Physical Education- Thinking Outside the Box

After being alerted to a couple of bills being considered by the MA Legislature this week about making Physical Education mandatory from K-12, I was able to put together some testimony for submission, and delivered it both in person and in writing.

Before I cut and paste it, a few caveats.

First and foremost, I strongly support PE, and it's larger context, health and wellness, as critical items in our curricula and in the lives of our students. I have voted numerous times over the past ten years to ensure that our PE, Health and Wellness offerings are expanded at every level, and become an integral part of our student life and academic trajectory.

Secondly, the proposed bills did not allow for a waiver process through which students participating in school organized sports could "waive out" of the PE requirements, by dint of their efforts in the sport. In reality, the amount of physical activity involved in training for any of the sports offered at the High School far exceeds the minimum mandated by these bills. If we are to face the 21st Century with anything approaching a competitive attitude, we need to find ways to celebrate what our kids are doing at times and in places that go beyond the walls of the school. We have kids who are putting in 12 hours a week training for cross country, we have kids competing at the state level in activities like martial arts, fencing, dance- all without
getting any real credit from the schools.

Thirdly, the offering of a waiver for participating in school-sponsored sports, which could potentially affect the 60% of Nbpt High School kids doing sports, would free up time in the schedule to allow them to take more classes, especially at the AP and Honors level; it would free up PE teacher time to offer a broader range of electives in areas not currently being offered. In short, it makes great sense.

My testimony:
Testimony on H 1053, S 216
September 20, 2011
Bruce Menin, Vice Chair Newburyport School Committee

I want to thank you for the opportunity to offer testimony on the Bills before you, H 1053 and S 216. I appreciate the effort that has gone into addressing many of the issues contained in those bills.

My name is Bruce Menin, and I’ve served as an elected member of the Newburyport School Committee for ten years, the last two as Vice Chair. Please note that this testimony is not offered as the “official position” of the School Committee as a whole; neither does it reflect the opinion of any other School Committee member. I do believe, however, that my tenure on the Committee, my experience as a teacher, and my role as the parent of two students in the public school system give me a level of practical experience, some clarity and hopefully wisdom on the substance of the bill.

I urge you to oppose the statutory mandate of Physical Education courses as part of the curriculum for students; better yet, I encourage you to amend the bill to allow school systems to grant PE waivers in the high school if a student is participating in organized scholastic sports.

In my ten years as a School Committee member, I have always strongly supported wellness curricula at every grade level, and fully endorse the value of vigorous physical activity at every grade level. My concern with this bill stems from what I see as a growing problem- and has become an “on-the-ground” reality for parents and students. The current requirements for PE at the High School prevent a growing number of students from taking additional courses that would better prepare them for college, and for competing in the global economy. Locking in the mandate suggested by this bill will only compound that problem for us, and society. We teach to each student according to their gifts and challenges, and yet we have had to tell more students every year that because of the stagnant Chapter 70 reimbursement formula, and the burden that places on cities like Newburyport to either find new money every year, or make cuts in our school budgets, we cannot staff and cannot fit into their schedule courses like AP Chemistry or AP Physics. Already, existing requirements for PE make scheduling very difficult; the mandate imposed by this bill compounds that problem. In Newburyport, 60% of students at our High School participate in inter-scholastic sports, so we are talking about a significant number of students impacted by this bill.

There is a very bittersweet irony here. Parents in Newburyport, and other communities now pay to have their kids participate in sports. If we were willing to value those sports as a substitute for a token Physical Education requirement of 30 minutes of physical activity a day, we would enable students to put together an academic schedule that offers greater challenge and rigor.

We have also found that the scheduling intricacies of accommodating these PE courses in High School often results in the insertion of a study hall in a preceding or succeeding semester so that the gym requirement is met. In effect, we limit the academic choices some of our students can make so that they can play volleyball during the school day, and then further compound that problem by giving them a study hall so that their schedule aligns with a gym class the following semester. And, we essentially ignore the clear value of those sports that they are doing, whether they are sanctioned or not.

A way to address this would be to allow School systems to offer Physical Education waivers in those circumstances where students participate in a school sanctioned or organized sport. While that wouldn’t begin to address an ancillary problem- we have students who are competing at the highest levels in non-school sanctioned sports or physical activities- swimming, martial arts, dancing- who receive no credit for that, yet are still required to fit Physical Education into a High School schedule.

My best guess, after ten years on the School Committee, is that a waiver would not only free up critical schedule time for academic courses, but it would also enable current PE teachers to offer a wider range of wellness electives as part of the overall curriculum at the high school. I believe those courses will be as critical as anything else we do during the school day. In fact, it might free up PE instructors to offer more diverse PE courses during the day as electives- fencing, or wrestling, yoga or dance. Allowing waivers for student athletes actually encourages the kind of physical activity this bill purports to value. It builds on what is already a strength in many school systems.

Telling a student athlete, who works out 2 hours a day to compete at a school sponsored sport, or a non-sponsored sport, that we can’t work AP physics into their schedule because they are required to take PE so that we can ensure they get 30 minutes of physical activity per day is simply not the way to prepare MA students for the future. Offering them half a credit for that participation, with a mandated requirement that they also take a full HS PE load along with it is not a courageous step into the 21 Century.

In the ten years I have been on the school committee, we’ve gone from offering a free public education, to one that is forced to charge fees for participation in virtually every extra-curricular activity, including organized school sports. That is also not a constructive direction to be going in. To essentially ignore the value of that sport as part of the academic record of a student makes little sense; it misses an opportunity to build a well-rounded student taking a more rigorous and flexible schedule.

The idea of a waiver around Physical Education for High School students, contingent on meeting a clearly proscribed set of alternative options, has been a part of the California State Board of Education Statutes for several years.

We can do much better than this, by allowing school systems to grant waivers from the traditional PE courses to those students who often exceed the minimal standards of 30 minutes of activity by participating in inter-scholastic sports. A PE waiver for student athletes is sensible, it celebrates their accomplishments on the field and in the gyms while enhancing their ability to take the kinds of courses that will change their lives, and probably our own, in the future. Please consider amending this bill to allow for waivers, or not sending this bill as constituted to the full legislature for consideration. I ask this as the parent of a student athlete- celebrate her achievements on cross country fields, and allow her to take the classes she feels will give her the future she wants. Allow our school system to offer those classes. A simple waiver crediting her for the work she has done after-school- work which requires her to exceed the minimal expectation of 30 minutes of activity a day by 400%, six days a week throughout the school year, would accomplish both.

Thank you.

Back on the Radar Screen

I have been uncharacteristically quiet for the past year or so. It feels like time to get back into the blogging business. People have expressed concerns about the issues and challenges facing the schools in Newburyport. Local media is not always able to, or inclined to present nuanced issues in all their complicated and messy glory. Other commendable local blogs are helpful, but don’t focus on the particular issues affecting schools regularly. A real public conversation about the schools is usually limited to a brief period before School Committee meetings; and thus far, even that is available only to those attending the meeting. The rest of the debate is held in blog posts and through letters to the editors. Those places provide great vehicles for expressing an idea, but leave a lot to be desired as a way to bring new and fresh ideas to the table for vetting.

The community should have a place to go for a dialogue about the long-term implications of the challenges we face. We need information, context, explanation, and a place to challenge assumptions and raise concerns about our schools.

Schools are no less important to me, and the larger community, than they were when I last posted in 2008. Some of the issues are old, some of the challenges we face as a community are new, and unprecedented. I’ve always believed that if you give the community all the information they need to make a decision, you significantly increase the likelihood they will make a good, compassionate decision. Solid, factual information is truly the down payment on the democratic process, and impending elections are always a good time to ante up.

Over the coming months, I will attempt to clarify some of the complex issues facing our schools and the community. Too often, local news reporting fails appreciate the larger context in which issues arise. Sometimes they do not, or cannot examine issues that cannot be easily rendered in black and white. I hope this blog will help. I will continue to strive for balance in the presentation of those issues; but again, I strongly believe that transparency rules, and that an informed community will get it right most of the time.

I write as a member of the community, as a parent, and as one of seven elected School Committee members. I do not write on behalf of the full Committee; nothing I say should be construed as representing the deliberations of the full Committee. I’m on my own here, folks. Again. Thanks for taking the time to read. And to think for yourselves. Those two practices make Newburyport a far better place to raise our kids.

Check back in the coming weeks, y'all. Let the conversation begin.

Learning outside of the classroom...

Summary paragraph: In which Menin shares some knowledge gained in two close encounters of the out of classroom kind.

Sometimes, when I tell people that I'm the only candidate to run for re-election in ten years, they look at me like I am really stupid, or a glutton for punishment. I don't think I'm either.

I spent a great deal of time talking with two people over the past two days who have no intention of voting for me; and probably will cast no ballots in the School Committee race at all this year. Both are parents who have children in the schools; both recognize that the cuts of the last 6 years have had a drastic impact on the quality of education and additional services their children receive.

Both questioned the reconfiguration; one from the creating another layer of bureaucracy perspective, the other questioned the wisdom of the groupings of children and the long bus rides.

There are no easy answers to these questions; nothing glib, or fatuous. The truth is, as the Superintendent and the School Committee enter into a budget cycle focused on student achievement, and insist on a greater degree of scrutiny and accountability, we will eventually be in a position to know. Certainly, the trends will become clear by the end of this year; and they will be scrutinized by the Administration, the SC and the community.

The heartache of the chaos of the last few years has compounded the level of mistrust built up by previous administrations and SC's both have a basis in reality. There were previous Committees and administrations who did not practice transparency. As one of a few voices demanding it, and challenging the status quo, I believe the combination of this crisis, and the arrival of a thoughtful, focused set of administrators things, in this crisis, have changed the whole deal.

The other candidates running for School Committee have raised a number of points that deserve clear and direct response; probably from me, as the only incumbent and the only one seeking re-election.

Have we been the most effective communicators of the change and new level of accountability that we hold ourselves to?

• No. We need a far more strategic and multi-pronged approach to communicating with the community, and a sharply tailored message so they can get the sense that business as usual went out the window two years ago. We also need to have a strategic approach to bringing various community members who don't currently identify themselves as "stakeholders" into the schools, and creating value for them. This is a fair criticism.
  

How will we hold ourselves accountable for improved student achievement?

• By setting goals for the SC and the Superintendent that are public, specific and measurable. By assessing progress on these goals in a timely (quarterly, bi-annually, etc.) fashion, in public session, with public input.
  

Is it possible to make constructive changes in the schools that will impact on student achievement in positive way, even in the midst of a budget crisis?

• Yes, but it will be impossible to take the schools to the next level without an influx of cash. This is a time of crisis, and a time of opportunity-- we have the responsibility to reconsider every aspect of how we educate our children, and think about that in new, dramatic ways. It is almost exactly as Dickens said, "These were the best of times, and the worst of times." These are the times we live in, and we are challenged to do better than we have.

Is the idea of reconfiguration on the table?

• Speaking only for myself, we need to look at every program from the point of view of how it promotes and sustains student achievement, and have a clear, understood and communicated framework for determining whether or not we are accomplishing what we set out to do. I know the School Committee and the Administration will analyze every scrap of data available to help us understand what is working, and develop strategies to change what isn't. From this point forward, no idea should be dismissed out of hand without considering it from this perspective.

Are meetings conducted efficiently, and with focus?

• To be fair, have to say that when I started, SC meetings were conducted efficiently, had focus, and lacked transparency and any genuine mechanism for encouraging community involvement. I can remember many meetings when there were more people on the payroll of the schools than citizens sitting in the room. With greater transparency, there has been a very interesting transition occurring- we no longer have to scratch for facts, information is available that allow us to actually accomplish due diligence around an issue. Where in my previous experience, to put it diplomatically, the information available to the Committee never made it all the way around the table, and what was made available always seemed to limit our options, that is not the case any more. We get what we need, and because of that, spend much more time than before in deliberation. We also, especially in the last 12 months, with the budget crisis and the reconfiguration, made a commitment to hear every single opinion of every single person with an opinion before deciding. We did. We may very well be one of the few elected bodies that uses the option of suspending our rules to take public comment or engage in a public conversation before a vote.

Can the meetings be more tightly run? Yes. More efficiently? Probably. More democratic, more accessible to the public- I don't think so. The School Committee will likely adopt some goals that will outline another important mechanism for utilizing the talent and the input of the community to help us make informed decisions.

It won't be easy. The most difficult part, I think, won't be setting attainable student achievement goals, and reaching them. It will be communicating clearly to the community two important things: this isn't the School Committee and administration of four years ago, and that's a blessing; and that what we have here is a truly municipal problem, that can only be solved by the City changing how business is done. There is so much more sunlight at the Administration Central Office than there ever was. At City Hall, the nooks and crannies of the public process, particularly around creating non-school budgets, live in the shadows. Until that changes, we'll keep trying to treat only the symptoms, the schools; and ignore the real problem-- that we are a municipality operationally stuck in the 1950's. In many ways, I think the Schools, which still have a long way to go, have set a good standard over the past two years for an open and transparent budget process.

My Position: Institutionalizing a culture of Community Engagement in the Schools

Summary paragraph: In which Menin considers the important cultural changes that have occurred since he joined the School Committee, and lays out a path for continued change that engages the community.

If you think the School Committee deserves a failing grade when it comes to maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the community these days, you should have been around six years ago. Then again, maybe you were; if so, skip over the next few paragraphs and rejoin me when the text is bolded.

When the School Committee wanted something, like a new High School or a new Elementary School, there was no group better in the city than they were at hammering home the point. As one of my opponents says, "there was a newsletter out every two weeks from the School Committee!" Fair enough.

But when the community wanted something, like answers, or information; they became quahogs. Tight as could be. You want in on hiring a Superintendent? We'll arrange a dialogue where she'll answer pre-arranged questions, and then you get to write down questions, give them to us, and we'll decide which ones to ask. You want to know what kind of a package was given to the departing former Assistant Superintendent? You think you're entitled to it? You think it's a public document?

It was; some of us pleaded in Executive Session that it be publicly released. Eventually, it was, although it took someone filing a Freedom of Information Complaint against the Schools. I learned a new colloquialism this morning; you can smell what I'm cooking. It was like being in an old Laurel and Hardy movie, where they are in bed and one of them has somehow managed to get his hat on his foot, which keeps "peeking" at them. You just know that at some point, one of them is going to whack it with a hammer, or shoot it with one of those magic guns where nobody ever seems to bleed.

Things change and evolve. Early on, 6 years ago, Dick Sullivan and I pushed for transparency of process and records. Slowly, much to everybody's surprise we discovered a lot of ways to engage the community. Longer, more frequent, more free-wheeling budget hearings. Making budget documents available before those sessions. Making a lot of documents available before School Committee meetings to SC members- no joke, if I had five bucks for every document that was handed to us at the beginning of a School Committee meeting that we were asked to vote on that meeting, I could cut the deficit in half.

Perhaps the pendulum has swung a little farther the other way. Now that we are getting requested information in a timely fashion, and the information is as complete as possible, the SC has finally become a deliberative body. We deliberate. We run as many scenarios as it takes to get it right. We've been willing to interrupt our own deliberations to get feedback from the floor. I'm sure that the Robert who penned Robert's Rules of Order has cast a pox on us. We can probably tighten things up, and still promote a culture of community engagement.

But I have always promoted an idea that is only now coming into vogue. I have been a strong believer in the creation of ad hoc Task Forces, or Advisory Councils, to meet, discuss, research and recommend potential solutions to issues and opportunities in our path. These groups could report out or originate from our Sub-committee structure, or report directly to the full SC and the community when their task has been completed.

The Task Force on School Revenue is a perfect example of this in action. Two School Committee members, a City Councilor and a former City Councilor, and a number of people from the community with an interest in the subject.

In crisis, there is opportunity. The idea of a member of the SC, collaborating with people in the community who have a particular interest works on many levels. First, it allows the School Committee to literally explore many more ideas than it possibly could working as a Committee of the Whole, or even as a Sub-committee. It also helps support the administrative staff- I suspect that there are many ideas that they, faculty, even School Councils and PTO's would like to look at, but no-one has time for researching them.

The second compelling reason is that there is an astonishing pool of talent available to us in the community- money people, artists, teachers, seniors, managers, parents. The pool is out there. By engaging them in these short-term projects that could result in long-term constructive value for education, we are extending ownership of the schools back out into the community.

We don't lack for topics. Can we find more time on learning? Is there a value to extending the school day? The year? Can we create relationships with colleges that can be beneficial academically before students graduate? Can we run summer school classes that are not remedially focused- for example, can we beef up biology by running an oceanography course, or a marshland study project in conjunction with Parker River or Audubon during the summer?

Are there genuine partnerships with the arts community that can benefit our kids?

There is no limit here.

And the final advantage is that people in the community will have an opportunity to work within the schools, the confines of the roles of the School Committee, and better understand the limits and the possibilities along our path to excellent education. That can't help but make them better advocates, voters, and better City Council and School Committee candidates.

Communication and the Community

Summary paragraph: In which Menin recognizes that the School Committee needs to improve how it communicates with the community, and steps taken to improve that problem.

One of my favorite lyrics comes from a Greg Brown tune, and it goes something like this "...Dream on little dreamer, dream on; the world isn't what you think it is, it's what it is..."

After I was first elected to the School Committee, during one of the many meetings I attended before the inauguration, I had a chance to watch the SC evaluate itself. When it came to the self evaluation question about communication, as I recall, there was only one tangible, measurable goal: Did we get the newsletters out in a timely fashion?

I realize that newsletters are important; I've heard them extolled as a critical factor in the passing of the High School debt exclusion, the second time. As far as I'm concerned the jury is out on that; they were important, absolutely, but more important was choice to disengage and simplify the debt exclusion question itself- the first package had everything in it from the library to DPW trucks to the High School

Once they were teased out into two separate campaigns, they passed handily on their own merits.

Keep in mind that sitting on the SC at that time were two people who were professionals in communications. As a matter of fact, the first Committee Nick deKanter and I served on together, sometime in the mid-to-late 90's, was a Task Force convened to help the School Committee better communicate with the community.

It has been a longstanding problem.

Some of it is represents last remaining shreds of the old Empire. There was a natural bent towards withholding information, an almost pathological obsession for Superintendents and School Committees to take aim at their own feet and blast away. Secrecy, withholding all the information needed for informed votes, were pretty much par for the course.

During several of the years I served on the School Committee, we engaged administrators who were allergic to bad news.

Another aspect of the difficulty in transmitting information to the community is that aside from newsletters, community access television has been a non-starter for the better part of two years. Local radio is virtually gone; most of what we now hear on local radio stations is piped in from somewhere else.

The third, and perhaps most critical element in communicating is that we deal every day in the schools with education issues that cannot be reduced to pithy, third grade level sound-bites. The issues are complex, involve many variables, and our culture has succeeded in reducing our attention span to within the diagnostic range for Attention Deficit Disorder. Some of the people entrusted to report for local papers don't know the issues, and work with editors who need to cram every story into a five word headline, regardless of the nuance and complexity.

Few voices in the local coverage are sympathetic to understanding the issues. Few outlets exist beyond the traditional to get the "gospel" to people-- newsletters, letters home; mostly targeting constituencies who already have a stake in the schools.

We have tried doing regular outreach to residents who consider themselves outside our constituency base, lunch meetings, presentations, etc. Although it is difficult to gauge the success of this, it can be done more often and more effectively. Better yet, we should find ways to open the school facilities to make them more hospitable to these people- Saturday afternoon classic movies, or teas hosted by different classes. How about using the computer labs and volunteer students after school to offer seniors an orientation to the internet?

There have been significant improvements made to our website, with the focus on making more information accessible, and using it as a means of gathering feedback from the community as a way of informing decisions we are researching between meetings.

We have extended the maximum flexibility possible into our open meetings, allowing for public comment, public conversation, and a suspension of the rules to have members of the public comment on issues as they are being brought to the vote. At the same time, having all of the information we need now to make informed decisions, we are doing a lot more due diligence, and are a lot more deliberative-- which for many, translates to interminable boredom. Having experienced the good old days, when decision-making was a formality and an end-run around deliberation, I'll take boring.

Other suggestions we have considered and implemented over time include a rolling series of forums, presented around the Wards; holding a School Committee meeting outside of the Schools once a quarter, working with Ward Councilors and PTO's to make Administrative staff and School Committee members available to meet on a more regular basis with both groups.

We have also had small group conversations with City Council members, to help them understand how we will be projecting budgets and forecasting expenses.

We have very far to go. We have come very far; none of us feel like the message is sharp, consistent, and strong enough to break through to the community, yet.

But we'll get there.

A Few More Thoughts For The Mother's Club

Summary paragraph: In which Menin takes advantage of being a blogmeister to clarify his remarks of last night, at the Forum.

First, let me say what I didn't say, and that is thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to all of you.

I didn't start off by describing myself and my background, for two reasons. The first is the gift and curse of incumbency; the second is that I wanted to get straight to some key points. So...

• Six years ago, I ran a campaign against the School Committee. I truly believed, and still do, that they were bright and committed people, with a wide array of skills. But they didn't know squatty-roo about what it takes to promote and sustain student achievement. They were builders, bricks and mortar folks, and there were none better. They promoted a Superintendent from within, 8 months before she would officially start, because they would not take the risk of the incoming majority finding a new Superintendent. They had issues with... let's say they had a familiarity with the use of control as path to getting what you want.
  

• I was the first teacher to sit on the School Committee in a long time. In addition to being licensed to teach K-8 and Special Needs in two states, I have also taken Montessori training in teaching 6-9 year olds, and 9-12 year olds. I also had experience running two non-profits over a period of 13 years, one I took over with a $5,000 debt (on a payday, which I made up out of my own pocket, until I could get the books straightened out). When I left the agency as part of a merger, the budget was $1,500,000 and we controlled about $2,000,000 worth of property; anyone driving down or up Route 1 near Topsfield can drive through it; Nike Village. The second non-profit was a startup national association of Consumer Attorneys; in four years, I took it from 15 members to 500. So I brought a very unique package to the table- familiarity with education and curriculum, financial management, and administrative experience; and an abiding faith in sunlight and transparency. Quite simply, I believe if you give people all the information relevant to the decision you are asking them to make, most of the time, they'll make a good decision.

• My first four years on the Committee were spent trying to push for process and document transparency, using new approaches to delivering curriculum, finding more ways to collaborate with groups on the community, and finding ways to engage the community in planning, assessment and the work of the schools and the School Committee. Those were difficult times; my strongest allegiance was with Dick Sullivan, with whom I had forged an agreement-- any motion he made, I'd second, any motion I made, he'd do the same. It forced the Committee to become more accountable and deal more publicly with yucky issues.

• Although I have "evolved", my fundamental concerns and beliefs as a member of the School Committee remain pretty rock solid. I believe in complete transparency of process. Every now and then, Dr. Lyons will mention some trend he's noticed over several years, and a few of us will chat in the parking lot after the meeting- the conversation will go something like this- "Did you know that?" "No, they never told me", "and we voted on that issue?" Information is the currency of power; and I've had the opportunity to work with some real hoarders in my time in Newburyport.

• I believe in fully engaging the community in every way possible. I introduced the idea of Public Conversation to the School Committee, extended Public Comment to two sessions each meeting; and have encouraged the use of suspending the rules to get feedback from the room before we vote on some issues. This has made the meetings a little more chaotic, more laborious; and while they could be run more tightly, I believe democracy is sloppy. I believe it is best to wear casual attire to events that celebrate the astonishing gift that the founders of this nation bequeathed us, because it can be pretty messy. Meetings lose focus. You can get overloaded with information. Believe me, it is far, far better for education to be overloaded with information, than asked to vote on issues with an underload of info.
  

• I believe in accountability. I have participated in four Superintendent evaluations, and in fact, lobbied for a change in the scoring system that originally proposed that went from poor to very good as options; and have been a strong advocate of reviewing the five-year plan developed during my first year on the Committee. I requested a review after 12 months, when there had been a dramatic change in our finances, I requested a review at 2.5 years, I requested a review a four years in. The Administration and the School Committee have never reviewed the five year plan. It is also my opinion that despite the herculean effort that went into the five year plan, the unexpected cut in state revenue by 20% should have immediately caused a review of the document and adjustment of goals to reflect the new dynamic. That didn't occur. I now believe we need a new five year plan that has a greater degree of organicity to it, and can respond to the volatile funding realities.
  

• I believe in collaboration. Although the NTA has chosen not to engage in collaborative bargaining for the last two contracts, I have always believed that the relationship between the union and the administration was frostier than it needed to be. Between changes at the Union, and changes in the Administration, there seems to be a mutual respect between the parties that I see as hopeful and promising.

• I believe in innovation, and best practices. I believe that we have teachers who teach the fur off any subject, and have lacked resources to stay up to date.
  

• I believe that the educational model we used for five years, which treated every child the same, was wrong. I was vocal about this for five years. I believe in Howard Gardener's ideas about multiple intelligences, that each of has ways we best process information and express ourselves; I believe now as I did then that we should be academically challenging kids who need to be challenged to stay engaged, and support those kids who need strategic support. With the change of Administrations we have moved away from the "one size fits all" approach. It will take several more years to fully implement a leveled approach to curriculum, but we will get there.

• I believe that we should be looking at innovative ways to generate revenue from the schools for the schools; that we should be making the school system more "user friendly" to groups that do not feel they have a stake in them through school-based or student/teacher community based interactions.

• As a member of the Task Force on School Revenue, I believe that we should and will have a long-term and short term plan for addressing revenue needs that will not be totally reliant on an Override. I believe that the forecasting tool developed by Committee members Dana Hooper and Gordy Bechtel will provide much needed direction and integrity to budget projections for the next 3 to 5 years, and will go a long way towards encouraging an informed, community-wide dialogue about how to address revenue shortfalls. I would support, unequivocally and strongly support an override, with specific abatements for seniors on fixed incomes who own property that would only be collectible once their home is sold, as part of a package of measures to address school revenue needs.
  

• After six years, five spent opposing cuts to programs that were not accomplishing the intent with which they were being made (leaving a skeletal framework so that programs could be restored when revenue was better). I believe that simple program restoration should not be the basis for moving forward; that student achievement, multi-curricular approaches and best practices, and multiple ways of assessing students learning to help us understand their needs, (and the how and what we need to do to tailor curriculum to meet their needs), is the direction to go.

• I believe that we should be talking about longer school days, re-framing the school year, and encouraging more community-based learning for the students.

• I believe that the schools are not simply a budget item to be argued over annually; I believe the schools are an ongoing discussion that touches the very heart of a community; it is about who we were, who we are, and who we want to be. It is about preservation and legacy, it is about preparing children for a future in which it will be up to them, literally, to undo the damage we have done to this fragile planet. I believe, literally again, that the future depends increasingly the education we are providing today. Schools are a public, civic, ongoing conversation, a give and take of ideas, a thoughtful, intentional movement towards informed citizenship.

• I believe, that this is a remarkable, painful and transitional time for our schools. As an educator and parent, I believe the silver lining to this dark cloud is that for the first time in generations, the old ways of doing things cannot be relied upon, mediocrity is not good enough any more. And within this new paradigm, with the support of the community and collaborating as partners with teachers, we have an unprecedented opportunity to completely reshape how we are educating children, to try pilot projects in areas like extended school hours, offering credit courses in the summer; there literally are no limits to our ability to reshape the basic package to get better value for the money we are paying, and identify new money based on innovation we seek. I am extraordinarily excited about this.
  

• I believe in apple pie, I believe in motherhood, and I don't think fatherhood is such a bad thing, either. I draw the line at the Yankees, though. Even as a New Yorker, born and bred, my revulsion for those arrogant SOB's began in the womb. In my entire life, I have refused to read a Yankee box score; and as an eight-year old kid, sharing the 'hood with Mary Carrier, I gave as good as I got in those inevitable "scuffles" that would occur about favorite baseball teams as part of growing up. And I will always remember this- it was never only one kid; Yankee fans would travel in groups of three- two to hold you while one pummeled you. Those bastards get the fans they deserve. Grrrrrrr.
  

It's late. Nose around the blog a little; you'll find that I'm more than happy to share my thinking on issues affecting the schools. Feel free to post your own comments, e-mail me with questions, or call me.

Thanks.

A Truth is Not THE Truth

Summary Paragraph: In which Menin argues once again that taking facts out of context can bear little relationship to a universal truth, and wishes things were as simple as some people believe.

One more time. Does the teacher salary matrix, as negotiated 3 years ago, seem somewhat insensitive to the current fiscal crisis we are in? Yes. When I was the only SC member to vote against the approval of the contract at the time, something hard for me to do because I am a teacher, and a former member of a teacher's union, I said we were mortgaging the future, and that if the proverbial bottom dropped out, the teachers would bear the brunt of criticism. I am not Nostradamus; I just believed, 3 years ago, it would have implications down the road.

Is the salary schedule and structure a significant driver in the overall increase of school costs? Yes. The only one? No. Singling out the teachers, and analyzing their contract with no reference or familiarity to exactly what was gained or lost at the table is short-sighted, simplistic, and what those familiar with Alcoholics Anonymous call "stinkin' thinkin'."

Why? Because the analysis makes assumptions that are drawn not from reality, but from the way you think reality is, must be. The teachers have snookered the SC, the SC snookers the community, and what we have here is a whole lot of snookerin' going on. An assumption. A particularly nasty one, because it gains momentum to the degree it can demonize "the other" (fat cat selfish teachers), and do collateral damage as well (that easily snookered, lying School Committee).

So, what do we gain here that is of use to the community? After two of the hardest years our staff have ever had to endure, we are blaming them for all the problems of the schools. After
the SC has finally managed to address a range of problems from building safety to best practices through a reconfiguration that saved $750,000 in one year, and postponed any discussion of building a new school ($30,000,000) for ten years, we are finding a way to blame the School Committee.

Nothing. Nada. In fact, these truths, proffered as so self-evident, damage our relationship with the teachers as we go into contract negotiations. Maybe we'll clean out that rat's nest of ineptitude that has been pretending to be a SC. That's not tough; there will two new members under the worst case scenario.

Is every licensed teacher a good teacher? No.
Is every cop a by the books, honest cop? No.
Is everyone choosing to home school kids doing the right thing? No.
Is every Hollywood star a hedonistic, drug-using moron? No.
Does every player in baseball use steroids? No.

Like I've said before, a goat has a beard, but that doesn't make it a Rabbi.

Are the teachers solely responsible for the increase in costs in the running of schools? When 25% of our budget is used to pay for our statutory obligations to 10% of the student population, and that 25% can vary (upwards, always upwards) by $250,000, no. When utility costs doubled in one year, and every building we have has envelope issues, no. When the state requires every teacher to get a Master's Degree in an accredited program within five years to maintain a license to teach, you are dealing with a work force that needs constant professional development. I haven't finished the research, but I'm betting that aside from cosmetologists no licensed profession starts at a lower average base salary.

Has the time come for a new approach by the entire city to negotiating salaries? Yes, absolutely. We are way, way overdue for it. Can I sit here tonight and tell you what we will put on the table, take it or leave it? No, because that is bargaining in bad faith. There are labor laws prohibiting that kind of posturing on either side before talks begin; engaging in a specific public dialogue about upcoming contract negotiation strategies and goals in a specific way wanders dangerously close to the edge of what is legal; and it is way over the top when it comes to demonizing the second largest workforce in the city.

There will be reforms in upcoming contracts. There will be a reflection, I expect, of the increasing importance of student achievement and professional development, of new approaches to teacher assessment approached in upcoming contracts. It will take time; the reality is that when we sit down with the Newburyport Teachers Association to negotiate, they are represented by the Massachusetts Teachers association; in effect we are sitting down with every teacher's union in the state, and trying to avoid negotiating the same contract with the NTA that everyone else has. We are optimistic.

But anybody who thinks that there will be wholesale changes in one contract, while at the same time using a simplistic analysis of the last teachers contract without any reference to context, is naive, and in my estimation, simply not ready for prime time. Now is not the time for bluster and finger-pointing. You may have discovered a stand-alone context-less truth, but don't try peddling that crap as THE TRUTH. There is no one, single truth, especially when your analysis lacks any context.

That is your truth, and you are welcome to it. At it's very heart, it is divisive and incomplete. The city deserves a better and more honest framing of the issues, and the students deserve an elected official who is able to resist reducing complex problems to simple yes/no, us/them formulations.

The Charter School- My Position

Summary: In which Menin restates his position on the River Valley Charter School.

Some history and reality: Different kids learn in different ways. They take in information differently, process it differently; they develop the ability to think and be social in highly individualized ways. One size doesn't fit all.

The ability of a public school district to individualize and approach teaching students creatively really comes down to two things: money, and leadership. Well, there actually is a third factor- the ability to think and act outside the box. You can't just have two; you need all three.

The Charter School movement, to the extent that I understand the history, was the result of the confluence of two major tides in American thinking. The first was the recognition that many districts were not meeting the needs of the poorest, most challenged students; they were not adapting to the urban reality that in some neighborhoods, you can't do your homework when there are gunshots outside your window; you can't rely on parental support when the parent is a single mom working two jobs to put food on the table. Schools were simply not offering enough choices to students.

The second was the conservative movement towards privatization. When it became clear that school vouchers was a non-starter, the movement backed the Charter Schools idea. It was predicated on an overt agenda that competition is good, regardless of the market, and I believe a more subtle interest in stepping control of Schools away from elected boards representing the whole city, and into private boards, while still using state funds. Massachusetts codified the Charter School concept in 1993; and in hindsight there were two key elements that would prove to be divisive and noxious to the overall debate about best practices in education.

The first was that the funding for Charter Schools came right out of the Chapter 70 allotment for each host community. Since the Charter's students going out of Newburyport were funded at twice the amount of choice students coming in (the rationale was that unlike the public district, which owns it's buildings, Charter's had to assume capital and rental costs) , it caused an immediate impact locally to the school budget. For a while, the state gradually eased the money transition, but eventually, the stark reality set in. Had the funding for the Charter schools been a separate line item in the budget, and not funded through the reduction of Chapter 70 aid to public districts, a great deal of the tension would have been relieved.

The second was that a key line in legislation spoke about Charter Schools as being in "competition" with host public district schools, when it probably should have said "collaboration." Even legislation author Mark Roosevelt concedes the phrase did not capture the spirit of the legislative intent.

In Newburyport, the Charter school was founded by a group of parents who had long lobbied the School District for significant changes in the curriculum, teaching methodology and use of "best practices." These interests were longtime concerns; at the time I don't know if the School Committee considered trying to address these concerns by exploring the creation of a Horace Mann Charter School- a charter that is overseen by the School Committee.

As an institution, with a publicly elected body, the public district was unable to address the issues presented by the parents in a timely fashion; the decision by the parents to use the Charter School legislation, with it's favorable language, was taken very personally by the sitting School Committee and the community. It was one of the early Charter Schools outside of an urban setting.

Shortly after I was first elected in 2000, I became the first member of the School Committee to visit the Charter School, and worked for years to find some common ground for dialogue between the public district and Charter folks. Actually, I worked with Senator Baddour to try to find a way to get everyone to the table. Some fitful efforts were made, which resulted in a joint letter to the legislature saying there should be more funding for all elements in the educational system.

I believe that every school should have the resources and the flexibility to meet students where they are, to provide challenges and supports in appropriate measures.

I believe that one way to assess the degree to which a student has mastered skills is for them to present, or exhibit those skills, and not only through testing.

As a trained Montessori teacher, I believe that there are three year developmental periods between the ages of 0-21; that an individualized and well thought out program can be delivered through the greater use of multi-age classrooms.

Newburyport lacked the resources, leadership and momentum to do these things. More than that, the School Committee was wedded to an approach to education that was traditional, slow to innovate, and increasingly oriented towards teaching to the middle.

I understand the motivation of the Charter School parents.

I wish, and would advocate that Charter School funding be detached from what is a direct loss of Chapter 70 funds at a rate disproportionate to what Newburyport receives, to a separate line item in the state budget, with a separate funding mechanism.

The Charter school is real, and it isn't going away. I prefer to deal with, and make the best of reality. I believe that there is much we can learn from their efforts to date, and there are probably ways in which we can achieve some economic efficiencies by working together. I believe we can share "best practices" with each other, do joint training of staff, and perhaps even cross-offer Explores for the middle school-aged kids.

I wish there hadn't been an urgency on the part of the founding parents to create the school. However, I can also see, based on joining the School Committee shortly after the River Valley opened, that there was no way in hell a dialogue between the School Committee and Administration and the Charter advocates was possible; the atmosphere was poisonous and venomous.

That was a long time ago. Dale Bishop and Kevin Lyon have professional history with one another, which bodes well. I support a stepped-up conversation about education between the two of us; I support finding common ground and working towards a relationship that benefits both groups.

As the financial crisis eases over the coming years, I would like to have the School Committee consider opening a Horace Mann Charter School that has a focus on the arts or math/sciences. That is one of the reasons I have strongly advocated that the City retain control of the Kelley School; the building modifications to meet code for an upper level school (Middle, High School) are less stringent that those for and elementary school.

And I'll continue to lobby for the Charter Schools to be funded through a mechanism other than Chapter 70.

Money, Part 2

Summary: Menin reveals 14 points he thinks will help the adults in the community get the ship of education unstuck from it's mooring between a rock and a hard place.

Without pre-empting the work of the Task Force on School Revenue, it is fair to say that they have framed the problem in a way that makes solving the funding problem easier to solve, on a short-term basis as well as long-term. We will see their ideas over coming months, some of those below may be reflected in the final set of deliverables, some may not.

After observing and participating in six budget draftings, two general elections, and an override campaign, I now believe any successful strategy to address the immediate needs of the schools, as well as the long term needs, must contain the following elements:


1. Project out School expenses for 3-5 years, so that revenue choices made can be applied towards predicted needs, academically & strategically.

2. Once expenses are projected, each budget submitted should reflect a commitment to student achievement as an over-arching priority.

3. Every budget submitted by the Superintendent for Committee and community consideration must be scoured for possible efficiencies that do not have a negative impact on student achievement.

4. The same strategy should be applied to the budgets of every City Department; the potential for open hearings with community feedback, as is the practice of the Schools, should be considered with other Departments.

5. As is the practice at the School Department, the City should freeze all budgets by October, requiring serious consideration in the payment of every subsequent expense. As a result, transfers within the Department budget could avert potential deficits in Departmental expenses. Significant surpluses could be identified to help other Departments offset deficits or allow for the implementation of new initiatives.

6. The City should attempt to reconcile all contracts with unions so they may be negotiated at the same time, reducing the "you got yours, I want mine" tendency that currently impedes progress. This will make possible the potential for much greater efficiencies and faster progress on areas such as benefits. Obviously, specific unions represent workers with specific contractual needs, but some common needs could be met more efficiently.

7. The City needs a clearinghouse for all potential grant proposals. Currently, each department does its own search, & writes its own grants, a remarkably inefficient system. If there was a clearinghouse responsible for triaging all federal, state and other grants available, and then moved them on to Departments to consider and/or apply for them, we increase access to funds available. Most communities triage grants out of Planning or Development.

8. Any future lobbying with regard to Chapter 70 reform must be highly strategic and surgical; in addition to lobbying for some wholesale changes in reimbursement rates, we must look at specific elements of the reimbursement package to see where simply shifting Newburyport from one category of reimbursement to another would result in additional funds. After five years of lobbying for wholesale Chapter 70 reform, it has finally arrived, and as a result, Newburyport is one of 33% of towns and cities in the Commonwealth could be getting less- significantly less- than the rest of the state. In short, the vaunted reforms have screwed us. Although this will be looked at closely by the Revenue Task Force as a long term goal, Dr. Ralph Orlando believes that it is possible that strategic changes could affect '09 and beyond. And I agree with Ralph.

9. Should the School Committee decide it will need to go to the taxpayers for additional funds over the short-term or long-term, the request should be absolutely specific as to dollar amount, how it will be spent; if it is at all possible to stipulate within the Override or Debt Exclusion that the money will in the future continue to be restricted for the designated funding it should be done.

10. The City and the School Committee should jointly agree on a long term plan to address non-building capital needs (technology, for example), and set aside budget money specifically to address those needs in a timely fashion.


11. The City and the School Committee should identify those items needed by the School (computers and other technology, upgrading HVAC systems for efficiencies, books and curriculum materials) that might become part of a Debt Exclusion.

12. In the event that the need for an override is clear, the City should enact abatement rules based on age and income levels that would exempt those qualifying from paying the additional taxes until their house is sold or the funds can be drawn out of their estate.

13. In the event that an override is needed, the School Committee should present to the community a clear picture of how the override items will be tied to a long-term vision of improving student achievement, restoring lost programs that can be delivered in a more efficient way, and promoting new, innovative, "best practices" initiatives.

14. Working with the City, the School Committee should help to identify potential and specific new sources of revenue that can be directed at the schools without increasing unduly the burden on the residents of Newburyport.


I'm still thinking, folks. There will be more on this to come.

Money, Part 1

Summary Paragraph: Part one of a series of posts in which Menin looks at the revenue problem experienced by the City and affecting the Schools, solutions we've tried, and solutions it will take to solve the problem.

After six years of declining funding, the schools are pretty threadbare, academically and physically.

While we can all agree on the effects, ranging from the loss of teachers and electives to the longer-term depressing of house values, I have to say thinking has evolved a great deal on the causes, and even more on potential solutions.

First, the City government has done pretty much everything we have asked of it over the past six years. The City Council has not, to my recollection cut any money from the school budget that it has received from the Mayor during my tenure on the School Committee; the School Committee has sent unbalanced budgets to the Mayor in 2 of the last 3 years; in four of the last six years, the Mayor has added some funds, but has not fully funded the recommended budget.

The problem is that even though the City has funded the Schools at more than the state requires it to, even that extra funding is not enough any more.

City growth isn't what it used to be; the assessments of private homes keep going up, at a rate faster than personal income, creating a widening gap between income and real property. That gap makes it increasingly difficult for people on fixed incomes to cope with additional taxes that would come with an override. That is a very real issue; as is the lack of affordable housing stock that would enable people who wanted to live out their lives in Newburyport to stay here.

In the crisis of last Spring, facing the trifecta (accumulated cuts of the previous five years had eroded academic programs to the tipping point, City growth was stagnant, and federal and state aid was not going to increase appreciably), the School Committee approved a major reconfiguration of the schools, which saved $750,000. It still left a structural deficit of more than $750,000 which the schools have had every year since 2004, when the state decided not to pay out the full Chapter 70 Funds it had committed to Newburyport.

The net result: Five years of cuts that weakened programs, virtually no new spending during that time to replace or update curriculum, and less federal money supporting schools despite the increase in meeting the unfunded mandates of No Child Left Behind.

Hoping to be able to make the most of the $750,000 in savings we gained from the reconfiguration, (a number we won't pull out of the budget again), and continue the momentum of overhauling the curriculum to bring it up to acceptable standards, we chose to go to the community to ask for an operating override in the Spring of this year. We believed that the only short-term solution to this crisis would be found in the community through an override. I believed that, and supported it.

It is also important to point out that our decision to go in the Spring was heavily influenced by Mayor Moak twice announcing at School Committee meetings that he was considering putting a debt exclusion on the ballot in November. We believed that competing with a general election, and a debt exclusion, the override would have no chance. Once we had committed to the Spring vote, the Mayor decided not to put a debt exclusion on the ballot this fall. It is also worth noting that two individuals who have been close advisors of Mayor Moak for a long time headed up the anti-override campaign.

The override failed for a variety of reasons. People felt the tax burden was already too much; people did not feel compelled to invest in the schools because they felt that they had no direct or vested interest in the schools; people felt that the school budget still had not gotten the scrutiny it deserved; people felt that "there are too many administrators and they get paid too much" (despite the recent state report that pointed out we lacked a sufficient number of administrators to manage the system effectively, and that the ones we had were spread too thin, and that our admin staff are at or below state median salaries); people didn't like the attitudes of those working for the override; and some people even felt they wouldn't vote for an override until the City itself showed a little more fiscal discipline in the budgets of other departments.

But it failed. The "Big Mo'" was lost, and the schools, though better off in some ways academically by the reconfiguration, remain in need.

An Argument Against Voter Apathy

If you're a film fan, you may have noticed that actor Richard Dreyfuss hasn't made any movies recently. That's because he has taken time out of his career to go over to Cambridge, England, and study for a degree in Civics.

Part of the responsibility our schools have is to teach the skills of civic engagement to students. Voter turnout decreases at a time when each decision made by our elected representatives becomes exponentially more important; the skill and the will to seek information and question assumptions becomes that much more critical.

Dreyfuss took time from his studies to emphasize the importance of this idea. Consider this a Position Statement from me.

http://www.americablog.com/2006/11/richard-dreyfuss-on-real-time-season.html

How We Got Here From There... Part 1 (Length Warning)

Even before the summary paragraph, I need to offer the following disclaimer. The opinions contained in this, like all posts, are my own. They don't reflect those of the any other School Committee member, nor are they intended to reflect the opinion of the School Committee as a whole. And in many ways, that may have been the community's loss.

Summary Paragraph: In which Menin explains the difference between deliberative due diligence and the perception of indecisiveness, the difference between making lousy decisions based on the lack of information from making real decisions that are informed; and he further shares some interesting and perspectives on the role the School Committee and the previous School Administration played in overseeing the erosion of academic standards; this is done in a series of postings.

At the last School Committee Meeting, we had two items on the agenda that were of particular importance to the immediate (1-5 year) future of the Schools. These were creating a set of School Committee goals for the year, and creating the framework in which some key cost savings could be taken in next year's budget. Since my natural inclination has always been open the process and cast a wide net for ideas, and since there is a reality that should the two incumbents sitting on the School Committee (the Mayor and myself) not be re-elected, there would be a new majority on the Committee, I suggested that we find a way to specifically include all five other School Committee candidates in the dialogue; and that any decision of the magnitude of busing only to the letter of the law could be explored, vetted and left for the new School Committee to choose; that we should not tie their hands.

I also pointed out that traditionally, these items would be raised for discussion in February and March of the budget process. This Superintendent's aggressive approach to budget prep, which moved the entire process up by four months, was something I have advocated for for six years. In reality, the projected time for making these decisions is early to mid-January.

After the meeting, one of the SC candidates, in passing, expressed extreme frustration to me that "You guys should just make a decision, you never make decisions," and moved on before I could respond. I tend not to like that form of communication; I call it "hit and run." I lump it with "sandbagging," and prosecutorial questioning.

As one of my wiser peers on the Committee pointed out to me, it is easy to confuse jumping to a conclusion with making a decision.

I spent a lot of years, in my opinion, serving on School Committees that jumped to conclusions, resulting in lousy, uninformed decisions that we are paying the price for now.

School Committees that accepted Administrative opinions, virtually unobstructed by any genuine research or not rooted in even the simplest conversation with teachers or the community as due diligence.

School Committees which, in my opinion, made decisions with an almost Bush-like lack of curiosity. My biggest anxiety in those days was that I would fail to ask "the follow-up" question. In the past, I was the founding Executive Director of the National Association of Consumer Attorneys, and learned the old legal maxim that you should never ask a witness a question you don't know the answer to.

Asking questions, something I did frequently, to the literally eye-rolling annoyance (somebody check the old tapes of the School Committee meetings) of several sitting at the dais, was usually the only way to get at exactly what the hell was happening. Information was not exactly presented fully and voluntarily. Probably just one of those operating style differences between me and them.

What the School Committee, and the Superintendent and the Mayors did not ever realize, I think, was that I knew the answers to 90% of the questions I asked. I had made the phone calls, talked with people affected, looked at numbers. Questions about accountability, about alternative ways to achieve academic goals, about cost savings, about the impact of the decisions we were making a year out.

The answers I received at meetings to my questions often astounded me in their creativity and lack of substantive information. That is why my anxiety about the follow-up question became nearly overwhelming. I felt like I was able to get my foot in the door, but not open it up enough to reveal what the hell was really happening. I used to describe School Committee meetings like being a dentist with a morning full of teeth extractions to do.

I remember dozens of meetings where Dick Sullivan and I would step out into the corridor just before the gavel to compare notes on items that would suddenly appear on the agenda.

I guess the word I would use to describe that operating style as "argumentative." It was the Andy Warhol approach; usually Dick Sullivan and I, and later Steve Coles would get our 15 minutes on the soapbox, and the vote would proceed, usually resulting in a 5-2 or 4-3 carry for the Administration position.

The School Committee is now a deliberative body. We may be way behind in figuring out how to consistently communicate outside of meetings, but inside the meetings we want to hear every opinion, examine the issue thoroughly, get as much feedback from the room as possible. It isn't efficient. It isn't exactly entertaining, despite my occasional irreverent remarks. But it sure beats the hell out of the way we did business before. By a mile. That was the river, this is the sea.

So my suggestion to those bright, active and committed folks who are also running for School Committee is suck it up and get used to it. Virtually every "rushed" decision I have participated in over the last six years has, well, not redounded to our benefit or credit. You see, those were decisions that often had a somewhat obscured political vitality animating them.

You will be asked to deliberate, to provide due diligence that is real and measurable and related to the overall goal of student achievement.

I'm the only one in the race who has a record to run on, and it clearly marks out a series of positions I took, often to the open disgust of my peers, that consistently argued for transparency, all cards on the table, honest assessment of what we were doing. The School Committee rule book points out that once the School Committee makes a decision, it reflects an action taken by the Committee as a whole, and it is in poor form to go out and piss and moan about it. But go see where I stood on some of the more poorly planned cost reductions we were asked to approve over the last six years- cutting theater at the Middle School, the Brown Kelley Principal merger, the fight to get Algebra added to the 8th grade and the attempt to declare it a failure without ever evaluating it, the need to adjust our teaching and curriculum to support kids where they were challenged, and challenge those who were bored (you know, the opposite of the one size fits all approach).

I began asking about reconfiguring the schools because of the potential for better use of assets and for the enhanced impact it would have on the ability of teachers to teach and learners to learn six years ago.

That wasn't a popular idea back then; it may not even be now. But I had studied it, lived it as a teacher, and felt it had a lot to commend itself academically and fiscally.

Sheesh. After five years of happy talk, no problem here, we've got a plan but... talk, I've been happy as a pig in mud that we are finally facing our responsibilities as a School Committee and an administration, and eventually as a community, honestly, deliberately, respectfully and thoughtfully. Despite the forecast for hurricane strength winds for the next few years, I want to return to the School Committee, and am excited to see new energy part of that equation.

This School Committee made more decisions in this last year, with better planning and far more due diligence, and with a focus on the future, than I experienced in the past five, despite my almost comic efforts to punch for that. That is called leadership. It is the synergy of a visionary administrator and a School Committee that is just now beginning to grow into the deliberative and diligent body it should have been years ago.

You see, friends. Schools are not a thing, a budget item. They are really an ongoing public dialogue, about where we've been, who we are, and where we want to go. A dialogue, as I pointed out when the first School Committee I served on introduced the perfect Superintendent candidate after a world-wide search, goes both ways. You speak, they listen. They speak, you listen. Anything else is a monologue.

And I think we've all seen where monologues get us.
And the conversation, if we are lucky never ends.

Just because I never seemed to be on exactly the same page as nearly everybody else doesn't mean I stopped reading the book. Now that it's a bestseller, that's very cool, because it provides a common language for dialogue and common set of metrics for accountability. And over the past six years, I've made a lot of notes in the margins.

Another Budget Driver- My Position

Referring again to the Mayoral candidate's debate comments, derived from Mr. Dean's carefully prepared letter that has been circulating throughout the community, I'd like to address the issue of what appeared to be inconsistent and overly generous jumps in teacher salaries in the seniority part of the matrix and the steps towards professionalism part of the matrix (I can never remember which is X and which is Y).

They are there. They are there for a reason; taken out of context, which both the candidate and Mr. Dean have done (of course they have; there is no way for them to know what actually happened in the negotiations of each of those items). They seem like logical targets for questions. And questions deserve answers.

For the last two contracts, the teachers union rejected the request by the School Committee to do collaborative bargaining, in which the entire bargaining unit on each side use the same data, and work towards using that data to support a consensus for contracting together. The contract prior to that was done collaboratively; it was before my time, but the feedback I received from our attorney at the time was that it was the quickest, easiest and most satisfying negotiation between the Newburyport Teachers Association and the School system.

Instead, for the last two contracts, the NTA has insisted on positional bargaining, also called adversarial bargaining. In this type of bargaining, each side exchanges evolving positions on a particular issue being addressed, and there is virtually no collaborative effort to agree on facts. Most of the work of responding to proposals at the table is done by the Lawyer for the School Committee and the Massachusetts Teacher's Association representative assigned to work with the NTA.

In my opinion, frankly, the latter bargaining style is tedious, incrementally productive, and lends itself to a lot of posturing. With the upcoming election undecided, I do not know if I will be involved, given my seniority, with the negotiations for the next contract. If I do, I am hopeful that the quality of the relationship Doc Lyons has created with the teachers will encourage the collaborative bargaining. It is such a wonderful learning process.

Having set the scene, one of the elements of any contract negotiation is that each party has its own list of "items" it would like to see eliminated or added; these items may have little to do with salary or benefits; but salary and benefits are often used as bargaining chips to get at these items. Increased sick time or a personal day more; a change in the co-pay of medical expenses, or the number of hours a teacher is expected to be on-site doing school work are four examples some of the "shopping list" items.

In my own experience negotiating a contract with the teachers, the seemingly inexplicable salary "bump s" were often linked with concessions that helped constructively impact another long-term budget expense. We didn't give something for nothing, and the teachers didn't get something for nothing.

Let me repeat that. Most of the seemingly curious and uneven bumps in salary movement across the matrix were agreed to in exchange for other items the teachers made concessions on. It may be that an analysis showed we were losing more teachers at that point than at other points in their tenure, and we wanted those teachers to stay. In may be there because it was a concession we made to achieve something we felt would be in the long-term best interest of the school system, the students, or the budget. You give a little, you get a little.

From my recent introduction to Mr. Deans, (through a number of very informative and animated conversations, and my longstanding personal admiration for the Mayoral candidate who unfortunately chose to present Mr. Deans' arguments out of the context in which the criticized decisions were made), I have to say they are both extremely intelligent men, who are passionate about public service. Frankly, I believe that both of them will make terrific public servants when elected. There's no personal beef here for me; the issues they raise absolutely deserve an adequate response.

The problem is that everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die; everyone wants to express a nice clear and seemingly simple talking point, but man is it a pain the petootie to actually place it in context. It forces you to write long postings.

My respect and admiration for both Mr. Deans and the unnamed candidate for Mayoral makes my disappointment all the more painful.

Again, I am not defending the salary schedule that was negotiated for this contract; if memory serves I was actually one of two School Committee members who did not vote to approve this contract, because of the salary schedule.

I think the long-term, and deserved basic mistrust of the School Committee and the administration has made it difficult to for the community to appreciate that some significant and more recent changes in approach and style and accountability have occurred.

Yeah, we still talk things to death, and our meetings aren't as tight as they could be. Our commitment to community engagement lends an air of sloppiness and informality to our meetings. We don't make lightning fast decisions (given my own experience with the tightly structured and highly choreographed votes on previous SC's, that may not be a bad thing overall).

But this refracted view of the SC automatically triggers in some members of the community the assumption that negotiating the contract was simply an exercise- the teachers said "jump," and we said "how high?" Every single item in the contract was analyzed for it's immediate and long-term financial impact; we didn't just throw our wallets on the table and say "leave us the Washingtons, you keep the Benjamins."

Even knowing that, and knowing and having tremendous respect for our teaching staff, I still voted against the contract because I thought the bill was too steep. Majority carries.

Them's the facts, boys and girls. Stick them where you've affixed your assumptions and see if it clarifies anything for you. Perception may be reality, but context matters the most.

Let me make my position perfectly clear

I have been advised to write short and simple postings; I struggle with that for three reasons. The first is that I am, by nature, long-winded. The second is that despite the political attractiveness (and necessity) of keeping it simple, these are complex issues; they aren't simple- you move one facet, you affect so many other things. The third reason is that I believe a community that is given all the information it needs to make an informed decision will make a good decision most of the time.

As much as I set this blog up to help in my campaign to be re-elected to the School Committee (have I mentioned I'm running?), I also want it to be a place that provides information that might help engage the community, the whole community, in finding answers we can all live with.

Any strategy that seeks to accomplish a political solution by demonizing or scapegoating doesn't really lead to a solution. I'm happy to mix it up with anyone on these issues, and can agree to disagree; I can even accept a bottom line of "I do not want to pay a dime more in taxes."

That's a legitimate position, and I can accept that for what it is.

But assertions that are not based in fact, but represent opinion dressed up like a fact, frost my cake. "Too many administrators," is an example of that. Comparable school systems have more administrators, the DOR in its report stated we needed a full-time human resource manager; we have one curriculum coordinator for pre-school through 12th grade, we went two/three years with three elementary schools and two principals. More importantly, the school-based administrators have critical functions- they hire personnel, supervise them, evaluate them, provide remedial plans to improve teaching, in additional to the myriad of other activities they perform.

Until we stop throwing crap like that against the wall one more time just to see if it sticks, rather than having a genuine discussion about how we can create a collaborative or innovative supervision process or evaluation tool for teachers, we are stuck. Stuck.

And in this world, in this culture, in this society, stuck really means going backwards.

Who's gonna drive you home... My Position

There is a sick leave buy back clause in the contract, affecting teachers hired before a certain date. I personally would rather not have a liability exceeding a million dollars hanging over our head. As best we can determine, the buy-back clause emerged as a compromise somewhere in the past, when the School system came to the negotiating table with little or nothing to offer in the way of financial incentives or raises. That's the way it always happens. Is there a lesson to be learned? Yes. Don't make promises that last more than 20 years. Perhaps there is some creative way to resolve this contractual issue.

Longevity is another "issue" in the contract that appeared some time ago, and I believe (if memory serves) may have been part of the 2001-2002 negotiations. Often, School administrations face a negotiating team heavily weighted towards teachers with the longest tenure in the system. They negotiate on behalf of the entire union, but interestingly enough, seem the most intrigued and persistent about salary structures that impact the last years of their teaching experience; years which coincide with what the bottom line on their pension will look like.

Again, perhaps there are some creative ways to address this particular contract item.

Still more drivers out there (the road to budget hell, as you can see, is full of drivers); but one last comment for tonight before I resume this discussion.

Baby, you can drive my car... My Position

We have a legal responsibility to provide educational services for all students based on their gifts and challenges that is exceeded only by our moral responsibility as a community to do so.

The legal responsibility is clearly enumerated by my reading of state and federal laws. The moral responsibility has been shaped by a lifetime of work with people facing all kinds of challenges; I have both a Bachelor's degree and a Master's degree in the Science of Special Education, and began working working as a volunteer with children with challenges when I was 11 years old.

Unless the state steps in more aggressively to regulate these services, Newburyport faces the same expense predicament every other school system faces:

The cost of delivering services is rising faster than 2.5%, and faster than the rate of inflation.

From year to year, as children enter into our schools from pre-K through whatever grade they enter, it is not possible to specifically predict who will need support services- we are prohibited by law from even asking those questions as we admit kids. So we never know how many kids will need the services.

Until they are evaluated, we never know the intensity of services we will need to provide.

We have tried to control these costs in several ways that actually provide more benefits than just dollars for the system. We have one of the lowest out-placement rates in the state, meaning that we have made remarkable efforts to keep these students in this community and ensure they receive all the services they need. While this meets the moral criteria I mentioned, it also saves us hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in potential out-placements.

How much can this cost center impact on a budget annually- I can't recall a surplus in the SPED line items in six years; I can recall several deficits that were met by transfers from within frozen line items in the existing budget of the year in question; and we have had to go into the Choice account to pay for significant SPED deficits at least once as I recall. In excess of $100,000. In the area of SPED, we have traditionally been very conservative (i.e., over-budgeted) in this line item.

It is always a wild card, and certainly qualifies as a budget driver.

Next up, those pesky buy-back and longevity clauses.

Drive on, Drive On- My Position

In the previous post, we talked about one particular driver to the never-ending increase in the expense side of the School budget, the one that seems most popular these days, teacher salaries.

Before I talk about another budget "driver", I had one further point to make regarding the upcoming contract negotiations. It is completely illegal, under labor law, for me to discuss impending labor negotiations. People have publicly made a range of suggestions, from letting the contract simply expire and shrug our shoulders, to tearing it all up and start over, asking for "give-backs," freezing the contract, restructuring the contract. Some of these are interesting, if draconian and potentially unworkable ideas; there are also a number of interesting, potentially collaborative and productive ideas to be explored as well. It's all very interesting; unless of course you are a teacher. Then, according to the candidate for Mayor and Mr. Dean, you not have to shoulder the burden of more kids per class (correcting 90-120 creative writing essays, anyone? No time and a half for that, folks, just part of the job...); nonetheless, the Mayoral candidate and Mr. Deans agree you are the reason our schools can't contain rising costs.

Let me be clear about my opinion on this, with the full understanding that students interested in the SC race might be reading.

Are teacher salaries a budget expense "driver?" Yes. The only driver. No. In fact that suggestion has about as much resonance as a goose fart on a muggy day. Once the air clears, you're left with a smiling goose, and an existing problem. The suggestion itself is divisive, unfair, short-sighted and could potentially poison the atmosphere as we head into what I believe will be possibly some very creative and forthright negotiations.

I think it is fair, and within the law for me to state the following facts regarding upcoming contract negotiations:

Both sides are aware that money is in short supply.

Unlike previous years, as we head into contract negotiations, based upon my own discussion with teachers, there is feeling of trust between the admin and the union that I have not seen in my six years. There is a respectful relationship. That is a good thing.

Both sides will come to the table prepared, and I hope engage in a creative discussion that will include a clear understanding of the long term impact of negotiated items on future budgets.

Well, that is all I can say about negotiations.


Perhaps another driver, one with far greater long-term impact projected outwardly, assuming that efforts could be made to begin addressing what some in the community feel is the excessive rate of compensation for teachers is the absolute hemorrhaging of revenue from the feds and the state over the past 6 years.

In 2004, we lost 20% of our state Chapter 70 revenue, approximately $750,000.
Around that time, we also lost funding for providing transportation; as a result, in an area that was once heavily supported by the state, we have taken on a $500,000 a year burden, 20% of which is made up by assessed fees. We have lost a number of support grants received through the state, including health grants, literacy grants, and MCAS tutoring grants.

Let's add it up. $750,000, plus two years of transportation at $500 thou per, and lets just guess that before that we had two years at $350 thou per. So far, that's $2,450,000 in lost revenue over six years. Let's really go conservative on the health grants- let's say 6 years at $10,000 per year; as for the MCAS tutoring grants, let's be even more conservative- $5,000 for two years. That brings us up to $2,520,000 in lost revenue in six years. I'll let the candidate and Mr. Deans figure out how many teachers that would support- you can even use as a base rate of pay what you think their work is worth. I know you think they make too much, even though we are below the state median in some of our levels, so use your own figures; somehow neither Mr. Deans nor the candidate got around to actually valuing the work teachers do in terms of dollars.

And hey, there's actually an added incentive here-- if you set the value low enough, we might be able to qualify them for free and reduced lunch.

I'm not going to bother including the fact that during the past six years, the No Child Left Behind Act (or charade, if you prefer) has never been funded at more than 15 to20% of what the feds estimated it would take to bring the country into full compliance with the statute. That little detail hasn't prevented them from requiring that every single regulation embodied in the act be achieved within the timetables set (and not yet revised). Oucho.

I dunno, could be another couple million there, for sure.

Wow. Over six years, the real loss of $2,520,000 in revenue, and the possible loss of an additional couple of mil in federal money for academic achievement? No wonder the actual cash amount of the city's contribution has increased, even though the percentage of the city budget spent on schools has decreased slightly.

I'm still willing to hear an argument that teacher's salaries and benefits may be the most immediate area in which we can effect savings, albeit at a great cost to morale and potentially the actual loss of teachers to other, better-paying school systems, but asserting that it the "main, perhaps only driver" in jacking up our expenses doesn't stand up to simple scrutiny.


Next post, yet another driver...