Thursday, October 25, 2007

Oct 18 BOE meeting -- the gloves come off!

Lots of good stuff from this meeting. The best part of this meeting was the patron comments, of which there were 7. We'll get to them shortly. So here's the summary with a few comments interspersed.

Summary

Standing Committee Report

As is the custom, before the Board breaks for its closed session (we should talk about these...), they get reports from the Board Standing Committees.

Combined Operations/Community Relations Meeting
Tuesday, October 9th, these two Standing Committees held a joint meeting to discuss the upcoming Bond Issue survey. Two members of the Facilities Committee, Nancy Hanks and I, were invited to attend as well, since our committee is charged with defining the contents of the bond. We met with Ken DeSieghardt, a consultant brought in to define and conduct the survey. We spent about half hour or so discussing proposed questions from Ken, making choices about what questions to include and leave off, and talked about how his firm would be conducting the survey.

The biggest conversation centered around including questions about the amount of the proposed bond issue. I'll explain more about the issue later in this post.

Planning and Student Achievement Committee

Not a lot from them. They discussed the technology proposed for the bond issue, consisting of talking about hiring more employees to support technology through the district, and about potentially moving some of the 75 cents of the Rockwood assessment from the bond debt levy into the general fund.

The one key point you can draw from this discussion is that everyone in Rockwood needs more money. Every committee, every department, every administrator. Everyone needs more money. That has been my biggest realization of late, in working with the Board and its committees -- in the commercial world, companies have the ability to generate revenue to fund their activities, which creates an environment where money is potentially not as tight as in the public sector. If the company is successful, there is an excellent chance that they will have enough money to provide for all the necessities, as well as some luxuries. In the public sector, things are not like that at all. The district lives on a fixed budget, which means they have to make difficult choices every day. Everything they do is underfunded, because the money just isn't there.

Patron Comments

There were 7 patron comments this evening. Each person speaking had a particular problem with the district or Board, and they all spoke very eloquently about their issue.

Schools pushing video games to children

A district father started off the comments with a complaint about a book order form that his child brought home from school. The form had been given to his child by the teacher, along with a letter explaining that the classroom would be given free books if enough students ordered from the catalog. The problem the parent had with this was that the catalog included video games. These video games did nothing to contribute to the education of children, and actively encouraged them to play these games instead of doing something more active. This father very clearly made his point that this kind of advertising didn't belong in the classroom, and he wanted it out.

In my mind, this father raises a very interesting point. Gerald Weinberg, a business consultant author I read, writes about acting congruently with ones words. The district does use a lot of words about doing what is best for children, but their actions don't always match. Strictly based on my own observations, school lunch rooms serve a lot of junk food, there are soda machines on campus, video games are sold at book fairs, and I'm sure there is a lot more that I just haven't seen. Kids repeat what they've been taught, and good eating habits and reading habits would be excellent actions for children to repeat.

Everyday Math Program
A mother came to the board very concerned about the way her child was being taught math. The district has begun to use a program called Everyday Math, developed very recently at the University of Chicago. This program represents a very different method of teaching math, focusing on teaching children non-traditional strategies for doing things like adding and subtracting numbers.

Her child was having problems learning math this way, and the teacher had no alternative teaching method available. It was Everyday Math or nothing.

Quite logically, this mother wanted to learn more about this program, so she looked for her child's text book. There isn't one. Teachers have a book, but students don't. OK, so she wanted to see the teacher's edition. This teacher felt that they had to check with the district before allowing the parent to see this book. After some number of weeks had passed, the teacher refused to allow the parent to see the book, because the district wouldn't let parents see it.

She was quite upset about this, as her child was failing, this particular teaching method was not reaching her child, and she had absolutely no visibility into what the student was being taught, how she could help, or anything at all about it.

Clearly, this is a case of the district falling down on its responsibility to communicate effectively with parents about the progress of their children.

The Board is not obligated to answer, or even address, patron comments, but this comment deserves, and even demands, action. Anecdotally, I've heard from several parents very similar stories. This math program is mildly controversial across the country, as more than a few students are having problems with it. I think we need some answers.

More information about this program is available at a lot of sites on the web.

Rockwood Schools Foundation Funding

The next two speakers asked the Board to continue funding the Rockwood Schools Foundation. They spoke about the great things that the foundation is doing, like giving teachers grants to try innovative teaching methods, creating permanent art structures in schools, and creating excitement in students, parents, administrators, and teachers in Rockwood schools. Both of them asked the Board to continue donating the cell tower easement income to the foundation, to enable it to continue these programs as it grows and expands into a self-funding entity.

Community Support for the 2008 Bond Issue

Two parents came forward to complain very clearly and vociferously to the Board about their actions, behavior, and attitude towards Dr. Larson, teachers, and parents. The message delivered is that there is a growing number of parents who are very dissatisfied with this Board. An example was given of particular behaviors by two of the Board members at a recent Town Hall meeting attended by Dr. Larson. The actions of these Board members were so bad that parents were visibly embarrassed. This behavior and this attitude must stop, or the Board risks alienating even more of the community.

The thing that makes this alienation all the more dangerous is that the community support is critically important to the passage of the 2008 bond issue. Without strong support from the community, and parents such as these two ladies, the bond has no chance of passing. These ladies were both very active in their involvement, have the ear of many district parents and patrons, and can mobilize enough voters to make a difference. If any of you doubt it, just remember how close the election was this spring -- in three weeks, they crafted a write-in campaign that came within a few votes of unseating an incumbent Board member.

It was made very clear that they are willing and able to mobilize these voters again, come April 2008. The actions of the Board would dictate what these voters would do.

Grading and Assessment Policy

Rockwood has been working very hard for quite a while now to define a new grading and assessment policy. This policy affects how children are graded, how homework is figured into a student's grades, and what types of assessments are done to gauge a student's progress. This policy is slowly being phased in throughout the district, grade by grade.

The problem is that the policy hasn't been communicated to parents well at all. I know about it because I attend Board meetings and hear the discussions about it. Few other parents in the district know anything about it.This parent reported that teachers were confused about the policy, as the policy hasn't been defined yet. PTO Presidents were just made aware of the policy last week. He was also curious about what kind of data is available to prove that this new grading policy is effective.

Lots of questions, very few answers, very poor communication.

Superintendent's Update

Dr. Larson reported on a visit to Rockwood by its long-time security consultant, Jesus Villahermosa. Jesus was here for his annual presentations to 6th graders about safety issues. While he was here, he gave presentations to the Facilities Committee and others. Rockwood has an outstanding safety record, but they need to start looking past fire and earthquake kinds of safety issues and focus on the kinds of issues that have been affecting schools lately. Dr. Larson specifically mentioned the lockdowns that have been happening around the country in response to several school shootings. Unfortunately this is the world we live in, so the district needs to be prepared for such occurrences.

Pandemic Flu Preparation Discussion

Tim Woerther graciously offered his time to the Board to give a report on his group, Pandemic Prep. Their mission is to develop awareness across St. Louis of the issues and risks associated with a flu pandemic, and what we can do as individuals and as a district to prepare for such a situation.

The last flu pandemic to hit the St. Louis area happened in 1918. Flu hit cities all over the country, and different areas were affected by it by differing amounts. He compared the affects of the flu in Philadelphia with St. Louis, and showed how the preparations and mitigations performed here lessened the impact of the flu, decreased its mortality rate, and reduced the rate of infection.

During 1918, in St. Louis, to prevent the spread of the virus, public gatherings places were closed, such as school, theaters, churches, and libraries.

We need to create a similar city-wide plan for 2007, including updating measures from 1918 to today's terms, like MetroLink instead of streetcars.

The important next steps that the area needs to take are to choose those tactics that are thought to be effective as preventing or mitigating, decide on a trigger point to implement those actions, and review and communicate the plan.

This is not the first time that the Board has had conversations about a possible flu pandemic. Dr. Larson observed that flu has killed more people than any other disease in the history of mankind. I've never really paid attention to discussions about possible pandemics, but Tim made a very good case. Maybe it is worth investing a bit of time and effort to prepare ourselves for what could be a civilization-changing event.

Bond Survey Discussion

One of Ken DeSieghardt's associates came back to the Board to present the final proposal for the survey. He brought back two versions of the survey. The only difference between the two versions was that one version included several questions feeling out the public about their feelings concerning the possible amount of the bond issue, and the other didn't. Almost all of the discussion centered around whether or not to include these questions, and if so, what should the questions say.

OK, since the Board discussed it in open session, I guess it is OK to talk about it here. The issue is that Rockwood has had a habit of creating bond issues that are in the $45 million range. This year, they have more needs. A lot more needs. They are discussing proposing a bond issue somewhere over $70 million dollars. And the truth is, they really need it. But no one knows how the public is going to react to this number. Will they have sticker shock and vote it down? Or will they look at the quality of items in the bond issue and approve it? No one knows.

So the question becomes whether or not questions about the possibly acceptable sizes of the bond issue should be made part of the survey. On one hand, this question is not usually asked for a bond issue that doesn't include a tax rate increase. On the other hand, Rockwood really needs this bond issue, so if the public won't go for the size bond issue that they're proposing, then we need to know this now so the bond contents can be downsized. Having to do this would be tremendously painful, but passing a bond issue is an all or nothing thing, so everything that can be done to reduce the risk of it being voted down must be done.

After asking a few questions, the Board decided that the questions about the size of the bond issue should be included in the survey. That left the complication of deciding what bond amounts to ask about. Some were in favor of starting very high, like at $95 million and working down, knowing full well that we would never ask for that much, but relying on the hope that it would make the lesser numbers seem more palatable. Others wanted to avoid the excessive sticker shock of starting so high and keeping the questions centered around numbers that were actually possible.

About this time, one Board member reopened the question about whether or not to include the questions at all. She was concerned that the answers that came back might not be what they wanted to hear. At this point, Bill Adams had the line of the entire meeting when he said that fear of not liking an answer is not a reason not to ask a question. Bravo, Bill. Very well said.

The whole point of the survey is to gather what the public is thinking. Rockwood needs this data to know what to propose for the bond, or even if they should propose a bond. It is of critical importance that the information they get back from the survey be the unvarnished truth, because that is what is needed to know how to plot the course to the next election.

Final amounts of the questions were to be left to the survey company's best judgement, as they are the experts, but it will be something like $85/$75/$65 million.

We'll find out the results of the survey at the meeting on 11/8. If I were you, and I was remotely curious about the bond issue, I'd be there!

Elementary Capacity Committee Report

Shirley Broz came back to the Board to update her report from several months ago. The Board had instructed her to go back with slightly different assumptions and redo her conclusions. She did it, and came back. What she reported is that there are several elementary schools that are sorely in need of more space. There are 5 elementary schools that have insufficient SSD space and 4 other schools that lack Adventure Club space. More information is available on BoardDocs.

Shirley graciously came to the Facilities Committee meeting this week and gave us the same presentation that she gave the Board. It was just as good this time as the first time I heard it :)

Enrollment Projections

Formal enrollment counts are taken the last Wednesday of September and January. Rockwood has an official enrollment of 23,332 students, including SSD and VICC. This represents an increase of a few hundred since last year, making our enrollment growth curve basically flat. More information is available on BoardDocs.

Conclusion

That was basically all that was talked about at this meeting. The highlights were the conversations about the Bond survey and the 7 wonderful patron comments. I truly love the courage and passion possessed by parents who speak at Board meetings. Great job to all of them!

The next Board meeting will be on 11/8. This is the meeting where the bond survey results will come back, so I truly and highly recommend that every one of you (ok, both of you) readers attend.

Until next time...

-- bab

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Report from October 4th, 2007 BOE meeting

Overall, I thought this was a pretty exciting meeting. The board members talked about some pretty exciting and interesting science initiatives. I’m kind of a science geek, so I was very pleased to hear this. Science education is very important to me, as it is the beginning of the long journey of children towards being the inventors, engineers, and innovators of tomorrow.



Contents





Bond Community Survey Timeline



Kim Cranston gave a report on the progress made in creating the survey being used to gauge community support for the 2008 Rockwood bond issue. As a bit of background, there are current two separate committees meeting to work towards creating the contents of the 2008 bond. The Facilities Committee is working to decide which of the many needed improvements to include in the suggested bond, while the Finance Committee is helping to decide on the suggested size of the bond. Between these two committees, a recommendation for the BOE will be created. This recommendation will be brought to the full Board early in December, where the Board may approve it or suggest changes. That promises to be a fun meeting, so I highly recommend attending. Stay tuned to this blog for an announcement regarding when the bond will come to the Board.



As part of this process, Rockwood is commissioning a survey to be taken by a professional polling company. They want to understand the community wants and desires and to flesh out any particularly sensitive issues before creating the final bond recommendation. The district is doing this to give us the best chance possible of crafting a bond that will have maximum community support, giving the best chance for getting it approved by the voters in April, 2008.



Kim reported that the Operations Committee, the Citizens Committee, and the Facilities Committee would be having a joint meeting on Tuesday, October 9th, to start the process of creating the survey. Out of this committee meeting would come instructions to the polling company about what questions to include. The polling company was going to create a suggested survey and return it to the district by Friday, 10/12. It would be sent out to the attendees at the Tuesday meeting for comments, which are due on Tuesday, 10/16. The comments would be sent back to the polling company for inclusion, and the final suggested survey would be ready for board approval at this next meeting on 10/18.



If you’re curious about the survey, come to the board meeting and see for yourself. I was at the Tuesday meeting where we decided on the questions, and the survey looks really good. There are a bunch of questions about the general performance of the district, some questions about specific projects, and some good follow up questions. If you get called for the survey, please take 15 minutes out of your day and answer. Whether you support the bond or not, your input is important!



Science Initiative Report



This was my favorite part of the Board meeting. As I said before, I love science, so any time we’re going to talk about teaching science to children I’m ready for the conversation.



Mike Szydlowski came to the Board to discuss the research done and to recommend initiatives to increase science achievement and interest (I’m already sold!). The research done consisted of collecting and reading many articles on these same problems, mining these articles for solutions tried by other districts, and integrating the information to form a set of recommendations for our Board. These articles are available on Board Docs.



There were two separate initiatives suggested, for high school and middle school separately. The two proposals were very similar, with minor modifications for middle schools.



The overarching goal of these initiatives is to make science more interesting for students, allowing them to relate the studies back to the real world. Labs, in particular, were mentioned as needing to change to inquiry based, addressing real world problems. While I’m sure this is a completely noble goal and proven through academic research to be effective in helping students learn about science, it seems mildly counterproductive to me. It is entirely possible that my experiences with science are different than most children, since I was very good at the subject and also intensely interested, but I never lacked motivation for learning. My fear is that the purpose of labs may become diluted by introducing irrelevant information into the experience. Labs, as I recall, were done to drill home a theoretical point. For example, the lab about bouncing pucks around an air hockey table, done to illustrate the physics behind inelastic collisions, was interesting in its own right. And the chemistry labs I did were more than challenging enough to hold my interest. What I liked about the labs that I had was that their purpose and goal was unambiguous. The information presented was concrete, without any ambiguity, sufficient to explain the concept, and free from extra information. It let me focus on what I was doing and why. The introduction of real world concepts, challenges, and problems may serve to place the lab into a larger context, but it may detract from the understandability of the point. This leaves you with the tradeoff of a more complicated lab experience available to more students versus a more focused lab to which fewer students may be exposed. I guess if those are the choices, then the former is infinitely better than the latter.



Several issues were raised during the discussion of the high school initiative. The first was that the current Rockwood curriculum is dated, due to the extended cycle of curriculum refreshes. There are new, challenging classes coming soon, but they are not quite ready yet. Another major issue raised was that it was common for students to have more experience with individual topics than their teachers. The example brought out in the meeting concerned the medical industry, where students could be significantly more advanced than their teachers in certain areas. The proposed solution was to offer teachers field trips during summers or on resource days into the field to learn about new and exciting topics. While this sounds very good, as any exposure to newly found information is welcome, this will only help teachers close the gap or put them slightly ahead of their more advanced students. It will not give them the in-depth knowledge of a subject needed to truly teach it. This is worrisome for a subject as important to learn, but difficult to teach, as science in our high schools. Next, they discussed bringing science competitions into high schools, as a way to excite and motivate students. This is difficult to do in high school, because of all the other extra-curricular activities of students and the busy lives of teachers. Currently, teachers who act as sponsors of science-related competitions do so after school, but the suggestion is to make several teachers responsible for this and give them 6th period as free time to do this. They also explored how to put students in touch with real world experience, either through bringing in outside speakers or creating situations where students could explore science in their communities.



The middle school initiative was almost exactly the same, as they were already doing most of these things. The biggest problem that the middle schools have is that the science classes are larger than the rooms can handle. in some classes, there are too many kids to be able to do any labs. The hope is that this can be addressed in the 2008 bond issue, should one be proposed.



Library Compliance with 4th Cycle MSIP



The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) is the government body that sets the rules and policies that govern the operation of school districts in Missouri. They publish a regulation called the Missouri School Improvement Program (MSIP) that establishes a 5-year improvement cycle for schools in the state. We are currently in the 2nd year of the current cycle. According to the regulation, schools are reviewed one time during each cycle, and Rockwood is due to be reviewed in year 4 of the plan. Because of this, Rockwood is doing everything it can to fix those areas of the district that are out of compliance with the current, or 4th Cycle, MSIP.



The particular issue being addressed this evening was about library compliance. The MSIP sets certain standards for library size, in terms of area and titles contained, amount and quality of multi-media facilities available. We are currently well out of compliance with 4th Cycle MSIP in Rockwood, and Dr. Kathy Peckron, the Deputy Superintendent for Curriculum and School Leadership, came to the board to discuss how to bring the district back into compliance.



In short, all it is going to take is money. And lots of it… The district currently needs to expand the libraries in several schools, increase the types of media available, and add lots of volumes to the stacks. According to Dr. Peckron, we are $3.2 million dollars short in our current funding levels. In other words, it would take this amount of money to bring us into minimal compliance with this regulation. It would take about $3.8 million dollars to bring us up to a high level of compliance. And once we do bring ourselves back into compliance, would need to increase our yearly funding of libraries and media centers by $400,000 per year, up to $727,440, to keep us in compliance. Clearly this is a lot of money, and we would have to prioritize what changes and improvements were made.



The Board seemed to be pretty shocked by the magnitude of this unbudgeted need. They expressed the fear that there were other similar MSIP-related needs that they didn’t know about. Dr. Peckron promised to bring forward subsequent unbudgeted needs every month, including a middle school math initiative that will be brought to the Board soon. It did seem pretty apparent that the Board was not very happy at this point, since they didn’t know, and had no way to know, what the total amount of these unfunded and unbudgeted needs were.



High School Schedule Update



Susan Hladky brought the Board an update on the High School Schedule update for the 2008-2009 school year. The focus of this report was about professional development days, and how to coordinate the scheduling of these days across the district. Mrs. Hladky brought a couple of options to the Board, based on one of two proposals. Both of the proposals had all 4 high schools taking the same professional development days. Peggy Devoy noted that a survey of parents taken fairly recently unequivocally said that parents wanted entire quadrants of the district to be off together. This made child care for families on professional development days much easier. It seems that this survey was forgotten during the creation of this plan, so the board agreed to try this new schedule for a year and then discuss it the following year with principals.



It still seems that the Board is discounting documented input from parents in favor of a plan that they approved. I hope that they will revisit this decision after a year and reassess the affect of this policy on district families.



Distribution of Cell Tower Income



How many of you knew that there was a charitable organization called the Rockwood Schools Foundation? Their mission, as found on their web page is,



The mission of the Rockwood Schools Foundation is to raise money for innovative educational programs that make a lasting difference in the lives of Rockwood students.


What this foundation does is to solicit grant applications from Rockwood teachers who have innovative ideas about new things to try in their classrooms. The best of these grant applications are chosen, and money is given to these teachers to try out their ideas. I was at their grant presentation ceremony last year, and it was very exciting to see the passion and creativity in these teachers.



One of the main ways that the Foundation is funded is through income generated from allowing a cell provider to place cell towers on district property. The Board approved the redirection of this income to the foundation, to enable it to fund the previously described programs. Through the growth of this revenue and fund raisers, the Foundation was able to fund $120,000 worth of grants over the past 2 years. This year, they have $84,000 of grants to extend, including student scholarships.



The question before the Board is whether or not to continue directing this funding to the Rockwood Foundation. They Board has three options for this funding — continue approving the funding yearly, dedicate the funding for multiple years, or to stop the funding entirely. There is apparently some controversy about which path to choose, controversy that is being kept within the Board currently.



Given the increasing ability of the Foundation to generate its own funding through donations and fund raisers, Rao Kazaa suggested that the district continue its funding of the the Foundation until such time as it is self funding. This is expected to happen within a few years.



The discussion was tabled for now, to be readdressed at the October 18th meeting of the Board.



High School Schedule Parent Component Project Team



This is a group that is working on implementing the new high school schedule starting next school year. This schedule is in response to an increase in credits required for graduation, based on new Missouri law. The biggest issue that this committee has is that this information has not been disseminated to district parents yet. They are developing communications strategies to get this information out to parents, such as parent handbooks, electronic and print communications, and holding parent meetings in each quadrant.



Electioneering Committee Report (Regulation 0380)



After the election fiasco of April, 2007, the Board formed an ad hoc committee to re-examine Regulation 0380, the district regulation describing acceptable and unacceptable electioneering behavior. The issue in front of the Board this evening is only to receive the report of the committee, not to approve or disapprove of its contents. The committee reported its findings in terms of changes to the existing regulation.



Steve Banton chaired this committee, and gave the report. other members of the committee were present to answer questions. Mr. Banton reported that the changes to the regulation were accepted unanimously, with one exception.



The changes consisted of reordering the basic organization of the regulation, moving those activities that are permitted to the start of the regulation, and the prohibited activities to the end. The rest of the changes, save a couple, were mostly word-smithing. The net effect of the word-smithing was to further clarify what is allowed (distributing in student backpacks non-advocational literature written by the district, electioneering by district personnel on their own time) versus what is not allowed (use of any district property or resources for advocacy, including the district email system).



The one statement that proved controversial was a part that was added to help guide members of the Board in avoiding perceived or actual conflicts of interest when applying this regulation. The biggest issue that this re-examination of the regulation was to clarify was how to decide if a piece of literature to be distributed through district channels was advocational or not. According to law, public organizations cannot use any public funds or resources to advocate for or against any candidate or bond issue. This means that the district must be extremely careful about any election literature distributed through district channels, under peril of law. Since, for issues involving Board candidates, the current members of the Board have a rooting interest, they should recuse themselves from taking part in any decision about the advocational content of literature.



The committee suggested language be put into the regulation explicitly removing authority from the Board to make decisions about these issues, and vesting that authority in the Communications Department, in concert with legal counsel, and Dr. Larson.



The unavoidable problem with this language is that Rockwood regulations hold no power over Board members. In fact, fellow Board members hold very little power over their fellow Board members. The committee is free to write any language that it wants, limiting the powers of the Board, but any member of the Board is free to violate that language at will, with absolutely no repercussions. For that reason, half of the committee wasn’t comfortable including this language, since it had no affect whatsoever. Another half of the committee wanted it in there, just to serve as a reminder to the Board of how they should act. Deadlock!



During discussions on this particular language, Mary Battenberg and Janet Strate agreed with the half of the committee that voted against the language. They made the same case — it doesn’t have any power over the board, then why should we have it. Their other reason was that the Board is ultimately responsible for the district to the state, so they would be very uncomfortable recusing themselves from these discussions and decisions.



Mary Battenberg focused herself on another topic that interested her. One facet of this regulation is that use of district email servers “by Rockwood personnel and any others” for advocational purposes is strictly prohibited. Mrs. Battenberg was particularly concerned about the “and any others” part of the regulation being able to send electioneering emails into Rockwood, as happened during the last election. She wanted to make sure that this use of district resources would be prohibited for parents. The only problem with this idea is that the policies and regulations of the district have no authority over the actions of parents in the district. As employees of the district, any teacher, administrator, or staff member is governed by the rules of the district, per their employment contract or collective bargaining agreement. Parents, however, have not entered into a contract or agreement with Rockwood, so they are not bound to their regulations. If I were to want to send any sort of email into the Rockwood email system, short of things obviously unlawful (porn, threats, etc), I can darn well do it.



The only avenue open to the district at this point is to use content filtering to prevent the flow of electioneering information into the district email system, to Rockwood personnel. I can personally testify to the effectiveness of content filtering software, as I’m sure all of you can, as well. We don’t ever see spam in our inboxes, do we? I don’t get more than a few thousand a day, personally. I’ve been on the internet since the late ’80s, I have two blogs, I used to post to professional usenet newsgroups, I take part in online forums — in short, my email addresses are out there for anyone to harvest. If content filtering actually worked, wouldn’t I be using it to eliminate received spam?



The other problem with content filtering is that it can result in completely innocent and appropriate emails being blocked. Imagine if you wanted to email your child’s teacher about election issues in the upcoming presidential election, and you happened to trigger some of the keywords. This can and almost certainly would interfere with your ability to communicate with the teacher. Bad plan, very bad plan :)



No decision was made tonight, but the regulation is going to be taken to Policy Review Committee, then back to Board for a first and second reading, and then a vote. Stay tuned for info.



Conclusion



Well, those were about the only interesting issues brought up in the meeting. I do my best to capture the spirit of what happens, as well as the facts, but it is much easier to understand if you’re actually there. I continue to encourage each and every one of you to attend just one Board meeting. Come, see who these people are, how they interact with each other, how they think. Then you’ll be able to make your own judgements about whether or not my summaries are accurate or not :)



bab

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Welcome to another board meeting summary. This meeting was remarkable in that it was not overly long, it was informative, and all parties acted with proper decorum. I hate it when that happens :)



  • Operations Committee Reports
  • Patron comment
  • Pyramid of Intervention Committee report
  • Report from Dennis Griffith
  • Scholarship and College Counselors update
  • Individualized Learning Center report
  • High School Intervention
  • Board policy Updates

Operations Committee Reports


There were reports from several standing district committees. I'll outline some key highlights from each report:


Planning and Student Achievement



  • Board certification for teachers is a good thing for the district and for the teachers. District gets better trained teachers, teachers get the training and an increase in pay. Some sense of worry over pay increase if sizeable percentage of teachers are certified.
  • Investigating 21st century skills. Dr. Larson was charged with creating a plan to look at key 21st century skills that Rockwood students will need in a previous Board meeting.

Operations



  • A survey is being created about the bond issue. Questions remain about the first draft, the length of the survey, and a comparison of the surveying companies.
  • Many schools need improvements in their libraries to stay in compliance with state guidelines. It is going to take quite a bit of money to buy new books, retire old books, increase space, and bring libraries to where they should be. And once they are compliant, it will take additional, continuing money to keep them in compliance over time.

Community Relations



  • Talked about bond issue in their meeting
  • Is trying to create Speakers Bureau (in response to Board request as voiced in discussion over Superintendent's Blog?). They have generated a spreadsheet of all community organizations. Now is deciding what the bureau makeup should look like.
  • Discussed how to handle requests from outside entities for student names and information. They are allowed to do this, as long as what they distribute meets some specific guidelines that preserve student privacy. Does the district have to honor such requests, can they charge for them?

Patron Comment


There was a single patron comment during the meeting. A District parent spoke about how Policy 6450, Grading and Reporting, was being implemented. According to the implementation directed by the Board, this policy is not supposed to be in effect until 2008, and then phased in over a number of years. According to her comment, this policy is already being implemented in some high schools and middle schools. Her main complaint centered around the fact that this fairly broad and important change was very poorly communicated to parents. It affects so many of our children, yet so few parents even know it is coming. Why?


Pyramid of Intervention Committee


The Pyramid of Intervention is a set of strategies and responses designed to allow teachers to react in a predictable way when rewarding or disciplining students (my own interpretation). In a welcome change, this meeting talked about the rewards system used to praise students who perform and behave well.


The belief of this committee is that younger students need more structure to their days than older ones. This allows rewards to be given to high school students resulting in more freedom in how they can structure their days, increasing from 9th to 12th grade. Assuming students qualify for this set of rewards, they can be granted privileges such as changes to go to the library during class hours, one-on-one teacher contact, and working as an office aide. The specific set of rewards has intentionally been left to individual high schools, to allow them to create incentives that match their existing culture and traditions.


The only troublesome part of this program to me is that they are looking at expanding the set of entrance criteria to this program. One possible criterion may be submitting to random drug testing, which I personally would be 100% against. I'm thinking back to my high school career at Parkway Central, and I would probably have been part of a program like this. I was an excellent student, always behaved well, had a good relationship with my teachers and administrators, and so on. I can't imagine being asked to submit to random drug screening at that point in my life, after working so hard to gain the respect of my peers, teachers, adminstrators, and parents. I think we're risking sending the wrong message here.


Report from Dennis Griffith on Transportation


In case you didn't know, there is a new high school schedule set to go into effect next year. It was caused by a new requirement from the state, increasing the number of credits needed to graduate from high school. To meet these new credit requirements, Rockwood decided to change the makeup and timing of the high school days. These changes necessitated changes in the bus routes, resulting in middle school children now being dropped off as early as 7:00 AM at their schools. This change will require $75000 to pay for additional supervision for these children.


First off, I don't know where this extra $75000 came from. Was this initially budgeted as part of the new high school schedule, or is this some extra expense that the Board has to approve? Was their any way that this extra cost could have been foreseen and potentially avoided by more careful consideration of the new high school schedule? Seems like an expensive thing to overlook...


Second, we're now asking our middle school children to have to wake up even earlier now, to make it to a bus 10 minutes earlier, to stay at the school building longer during what is already a long day for them. Again, this doesn't seem like a wise choice. These children are growing every day (my 8th grade daughter seems to grow about 3 inches a day :)), and they need their sleep. This truly does not seem like a good thing, but the best of a set of poor choices resulting from a lack of foresight.


Scholarship and College Counselors


This was a great report on the success that Rockwood enjoys in getting its students accepted into major, highly competitive universities around the country. The counselors do a great job in helping students learn about different universities, and then helping them prepare for the application process. The district has a college fair, where about 2000 students attend, including over 100 VICC students.


Additionally, the Athletic Directors at district high schools have done an excellent job in helping the recruitment process for our athletes. Rockwood students earned 72 athletic scholarships last year!


Individual Learning Center


This was a report given at the request of the Board. The ILC helps smart but troubled kids succeed in school. Their mission is to help students graduate who might otherwise have failed or dropped out. They were founded in 1996 and are up to 90 students now. Their goals are to increase student completion, attendance rate, and achievement. They have a low student/staff ratio and use a variety of teaching strategies to reach each student. At the end, they spoke of needing a small amount of room in their current building to be repurposed and set aside for them. This would give them additional instructional space for small classes and one-on-one counseling.


High School Intervention


There was a presentation about the High School Intervention policy, which is designed to identify and help those students who need extra help to succeed. Their presentation centered around the different strategies in place to identify those students in need, what kind of information they collect on them, how they communicate with parents, including Infinite Campus, and how they monitor these students' progress.


The presentation itself was very well done, and the program seems to be very well put together. Bill Adams had a wonderful comment at the end, where he praised the principals who take part in this program for treating each individual student as an individual and not a number. The adminstrators know each of the students by name, know things about them, talk with them, and so on. He thought this was excellent work, and I whole-heartedly agree with him. People are not numbers, even when taken in large groups. Individuals are their own person first and foremost, and only part of a group of people as a distant second. I echo Bill's praise for going the extra mile to get to know each student as a person. That's how trust and relationships are built.


Board Policy Updates


The biggest issue here was discussion the portion of the New Member Orientation policy that discusses the rules around absences from Board meetings. As current defined or interpreted, any member who misses three consecutive meetings is deemed to have abandoned their position, and the Board is allowed to replace them. There is an exception inthe case of excused absences, for things like a death in the immediate family, sickness, and so on.


The problem with this interpretation, as discussed at the meeting, is that there is no legal definition for what it means to have abandoned a Board position. Someone could miss a dozen meetings in a row, get replaced, come back, and potentially have a legal right to reclaim that seat. There is actually no legal recourse that the Board has against any of its members to remove them, short of them comitting a felony, moving out of the district, or a couple of other similar reasons.


The Board admitted there was an issue with this, but they couldn't come to closure on it. They'll discuss it again at a subsequent meeting.


Conclusion


And so ended a basically controversy-free Board meeting. I've recorded and represented the few contentious issues I noticed, and there weren't many. On the bright side, this upcoming meeting, October 4th, will be more exciting. The Electioneering Committee completed its work a couple of months ago, and their report is to be brought to the Board. This should be loads of fun for reasons I'll discuss after the meeting.


Thanks for sticking through this update. I know they're getting long, and I'm considering just referencing the BoardNotes document that Rockwood publishes and adding my comments as needed. That would make my job easier, but potentially make it more difficult for readers to follow while jumping between both documents. We'll see :)


-- bab