Neighbors

I try to keep this government thing informal. I have a conviction that government is just the community working together, not some third party.

So when I say "neighbors" I'm often referring to "fellow Loudoun County residents." It's an attempt to distance myself from the pedestal. Someone commented on a blog yesterday that perhaps the joint committee of the School Board & Board of Supervisors should include, in addition to the EDC representative, a "citizen representative." This strikes me as odd because we (School Board members and Supervisors alike) are the citizen representatives. None of us were appointed by a divine being, few of us have any affluence or professional expertise to speak of. Some of us are living paycheck to paycheck. I often describe myself as "just a dad who goes to a lot of meetings." This helps me to keep things in perspective.

When talking about how the schools should be run I am at my best when I'm just talking to a neighbor at the fencepost. So when I speak of "neighbors" I'm reminding myself and the people around me that everyone who lives in Loudoun is my neighbor, and I am their neighbor, and that shapes my vision of what I'm supposed to do as a School Board member.

Obama On Education

So tonight I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be a community college or a four-year school, vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma.

And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself; it’s quitting on your country. And this country needs and values the talents of every American.

Why recruiting?

Several neighbors have written to the Board asking why LCPS is still engaged in recruiting activities when the budget is frozen (at best) for next year. It's a fair question, one that several Board members asked earlier in the process.

The short answer is that while the recruiting budget has been reduced, the School Board's proposed budget does not call for staff cuts, it actually increases the number of school-based employees to accommodate increasing enrollment. LCPS must be prepared to send out offer letters to new teachers starting May 1st in order to get the most talented.

While there are no new central office staff positions in the budget, there will be 2,500 more children to educate and a new school opening in the fall. This will require more teachers, bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers, school nurses, aides, secretaries... In addition many LCPS employees will retire, move, resign, transfer or change positions and their positions will need to be filled. The proposed budget manages to absorb all of this new hiring without increasing class sizes by instead making cuts in many other areas.

If the Supervisors cut the budget deeply then elimination of positions is considered, but even then the positions are not interchangeable. An Assistant Athletic Director whose position may be eliminated may not be qualified for the speech therapist opening, so some recruiting is necessary to find a highly qualified speech therapist. I also hope that in the event of a RIF, the LCPS Personnel department would expend some energy helping the RIF'd find other employment.

Of course our hope is that with your encouragement the Supervisors will vote to fully fund the proposed budget (as strongly endorsed by the Economic Development Commission) and that the recruiting efforts will have been prudent preparation.

Business Leaders Endorse Full Funding

Link to Original Letter

Economic Development Commission
Loudoun County, Virginia

February 18, 2009

Dear Chairman York and Members of the Board:

As members of your civic and business community who care passionately about the quality of life in Loudoun, I am writing on behalf of your Economic Development Commission.

We believe your process has worked well this year in delivering a budget that you and the public can easily examine, understand, and act on with relative swiftness. The professional staffs and leaders of both Loudoun County Public Schools and Loudoun County Government are to be complimented in charting an effective course across treacherous financial waters. We strongly believe the County Administrator’s recommended budget for Fiscal Year 2010 retains an appropriate level of core services mixed with a modest amount of needed infrastructure at a proposed tax rate that is affordable. As your advisors, we would like to say to you, “Please adopt the County Administrator recommended overall budget.” [original emphasis]

It supports education and the growth in our student population that is still coming at the rapid pace of approximately 4.5% per year for the next five years. It supports important infrastructure commitments, such as our community’s financing commitment to bring Metrorail to Loudoun. It keeps our community’s service levels high enough to satisfy the expected demands of citizens who need the caring help of government more than ever. And, it recognizes the importance of preparing for future recovery and growth by continuing the progress in economic development that you began last year, all while reducing the actual tax amount paid by residents. We are certain all of these investments in our community now that prepare us for the future will payoff as Loudoun becomes nationally recognized as the kind of community that is among the most caring, desirable, and well led places in America.

We enjoy serving Loudoun and hope that this advice is useful to you in moving ahead so that we can focus on the next challenges for a great community.

Sincerely,

John B. Wood, Chairman
Loudoun County Economic Development Commission

Comments, Jan 13 2009

My comments from the dais on January 13, 2009. Congratulations to Mr. Geurin along with a little teasing, outlook for the year ahead.

Comments, Feb 24 2009

Comments regarding board members' responsibility to communicate well with members of the public, and points about LCPS' operational efficiency .

Text your comments

A teacher showed me something very new and incredibly interesting that I am now experimenting with. It's called Wiffiti, and it allows anyone to send text messages to a central bulletin board.



I'm sure that folks will send the occasional message during the week, but I imagine it being even more fun during a school board meeting or during the upcoming public comment sessions on the budget. People sitting in the audience can comment on the topic currently being discussed. Give it a try!

2/24/09 Agenda

Hopefully we'll finish in time to see Obama's address to Congress.

1. Recognitions
• National Professional Social Work Month
• School Board Clerk Appreciation Week
• School Board Appreciation Month
2. Award of Contract to replace Loudoun Valley Grandstand: $477,500
3. Discussion of proposed School Board Goals
   

AP Test Scores

The College Board released its 5th Annual AP Report to the Nation a couple of weeks ago, and it opened my eyes about Loudoun's level of achievement. The headline that first got my attention read that Virginia scored third nationally among states in AP achievement, behind Maryland and New York.

The measurement that College Board uses to compare districts is the percentage of students graduating in that year who score a 3 or higher on at least one AP test (College Board maintains that a score of 3 is a predictor of college success).

• Nationally, 15.2% of graduating students scored 3 or higher on at least one AP test.
• In Virginia, 21.3% of graduating students scored 3 or higher on at least one AP test. College Board published a separate summary of Virginia's 2008 AP Scores.
• Loudoun County's number: 34.6%.

You can view other details about Loudoun AP Test Scores online at the LCPS website, as well as many other testing statistics.

Two Questions of Efficiency, Three Answers

Is LCPS efficient?

This simple question has two meanings, and three answers.

The first meaning, the one that my colleagues and I think of when we ask it, is the "throwing money away" version: Does LCPS waste money by leaving the lights on at night, paying people to do nothing, buying more textbooks than are used?

LCPS has a lot of measures in place to ensure that money isn't wasted. There are annual audits, last year a major independent efficiency review, accounting controls and procurement procedures. There is a full-time energy efficiency team. Budgets are strictly adhered to and every year a surplus is returned to the County coffers. That said, LCPS is imperfect, just like every organization, and the potential for this kind of inefficiency is in proportion to the size of the organization. There are inefficiencies and it is up to everyone to try to identify and improve them.

The second meaning, the one that most people think of when they answer, is the "stuff we don't need" version: Do classrooms need electronic whiteboards? Are the security systems worth the money? Should we teach spanish to elementary school kids? Do we need full-time Assistant Athletic Directors?

The answer to this question is funny because it is both universal and singular. On one (universal) hand we all, every one of us, think there are items or programs or positions that LCPS spends money on that it shouldn't. I have my list. I'd venture to say that even the Superintendent has a list of his own, since the Board inserts items into the budget or initiates programs that he doesn't recommend. Getting the majority of the Board (and a majority of the community) to agree on even a single item in this list is an entirely different matter, which is what makes the answer entirely singular: your list will not match anyone else's exactly. What is extraneous to you is critical to your neighbor.

This is the challenge that the School Board has in pitching its budget to the Board of Supervisors. Each Supervisor, just like every involved citizen, says "LCPS can get by with less money by cutting this list of people and programs that I feel are unnecessary." The irony is that this leads the Supervisors to agree in principle that the LCPS budget should be cut, because they never have to take the step of agreeing on what parts of it should be cut.

The third answer, conveniently, encompasses each of the other two. It's an umbrella answer and one that I cite repeatedly: after all the "extra" positions, programs and inevitable waste, how does LCPS spending on a per-student basis compare to other area districts, and how does the resulting education that students receive compare to those districts? There are a hundred different ways to judge the educational outcome, pick the ones you like. I encourage people with kids in the system to judge based on their personal experience. As for the per-student spending, LCPS is 7th out of 10 in the Washington region, and was ranked 11th nationally by Forbes magazine in 2007 for "bang for your buck." That's a pretty convincing answer to me.

Advocating to the Supervisors

The Board of Supervisors is now wading into the budget process. Public hearings are scheduled for:

1. Wednesday, February 25, 2009, 6pm
2. Thursday, February 26, 3:30 p.m. and 6:30pm
3. Saturday, February 28, 10 am and 12:30 pm at the LCPS Administration Building

Wednesday 2/25	Thursday 2/26	Friday 2/27	Saturday 2/28
6:00pm	3:30pm 6:30pm		10:00am 12:30pm
County Admin Building			LCPS Admin Building

Sign up to speak in advance by calling 703-777-0204, or email your comments.

Many people ask me how best to advocate for the School Board's proposed budget to the Board of Supervisors. Here's what I tell them.

1. When you write or speak, direct your communication directly to the two members who represent you... your district representative and the at-large member. Let them know in which district you live. This makes a very big difference.
2. Keep it short. A one-minute statement or two paragraph letter is just as effective as one five times as long. Don't worry that you can't include every salient point. Other people are making them too, they've heard it before. It's not about convincing them so much as about being counted.
3. The Supervisors can only determine how much funding LCPS receives. They can't determine what to spend it on. If you plead with them to save sports or small schools or special education, they'll look right back at you and say "not my decision."
4. One thing that local education advocates frequently believe but don't mention is that the system uses its funding efficiently. If you do believe this (Forbes Magazine does), say so. The Supervisors don't hear this very much.

Small School Restructuring

The Washington Post carried a story today about the potential closing of small western elementary schools Middleburg, Lincoln, Aldie and Hillsboro.

Tiny School Battles Long Odds

The school system expects flat revenue in the coming year and 2,500 more students. So officials are considering whether it makes sense to keep open Middleburg Elementary and three other elementary schools in the county's farm-speckled west -- Aldie (115 students), Hillsboro (142) and Lincoln (147). If they closed, students would be routed to newer and perhaps less intimate schools.

But that scenario seems unlikely. Even though closures were listed only as contingencies should school funding drop precipitously, community opposition has been deafening.

Several School Board members have suggested that administration of the four schools could be more efficient, perhaps by assigning principals to more than one school.

"I think that they need real restructuring if they're going to stay open long term," said board member John Stevens (Potomac). "They cannot be sustained at this level."

I'm not going to get into the emotional back-and-forth on this issue. If the Supervisors approve our Board's proposed budget, we won't come anywhere close to closing these schools this year.

I just thought I'd expand on my quote a little bit. Advocates for these schools feel that their schools are targeted annually. Everyone is weary of the debate, but it will keep happening until it is settled permanently, either when the schools are closed or when their cost structure is in line with the rest of the County, which would require staff cuts that parents would never agree to. Nevertheless I keep thinking that there must be a middle ground somewhere between these two resolutions. There is a question in my mind.

Could the five smallest schools in Loudoun County, which have a combined enrollment of 606 students, be run as charter schools using the equivalent per-pupil dollars as the rest of the district (approximately $7.8M)?

I think the answer is yes, but I also think that the staffing wouldn't look much like it does now. There would be a single shared principal, shared administrative and technology support. Probably some combined grade levels.

At the same time, the parents of those students would have more say in how the schools are run, and not feel like what they don't have was due to a conspiracy of the East. A savvy businessperson might even sell shares in the charter school organization to the parents of those children and the members of the community who support the schools.

There are a thousand details that I'm brushing over, of course. There are a dozen significant hurdles. I'm not making a proposal. I'm just asking a question (the one in bold, above). If the answer is no, then maybe Loudoun County can't afford these schools. If the answer is yes, maybe it's something we should begin talking about.

School Calendar Editorial

Published this week in the Lynchburg News Advance:

So commerce remains king at the Assembly and the education of the state’s students comes second.

The law requiring Virginia’s school systems to delay the start of school until after Labor Day is a relic that should be abandoned, just as were the slates that students once wrote on. The law has outlived its usefulness. It’s time to give control of the school calendar back where it belongs — to the local school officials who know what is best for their students.

Tonight's Agenda: Grading Scale & Budget Cuts

Tonight's recognitions:

• John Duellman (PFHS), Virginia's Assistant Principal of the Year
• John Brewer (DHS), Loudoun Times Mirror Citizen of the Year
• National School Counseling Week
  
• Career and Technical Education Month
  

At tonight's meeting the Board will discuss three items relating to the grading scale. The second and third items simply direct the staff to provide recommendations to the Board on implementation of a 10-point grading scale and weighting of honors and dual-enrollment college courses. Those recommendations will be made and voted on at a later meeting.

The first grading scale item to discuss is whether to retroactively weight AP courses by giving them a 1.0 point boost. Currently those courses grant a .7 boost to the student's GPA. This will be voted on immediately because the change needs to go out on transcripts right away if it is to take effect at all for courses taken in the Fall 2008 semester. There is a concern among some parents I have heard from that this would rearrange hard-won class rankings. The Superintendent is investigating the impact on class rankings. Fairfax is also implementing the AP score weighting increase retroactively to the beginning of this school year.

After all this is done we'll have more motions on the plans for implementing budget cuts below the level that the Board has requested (referred to as Tiers, as they are segmented at 5%, 10% and 15% budget cuts). Expect to also see a motion clarifying the meaning of these Tiers to the Board's future adjustments to changes in revenue projections.

Furloughs Aren't the Answer

There are apparently some folks out there who believe they have stumbled onto a magic bullet bullet... furlough days. Superintendent Hatrick included one, and then two furlough days in his "last resort" suggestion for cutting most drastically into the school budget. Some board members will suggest tomorrow night that those furlough days be implemented earlier to save programs, and I've also received two anonymous emails encouraging me to support a furlough day every month in the next year.

I will not support furlough days as anything but a last resort. Creating a furlough day is a pay cut for every employee. The Board has already voted to freeze LCPS employee salaries next year while increasing health care costs, a defacto pay cut. Implementing furlough days or further salary reductions is a way of requiring one small sector of our community, LCPS employees, to shoulder the burden of this financial crisis alone. It is a statement that the community wants to pay less but receive the same level of service. It is not the spirit of teamwork that our nation and our community needs.

If the community wishes to pay less, it should accept a diminished level of service. This is true not just for schools but for law enforcement, libraries and road improvements. The painful, harmful cuts that the Board will need to implement if the school budget is reduced should be borne by the whole community, not just the LCPS employees through further salary reductions in whatever form.

Four Messages the Community Wants to Hear

Each month our Board receives a little pamphlet titled "The Board" from an organization called "The Master Teacher, Inc.", whose website doesn't list it among their publications. It's a little trifold and has concise mini-lessons. They're sometimes interesting, sometimes trite. Overall, I like getting the reminder that all of the wisdom about how to do this job well doesn't come from within our borders.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the extracted "Four Messages" of the subject line with you and ask for your feedback:

1. "We are completely and unwaiveringly committed to service the interests of students."
2. "We are committed to exercising care and good judgment in managing the resources with which we are entrusted."
3. "We are committed to conducting our business in an open, objective and professional manner."
4. "Future-focused planning and commitment to constant improvement."

I have a stack of these things here on my desk (I'm a bit of a pack rat).
Other titles:

• Managing Pressure and Special Interest Groups
• Why You Need to Develop Standards for Budgeting
• What Are Your Aspirations?
• Seven Attitudes Held By Effective Board Members
• Harnessing The Benefits Of Board Service
• The Board's Role in Planning A Bond Issue
• Five Operating Principles for Effective Board Meetings
• What You Need to Know About Student Testing And Assessment
• Why Frequent Retreats Are Good For Your Board
• The Board's Role In Contract Negotiations
• Six Steps to Building Strong Colleague Relationships
  
• Seven Attitudes Held By Effective Board Members
  

Bank of America Student Leader program

Just something I received in the mail this week that may be of interest...

Selected High School Juniors & Seniors will:

• Participate in an 8-week paid summer internship with a local nonprofit organization
• Take part in an all-expense-paid week in Washington, DC at our Student Leadership Summit with hundreds of other community-minded students from the US and UK
• Learn how nonprofits, government and business can partner to create a positive impact in our communities

For information: BankofAmerica.com/neistudentleaders
Deadline for application: February 20, 2009

Free & Reduced Price Lunches & Breakfasts

I found a good reminder in the Algonkian Elementary newsletter this morning:

Free and Reduced Price meal applications are available all year. Anytime there is a change in employment status or wages, a new application may be filled out and sent to Food Services for approval. Please note that a social security number is not required for approval. This process is a year long process not just at the beginning of the year.

Please feel free to call the Food Service Office with any questions at 571-252-1010.

In a time of layoffs and cutbacks, that's a very good reminder. The Free and Reduced Price meal program is funded by the US Department of Agriculture.

Another Church takes up Collection for Scholarship

This coming Sunday, February 8th the Unitarian Universalist Church of Loudoun takes up a collection for the Unsung Educators Scholarship, which I set up to benefit the children of LCPS employees who work in the custodial, food service, facilities, transportation and warehouse divisions. The service includes a story for all ages, and in honor of this special collection this Sunday's choice will be The Custodian from the Black Lagoon.

The Elaine Avington Griffin Unsung Educators Scholarship honors the role that custodial, facilities, food service, transportation and maintenance employees play in the health and safety of our children every day by awarding $5,000 scholarships to their children for post-secondary education. These aren’t the teachers and principals that we usually think of when we talk about educators. They aren’t in the classrooms and their names don’t come home on paper in backpacks. Yet with every good meal, every safe bus ride, every day spent in a clean building that is comfortable summer and winter, they give our children their best chance to learn. These unsung educators are the people who literally create Loudoun Schools’ Climate for Success by making our schools safe and healthy.

10-Point Grading Scale

This morning the Board's committee on Curriculum & Instruction meets to discuss the grading scale again. I expect to see action on the issue soon. Now that the majority of Board members have publicly stated their position in favor of the scale it is time to set about implementing it.

I withheld judgment on the grading scale for nearly a year while arguments were made for and against, as data was gathered and presented. I carefully considered arguments on both sides and ultimately, after reading the study published by Fairfax County, decided to support the 10-point grading scale.

Evaluating student performance is an inherently subjective matter, there is just no getting around it. Even with a precision subject like math, where the answer is presumably either right or wrong, two students with the same ability and effort may receive dramatically different grades based on different factors. Some factors they can control, such as showing their work or using a particular approach to solving. Many more factors they cannot control, such as such as a teaching method, their health or parent's ability to assist. Comparing two students even in the same classroom is inherently subjective and to some degree unfair. Comparisons of two students in different classes, schools, districts, states and countries become increasingly innacurate with each expansion of range.

Just as we have always done with students, this country is on a real tear right now to grade its public schools. Not only are there a dizzying number of state and national-level standardized tests but every month there is an attempt by yet another publication or organization to rank schools and districts across the state and nationally. I used to write a new blog post every time one of them came out. It quickly became apparent to me through their different criteria the impossibility of truly getting an objective comparison between districts. The same is true with students.

This impossibility of getting a measurement system that one can definitively call the "correct" system makes the argument that a 10-point scale is better than a 7-point scale absolutely beside the point. They aren't right or wrong, they're just different. No grading system is fair, none is the best. They're just different and each needs to be taken for what it is.

The reason I favor a change to a 10-point scale is that while it is no better or worse than a 7-point scale, it is the standard of the majority of districts in Virginia and around the nation. In a chain of comparisons that it may be impossible (and even undesirable) to standardize, this is one link that can be made consistent.

A "92" in classroom A will never be the same thing as a "92" in classroom B just due to different teachers. That score doesn't have the same meaning at High School A as it does at High School B, and forget about it being the same between counties and states. But at the very least we can all call a 92 an A-minus. With time, as more aspects of public education (links in the chain of comparisons) are standardized, this one consistency will mean more than it does now... the chain itself will become more standardized. To think that we'll ever have a truly fair, objective and predictive evaluation system is folly, but that's no reason not to make improvements where we can.

What is the School Board's Job?

I received an interesting challenge in an email this evening, from someone unhappy that I would not overrule the Superintendent on a matter of curriculum:

If you cannot influence curricular issues, what DO you do? What school issues does the board want to handle...the ones Dr. Hatrick puts in front of you, or the ones a real, in the trenches daily teacher asks you to work on...with great hope in our elected officials?

I responded:

You ask what our job is. I happen to have a copy of the state law pinned in front of my desk as a constant reminder. It is section 22.1-79 of state code. Nowhere in that law does it give us the power to decide the best teaching methods, and nothing in our qualifications prepares us for it. We hire people expert in their field to do these things and ensure that they are done well. Sometimes they disagree with each other, at which point the senior person's view must prevail. If the results of that person's work do not meet the community's standards then the Board finds someone else to do it. I assure you that if the School Board got involved at the level you suggest in every matter of disagreement among educational professionals, you would be very unhappy with many of the decisions.

If you were under the impression that by being a Board member I get to set everything straight, let me correct that view. I give Dr. Hatrick plenty of feedback about how he should do his job, but it is ultimately his to do until I (together with at least four colleagues) decide that someone else should be doing it. Sometimes I approve of the execution, sometimes I do not, but even when lining up all of the things that I would personally change, overall I can see that LCPS is an efficient, high-achieving (albeit imperfect) district that serves its students and community well. Ultimately that is my job, to ensure that broad end result. Until a majority of the Board feels that this end result is not being achieved, we will continue to give the task to the existing leadership.