Tonight was the follow-up to the January 31st meeting at Columbia High School. Tonight was about how to do effective advocacy. The short version is, advocacy is about relationships, so you can't expect result from a one-off interaction with an elected official in the midst of some crisis. Perhaps the fiscal situation will motivate people to start making those relationships, so that future crises can be avoided.
I'm a little torn about what exactly to ask of elected officials, so it is actually kind of nice to focus on getting to know them and getting them to know me without trying ask for too much too fast.
At the end there were presenters from EducationSpeak.org, which sounds very interesting and will likely become part of my weekly web routine.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Friday, January 25, 2013
Board Meeting of 1/22/2013
I went to the board meeting Tuesday night. No major items on the agenda that I was interested in, but I'm a little interested in everything about the district, and I'm the board liaison for the PTO, so I figured I should go on nights that I don't have Scouting. I was late and missed the students first presentation. The 4 major points of discussion were the state aid numbers being released, the purchase of the bus garage on Hillside Ave, formally ending our participation in the Nat'l School Lunch program, and a change to the high school grading procedure.
The state aid numbers are within a percent of the projection, but still almost one FTE short of what we expected, so that's a little bit of a bummer. There's not much else to say about it, though, since there's nothing we can do. I'm going to the forum next Thursday to hopefully convince elected officials to spend more on schools, but I just don't know whether my heart is in that. I really want school funding to be as local as possible. As painful as the transition is, moving towards a budget with a smaller percentage coming from state aid is probably a good thing in the long-run.
I think buying the garage is a great idea, and I'm confident that the information will be presented in a way that everyone agrees with. It's good for the budget on both the revenue and expenditure sides, and it's not really a change from current operations. It does set the stage for easier out-sourcing of bus drivers, so that's the only group that will potentially vote NO. I am hoping it's a small turnout of mostly parents and teachers, who ought to be strongly in favor of it.
The Nat'l Lunch Program is the perfect example of why I want funding to be local. A bunch of well-intentioned politicians in DC designed a lunch program that is simply inferior in every way to what we were already doing. So the students stopped participating, so it became a money loser instead of break-even. I'm glad we're ending our participation.
The high school grading procedure presentation was dumb-founding. While I fully support the procedure they recommend, I was surprised that we weren't already using it, and especially surprised at the way the presenters talked about it. They made it sound like this complex mathematical thing that was hard to do and even harder to explain. To me, it seemed really straightforward. In the past, we converted grades from a 0-100 scale to an H/A+/A/A-/B+/.../F scale, which is a huge loss in precision. We then converted the letter grades to a "quality point" scale which is sort of like a GPA, but it had one arbitrary adjustment for H, and was different enough that colleges just re-compute GPAs anyway. Now, we'll just stop at the 0-100 scale, maintaining a somewhat arbitrary value (105) for H's during the transition.
No comments from the community during this board meeting, which is the most entertaining part, at least to me.
The state aid numbers are within a percent of the projection, but still almost one FTE short of what we expected, so that's a little bit of a bummer. There's not much else to say about it, though, since there's nothing we can do. I'm going to the forum next Thursday to hopefully convince elected officials to spend more on schools, but I just don't know whether my heart is in that. I really want school funding to be as local as possible. As painful as the transition is, moving towards a budget with a smaller percentage coming from state aid is probably a good thing in the long-run.
I think buying the garage is a great idea, and I'm confident that the information will be presented in a way that everyone agrees with. It's good for the budget on both the revenue and expenditure sides, and it's not really a change from current operations. It does set the stage for easier out-sourcing of bus drivers, so that's the only group that will potentially vote NO. I am hoping it's a small turnout of mostly parents and teachers, who ought to be strongly in favor of it.
The Nat'l Lunch Program is the perfect example of why I want funding to be local. A bunch of well-intentioned politicians in DC designed a lunch program that is simply inferior in every way to what we were already doing. So the students stopped participating, so it became a money loser instead of break-even. I'm glad we're ending our participation.
The high school grading procedure presentation was dumb-founding. While I fully support the procedure they recommend, I was surprised that we weren't already using it, and especially surprised at the way the presenters talked about it. They made it sound like this complex mathematical thing that was hard to do and even harder to explain. To me, it seemed really straightforward. In the past, we converted grades from a 0-100 scale to an H/A+/A/A-/B+/.../F scale, which is a huge loss in precision. We then converted the letter grades to a "quality point" scale which is sort of like a GPA, but it had one arbitrary adjustment for H, and was different enough that colleges just re-compute GPAs anyway. Now, we'll just stop at the 0-100 scale, maintaining a somewhat arbitrary value (105) for H's during the transition.
No comments from the community during this board meeting, which is the most entertaining part, at least to me.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Class Size Aid
There were a few comments last night about elementary school classes with 24 to 27 kids in them. While I think our teachers and families are excellent and will thrive in almost any environment, I also spent a little time thinking about the alternative. There is this fundamental tension between small classes sizes and the fiscal reality of how our teachers are compensated. I'm 100% fine with teachers being highly compensated, but I have mixed feelings about how much their compensation grows each year. The growth in the required contributions to the retirement systems, along with step increases in pay, are the main drivers in budget growth. But how can you decrease class size without hiring more teachers?
One thought I had, was to hire TAs. I need to talk to actual teachers to verify, but I would bet that a 27-student class is overwhelming to a lone teacher, but more manageable to a teacher with a full-time or nearly-full-time assistant/aid. Right now, if I understand things correctly, the only TAs are ones that are assigned to a specific student as part of their IEP. The means the aid can't help the teacher manage the entire class, both because they have to focus on a particular student and because they're not in the classroom all the time. I wonder how much better a dedicated TA would be. I haven't looked into any of the details as far as what they cost or how many teachers would want a TA.
I wonder if we could organize grants through the PTOs to pay for TAs focused solely on helping the teachers with the largest class sizes. I imagine a system where donors would specify a specific elementary school or indicate district-wide, and then teachers would submit requests for TAs (potentially part-time), and the grants would be award based solely on class size. If one teacher didn't have the largest class but felt they really needed the grant, they'd need to convince other teachers not to apply. The funding organization could put out a RFP indicating how many FTE TAs it will fund, and hopefully the district could help in that hiring process.
There may be aspects I'm overlooking, but I just wanted to capture that thought so I have something to reference and modify as I noodle it a little more.
One thought I had, was to hire TAs. I need to talk to actual teachers to verify, but I would bet that a 27-student class is overwhelming to a lone teacher, but more manageable to a teacher with a full-time or nearly-full-time assistant/aid. Right now, if I understand things correctly, the only TAs are ones that are assigned to a specific student as part of their IEP. The means the aid can't help the teacher manage the entire class, both because they have to focus on a particular student and because they're not in the classroom all the time. I wonder how much better a dedicated TA would be. I haven't looked into any of the details as far as what they cost or how many teachers would want a TA.
I wonder if we could organize grants through the PTOs to pay for TAs focused solely on helping the teachers with the largest class sizes. I imagine a system where donors would specify a specific elementary school or indicate district-wide, and then teachers would submit requests for TAs (potentially part-time), and the grants would be award based solely on class size. If one teacher didn't have the largest class but felt they really needed the grant, they'd need to convince other teachers not to apply. The funding organization could put out a RFP indicating how many FTE TAs it will fund, and hopefully the district could help in that hiring process.
There may be aspects I'm overlooking, but I just wanted to capture that thought so I have something to reference and modify as I noodle it a little more.
First Budget Forum of 2013
Last night was the first budget forum of the year, and there were some interesting questions and comments made by the community.
Our superintendent started off with a 1-hour presentation on some of the state mandates. I'm not sure what her objective was. I found the information useful, but the presentation was rather long, and I think I had the basic idea within the first half hour. I love that so much of the materials from these discussions and the board meetings are being put online for easy review afterward. I hope that as the community and the district become more familiar with that new reality, the 2+-hour-long details will get posted, and only the 30-minute summary will be presented.
Then, for about another hour, there was a fairly information Q&A/comment/discussion period, which was almost entirely community member talking or asking questions, with excellent answers and limited commentary from the board and leadership team. As always, there were some familiar comments from sincere parents/residents who were new to the process. Why don't we cut sports? Is there a minimum number of students required for classes at the high school? Have you compared NCSD with other suburban council schools? Can we get a list of proposed/recommended cuts and their price tags? I think it's great for the board to be reminded of these most basic concerns that parents have, and to be reminded that most people don't spend even a 100th as much time as they do thinking about these things.
I hope that everyone responds to the survey that will be posted later today. In past years, people have mostly gotten involved only after the proposed list of cuts, to advocate for their favorite item. Unfortunately, that means we all have to sit through the same questions again, and re-explain the motivation for each and every cut. It's a big budget gap this year, so I'd be very surprised if the first vote wasn't above the "cap" and required a 60% vote.
Our superintendent started off with a 1-hour presentation on some of the state mandates. I'm not sure what her objective was. I found the information useful, but the presentation was rather long, and I think I had the basic idea within the first half hour. I love that so much of the materials from these discussions and the board meetings are being put online for easy review afterward. I hope that as the community and the district become more familiar with that new reality, the 2+-hour-long details will get posted, and only the 30-minute summary will be presented.
Then, for about another hour, there was a fairly information Q&A/comment/discussion period, which was almost entirely community member talking or asking questions, with excellent answers and limited commentary from the board and leadership team. As always, there were some familiar comments from sincere parents/residents who were new to the process. Why don't we cut sports? Is there a minimum number of students required for classes at the high school? Have you compared NCSD with other suburban council schools? Can we get a list of proposed/recommended cuts and their price tags? I think it's great for the board to be reminded of these most basic concerns that parents have, and to be reminded that most people don't spend even a 100th as much time as they do thinking about these things.
I hope that everyone responds to the survey that will be posted later today. In past years, people have mostly gotten involved only after the proposed list of cuts, to advocate for their favorite item. Unfortunately, that means we all have to sit through the same questions again, and re-explain the motivation for each and every cut. It's a big budget gap this year, so I'd be very surprised if the first vote wasn't above the "cap" and required a 60% vote.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Middle School Visioning (VA re-configuration)
Last night was another middle school visioning discussion with the Board of Ed. The discussion focused on different options for reconfiguring the middle schools, including:
- Keeping things the way they are
- Pushing 6th grade back to elementary schools and consolidating 7&8 at Iroquois
- Converting Rosendale to a 6th-grade building and consolidating 7&8 at Iroquois (and re-districting the K-5 students)
- Expanding Iroquois to accommodate 6-8 (possibly consolidating 6th grade at VA until the capital project(s) are complete, about 2 years)
- Suggested moments before the meeting: modifying option 3 so that Rosendale is 5-6 and Iroquois is 7-8
This was a preliminary discussion focused on gathering questions and ideas from the community. The board and administration intentionally left dollar figures off each option so that the discussion would focus on the academic and social experience of students, and the community changes.
Some questions that were raised included:
- If this is driven by budget constraints, what's the alternative to closing a school? Program/Personnel reductions?
- It may not be realistic to think we could rent out VA
- At what point is a school too big or too small?
- Would the county extend the sidewalk to Rosendale?
- How will 6th grade curriculum change under the various options?
- How detrimental is the extra transition involved in having a 6-only Rosendale?
- How much money is at stake? [Deb Oriola told me they had discussed numbers in the $750k range]
- Some parents were simply opposed in principle. "Nothin good ever comes from closing schools."
- Does anyone know of a building in another district that stayed open and useful as a non-school? There are some known examples of buildings that were rented/used for a few years, but eventually fell into disrepair and diminished the atmosphere of the neighborhood.
- Where possible, it was requested that the changes/transitions be limited to MS only, and not be pushed down to elementary level
- Someone said that reducing infrastructure is bad, but better than cutting people and programs.
- The point was made repeatedly that it is easier for a middle-of-the-pack student to get lost (geographically but also socially and academically) at a larger school
- VA is literally in the middle of Niskayuna, so closing it has symbolic ramifications as well as major effects on real estate values.
- Students' opportunities to walk to school would be reduced or eliminated if VA were closed.
- Splitting VA/Iro. by grade-level would potentially have some families driving to 4 different places, being on 4 different PTOs, etc.
- The board is compiling people's notes about Pros/cons/questions and will be posting them to the district website later this week.
For reference, there are about 1000 middle-school students in the district, with slightly more than half at Iroquois.
If elementary school parents have strong opinions, they should talk to the board as early in the process as possible. There is a board meeting on Tuesday, and the board accepts email at any time. There is also a forum tomorrow (the 18th) in South Colonie where parents can discuss funding issues and ramifications with elected leaders. At least part of the budget constraints this year are driven by "unfunded mandates" from the state.
I would also mention that these "round-table" discussions are an excellent opportunity to meet other members of the community and a board member or two. The turnout has been very high (>100 people last night) but not so high that your voice isn't heard. There were 7 groups last night with about 15 people each.
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