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
- Science Initiative Report
- Library compliance with 4th Cycle MSIP
- High School Schedule Update
- High School Schedule Parent Component Project Team
- Distribution of Cell Tower Income
- Electioneering Regulation (0380) Report
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 :)
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