Superintendent Search.

This morning, Worthington's Superintendent, Dr. Melissa Conrath announced her intention to retire at the end of 2011. Our district owes her our thanks for guiding us through some pretty rocky waters these last 5 years.

The selection of a Superintendent is the single most important responsibility that a local school board has. The Superintendent is the Chief Executive Officer of a 120+ million dollar organization with over 1000 employees with a crucial mission - the education of thousands of children. It is imperative that the Superintendent matches the priorities our community has told us they want for our district - Absolute Excellence and Exponential Impact. In addition, the Superintendent must be cognizant of the harsh economic times we are in and manage the district accordingly.  

Our search process will be open and transparent with many opportunities for community engagement and feedback. At any step in the process, Worthington residents should feel free to pick up the phone and call us or email us. In addition, the district will be setting up a virtual suggestion box on its web site so constituents can provide feedback on the qualities and characteristics desired in Worthington's next superintendent.

Our board has put together a tentative timeline for the search. These things are always fluid but in general, the search should go something like this:

Now Through Early March:  BOE interviews and selects search firm and develops documentation on what Worthington is looking for in a Superintendent

Early March Through Mid April: Search firm collects Resumes

Mid April through Early May:  BOE interviews candidates

Mid May: Finalists Selected

Mid May - Late May:  Finalists interviewed by BOE, administrators, staff, community leaders and possibly members of the public

Late May - Early June: Selection made or, if no suitable candidate is found, restart search

August 1: New Superintendent Starts.

Once again, our entire board welcomes community participation in this process.

Congressional Visit

Yesterday, the Worthington School District and Liberty Elementary School were blessed to host a visit by United States Congressman Steve Stivers (OH-15). Never let it be said that Congressman Stivers is afraid to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty as you can see from this short clip.

As the Congressman walked into the classroom, Liberty Elementary School first graders and fifth graders were engaged in a project on how to keep earthworms from escaping into the classroom, a vexing problem on the way to solving the broader problem of cafeteria waste presented by our district's superintendent. The theory is that the earthworms would eat the waste, but the earthworms instead chose to flee. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from our congressional visit, but I didn't expect to see a member of the United States Congress with earthworms crawling all over his hands, but as our guest  put it "My 17 month old daughter would LOVE this". Congressman Stivers spent about an hour with the kids, talking about how a bill because a law (Sorry Congressman, you'll never explain it better than this), what's it like to be in Congress and everything in between.

I think it's important for legislators to see what goes on in a modern elementary school. No longer do we always see 5 rows of 5 kids each listening (or not)  to a teacher in the front for hours at a time. Kids are engaged with smartboards, project(problem) based learning and are expected to demonstrate skills other than the mere regurgitation of facts. Liberty Elementary School, through its renewal proposal, is at the forefront of this mini-revolution. Sometime this year, "No Child Left Behind" will be up for reauthorization. Hopefully, through school visits such as this one, Congressman Stivers and his colleagues in Congress will see that each school has a unique personality and culture, each school can approach the standards differently and trying to force thousands of schools into a federal mold is problematic at best. 

Personal Financial Literacy in Worthington Schools

At the January 21, 2011 work session of the Worthington Board of Education, we had an in depth discussion about Personal Financial Literacy. At the heart of the discussion was whether or not Worthington should require a semester class in Personal Financial Literacy as a graduation requirement.

There is little doubt that the lack of personal financial literacy is a societal problem. Surveys show that kids graduating high school lack the skills and knowledge necessary to make good decisions with regard to personal finance at the very time in their lives when they need to start making those decisions.

Ohio requires the study of economics and financial literacy,  however, the law was non-specific as to what had to be taught and how much of it had to be taught. These decisions were to be left to local school districts, however, a committee was formed to recommend guidelines. Worthington elected to fulfill the requirements by modifying the graded course of study for American History and teaching the content standards over the course of a week or two at the end of the school year.

Instituting a new local graduation requirement is unusual, but not unheard of. Worthington requires one semester of speech, for example, even though it is not required by the state of Ohio. No one doubts the importance of personal financial literacy, the question is whether it rises to the level of importance given to other required classes.

According to the Jump$tart coalition, 4 states already require a semester of personal financial literacy with others considering such a policy. The third recommendation of the Ohio Financial Literacy Commission was to require a class.

What is the downside of requiring a semester of personal financial literacy. In Worthington, our high school students have a rich variety of electives that can spark an interest in all kinds of subjects. Mandating a semester of personal financial literacy would remove the opportunity to have selected one of those electives. Arguably, some students already know the subject matter and would therefore be wasting their time in the class. A Time magazine article suggested that students who have taken such a class are no better off than those that have not.

After considering all the data, I am leaning in favor of Worthington Schools modifying our graduation requirement to include a semester of personal financial literacy.  I believe that we must do all we can to arm our graduates with the knowledge necessary to make good financial choices as they start college or enter the workforce. The requirement would be able to be satisfied in a number of different ways, including economics classes, a business class or even our new mathematics class titled "Financial Algebra". Thanks to Ohio's new Credit Flexibility law, students that already have the knowledge would be able to test out of the requirement  and students would also have the ability to satisfy the requirement through independent study, online courses or internships.

Agree?  Disagree?  Discussion?

Why we need a five year forecast

Today's edition of the Columbus Dispatch brought the unwelcome news that the Ohio legislature is contemplating removing the requirement for a five year forecast and substituting instead a three year forecast requirement. The legislature correctly believes that the fourth and fifth years of the forecast are usually inaccurate, state revenues will always be unpredictable and therefore, there is no value in providing them in the forecast. I disagree. While it  is clear that forecasting 5 years out when the state is on a two year budget cycle is problematic, the value of the five year forecast goes way beyond this relatively minor issue.

For example, the entire expense component of the forecast can be predicted with an acceptable margin of error given the relatively stable nature of the workforce and the relatively narrow range of employee compensation and there is value in doing so. Forecasting through the entire 5 year period allows school districts (indeed, requires school districts) to work towards a planned levy cycle. Currently, Worthington is planning its next levy for 2011 or 2012, but the fourth and fifth years of the forecast are required to determine how large the levy should be and when the next levy would be.  The forecast serves as documentation for internal and external audiences that the next  levy will be required and why. Cutting the forecast to three years would make it more difficult to build community support and community understanding of a planned levy cycle.

Worthington is currently struggling to find a path to long term financial stability. One aspect of this project is to convince our constituency that change is necessary. The 4th and 5th years of the forecast are exhibit A in this effort. In addition, reducing the forecast period would serve to obfuscate the  cost of employee labor agreements and ongoing requirements such as employee health care.

Indeed, even the one component of the forecast that cannot be forecasted accurately, state revenues, derives benefit from a 5 year requirement. The permanent reimbursement of tangible personal property taxes, an issue of significant importance to many Ohio school districts only came on the radar screen of many school districts because the lack of said reimbursement caused  revenues to take a significant hit in the 4th and 5th year of current forecasts.

It's my hope that the legislature reconsiders this change.

Ohio School Boards Association Award of Achievement.

The Ohio School Boards Association (OSBA) is an organization that represents the 3000+ school board members in the state. Districts join OSBA using taxpayer funds. For large districts, the charge is 70% of the District's Cost Per Pupil, so in Worthington, that works out to $9261/year for 2011. For your $9261, OSBA provides a number of "free" services, some of which are significant such as providing lobbying support for districts and legal advice on school board related matters to board members.

OSBA also has many opportunities for "training". These are fee-based classes that school board members can take to become better, more informed school board members. I've attended a number of OSBA sessions, notably the OSBA Capital Conference, and have found them to be helpful in understanding various aspects of school board governance.

The other day, I received this communication from OSBA in the mail and it inspired this blog post. The mailer describes the OSBA "Award of Achievement". How does one get the "Award of Achievement". Simple. Enroll is as many OSBA taxpayer funded classes as possible.

Now, I'm a big believer in board members learning everything they can about the business of education in the state in order to best represent their constituents, however, I am not a fan of spending taxpayer dollars to do so. Every dollar that board members spend on themselves is a dollar that is taken away from the teachers, students and programs that they are able to offer. This mailer seeks to use the ego-boosting "Award of Achievement" as a way to artificially get board members across the state to take classes and spend taxpayer money. In fact, it goes beyond that. It also introduces the "Master Board Member" as one who takes even more classes over an extended period of time.

Now, don't misunderstand my rant. I'm not saying that all OSBA classes are bad or a waste of money, I'm ranting against OSBA's self-serving "Award of Achievement" and "Master Board Member" status symbols as a way to drum up business. By all means, board members should take classes if they feel the need to get educated on a particular topic, but they should make sure they are doing so for the right reasons. If OSBA wants to recognize board members for excellence, it should pick criteria that does not make profits for OSBA. Otherwise, it would be like Kroger issuing an award of achievement for buying a certain amount of groceries over the course of year which is to say.. meaningless.

Waivers for minimum school year.

The July 26, 2010 meeting of the Worthington Board of Education had an agenda item where the board requested a waiver from the Ohio Department of Education for the ability to hold classes at the middle schools for 177 days next year, rather than the 178 days required by the Ohio Revised Code (ORC 3313.48). I relunctantly voted with the majority to request the waiver after hearing from three of our middle school principals.

Why did we need to request a waiver? Ohio law requires school to be in session for 182 days but also specifies that up to 4 half days (or two full days) can be used for PTA conferences and record keeping, thus reducing the minimum to 180 days. The ORC further specifies that an additional 2 days can be used for teacher's professional development, thus reducing the minimum under Ohio law to 178 days.
The contract with the Worthington Education Association specifies that the teacher work year is "no more than 185 days". It further specifies the following time where classes are not in session:

2 days at the beginning of the year for district and building activities and teacher planning
2 days (one each) at the end of the 2nd and 4th reporting periods

There are 3 additional days that are not accounted for in the contract, one for professional development and two for PTA conferences. That leaves the minimum 178 days for student contact time.

The argument made by the middle school principals is that the 7 days already  included in the teacher contract but without classes being in session were not sufficient for the specific professional development activities required to assure the success of our middle school restructure. They further stated that they could not request the teachers attend sessions outside of the contract year (even if we paid them) and therefore, the only alternative was to request the waiver and provide an eighth day under the contract without student contact.

At the meeting, I asked if teachers could possibly use the Professional Collaboration Time that is already specified in the contract for this purpose, but again, that time was already spoken for.

I made the comment that American kids spend less time in school than most other developed countries. Here is the data:

Both President Obama and Governor Strickland have argued for a longer school year, however, most teachers unions will not agree to this without additional compensation and federal, state and school district budgets would not be able to absorb this additional cost. My objection to the waiver is that we make a bad situation worse by further shortening the school year.

Ultimately, our board did approve the waiver. While I had reservations, the unanimous backing of our middle school principals and our superintendent carry a lot of weight, but in the future, I'm hoping that we can work on other ways of allowing teachers the time they need to analyze student data without detracting from student contact time and within the constraints placed upon us by union contracts or, if teachers consent, to add a day or two to the teacher work year to dedicate to activities such as this.

Race to the Top

For my introductory blog post, I wanted to comment on the plans in congress to defund part of  "Race to the Top" in favor of a giveaway to the states to save teaching jobs.

I support President Obama's Race to the Top initiative. The effort  is an attempt to use a competitive grant process to get states to institute long needed reforms to public education. The program is documented here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_Top

In particular, Ohio will get access to RttT funds based on our willingness to implement the components specified in this application. In general, the President believes that we should ease limitations on charter schools, look for innovation in how teachers are paid and evaluated, develop common standards and assessments and expand the use of data (particularly long term data) in evaluating teacher, school and district effectiveness.

Sometimes, it seems that any attempt to objectively assess teacher performance and use such assessment to inform compensation and retention decisions is unacceptable to the National Education Association, which is why they issued a vote of "no confidence" for RttT. It is obviously inappropriate to measure a teacher's effectiveness solely based on test scores, but the RttT initiative is designed to figure out what works - and what might get the consent of the unions. I was disappointed in NEA's decision not to embrace the administration's initiative as there is no serious argument that can be made that the optimal way to pay teachers is using the sole criteria of longevity and degrees earned, two items which study after study have shown have little or no impact on a teacher's ability to get the job done.

Still, despite the NEA opposition, about 50% of Ohio's districts have signed on to such reforms. Why? Because the federal government is offering a boatload of money for districts who commit to implementation. How much money? Around 4,500,000,000 (4.5 Billion dollars) will be available and most of that will funnel down to individual school districts. In Worthington, we stand to gain around $500K over a 4 year period to do things we probably would have done anyway.

Now, along comes Rep. David Obey (D-Wisconsin). Rep. Obey is concerned that states may have to lay off teachers because of rapidly deteriorating state budgets so he inserted a provision into a war spending bill that would give 10,000,000,000  (10 billion)  dollars to the states with absolutely no strings attached, no requirement for reform and no need to implement any of the President's education agenda. Rep. Obey decided to pay for some of that 10 Billion Dollars by reducing the amount of the RttT initiative.

To recap, President Obama proposes spending 4.5 Billion Dollars in competitive grants to get states to implement much needed education reforms. States like Ohio and districts like Worthington engage with their unions and agree on a blueprint for implementation. Ohio submits a grant application and will in all likelihood get the grant. Rep. Obey and other congressional democrats then decide to offer twice the amount without requiring the reforms. It is as if you try to get your kid to do her homework by offering her a trip to Zoombezi bay and then, an hour later, telling her to forget the homework and Zoombezi bay, you're going to Disneyland!

I think Rep. Obey is being short sighted. He is willing to trade an important education reform initiative for a one year delay in state governments having to make the structural changes that are required to balance their budgets. That's not a very good trade. Race to the Top is an important step in the right direction. Rep. Obey and the House Democrats should leave it alone.