Way to go, Joe

SB19 passed this weekend, for which we should all be grateful.

SB19 unwound a previous bad law that was hurting every public education student in California. Some time ago, we wrote into law a "firewall" that prohibited using test scores to evaluate teacher performance. I won't debate why the law passed, but I will say plainly that I'm pleased it was repealed.

There are two big wins here. One is financial. The Obama administration has earmarked $4.5B for improving schools. One of the specific requirements to be eligible for that funding was -- you guessed it -- that the recipients had to permit the use of test scores in teacher evaluation. Even if it were only for mercenary reasons, it was a good idea to pass this law. The State of California simply can't afford not to be eligible for this funding.

The second reason this is good news is just plain common sense. Evaluating employees can be very difficult. Just because something is difficult doesn't mean you shouldn't try, though. In private industry, good companies devote tremendous effort to understanding who is contributing, who isn't making the grade, and what we can do to help those who are struggling to learn from those who are stars. Teaching is on of the most important professions. Wouldn't it stand to reason that we want to use every tool available to figure out who is doing well and who needs more coaching?

To be clear, I don't think test scores should be the be-all, end-all for evaluations. It should only be a piece of the puzzle. Still, this opens the door for a meaningful dialogue to evaluate employees on the basis of quantifiable data along side the more subjective observations. Thank goodness for common sense.

Relief... for Now

At tonight's Board meeting, Randy Kenyon presented the updated financials for the District. The good news is that we actually have a bit more than we thought. Through a series of favorable events, we've ended up the year with a reserve balance of $3.1M, or 7.4%. This is great, considering we were staring down a <3% reserve at the last meeting.

Here's the bad news. The big swings were due to a lot of one-time monies, so the deficit gets bad, quickly. Within 2 years, we'll be down to ~1.5% reserves if something doesn't change.

Hopefully folks are smart enough to focus on the long term picture, which remains bleak. "Hope" is not a substitute for "planning".

How To Choose a Board Member

Since I'm now running for the Board of Trustees, I've been thinking and talking to folks about what makes a good board member. Someone passed along this article, which I found to be particularly good. Enjoy.

http://www.greatschools.net/improvement/volunteering/school-board-candidates.gs?content=22&page=all

Covington After School Program

At this week's board meeting, one of the board items was to review a draft agreement under which the city would take responsibility for the after school programs that have traditionally been run by the PTA's. The plan was to hold a pilot at Covington this year, then roll it out across the district next year.

I was pretty surprised by the outcome. The city in fact will not be sponsoring the program, at least not yet. There were several factors that rolled into this decision:

No parents were included in the definition of the pilot program. The head of the Covington PTA and the head of the Site Council spoke to the board about the fact that the parents have not been included in the process. Under the old system, the PTA selected all of the vendors who held the after-school courses. They hadn't been consulted at all by the pilot study group, nor had the Site Council.

The revenue split has left a number of unanswered question. The city has said their program would be roughly "cost neutral" to the parents, but they also asked vendors for a 40/60 revenue split. Generally this means the vendors will have to charge more to take home the same amount of money, as the schools previously only took 15% to cover the cost of janitors, lights, etc.

The district wasn't being compensated at all for lights, utilities, janitorial, etc. This would have resulted in a cost to the district of approximately $8,000 per site.

There was not a list of actual offerings available. The city hadn't finalized which classes might be offered- they only had a sample list. This made some folks uneasy, to try to approve something we didn't have all the details on.

The city program wouldn't be ready for launch until ~28 September. Normally these programs are ready right after labor day. This would create a gap for parents of students at Covington who rely on the after school program for child care.

On the flip side, the city would bring to the program some disciple that it was agreed would be useful, in terms of formalizing the list of children participating (making it easier to deal with emergency situations), background screening / fingerprinting of vendors, etc. While those are valuable "pluses" to the program, there were simply too many unanswered questions about how the program would actually come together. After a pretty vigorous discussion, it was decided that the PTA would launch the fall program offerings. The city will go back to the drawing board and plan a pilot that will begin in January, which is a time when the existing programs normally turn over to new offerings anyway.

I think this was a good outcome. I'm glad to see such a strong emphasis on parental input to the program, and close scrutiny of how the finances would actually work out. While I'm sure it was disappointing to those who had been working on getting this going for September, it's better to get it "right" the first time it hits the schools, so it can be fully supported during the pilot.

Financial Emergency

Last week at the Board Meeting, there was a vigorous discussion about declaring a financial emergency. Among other options, it would give the administration the ability to freeze step and column movement for teachers.

I won't go into the specifics of the step-and-column discussion, but I will say that I believe this went as well as it could. For those who didn't attend:
- the district was considering declaring an emergency
- the teachers and classified staff have said they feel they are being effectively blackmailed
- the district has decided not to act until the Aug 17 Board meeting. If no meaningful agreement has been reached by that time to close the budget gap, the district will act unilaterally to address the shortfall

My thoughts:

1) I agree with the decision to consider the motion now. It is important that the employees understand that there is a very real problem here. In start-ups where I have worked, wage concessions and other austerity measures were better received when folks have some visibility and have been given the opportunity to chime in.

2) in this case, the teachers and classified staff will have an opportunity to make meaningful concessions at negotiating sessions before Aug 17. They've said they pride themselves on the working relationship. It is time to see it in action.

3) I also agree with the decision to postpone the final vote until Aug 17. Give folks one last chance to address the problem.

Let's all follow this closely and see where it goes.