1). Why are you running for school board?
I am a passionate proponent for public schools and have
witnessed a precipitous decline in the quality of the ECSD education over the
last decade, both personally and collectively as a community. I have unique
skills and abilities that are not routinely evident on the board. I believe
that my skill set of school finance expertise, data analysis of all kinds and
research persistence to become fully informed regarding school issues would be
an asset to the ECSD Board of Education. That skill set combined with an
unwavering dedication to speak my mind will help alleviate two glaring board
deficiencies that have worsened over time. I addressed both in my campaign last
year. The first and most destructive of those shortcomings is the absence of a Strategic Plan for the district. A
Strategic Plan is a roadmap of priorities by which successful businesses reach
their goals. It serves organizations in both
good times and bad by helping prioritize which programs they should support
with limited resources. It’s all well and good to have a vision statement
wherein the district vows support for excellence in every area of the business
model. However, without a plan by which it plans to execute this lofty goal,
any governing body will be buffeted by the political winds du jour.
The Board has consistently stressed over the last five years
that any Strategic Plan they implement must have the unique Evansville community
values imbedded within it. The district
spent a lot of money, time and effort in 2010 to implement a Strategic Planning
process that included community input. Mr. Roth was uncomfortable using this
data and rightly noted that the community input was limited to around a hundred
individuals. The Citizen’s Advisory Committee was formed to create a survey to
take the pulse of the community values with what I understood at the time to be
a goal of creating a comprehensive Strategic Plan that involved a greater
community component. The survey I received was long on referendum questions and
short on prioritization. I don’t know if or how they plan to use this
information to help the district prioritize implementation of programs and
initiatives. When elected, I plan to encourage fellow board members to
vigorously pursue creating a Strategic Plan that uses the data the community so
kindly provided. One example of an issue that could be ameliorated by a
Strategic Plan is the districts Open Enrollment net revenue loss, which has
increased every year for five years and currently accounts for a net loss of
over three hundred thousand dollars. Once implemented, this plan could help the
district dig itself out of the open enrollment deficit it has placed itself in
by minimizing the importance of the problem for years. This is just one example
of how the district will benefit from a well thought out Strategic Plan.
This brings me to the second way in which I feel I would be
an extraordinary asset on the ECSD Board of Education. I have a very good grasp
of school finance. It is a
complicated subject to which I have made myself a dedicated student since 2006.
I have learned much and continue to learn with each budget proposed by the
board. I have drilled down into the budget and spent hours in Ms. Treuden’s
office learning the nuances of how programs are supported and how rolling
averages work to change the revenue cap. Ms. Treuden is an outstanding business
manager and deserves to have somebody on the board who can appreciate the
complexity of her work and understand the nuances of how revenue is generated.
The public deserves to have a board member who can do all of that as well as
anticipate the effect change x will have on program y. I have done budgetary
iterations by hand for the 4K Investigative Committee Operations sub-committee
which has been a very informative exercise. I have analytical skills and
abilities and a great deal of curiosity that are also not evident on the
current board. That is not to say that these characteristics are absent on the
board, but I have been to nearly every board meeting for eight years and the
present board doesn’t consistently exhibit these traits. I will respectfully direct
questions to the pertinent person before the meeting, as I did in my former term
on the board, so they can be prepared to answer in public. Because I am a
strong proponent of a completely transparent governing body, I will repeat the
questions in a public forum. Those present will then see that the board has
addressed an issue.
2) In what ways might you foster stronger
communications between the school board and all school staff? Between the board
and the community?
“Effective school boards have a collaborative
relationship with staff and the community and establish a strong communications
structure to inform and engage both internal and external stakeholders in
setting and achieving district goals. In high-achieving districts, school board
members could provide specific examples of how they connected and listened to
the community, and school board members received information from many
different sources, including the superintendent, curriculum director,
principals and teachers. Findings and research were shared among all board
members. (Lighthouse I; Waters and Marzano) By comparison, school boards in
low-achieving districts were likely to cite communication and outreach
barriers. Staff members from low-achieving districts often said they didn’t
know the board members at all. “
In the new open enrollment paradigm, public schools must
become chimers of their own bells of success and delve into problems that
hinder education at every level. They must be open to new ways of operating
that meet the needs of all levels of learners. They must anticipate issues
where possible. Excellence in communication and complete transparency is a
crucial step toward meeting that goal. ECSD has a long row to hoe in this
regard.
Poor communication was identified as an issue in the 2010
strategic planning process. To address this, last fall the Board of Education
implemented an ad hoc Communications Committee comprised of two board members
and two administrators. Plans have been
mentioned to expand the membership and step up the promotion of the community survey
to increase the response rate. While the district employed a wide variety of
media to inform the community about the survey and urge voters to complete it
in a timely fashion, I am unaware of specific publicity steps taken to inform
the community at large about the background information necessary to complete
the survey in an informed way. I take this to be a sign that more work is
needed in this area. I would first assess
where the communications committee was on their work before making any
recommendations, but generalizations can be made.
Some School districts employ public relations professionals
to execute well-organized and coordinated communication across all levels. Such
plans place the onus of the communication on the district and minimize district
conflicts such as programming during board meetings and planning simultaneous
events at multiple schools. These firms or professionals utilize a multipronged
approach in which a wide variety of media is employed in order to connect with
the greatest cross section of the community.
Using this as a model, the district as a whole would reap
many rewards. I am not promoting yet another layer of administration, but
rather that the district use this model as they seek ways to improve. There is
little that an individual board member can do to truly effect change, but one
can envision encouraging certain programs that would improve the status quo. Extending
this to the board communications with staff and the district community, there
are a number of ways the board itself could improve the transparency of their
business. One of the best ways I can
think of for this would be to record and provide public access to the ECSD
Board of Education meetings. In that way, those who cannot attend the meetings
can access them via computer or public access TV, or even at the district
office. This would benefit both staff and the community at large. It could even
be used as a student Audio Visual credit, or technology credit if a student
records the proceedings.
I would encourage the board to return to the public
listening sessions that seemed especially popular with staff but also attracted
the general public. This is a way for unfiltered information to get to a few
board members, who then shared with the board as a whole. It works for some
folk who are reluctant to speak in front of a governing body as well as those
who are intimidated by the presence of the entire board and administration. Working
as an individual board member only, I would spend time with staff at each
school to help understand some of the problems staff face. The public school
landscape has dramatically changed and this would enable me to come up to speed
with staff in all buildings, not just the ones our children inhabit. The
information gleaned from these meetings would inform my decisions as a board
member.
Another way to gain public trust is by using the survey data
people spent time to provide to create a strategic plan and not just guide the
creation of a referendum. I’m part of the public that worked hard on the 2010
strategic planning process, from which information has been largely ignored,
leaving me to feel disenfranchised. If I feel this way, it’s likely others do
too. “Why bother?” is the overall sense many have at any public information
sessions the district has.
From my observation over the years, the Board of Education
as a whole would benefit from improvement in their internal communication as
well. There is a board development committee that should help address this
issue, but has yet to productively tackle the problem. Stepping up the work of
that committee would be the way I would encourage fellow board members to solve
this problem.
3). What do you believe employee compensation should
be based on?
This question is very broad and I am not an HR specialist. A
pat answer to that is usually “whatever the local market models recommend.” The
problem right now is that there is an ever changing landscape of public school
compensation models from which to choose. It is the responsibility of
Administration to devise a compensation model that uniquely captures the
Evansville needs. My observation has been that Administration is looking to
other districts for guidance on this and a number of other issues and the
protocols are just not established yet. I also don’t think that the Board of
Education will be involved in devising any compensation models but rather in
voting in support of or against the model proposed by administration. So if you’re asking what kind of compensation
model I’d like to see the administration create for Evansville, I can answer
that.
The percentage of an organizations budget that it sets aside
for salary and benefits should reflect the value it places on attracting and
retaining outstanding employees. If that alone were the criteria for employee
compensation, it’s safe to say that the ECSD would be among the top employers
in education. The steady exodus of both experienced and rookie employees from
our district says otherwise. Dramatic changes in public school compensation
models began in 2009 with the repeal of the QEO and continued with Act 10 in
2011 and now the Affordable Care Act. The impact of these changes are possibly
viewed negatively but could be used to design a cutting edge, state of the art
compensation model that would reap rewards for decades if everyone (staff,
board, administration) works together to envision and implement the new model.
It won’t be easy, but things that are worthwhile rarely are.
Generally speaking, employee compensation models ought to
fairly compensate employees with pay and benefits that are “usual and
customary” to their geographical region and career choice. It’s my belief that every compensation model
should be based on the competency of the individual employee. Ideal models
presume employees are competent but independently confirm this via employee
evaluations. Such evaluations include measurable parameters pertinent to an
employee’s job description as well as an unbiased evaluation of how the
employee has executed his or her job duties in the last year. Annual performance plans should be mutually
agreed upon and include overall career goals that synergistically benefit both
employer and employee. Employees who
consistently perform above and beyond the standards for their position should
be awarded additional bonuses above and beyond salary increases for the average
performer. An untouchable pot of money would be set aside for this purpose, as
it is to the employer’s advantage to encourage such high performing employees. Those
who consistently show a need for improvement through X number of consecutive
evaluations even while direction and support is provided should ultimately be urged
to move on to other careers and would be ineligible for any increases until
improvement is documented. Safeguards
need to be in place to protect both employee and employer so that a balanced
system is achieved. This model presumes
standards are set previous to the evaluation time period and in no way allowed
to become a “moving target.” If administration wants to raise the bar for a
particularly high achieving employee for the next evaluation period, that can
be done, but nothing can be added to an employee’s job description in
mid-cycle.
Short answer: Employee compensation should be based on the
competence with which an employee carries out his or her job description. This
is evaluated in a fair and equitable way via a comprehensive, measurable and agreed
upon performance standard.
4). What criteria will you use when faced with
budgetary cuts?
I refer to my answer to the first question posed. I would
vigorously encourage fellow board members to create a strategic plan using the
results of the recent survey. If that is not done, individual board members are
forced to generate their own list of criteria based on a combination of public
input and their own consciences, which not only won’t match other board
members’ lists, but will likely conflict with them. This is a very poor
substitute for a comprehensive, agreed-upon strategic plan because each board
member cannot help but bring their own agenda to the table, which shows at
every board meeting. Because the board lacks a strategic plan, what follows
would be my personal approach to budgeting.
First and foremost, any plan to further decimate the ECSD
needs to minimize the effect on our students. The administration tried to
implement just such a priority plan last year and it is my observation that it
was not very successful. Enrolling my upperclassman daughter into college
preparatory classes this year was unnecessarily difficult and anxiety producing
for her. Furthermore, resources tell me that students were placed into classes
for which they were woefully unqualified and teachers were told to make up the
deficit. I’m sure there are many more examples of the failure of the student
led priority system in use, but it seems to need a tweak.
Furthermore, I would stress that any plan for further cuts
in the ECSD must be equitable in its distribution of pain. Why do I feel this
way? It was unconscionable in my mind that a few years ago the curricular
budget was cut by 12% while the co-curricular budget made only a 5% cut. This
year, both budgets were increased, which gave a three year average change for
the curricular budget at about a five percent decrease while the co-curricular
budget has experienced an increase of about ten percent. I concede that these
budgets are very different in magnitude, leading many to make remarks like,
“$250,000 (approximate co-curricular budget) is pittance in a 20 million dollar
budget.”
That leads to my next budgetary guide. I will never think a
quarter of a million dollars is pittance. I always think of program costs in
terms of “teacher units.” $250,000 translates to the salary and benefits that
could support five (rookie) teachers in my head. After their budgetary analysis
of what portion of the co-curricular budget is paid with state aid, the
co-curricular committee concluded for the School Board that “For just the cost
of a teacher, we can keep all of our activities.” That phrase aggravated me for
both its insensitivity and deceptiveness. (Those who were there know that this
meeting was followed the following month by a proposal in which administration
recommended laying off ten teachers). It still costs the district $250,000 to
provide the co-curricular programs in their entirety. Local property taxes support a third of that
and state aid supports two thirds of that. State aid is provided through other
taxes residents pay and is not “free money.”
Which leads me to my fourth budgetary guide. Just because
the state aids a program at about two-thirds, doesn’t mean it only “costs the
district a third of the projected expense.” It just means that local property taxes support
a third of the cost and state aid supports two-thirds of it. Nearly every penny
of support for public schools comes from taxes, hence the term “revenue”
designating the income for public entities. I would like to see the board show equitable
concern for being good stewards of these revenues. It is extremely vexing when
the excuse for not cutting such and so or not increasing fees becomes, “It will
negatively impact our state aid.” Unless a change decreases the revenue cap by
decreasing enrollment, the revenue cap remains the same. If you don’t pay it in
a state tax, you pay it in property tax and vice versa. It would be a breath of fresh air if the board
was as concerned about the negative effect on state aid from not spending the projected
budget in five of the last six years as they are about increasing fees for
co-curricular participation.
I hope the drastic budget cuts are behind us, but without a
strategic plan, the only way I have to prioritize programs is to defer to those
with which I have personal experience. Sadly, many of the programs that helped our
eldest child prepare for and successfully attend our flagship state university
have already been gutted. Our subsequent children have been forced to seek
virtual schooling supplements because of this. The jury is still out on whether
or not this approach will be equally successful for them. I would like to be
part of a board that works together with staff, administration and community
not to return to the successes of yesteryear but rather seek new and innovative
ways to meet the needs of all levels of learners and ultimately exceed former
halcyon days.
5). In the past, to save money, non-teaching
positions have been reduced from full-time to part-time, which has been
significantly problematic for students and staff. What ideas and/or plans do
you have to address this issue?
It’s my conclusion from the exodus of both teaching and
non-teaching professionals from the district that general problems must exist
in the district regarding budget cuts to staffing. However, there is
insufficient information in this question to provide a cogent response directed
at non-teaching positions.
I can give my personal impression of teaching staff
insufficiencies from our family’s perspective.
It seems obvious from our experience with enrollment of our Junior
student this year that there aren’t enough teachers at the high school.
Evidence of this first emerged when the volume of scheduling problems exceeded
the staff time to solve them such that only families of Seniors were notified of
conflicts over the summer. In the past, it was every student. Not a single
email was sent to students in grades 9-11 indicating problems and student
schedules were simply posted online less than a week before school started.
Many schedules had little or nothing to do with what students requested, even
as alternate courses. Sources indicate that teachers were expected to accept
students without adequate prerequisite training in their classes. These are
additional indicators that the system is overwhelmed. It will only be
exacerbated next year with a small (100) outgoing Senior class and a large (145
or so) incoming Freshman class. I would urge the board to question the
mechanism of staffing and do what needs to be done as a board to reach a more
optimum student to staff ratio.
Again, this comes down to an issue of poor communication.
Families weren’t notified until it was nearly too late to solve the scheduling
problems. Teachers were not consulted for lack of prerequisites but rather told
to bring the kids up to speed because they had to “put kids somewhere.”
Staffing problems go far beyond the non-teacher positions and while the board
is usually not involved in the details of staffing decisions, they are
responsible for holding administration accountable for results. These are not
the kind of results a district wants to be known for and, in that way, the
board can exert its authority in requesting an improved staffing process that
would be generally applicable regardless of the position.
