questions would go up as the ease of communication would be increased.

I'm sorry to keep relating this to my day job, but this particular topic is very relevant to what I do and what I teach every day. I teach groups of people how to form into teams. One of the best ways to do this, to enhance collaboration, create trust, establish relationships, is to lower the cost of communication. Ask the Superintendent is one-way communication for everyone but the person who asked the question. Someone sends in a question, and Dr. Larson sees to it that the question is answered and a response is sent. Mrs. Cranston stated that questions that were seen frequently were moved onto the district Frequently Asked Questions list, so that others may view the answers. But no one else sees the answer! Again, however, this inhibits the free flow of information that happens when groups of people are able to interact freely. This blog would give people a forum where that easy communication could happen. There are no good reasons why the Superintendent should not be allowed to blog. This leaves one to wonder what the other reasons are...

Beth Fitzgerald spoke about something called astroturfing. As the director of the Magic House, she spoke of how marketing firms had approached her about creating blogs to advocate for the Magic House, and how suspicious this made her of blogging in general. Paraphrasing her feelings, she thought that since marketing firms are using blogs for astroturfing, blogs, in general, can't be trusted. She felt that blogging was a fad that would pass, evidence to the contrary not withstanding. She also pondered over the possibility that special interest groups would overwhelm the blog with comments and responses, making it seem as if large segments of public opinion adhered to some belief when it was only a few devoted, passionate people posting about some issue that concerned them. It was about this time that at least one person on the Board stared directly at some POCC members who happened to be sitting next to me.

Rao Kaza spoke up in favor of the Superintendent's blog at this point. He seems to be a little more technologically savvy than some of the other board members and seems to be more familiar with blogs and blogging. His was the only board voice in favor of this new form of communication for Dr. Larson.

Board President Janet Strate raised an issue about why the Communications Department was focusing on a new form of communication when the Board's request to establish speaking relationships with rotary clubs, civic organizations, and other groups in Rockwood was still pending. The Board had requested that the district find opportunities to speak to local groups in person to basically discuss Rockwood issues with groups that the district might otherwise not have any relationship with. Mrs. Cranston explained that this is and has been in progress but that these civic groups are very choosy about whom they allow to speak at their meetings. She is trying to get speaking opportunities at these groups all the time, but they are hard to come by.

There was a comment about now about how the blog was concerning "for legal reasons". Maybe I'm just cynical (no, me??? Could it be? Cynical of this Board?), but it sure seems like "For legal reasons" is the equivalent of saying "It's for the children!". Both sound really good, cannot be argued against without being made to look bad, and neither requires any logical reasoning to be accepted. If you hear this Board mention "legal reasons", ask yourself what they're really afraid of...

Again, reluctance on the part of a Board member for a seemingly unrelated or imagined reason. Maybe they just don't want Dr. Larson to blog... I wonder, if someone else were the Superintendent, would they feel this way?

Finally, the Gang of Four accepted Beth Fitzgerald's suggestion that Mrs. Cranston set up a blog that would be kept internal to Rockwood to allow Dr. Larson to write posts and have them read by teachers and staff only. If this goes well, they'll eventually let him go public with it. Anyone want to place any bets as to whether this ever happens?

Superintendent's Update

My notes began to get a bit sketchy here, because the original open session dragged on for so long, lost in trivia. My laptop battery was dying, and I was trying to conserve its life for as long as possible.

Dr. Larson deferred most of his update to Gloria Ventura who gave an update on a program she has been heading to reduce teen drinking and drug abuse in and around Rockwood. The district received the grant last September and she has been working, overseeing it, since November. There are only three districts in the area with a grant such as this, so Rockwood is very fortunate to have this, and to have her working on this program. They are doing their best to reduce teen drinking by working with local police departments (Ballwin, Ellisville, and one other). We have had our grant increased by $27777, which we are passing directly through to these police departments. They, in turn, are stepping up enforcement efforts, employing teens to help them catch stores selling to minors, and other things.

Long Range Planning Committee report

I have to apologize to Dr. Peckron here for not including a summary of what she said. Her presentation was valuable, focused, and informative. I just didn't take any notes on it.

Online community store demonstration

A demonstration was given showing the new website where people can sign up their children for Rockwood educational and sporting programs, like SwimAmerica. this new website allows parents to register, add children to their profile, and then choose, signup and pay for Rockwood programs. Speaking from parental experience, this site is 10X better than the previous website they had for this, and 100X better than being forced to register by mail. Welcome to the 21st Century, Rockwood! Great site, and a great job.

Remaining issues

There were two other issues discussed at the end of the meeting, but my battery was dead at this point, so I have no notes. This meeting went on a **lot** longer than I expected, and my nearly 3 hour battery was exhausted by this time. They did discuss elementary school capacity reports and the inclusion of secondary special education students in classroom counts at the end. I believe these presentations were again given by Shirley Broz. Another gentleman took the lead in discussing his cadre of counselors who are splitting time between the different schools. He had created a schedule that put his limited number of counselors at as many schools as possible, while allowing them to be there long enough to actually provide some balance. Mary Battenberg had some concerns about the distribution of counselors and the time they spent at each school. She discussed why she thought Lafayette High School needed more time more frequently. The Board then offered guidance to this gentleman about considering need over time when creating his schedule.

Conclusion

Boy, this was a long meeting. For the amount of actual content, this meeting went way too long. This board has a habit of grilling those who come in front of it about minute details of their presentations, instead of focusing on setting policy and direction for the district. It does seem that they seem to be lost among the trees many times.

As always, I encourage any and all of you to attend Board of Education meetings. The next one will be on September 20th beginning at 6:00 PM. Please come and draw your own conclusions. If you'd like to chat, I'll be in the front row as usual.

-- bab