Conference Report #1: Food Back Pack Program

With all the time we spend focused on Loudoun County's challenges, sometimes it is helpful to get perspective by considering the challenges that Virginia's small rural school districts face.

Northwood Middle School in Smyth County serves a very impoverished student population. Six times as many families live below the poverty line as in Loudoun County. Over half of the Middle School's 200 students receive free or reduced-price meals from school, and for many of them, those are the only good meals that they eat. Students frequently come to school on Monday morning and ask for two breakfast servings because they've had little more than soda and chips all weekend. Sports teams competing on the weekend are fed prior to games to ensure that they've eaten that day.

Nearly three years ago, school counselor Betty Webb instituted the Food Back Pack program in response. It is an attempt to help the poorest students get good nutrition over the weekend when they're away from the school cafeterias. Local charities donate backbpacks and foods. Peanut butter and crackers are a staple. Canned foods and juices are also common. During the week, the school's Work and Family Studies classes work on an assembly line to fill the backpacks. On Friday afternoons, students pick up the backpacks on their way out the door and return them empty the next week to repeat the process. The cost of the program is $20,000 to serve over 40% of the student population for the year. Over 60% of last year's sixth grade class participated.

Through one program requiring no new employees and little administrative overhead, children get a backpack full of food every weekend at a cost of about six dollars each. Students are involved not only as recipients but as volunteers. This is a good example of how schools sometimes get involved in more than just the three Rs and in the process save the community a lot of money. Schools are often best able to identify and assist chidren because that's where children spend most of their time when they aren't with their own families.

Richmond Summary

We've just wrapped up the Governor's Conference on Education here in Richmond and I'll be headed home soon. I attended a total of six sessions today on a variety of topics and in the coming days I'll provide my report to you on each of them.

1. Teacher Candidate Supply & Demand
2. Food Back Pack Program
3. The Content Literacy Continuum
4. Environmental Sustainability
   After School Mentoring for Middle School Girls
5. Limited English Proficiency (LEP) caucus of Virginia School Board members and Administrators.

In addition to the sessions I attended were four presentations given to attendees from across the state by Loudoun County administrators. They were:

1. Foreign Language Instruction in Grades 1-6: Its Impact on Secondary Programs by Syzette Wyhs
2. The Loudoun County Teacher Cadet Program by Cara LeGrys
3. Principal Partnerships - Professional Collegiality by Ilene Banker & Jan Emerick-Brothers
4. The Claude Moore Scholars Program by Shirley Bazdar

Finally, I sought out the presentation materials from Harrisburg City Schools on their lessons learned from a successful Elementary & Middle school redistricting. It was funny to introduce myself to the gentleman who gave the presentation, who shook his head and laughed when he learned I was from Loudoun and said "There isn't anything I can teach you. You guys do this every year." Hearing that, seeing the interest in the LCPS presentations, and knowing that I can bypass so many seminars that Board members from other areas of the state are clamoring to get into because their districts don't have our level of expertise, renews my awareness the Loudoun Schools are well respected across the state for professional excellence.

With all of the challenges that we face, all that we struggle with, we are in many ways envied by School Boards and communities near and far. We have much to be thankful for.

2008 Governor's Conference on Education

I'll be in Richmond today and tomorrow for the 2008 Governor's Conference on Education. I'm sure that it's held in the middle of summer to avoid conflict with other obligations, and yet there are two other events tonight that I'll miss in order to be there. I'm sure that I'll find some interesting to report on, just as I did last year:

2007 Report #1: Energy Conservation
2007 Report #2: Is Green Design Right for your Schools?
2007 Report #3: An Evaluation Process for Program Improvement
2007 Report #4: Designing High Schools for the 21st Century

Parent Recognitions

I'm frequently asked by parents how they can help to improve the school system. I speak to them about Successful Advocacy at LCPS of course, but a parent that I met last week gave me an additional idea: sponsoring recognitions for teachers and principals who are providing the kind of education that you think is important. LCPS recognizes its own in different ways, and Parent-Teacher organizations sponsor various de rigueur recognitions for teachers and staff, but I'm not aware of any Loudoun-focused school-independent groups who honor people based on exceptional performance.

The person who suggested this to me was speaking in particular about special education, a very challenging field in which parents and administrators often struggle to agree on what the needs of each child are and how to meet them. Imagine if all of the special-education advocate parents in Loudoun County nominated the principals, vice-principals, teachers and teacher assistants who demonstrated the best practices for providing special education services and recognized the best of them with awards and publicity. It would be a great way to show what success looks like, to thank the people who deserve it most, and to positively influence change throughout the county. So often people take the adversarial approach, and there is sometimes a need for that, but too many times it becomes the first approach. Once you're in adversarial mode it's tough to escalate your efforts without escalating the tension.

So if you're involved and trying to improve the way that LCPS handles a the issue that's most important to you, think about creating a county-wide recognition for the people who do it best.

You might also think about honoring your favorite School Board member. ;-)

Autism Summit

Last week I joined a meeting of the Loudoun County Autism Network. They are working right now to promote an Autism Summit taking place next Monday July 27th at Lansdowne. The purpose of the summit is in part to build support for VA House Bill 83, which would mandate that Health Insurance companies in Virginia pay for services for individuals with Autism.

During that meeting several parents expressed frustration with getting LCPS to provide the kind of teaching that they feel their children need, but several also expressed their great appreciation for the work that their kids' teachers and principals do. One parent also asked me if there is a recognition program for exceptional special education teachers. To my knowledge there is not, but it sounded like a great idea. It's an idea I'll talk more about in a later post.

Potomac/Sterling Community Survery

As you may have read, Loudoun's Department of Planning "has undertaken a community outreach effort in the Potomac and Sterling communities that engages citizens in a public dialogue that captures their concerns, needs, and desires and gives them an opportunity to suggest creative solutions that can improve the quality of life within their neighborhoods" with an initiative called the Potomac-Sterling Outreach.

As part of this effort the department conducted an online survey of residents regarding their community. Preliminary results from the survey (PDF) were released this week. I spoke to the man in charge of the study, Miguel Salinas, on Wednesday morning and he stressed to me that because this is a self-selected group of respondents the survey is by no means a scientific poll. Nonetheless there were a significant number of respondents and their opinions are meaningful and representative of different folks throughout the communities. I thought I'd highlight the school-related results for you here.

1. "Stakeholders were asked to identify the places, people and characteristics they valued the most within their neighborhoods and the larger community. Top among these were: 1.) Proximity and accessibility of residents to jobs, services, and retail, 2.) The sense of community, 3.) The amount and quality of the area’s parks, trails, and open spaces, and 4.) Quality public schools and libraries, in that order."
2. "Schools are identified by stakeholders as the area’s biggest asset. Stakeholders noted the quality of the public schools and their dedicated staff and liked the fact that neighborhoods are organized around schools, providing opportunities for children to walk. They also value the smaller school sizes - feeling they are not as overcrowded as the public schools immediately to their west."
3. School issues were not among the top concerns listed.
4. Respondents noted the "need to maintain the quality of schools in the area and to upgrade older facilities such as Park View High School and Sully Elementary School;

Suggestions from some respondents:

1. "Collaborate with schools, community leaders and local businesses to create a sense of community."
2. At least one "Collaborate with schools, community leaders and local businesses to create a sense of community."
3. Expand opportunities for use of schools as community spaces
   
4. Maintain and renovate older schools such as Sully Elementary
5. Playground renovation at Guilford Elementary
6. Offer full-day kindergarten for children

This process is far from over, and the report specifies that "Citizens and stakeholders will continue to have an opportunity to provide written comments via e-mail at any time." The email address is Potomac_Sterling@loudoun.gov.

Public Facilities Planning

As I mentioned last week, Supervisors and School Board members of the joint committee were assigned homework this month, plowing through even more reading material than usual. My friends and family who rib me for not reading books should be careful, I probably rjead more words than any two of them combined in any given week.

In this case, we're reading through chapters of the Revised General Plan (feel free to follow along yourself by reading chapters 3, 6-9 and 11). I'm also staring over at the coffee table at the Capital Needs Assessment, which is smiling back at me with its bright yellow glossy cover. I thought I'd jot down some notes as I read through it so that the key information isn't buried in these books.

• The location and design of public buildings, and schools in particular, are of primary importance, play a special role in neighborhoods and communities, and are focal points and social and civic anchors. It is important that their location and design set the highest possible standards. Direct investments into currently developed communities and areas where development is planned.
• [Within the Suburban Planning Area] Locate compatible civic/public uses (e.g. governmental, educational, religious, recreational, and other uses) within High Density Residential areas to help form a neighborhood center around which the residential uses are located and for the efficient use of facilities and services.
• [Within the Transitional Planning Area] Recreational uses, along with civic uses such as churches, community centers, elementary schools, human service offices, library branches, senior cafes and other like uses constitutes the predominant component of non-residential uses within Villages and are necessary to promote a self-sustaining community.
• Schools: Coordinate with the County to identify suitable sites based on the Revised General Plan and its land use and growth policies in concert with the School Board's standards and levels of service as adopted by the Board of Supervisors.
• Schools: Locate at the focus at the attendance area to provide safe and convenient access for students
• Schools: Plan, design and coordinate school-related open space, athletic, and other facilities with the County's parks and recreation programs and facilities along with community services to function effectively as multi-purpose facilities.
• [Within Towns, Villages and Joint Land Management Areas] All planning for schools must focus first on community.
• Families endure the trauma of shifting school boundaries as new students are assimilated into the school system.
• The supply of sites has not kept up with demand or with the school system's construction timetable.
• The County will acquire school sites in advance of the School Board's recognized short and long-term future needs when these sites are not obtained by dedication from developers to minimize school transportation costs and to structure future planned growth.
• Public school sites should be located at the focus of the attendance area and will provide safe and convenient access for students. All public schools will be linked to adjacent neighborhoods by sidewalks or trails on both sides of roadways and crosswalks, and where possible, linked to greenways or tails.
• Whenever possible, new public schools in teh Rural Policy area will be located in or immediately adjacent to the Existing Villages, towns and Joint Land Management Areas (JLMAs).
• The central premise in this [Suburban Community] design approach is that the focuse should be on designing communities rather than individual structures.
• [Village] community cores should include public facilities and amenities such as schools, churches, parks and not big-box commercial uses.

That's plenty for today. If you're following the current school location conflicts between the School Board and the Board of Supervisors, or between the County and Purcellville, you will find plenty of ammunition in here for every side. Before trying to use that ammunition against the other side it would be honorable to first list all of the points that support the opponent's position. Acknowledging that every side has merit, and every side has weakness, might lead to the cooperation everyone has been yearning for.

Student Generation Factor

I learned a fun new term this week: Student Generation Factor. This is the number that the LCPS planning department uses to predict the number of students that will come out of a future residential development.

Single Family: .83 students per home
Townhome: .47 students per home
Multi Family: .28 students per home

Let's say a future development has 100 single family homes. LCPS would predict that 83 students would come from that development. Where does LCPS get that number? From the triennial census.

But wait, there's more! How old are those students? According to LCPS Planning, 51% will be Elementary age, 22% will be Middle Schoolers and the remaining 27% will be High School Students. Here's what else I know... under the current plans, LCPS will build High Schools to house 1,850 students each, Middle Schools at 1,350 students each and Elementary Schools with capacity for 875 students.

Let's have some fun with our new math today. If I understand this correctly, according to the Approved Residential Projects list, there were 41,712 units in approved or by-right developments which have yet to be permitted in Loudoun County as of January 1, 2008. So without further approvals that's another 41,712 homes on the way (more than that actually, because it only lists developments of 20 or more homes, but let's stick with what we know).

Housing Type	# Units	SGF	# Students
Single Family	11,161	0.83	9,264
Townhouses	12,468	0.47	5,860
Multifamily	41,712	0.28	11,679

That's a total of 26,803 kids who have yet to arrive (to provide a sense of scale, one year ago our student population was about 54,000). So how many new schools does that call for?

School Type	% of Students	# Students	School Capacity	# Schools
Elementary	51%	13,670	875	16
Middle	22%	5,897	1,350	4
High	27%	7,237	1,850	4

So that's a total of 24 new schools. Most of them will be south of the Greenway (Rt. 267) or West of Rt. 15. Again for scale, we currently have 75 schools, most of them with smaller capacity than the models listed here.

There are a number of caveats to this. There are factors will bring the number down. Not every approved or by-right unit will ultimately be built, for instance. There are other factors that will send the number higher, such as newly approved densities and developments under 20 units that didn't make onto the report. And then there is the question of how soon these various developments will be built.

There's also the caveat that I may be interpreting something incorrectly so feel free to check my math, correct my logic or provide me with different documents. I'd be happy to post updates.

Reforming the Minority Student Achievement Advisory Committee

I'm on a little roll talking about minority student achievement this week. Today I thought I'd fill you in on an upcoming decision by the School Board to reconstitute the Minority Student Achievement Advisory Committee starting this fall.

At our June 24th meeting we received a recommendation from the administration to create MSAAC Bylaws to restructure and revitalize the organization. Until now, MSAAC has had a steering committee made up of whoever showed up. Aside from MSAAC President Herb Bryan no steering committee member has children in Loudoun Schools, and Herb's youngest graduated last month, leaving no members with students at LCPS.

While I have sat in on two or three MSAAC steering committee meetings, I haven't ever been able to attend a regular MSAAC meeting because they take place on Thursdays, a night that I commit to my family. As it has been relayed to me though, the meetings are universally frustrating for everyone involved. No parent, administrator, civil rights activist or School Board member has ever relayed to me their satisfaction with an MSAAC meeting. Each has a different perspective on why things don't go well, but at least there is universal agreement that dramatic change is needed.

According to the briefing our Board received, it was MSAAC President Herb Bryan who suggested that MSAAC have Bylaws, and the administration responded by modifying the Bylaws of another successful group, the Loudoun Education Alliance of Parents (LEAP). Full disclosure: My wife Lori is LEAP's Vice President for Programs.

The basic structure is this: the Parent-Teacher Organization at each school selects two members to represent it as delegates to the monthly MSAAC meetings. These delegates elect officers from among themselves. The delegates are responsible to represent the concerns of their schools to MSAAC, and report back to their schools on the information they learn at MSAAC. The full text of the Bylaws are available online, starting on Page 80 of our June 24th Board Book (PDF).

Since they were published last month, I have received some feedback regarding the proposed Bylaws from minority advocates, and I hope to receive more. I expect that with some possible minor modifications the new Bylaws will pass at our August meeting, and an exciting new chapter will begin for MSAAC this fall.

Shaker Heights Problem

Yesterday I wrote about the persistent achievement gap in schools, a and not for the first time. Along the way as I have sought to learn more, I heard about a topic called the Shaker Heights Problem. Shaker Heights, Ohio is a Cleveland suburb with a sizeable middle-class African-American population. Despite eliminating all of the previously assumed causes of the achievement gap between African-Americans and their white counterparts, the gap persisted. This is almost universally true across the US in rich and poor areas, in urban, rural and suburbia.

From a 1998 Washington Post Story:

Most troubling to educators is the growing consensus that the achievement gap now seems to largely defy the explanations that were once offered.

Some researchers say that wide income differences between blacks and whites, and school segregation -- once cited as crucial factors in the achievement disparity -- are now believed to play relatively small roles in the current gap. Family structure appears to be even less of a factor, research has shown. And even school spending is no longer seen as decisive, given that the once yawning disparity between the average amounts of money spent to educate black and white students has been all but eliminated in recent years. Also, most research has thoroughly discredited the notion that the gap reflects innate differences between the races.

Five years later John Ogbu, a Berkley anthropologist specializing in minority education issues published a study called "Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb."I found an interesting essay about the book in the San Francisco Chronicle called "Why Fixing the Schools Isn't Enough." The summary is that this is consistent with the multi-generational after-affects of ethnic oppression.

Ogbu points to the Buraku people of Japan as a comparison. They are ethnically identical to other Japanese. During Japan's feudal ages, the emperor designated the Buraku to be the laborers, the lowest class. To this day, the Buraku lag behind their Japanese counterparts in academic achievement. Yet when they immigrate to other countries, where they are seen simply as Japanese and not Buraku, the the gap gradually disappears. Their school achievement rises.

Third-generation descendants of Koreans who had been forced into labor in Japan in the last century are among the poorest-performing students in Japan. But Koreans who immigrated to China in search of a better life are the highest-achieving minority group in China.

Ogbu's book was controversial, and some academics fault the research. Ultimately he concluded that it was the failure of parents, and not the school district, the led to the gap. Even critics of his book seem to agree that the fundamental difference between these students is not at school but the degree to which parents oversee their own children's education instead of leaving it entirely to the school. If I understand these reports correctly, they conclude that what the schools need to do more than reach out to the students is reach out to their parents.

I also found the following National Public Radio stories, also from 2003, to be very informative. If you only listen to one, listen to the second story, which profiles a suburban Ohio High School that has successfully eliminated the gap.

NPR: Ohio School Narrows Black-White Achievement Gap
NPR: Tackling the Achievement Gap at Reynoldsburg High

I don't have any conclusions to draw from all of this, I'm not going to recite everything that LCPS does to close its own achievement gap or make recommendations for what it should do. I'm just putting some resources out there that have been interesting to me and which may interest you also.

Tomorrow I will write about a current LCPS proposal to dramatically change the way in which minority parents receive information from and provide input to LCPS regarding their children's education.

Keep the Achievement Gap?

An interesting piece by Washington Post Education Columnist Jay Mathews caught my eye today, titled Forget About the Achievement Gap.

Why don't I like talking about the achievement gap? Because we use the term in a way that suggests narrowing the gap is always a good thing, when that is not so. Here are some ways the gap could narrow: Low-income scores improve but high-incomes scores don't; low-income scores don't change but high-income scores drop; low-income scores drop but high-income scores drop even more. In each of those cases of gap-narrowing, something bad is happening.

In case you weren't aware, the Achievement Gap Mathews refers to is the persistently lower academic performance of kids who are poor or who identify as Black or Latino. I've written about this before here and here. Mathews' vehicle for this exploration is a study called High-Achieving Students in the Era of No Child Left Behind published a month ago by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The study concludes that

Gaps are narrowing because the gains of low-achieving students are outstripping those of high achievers by a factor of two or three to one. The nation has a strong interest in developing the talents of its best students to their fullest to foster the kind of growth at the top end of the achievement distribution that has been occurring at the bottom end.

Mathews concludes:

Why not curtail all this achievement-gap talk? Let's focus instead on the progress of every child, no matter if she or he starts the year two grades behind classmates or two grades ahead. All children deserve a chance to climb as high as they can.

This is an interesting topic for Loudoun County families, so many of whom are well educated and affluent and expect the best education available for their high-achieving offspring. We also have a significant number of our neighbors struggling to get by on little education of their own. Some of their kids do very well in school, and others struggle.

Maybe it is because I'm not a professional educator or academic that Mathew's approach utterly baffles me. By suggesting scenarios where "low-income scores improve but high-incomes scores don't" he links achievement and income and posits that income and achievement necessarily move together. This may be a historical reality, but it should not be a future assumption. He even treads dangerously close to social darwinism by tying his statements to the "best students" phrasing of the report to his own "high income" grouping.

There will always be a top tier and a bottom tier. People have different abilities. Nobody desires to hold back the top tier until the bottom tier catches up. But it is our moral responsibility to try to create a world where the tiers are no longer passed down through generations.

Capital Planning

Last week's joint meeting between the Board of Supervisors and the School Board was pivotal, I think. For the first time several members of the public showed up to speak, and more were in the audience. A majority of the elected officials and significant representation from the senior staff of both boards were present. It wasn't a huge leap in raw numbers, but it was definitely a different kind of feeling in the room.

At the meeting each elected member was handed a sizable stack of information regarding capital facilities planning, which is drawing keen interest in at the moment given the conflict between the two boards on the acquisition of school sites.

In that packet is a single page that I am finding to be of particular interest. It is the 2008 Capital Facility Standards, which shows that the County has formulas for deciding how many of any given type of public facility are needed based on the county's population.

For instance, the Standards show that for every 25,000 residents there should be a Fire & Rescue Station. With our current population, that translates into 10 Fire & Rescue Stations. We have 11, so previous Boards of Supervisors have met that need. Interestingly there is a separate category for "Fire & Rescue Station West," one for every 10,000 residents. According to the Standards we need four of them, but we have eight. The standards also call for a "Community Park" for every 10,000 residents. That would mean 28 countywide. There are five.

Now I don't want to turn this into a battle between constituencies about who's getting their fair share or who's representative is bringing home the bacon. Everything doesn't grow at equal rates, the system of planned developments and proffers has skewed the distribution somewhat over time and other fiscal and political realities are at play. Instead, reflect that our community's true priorities are reflected not in campaign literature or rhetoric from the dais but in the choices we have made as we have grown so quickly. Until recently Loudoun adequately planned for school capacity, education is a very high priority of our residents. Look over the following non-educational Standards and how they have been met (or not) and see whether you can piece together the priorities:

Where we have what we need, more or less:

Capital Facility	Need	Actual
Animal Shelter	1	1
Health Clinic	1	1
Senior Center	3	3
Respite Center	2	2
Sheriff Substation	4	3
Fire & Rescue Station (East)	10	11

What we have too little of:

Capital Facility	Need	Actual
Libraries (by square feet)	6	4
Mental Retardation Residential Facilities	13	7
Mental Health Residential Facilities	19	12
Regional Park & Ride Lot	12	1
Community Park & Ride Lot	57	16
Recreation Center	4	1
District Park	11	1
Community Park	28	5
Juvenile Detention Center	2	1
Youth Shelter	1	1
Transitional Homeless Shelter	3	1
Emergency Homeless Shelter	3	2

Where we have more than the Standard calls for:

Capital Facility	Need	Actual
Government Office Space (sf)	281,638	706,232
Western Fire & Rescue Stations	4	8

What we just don't have:

• Juvenile Probation Residence (1)
• Teen Center (1)
• MHSA Adolescent Treatment Center (3)
• MHSA Adolescent 16-17 Group Home (3)
• MHSA Adolescent 12-15 Group Home (1)
• Juvenile Assessment Center (1)
• Transitional IL Residence (1)

Something to think about.

Unsung Educators Scholarship News

The Cascades Connection wrote a very nice story about the Unsung Educators Scholarship this week. It being the middle of summer, most of us aren't thinking much about scholarships and other school-related business, but the work goes on.

Assessment and Appraisal

In my Property Matters post last week, I made a statement that prompted Supervisor Stevens Miller to write to me in defense of Loudoun County Assessor Todd Kaufman. Pretty soon thereafter I received a strikingly similar letter from Supervisor Kelly Burk's aide at Ms. Burk's behest. The statement I made that got the most attention is below:

The assessor is not trained in appraisal methodology and is subject to no accountability for his figures.

Here is Mr. Miller's response, quoted with his permission:

In fact, Mr. Kaufman has informed me that he is, himself, a licensed and certified Virginia appraiser. Further, he holds the Certified Assessment Evaluator designation, which is the highest designation available from the International Association of Assessing Officers. His professional and academic credentials include considerable experience and education in the art of appraisal. Owing to his work, Loudoun county has one of the highest scores in the state for the accuracy of its assessments when they are compared with actual sales.

I had no intention of bringing Mr. Kaufman into this personally. I used his title instead of his name throughout my original blog post. Now though, in having two members of the Board of Supervisors bring him up by name in fervent defense, he becomes the object of attention.

I checked it out with the Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation, and Mr. Miller is correct that Mr. Kaufman is a Certified Residential Appraiser. This is one of four appraiser license categories under 18VAC130-20-10. Under this license, Mr. Kaufman "may appraise properties of 1-4 residential units regardless of transaction value and non-residential properties with transaction values up to $250,000." In other words, by law Loudoun County and LCPS would be unable to hire him to do an appraisal on the Rouse property, which requires a Certified General Appraiser's license.

So I stand corrected regarding Mr. Kaufman's certification, but not in terms of his ability to provide a professional appraisal of the Rouse property. He is unqualified. Yet the Board of Supervisors changed the future of Loudoun County school children on the basis of Mr. Kaufman's evaluation.

Regarding my statement that Mr. Kaufman is "subject to no accountability for his figures," I was referring to the figures valuing the Rouse property, not to assessments generally. I was unclear last time, so let me be more specific now. The LCPS appraiser must be prepared to defend his appraisal of the Rouse property in a court of law it were to come to condemnation proceedings. Mr. Kaufman only needed to defend his Rouse property numbers to nine part-time politicians who were predisposed to believe him because he was giving them the answer they wanted to hear.

As you read this and as I write it, it can be difficult to keep the terms "appraisal" and "assessment" separate. Mr. Miller himself alternates them in his letter, and I believe that Mr. Kaufman may be using them interchangeably as well in defending himself to the Supervisors, further confusing the situation. Yet assessment and appraisal are entirely different practices. Further, while Mr. Kaufman is certified in appraisal (albeit not in the type of appraisal required for the Rouse property, as noted above), he did not use proper appraisal techniques when providing his spreadsheet to the Board of Supervisors.

I have no question that Mr. Kaufman is qualified to *assess* properties, and that his work is held to very high standards and has achieved noteworthy success. Nonetheless, Mr. Kaufman's numbers on a $11.5M/$9.5M/$5.7M/$2.6M (take your pick) property influenced a public decision when by state regulation Mr. Kaufman’s qualification to *appraise* properties does not extend to non-residential properties of a value over $250,000.

School Board Financial Disclosures

I'm a big believer in open government. I believe that the people who administer the government are doing work assigned to them by the citizens, and that those citizens have a right to review the work done by the elected officials and civil servants. This is generally done by the press and public interest groups, but it can also be done by any individual. I wrote a bit about the impact on the Loudoun School Board of the Freedom of Information Act back in January.

In addition to this law, which guarantees citizen access to almost any document produced in the course of public business, there are financial disclosure laws that govern Virginia elected officials and even many volunteer board members. I've been filling out these financial disclosures (also termed Statements of Economic Interest) annually for several years, first as a member of the Loudoun Industrial Development Authority, then when appointed to the Loudoun Social Services Board, and now again as a School Board member.

The Virginia State and Local Government Conflict of Interests Act (2.2 ch. 31) governs these financial disclosures. In the words of this act:

...the citizens are entitled to be assured that the judgment of public officers and employees will be guided by a law that defines and prohibits inappropriate conflicts and requires disclosure of economic interests.

Requirements for financial disclosure are laid out in 2.2-3115. Disclosure by local government officers and employees. The code dictates that certain officers and employees "shall file, as a condition to assuming office" (and annually thereafter) "a disclosure statement of their personal interests." Even candidates for office are required to file financial statements under this section of code.

There are special sections just for School Boards, including 2.2-3108. Prohibited contracts by members of school boards, which primarily dictates that:

No person elected or appointed as a member of a local school board shall have a personal interest in (i) any contract with his school board or (ii) any contract with any governmental agency that is subject to the ultimate control of the school board of which he is a member.

Further, section 2.2-3119: Additional provisions applicable to school boards, and employees of school boards basically prevents School Boards from hiring anyone who "is the father, mother, brother, sister, spouse, son, daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law or brother-in-law of the superintendent, or of any member of the school board."

Of course all of this disclosure does the citizens no good if they don't have access to these records. A quick internet search brought me to the Secretary of the Commonwealth's Conflict of Interest page, which states:

If you are interested in the disclosure of local officers and employees, contact either the clerk of the governing body or school board.

So, since I've gone to all the trouble to fill one out several times over now, and you're interested enough to have read to the bottom of this post, I invite you to review my own Statement of Economic Interest. The current Statement is on file with the Clerk of the School Board, Ms. Christine Coleman, who can be contacted at (571) 252-1020.

Property Matters

The past two weeks have seen a flurry of activity around buying land for new schools. This is a complex subject and very sensitive. It's sensitive because although I am a big believer in open government, property negotiations cannot be done in the public sphere.

Without writing a post longer than any reasonable person has time for, I cannot explain everything here. What I will do instead is point you to press accounts of the situations and then give you my own rundown of the numbers in question. There are two properties at issue. One is referred to as the Rouse property, the other as the Lenah property. Between them, there is enough space for two High Schools, two Middle Schools and an Elementary School. That's room for nearly 7,000 students.

The best story regarding the Rouse property is by Leesburg Today. It is the most complete, covers the most important facts and gives voice to the most perspectives. The Loudoun Times Mirror published a short piece on the Rouse property that doesn't give you much insight but is a fair summary. Unfortunately it is the Washington Post's abysmal reporting that will get the widest circulation. The Post made a few changes to the online version of its story yesterday, but not before the original text went to print in this morning's Loudoun Extra. I have been assured that corrections will be printed in Sunday's edition but it's a sure thing that few will read them, so I have written also today about how the Washington Post got it wrong.

Finally, the Post ran a short piece on the School Board's contract for the Lenah Property yesterday but you'll get more information in the Times Mirror's earlier stories about parents in favor of and parents opposed to the Lenah site.

So now let's clear some things up. The biggest question is obviously about money. Here's how it breaks down:

#1: The assessed value of the Rouse Property is $2.6 million. That's the basis for the taxes the owner pays.

#2: The county's assessor, the guy whose job it is to set the assessed value, told the Supervisors recently that the property is worth $5.7 million. That's according to the assessor's own spreadsheet and a June 27 memo by Supervisor Jim Burton. Each of these is a public document.

Now the first thing you need to ask yourself is... why is the property is assessed at $2.6 million when the County's Assessor puts the value at $5.7 million?

#3: LCPS's attorneys hired an appraiser. The appraiser puts the value at $9.5 million, writing in a June 25 analysis that "the value of the Rouse property may be understated in our appraisal."

Why is the assesor's valuation radically smaller than the appraiser's valuation? Stated simply, the assessor evaluates thousands of parcels of land quickly. The appraiser evaluates a single parcel of land extensively.

Why take the advice of one over another? In a government acquisition, the appraiser is required to conform to Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice in order to make his appraisal defensible in a court of law should condemnation proceeding ensue. The assessor is not trained in appraisal methodology and is subject to no accountability for his figures. (Retracted, see Assessment and Appraisal post for details).

#4: Based on the appraisal (which came nearly a year before the assessor's evaluation) LCPS reached an agreement to pay $11.5M, more than the appraisal value but less than the cost of any other course of action including condemnation or an alternative property site. The extra $2M is called a premium. From the appraiser:

"Acquisition premiums are frequently paid by condemning authorities to avoid construction delays and condemnation proceedings. The time lost waiting for the results of a trial and the need to find alternative education facilities during the interim are vastly more expensive. As a result... premiums of 15% to 20% may be justified as an additional cost.."

The appraiser also provided an opinion letter to LCPS in response to the Assessor's analysis. This is the document that you need to read, and it is publicly available.

"Finding a tract like the large Rouse parcel with services at or near the property at a value of about $54,000 per acre is nearly impossible. Finding an available site in any one of the major mixed-use planned developments in the same general area... could cost triple or even quadruple acquisition costs[sic]. The benefits of acquiring the Rouse tract at $11.5 million for a single closing for all three schools compared to the potential alternatives noted above make the Rouse acquisition both prudent and financially responsible." (emphases mine)

These documents are in the possession of every School Board member and Supervisor. You can get copies for yourself with a request to the public information offices of either board. I stand by the School Board's decision. Based on the advice of the people who we pay to provide professional, independent, objective advice, I believe that the actions of the Board of Supervisors on the Rouse property will ultimately cost the taxpayers of Loudoun County millions of dollars.

The Washington Post Got it Wrong

In another post today about the recent clash between the School Board and the Board of Supervisors over the Rouse property, I called a particular story published online yesterday and in print today a case of "abysmal reporting" by the Washington Post. Here's why:

Problem #1:
The story in print reads:

"...the county's assessor had estimated that the land was worth dramatically less, $2.6 million."

The online story was corrected to say:

"the county had assessed the land at dramatically less, $2.6 million."

Do you see the $3.1 million difference between the two statements? No, you don't, because the Post failed to report what Leesburg Today and the Loudoun Times Mirror did, that:

According to a memo by Burton, the county assessor said the land is worth only $5.7 million. (Times Mirror)

and

"[County Assessor Todd] Kaufman's evaluation of the land placed the value at approximately $5.5 million." (Leesburg Today)

Problem #2:
The story in print reads:

Supervisors also said they were troubled that the district's offer included a $2 million bump to sweeten the pot for the owner.

The online story was corrected to say:

Supervisors also said they were troubled that the district's offer included an additional $2 million.

Do you see the difference here? The story in print implies that LCPS just tossed in an extra $2M as a favor to the owner. As it is the corrected version does nothing to explain the reason that there is a $2M "premium" on the purchase price, which is explained in my Rouse Property post.

Problem #3:
The story in print reads:

They ordered the school district to return to the owner and renegotiate the price.

The online story was corrected to say:

They asked the school district to return to the owner and renegotiate the price.

See the difference? Ordered vs. Asked. In case you were wondering, the School Board does not work for the Board of Supervisors. We work for the citizens who elect us.

Problem #4:

"County officials also have been frustrated with the cost of the schools being built by the district."

If we take at face value that "County officials" (though we don't know who they are or whether they constitute a meaningful group because this has no citations) may be frustrated, but let's remember that LCPS builds it schools for less money per student and per square foot than any other school district in Virginia. The Post should have noted this.

Problem #5:

"The acrimony comes despite a concerted effort by the supervisors to ease tensions between the two bodies."

This one phrase manages to be at once unsupported, biased and wrong. As written, one would believe that the poor, mild mannered supervisors are a put-upon bunch. At the very least the Post should note that members of the School Board have also worked to bridge the gap. In any case, while a few Supervisors have put forth an effort to improve the working relationship (Burton and Buckley get special credit here), some have actively aggravated the situation. There is certainly no "concerted effort."

Problem #6:

Also Tuesday, the board voted to take an inventory of the available properties across the county that might be suitable for schools."

As accurately reported by Leesburg Today:

"In anticipation of the summer discussion Miller presented an item at the board meeting requesting an inventory of land parcels appropriate for school uses located in the Dulles Suburban Policy Area."

Problem #7

"The hope, they said, was to provide more information to Loudoun residents and to the board, which they said is often informed about land purchases at the last minute."

The truth is that the Board of Supervisors only started paying attention at the last minute. This contract was signed by the School Board in March and engineering studies sent to County Staff in April. This is worth noting, don't you think?

March 11th: "The School Board approved authorization to sign a contract for the purchase of a parcel of land for a middle school (MS-6) and high school (HS-8). This land is 173.69 acres at the intersection of routes 621 and 617."

April 22nd: "The School Board approved conveying the findings of the engineering study of the 174-acre tract known as the Rouse property to County staff so that bond funding can be directed to the appropriate LCPS land acquisition account."

I'm a fan of this country's commitment to a free press, and generally I think our local reporters do a good job with the resources they have. Against that backdrop, this is an example of exceptionally bad journalism and the damage that can do to the public's ability to critically assess the job that its representatives are doing.