Don't Spend It Yet

The Ohio School Boards Association sent a notice to its members today which included this comment:

Today, the state Office of Budget and Management (OBM) released district-by-district spreadsheets simulating the dollars generated under the governor’s school-funding proposal. Please note that the fiscal year (FY) 2013 base excludes funding for transportation as calculated for FY 2011 and the career technical education attributed funds.

I won't claim to understand exactly what that means, but the spreadsheet the OBM sent suggests that Hilliard City Schools is in line to receive $5 million more in funding in FY14 than we received in FY13.

The first thing to say about this is: I DON'T BELIEVE IT

I'd like to believe it. An extra $5 million/yr of funding from the State changes things. If our State funding were to be $5 million/yr more for the next several years, and we were to hold spending to that projected in the Oct 2012 Five Year Forecast, then this could delay the next levy for a year, perhaps to 2015 instead of 2014.

But remember, there are several 'knobs' we can play with. Changing the levy timing is just one of them.

We could still put a levy on the ballot in 2014, but make it much smaller - say 4.4 mills instead of the 7.7 mills I estimated in October.

We could be more generous than we could have otherwise been in the next union negotiations, which will take place later this year.

Or we could plan for some combination of these factors.

More discussion than this is premature at this point, as this $5 million is just a number in the wind right now. The General Assembly still has to consider this proposal, and experience tells us that there will be additional tweaks. I'm not particularly optimistic that increased funding to districts like ours - seen to be among the more affluent in the State - is going to make it through the legislative cycle. The power in the General Assembly belongs to the urban and rural districts, not the suburbs.

Stand by for further developments.

The Superintendent Search Process Begins...

HILLIARD CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT

BOARD OF EDUCATION

NOTICE OF SPECIAL MEETING

(RC 3313.16)

Notice is hereby given; there will be a SPECIAL meeting of the Board of Education of the Hilliard City School District on MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2012 at 5:00 P.M. located at Hilliard City Schools Administration Building, 5323 Cemetery Road, Hilliard, Ohio. The meeting will be held in regular session to view presentations by the ESC of Central Ohio and OSBA regarding the Superintendent search process.

The meeting is called by Brian W. Wilson, Treasurer/CFO of the Hilliard City School District Board of Education, at the direction of the President of said Board.

October 31, 2012


Signed:
Brian W. Wilson, Treasurer/CFO
Hilliard City School District
Board of Education

Nichter: Resignation

Dan Nichter has resigned from Hilliard City Council after being indicted by a Franklin County Grand jury for passing bad checks.

I hope this brings an end to the saga of Mr. Nichter in the Hilliard community.

Now the question is who will be appointed to fill his seat on the City Council? Will it be another developer-friendly politician, or will the Council seek someone who will strive to do what is best for the greater Hilliard community?

I'm hoping the next Council member will be a stronger supporter of the Big Darby Accord than the Mayor and other Council members have been. Saying you support the Accord is different than actually abiding by the Accord principles.

And I hope the new Council member believes that a strong Hilliard community means a strong, healthy and cooperative relationship between the City of Hilliard and Hilliard City Schools.

Free Speech

Sent to the Hilliard School e-news mailing list on Sept 4, 2009:

The Hilliard City School District learned of President Barack Obama's student address scheduled to air at noon on Tuesday, September 8, just two days ago from several concerned parents. Since then, we have been overwhelmed with phone calls and e-mails both in favor of and against airing the broadcast in our school buildings on Tuesday.

As a district, we take a non-partisan view towards this address. The President of the United States is our nation's leader and a world power* who will be addressing the youth of our country. The intent to speak to students is not unprecedented, as other Presidents have done the same. For educators, this address presents a teachable moment for our students. As a system, it is our responsibility to provide educational opportunities for our students.

As Superintendent of this district, I always make an effort to listen and be responsive to community concerns. This issue has resulted in a divided community outcry that cannot be ignored. In an attempt to bring some calm to our community and be responsive to the concerns on both sides of the issue, I have decided to permit our schools to air the broadcast on Tuesday. Students whose parents prefer they not participate will be provided an alternative activity during the 15-20 minute address.

I understand this decision will be met with mixed emotions; however, I believe it offers an educational opportunity that should be made available to students.

Dale A. McVey

Superintendent

I find it sad and more than a little troubling that the state of affairs in our country has reached a point where it is questionable whether school children should be required to watch an address by the President of the United States, especially a speech directly meant for the kids.

I understand that there are those who disagree with President Obama on things both big and small. I'm one of them. That doesn't mean I wouldn't want my kids to hear what the President has to say. Regardless of whether the name on the White House stationary is Barak Obama or John McCain, the person we elect to be the President of the United States is the constitutional head of the Executive Branch of our federal government for at least the next four years. What he or she has to say is important.

To those parents who are opposed to this, I have one thing to ask: where are you the other 179 days of the school year when your kids are getting their heads filled with stuff from schoolbooks, curriculum, and teachers' words? Do you discuss any of the points of view on other topics presented by our school district to your kids? Do you know what their textbooks say on matters important to you? Have you tried to ascertain whether your kids' teachers are injecting a degree of personal bias that you feel is inappropriate?

After all, none of us really know what the President is going to say (update: the text of the President's address is now available here). Nor will most parents take the time or make the effort to talk to their kids ahead of time about what they think of Mr. Obama's policies and politics. Likewise, few parents will listen to the President's speech, or make time afterward to talk with their kids about it.

Democracy is not a spectator sport. The First Amendment to the US Constitution preserves (not "gives") our right to freedom of speech, and that means sometimes things will be said that we don't agree with. The solution to that is not to suppress freedom of speech, but rather to engage in the debate. And not just by yelling at each other, as we see at some many of these so-called "town meetings" lately, but rather an actual informed and respectful discussion of opposing viewpoints.

This reminds me a lot of the dialog about school economics. People largely ignore the issues until it's time to vote on a levy then, rather than spending the time to gather and analyze pertinent information, make their decision to vote for or against the levy based simply on hearsay, sound bites, and emotion.

Democracy will not survive much more of this.

* I don't think it is appropriate to say "The President of the United States is ... a world power." A more appropriate description is that the United States of America is a world power, and the President of the United States is elected to serve as its Chief Executive and Commander-in-Chief.

Announcing EducateHilliard.org

EducateHilliard.org is a non-partisan group of residents and business owners in the Hilliard City School District working for the preservation of our excellent schools through sustainable economics.

I'm proud to be one of the founders of this group, and excited about being one of our candidates for School Board this November. I am joined by Don Roberts, a family law attorney and father of three, and Justin Gardner, an accountant and auditor, and a brand new parent.

SaveHilliardSchools.org will continue as the place where I post longer stories about things that alarm me, or aren't making sense, about the leadership of our schools. EducateHilliard.org will function primarily as our campaign website, structured to make finding information easy for folks we're just getting to know.

We are not alone in this kind of community activism in regard to schools. You are invited to visit EducateWorthington.org and Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility and Accountability (New Albany) to learn what folks there are saying about the way the leadership of their schools are failing their communities.

More to come…

The Work Begins

I've been a poll worker since the Nov 2004 Presidential Election, and yesterday was once again a member of the excellent team in Brown Twp. We had a steady flow of voters from the time we opened the polls at 6:30am until late afternoon. Until then, at no time was there a voting machine idle, other than a brief interlude about 4pm when they all ran out of paper. It was good to see lots of young folks participating for the first time (we cheered for all the newbie voters and rewarded them with a donut!).

In addition to all the folks who showed up in person to vote yesterday, about 30% of the registered voters in our township cast their ballots absentee. This has become a powerful mechanism for encouraging voter participation, and has permanently changed the dynamics of the election process – for the better I believe.

In the case of Issue 78, the Hilliard Schools 6.9 mill operating levy, the vote in our township was FOR: 279 to AGAINST: 481. School levies don't often pass in Brown Twp, or the other townships for that matter. I'm not sure of the reasons, but I think there's perhaps something we folks who live out in the rural areas share in terms of frugality. And it may have been a mistake to rename our school district from "Scioto Darby Local Schools" to "Hilliard City Schools," because goodness knows that many of us out in our township don't consider the City of Hilliard government our friend.

District-wide, 14,714 votes were cast absentee – 41%. Somewhat surprisingly, the absentee vote was 7,023 – 7,691 Against the levy. Again, it will be interesting to see the precinct breakdown of the absentee vote, and note what patterns emerge.

Another interesting statistic is that district-wide, there were 604 ballots completed on the voting machines in which no vote was cast on Issue 78 at all. I wonder how much of that had to do with the fact that the school levy was on the last page of the ballot.

The Board of Elections website reports that district-wide the levy passed by a margin of 19,246 to 16,771, meaning a total of 36,017 votes were cast. While many would say that the margin of victory was 2,475 votes, I think the more accurate view is that it passed by 1,239. Had only 1,239 voters said AGAINST rather than FOR, the levy would have been defeated. In other words, the margin of victory was only 3.4%, and that can hardly be called overwhelming support.

This is not to diminish the hard work of Bobbi Mueller and the levy committee. In an election this close, their efforts certainly contributed to the passage of Issue 78. As I reported in September, these folks had a substantial challenge before them, given the vote outcome in March. There were 26,180 votes cast in March, compared to 36,017 yesterday, an increase of 9,207. Those additional votes were nearly 5 to 1 in favor of the levy – an incredible result. I said this would be all but impossible. But a number of all-but-impossible things happened in America yesterday.

And hopefully, many of the over 5,000+ unique visitors of this blog agreed with our call to pass this levy in order to give our movement the opportunity to enact change in the way our district is led.

Now is the time to honor the commitment many of us made to support the levy, yet demand change. Our support of this levy was in no way an endorsement of the current mode of operations, but our words are empty unless we now act.

The first meeting of our team is now being planned. If you want to be a participant in change, and not just a Monday morning quarterback, send me an email and you'll be added to our distribution list.

Dallas Schools Struggle Financially as Well

From Teacher Magazine:

Dallas Teachers Brace for Pink Slips

Dallas teachers can expect to hear as early as this week whether they are among the nearly 1,100 layoffs approved by the city’s school board on October 2, according to The Dallas Morning News. Teachers will account for half of the layoffs, as the district tries to fill an $84 million shortfall in this year’s budget.

Many teachers told the newspaper they felt frustrated by district administrators’ handling of the crisis.“They don’t care about us,” said elementary school educator Kimberly Stephens. “If they did, they would have found another way to help clean up this mess.”

“I’ve always been proud to be a Dallas Independent School District alum, but today I am ashamed,” said Richard Goodwin, a geography teacher and 31-year veteran of the school district. “If district Superintendent Michael Hinojosa were the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, he would be cut.”

The layoffs, which the school board passed in a 5-2 vote with one abstention, are expected to save the district about $30 million, according to The Houston Chronicle. But even combined with $38 million from other budget cuts, they still leave the district $15 million short.

The reality is that school districts are professional services organizations, and viritually all of the spending has to do with personnel costs. There is simply no way for a school district to significantly cut back on spending without reducing staff expenses.

What is disappointing to me in our situation here in Hilliard is that the most senior teachers are casting their young colleagues to the wind rather than share the pain. Their demonstration of selfishness may be what undoes public support, costing them all in the end..... pl

Zero Sum Game

Readers of SaveHilliardSchools.org know that I am a critic of Mayor Schonhardt's homebuilder-friendly actions (e.g. the proposed annexation of the land near Bradley High School owned by Homewood Homes and other residential developers).

But I read with joy the recent Columbus Dispatch article about the potential of landing a significant Verizon operation in Hilliard, creating perhaps 500 jobs and a valuable piece of real estate. I especially like that the deal would include a 'keep-whole' provision for the school district, even though the City has agreed to abate the property taxes for 15 years (note that the City gets its revenue via income taxes paid by the Verizon employees). If this deal comes to fruition, the Mayor and especially Development Director David Meeks are to be congratulated.

But we have to remember that when jobs are moved from one municipality to another, rather than new jobs being created, our win is someone else's loss. In this case, 200 of the jobs are supposed to be moved from Dublin. But those jobs are supposed to be replaced by jobs that move to Dublin from other places. Someone is going to come up short. We've been on the losing end too, such as when the City of Columbus lured Gates-McDonald downtown, or when Dana moved its manufacturing operation to Knox County.

It's a tough game, but it's the only one we've got. The trick is for the municipal government and the school board to see themselves as partners in serving the same community. The municipal government cannot allow new homes to be built faster than commercial development, or the existing residents of this community will not be able to keep up with the every-rising cost of running the school district. The Master Plan says the City of Hilliard needs 1.7 jobs paying $40,000/yr to fund for the services demanded by each new house.

So the breakeven for the City is 295 new houses as long as each Verizon job averages $40,000/yr. Since this is a call center, the jobs will pay less and the number of jobs required will be higher - 2.7 jobs per house if the average pay is $25,000/yr. That equates to more like 180 houses.

But what does that do to the school district?

Assuming each new house has 0.8 kids, it costs $10,000/kid/yr to run the district, and we need about 1/3rd of that money to come from commercial real estate taxes (another third to be generated by the residential real estate taxes on the house where the 0.8 kid lives, and the final third from the State of Ohio), this means that to keep these school revenue proportions, developers should be allowed to build 1 house for each $2,000 in new school tax paid by commercial entities.

It takes a property value of $155,000 to generate $2,000 in school taxes (pre-levy), so to build 180 houses, the new Verizon building would need to be valued at $28 million to keep the school whole. That's possible as the new BMW Financial building was valued at $23 million.

So I think that's the deal. If we're successful in recruiting Verizon, then Homewood (et al) can build 180 more houses - but that's it until another big corporate citizen moves in. If we keep to this pattern, then our community can continue to grow, and our property taxes will need to increase only to fund increases in pay and benefits (another conversation), and not also growth.

That's still a challenge of course. The even better solution would be to build no new houses, and using all of the Verizon revenue to fund all the increasing costs of running our district, keeping the student population the same, and getting out of the routine of passing new property tax levies every 2-3 years.

This goes back to my primary question - why annex the Homewood (et al) land at all?

10TV on Credit Card Spending

Comments have begun accumulating on another post in regard to the recent report by WBNS-10TV about the use of credit cards by Hilliard City School officials, so I thought it would be better to start a post on just this topic. I'll copy the comments over as well.

My own reaction to this is that it is a symptom of a management that has not been held sufficiently accountable for its actions. The Board of Education is elected by the public not to rubber stamp the wishes of the administration, but rather to guide and monitor the performance of the management it hires to run the organization on behalf of the public. The Treasurer has a special role in this, as the Treasurer reports directly to the Board – not the Superintendent – and has a duty to the Board to monitor and question the spending of the rest of the Administration.

All kinds of questions are raised by this story. Why did both of our public relations people (one of whom has since been laid off) need to attend a conference in Arizona? Why was a staff meeting held at Dave & Busters, which I find to be one of the more expensive food places in our area? Mr. Wilson said, "I'm sure Dave & Busters has a room - a conference room off to the side - where they could meet uninterrupted and have their professional development." I've been to Dave & Busters many times, including business celebrations, and know of no such conference facilities, nor is it mentioned on their website. Anyone know for sure?

At the very least, it's another case of bad optics. I understand the need to keep team spirits up, especially in time of adversity, and especially when you have a great team that has taken years to assemble. But this is a tricky art. Special rewards can quickly turn into expected benefits, and the negative feelings created when they must be suspended might do more harm than granting the reward in the first place.

This funding crisis is something that has been looming for a long time – I've been writing about it for a couple of years now. Somewhere along the way, an effective leadership would have said, "sometime soon, we're going to have a very tough levy campaign on our hands, and we'd better be sure we've got our house in order when the scrutiny gets intense." At that point, the finances should have been inspected with a critical eye, and this kind of stuff put in abeyance until better times. Had that been done, it could have made for a positive public relations event - a demonstration of good stewardship and fiscal restraint.

Instead, it is a public relations disaster with just over 90 days from the election (60 days until early/absentee voting begins).

Has this changed the way you're leaning on the levy vote?

New Albany Teachers' Union Contract

The Columbus Dispatch reported today that the New Albany school board and the teachers' union have agreed to a new two-year contract. According to the news story, the teachers agreed to a 2.75% base pay increase for the first year, and no increase for the second year.

However, the agreement does allow negotiations to be reopened for the second year if new revenue is obtained. The story did not say exactly what kind of new revenue would trigger that clause.

The story also failed, as is usually the case with the Dispatch, to point out that the New Albany pay grid includes the same type of step increase present in every other Ohio teacher's union contract I've examined.

While the Hilliard step increase is current a fixed 4.15% across all years and all education levels, the New Albany structure has different increase amounts depending on the years and education level. For example, a first year teacher with a BA/BS gets a 4% step increase for the second year, while a first year with a Master's gets 4.3%.

So the complete picture is that the New Albany teachers will get about 6.75% in the first year and 4% or so in the second year of this new contract - unless the district gets additional revenue, in which case they want more.

The starting salary for a New Albany teacher with a BA/BS will be $38,837 under their new agreement. In the new HEA agreement, the same teacher would be paid $36,160.

Agreement Reached, Up To Teachers Now

Members of the Hilliard Education Association - the teachers' union - will get to see a new proposed contract today, according to a report from the Hilliard Northwest News. If accepted by the HEA, the School Board may vote to ratify the agreement at their Monday, May 12 meeting.

Remember that if the HEA contact has better terms than those negotiated last fall by the OAPSE members, the OAPSE contract automatically adjusts to match the teachers' deal.

Administrative Costs, Part II

Mike Antonucci of Elk Grove CA runs a one-man outfit called the Education Intelligence Agency. I don't know anything about his political views, but he posts some pretty interesting data which he says is extracted from government reports. Here's one that ranks the US states by the number of teachers versus district level administrators.

It places Ohio 49th out of 51 (the District of Columbia is included), with a ratio of only 19.7 teacher full-time-equivalents per administrator. Mr Antonucci says: "Pennsylvania and Ohio have almost the same number of teachers, but Ohio has four times as many district administrators."

I wonder what it is about Ohio's approach to running schools that makes our level of administrative overhead so much higher than Pennsylvania. I wouldn't think the urban/rural mix is all that different - PA has big post-industrial cities and lots of farmland too. I wouldn't think the ethnic mix is all that different either. Their schools are organized on the community level rather than county - just like ours. If anyone has any insights into this, please comment.

Michigan beats us soundly as well. While we have only 19.7 teachers per administrator, Michigan has 47.4 - meaning we have 2.5 times as many administrators per teacher.

Only South Dakota and New Mexico have teacher/administrator ratios lower than ours. These states have tiny and dispersed populations compared to the states of the Great Lakes region and the northeast, where you would think our large school districts would produce economies of scale.

I'll continue to look through his research and post links as I find information that might provide some clarity to our situation.

News of the Cutbacks

At the request of one of the readers, here is a place to communicate facts about actions being taken by the District leadership to enact the $4 million in budget cuts they told us would need to take place if the levy failed.

Hopefully, this week's editions of the Hilliard Northwest News and This Week Hilliard (and maybe even the Columbus Dispatch) will contain stories about the cutback decisions, but I haven't seen anything in the online editions yet. When stories are posted in any of the papers, I'll put appropriate links here.

Please post only facts you know first hand -- no rumors or gossip please!

PL

The Governor’s Plan for Education

In his 2008 State of the State Address, Governor Strickland told us how he thinks our public schools are doing, and what needs to change.

He says the State of Ohio increased state funding for primary and secondary education by $600 million dollars (over what period?), and increased the state's share of funding from 48% to 54%. The state funded the construction of 250 new schools.

Is it showing results? The Governor says Education Week ranked Ohio's public schools as 7^th best in the county, and that The National Assessment of Educational Progress placed Ohio in the Top 10 of all four of its measurement categories. That sounds pretty good.

Still, the Governor wants to reorganize the the Ohio Department of Education, and I think it's a pretty significant change that he proposes. Here are the exact words from his address:

Today I am calling for the creation of a new position: the director of the Department of Education. This office would be appointed by the governor, subject to approval by the Senate. The director would have oversight over all Department of Education efforts.The existing structure, including the State Board of Education and the State Superintendent of Schools, would remain in place in advisory and additional roles as determined by the director. The most important duty of the state should not be overseen by an unwieldy department with splintered accountability. This change in organizational structure will ensure, like higher education, that there is a direct line of responsibility and accountability in K through 12 education. It will ensure that our elected and appointed leaders are working together to strengthen education in Ohio.

I think this is a big deal, somehow, but I'm not sure. I've never really thought about how the State Board of Education connects into the organization chart for the State of Ohio, but apparently it's a lot more independent than the Governor wants. I've scanned the Constitution, and the Ohio Revised Code, and the Administrative rules, and haven't found who, if anyone, the State Board of Education reports to. So I think it's no one. I think it's a free-floating organization that can create policy and make things happen without necessarily being on board with the Governor's agenda.

If I've analyzed this correctly, then I would have to agree with the Governor. I bet that a very very small fraction of Ohioans can even name who their representative is on the State Board of Education. Ours is Michael H. Cochran, but I admit having to look it up. So when people are uphappy about the schools, and want to hold someone at the State level accountable, it's going to be the Governor. So we might as well have the function report to him, just like all the other Executive functions of the state government.

The State Superintendent, Susan Tave Zelman (another name I bet few of us know), who reports to the State Board of Education, worded her response carefully. After all, she might end up working for the Governor:

My top priority has always been doing what is best for Ohio’s students. As the Ohio General Assembly considers the Governor’s proposal regarding the governance of our education system, I am confident they will do what is best for Ohio’s students.

The Governors plan throws a wrench in the school funding amendment proposed by Getting it Right for Ohio's Future, which seems to want to make the State Board of Education a super-legislature which has dibs on the State treasury. GIRFOF is heavily backed by the Ohio Education Association and the local teachers' unions. So it seems like the Governor wants to take on the teachers' unions.

I think I like this guy.

One nit though Governor. My family was among those first pioneers you spoke about who came down the Ohio River on flatboats to settle Ohio in the 1790s, but I doubt that they ever saw the the "mouth of the Ohio River" - because it is not in Pittsburgh...

... it's in Cairo Illinois.

Value-Added Evaluation

As readers of this blog know, I make no claim to understand the art and science of teaching. My focus is on the governance and funding of Hilliard City Schools - in other words, on making sure we have the right folks in leadership and that the system has the resources it needs to deliver the performance we in the community expect.

There is an intersection between these two elements - the feedback to the community about how our schools perform, measured against a set of standards applied to schools all over the state. We want to know as parents that our kids are getting a good education, and as taxpayers we want to find out if our money is being well spent.

The 'State Report Card' is one mechanism for answering those questions. Now the State of Ohio is adding another performance measurement called the 'Value Added measurement.' The Columbus Dispatch recently ran articles about this new measurement. Hilliard City Schools was given the top rating, GREEN, meaning that our schools are exceeded what the state would expect, according to their complex formula.

Dave, an educator in southwestern Ohio, writes the blog Into My Own, and in his blog has written an excellent series on the Value Added measurement system. You are encouraged to read it.

Thanks Dave.

OAPSE Contract Analysis

I requested and have received a copy of the 2008-2010 Contract with Local #310 of the Ohio Association of Public School Employees. This is the union which represents:

• Transportation workers: Bus drivers, mechanics, dispatchers and Bus Aides
• Secretaries
• Building maintenance workers
• Custodians
• Nurse Assistants and Licensed Occupational or Physical Therapy Assistants
• Various other kinds of assistants
• Accounting clerks
• Print shop operators
• Technicians, including the webmasters, software developers and project managers, systems analysts and database administrators, help desk agents, network techs

These are the sections I found of interest (my comments in italics):

• 18.01 – The School District pays 100% of the cost of life insurance premiums and dental insurance for fulltime employees. However for hospitalization and major medical insurance, the School District pays 94% in 2008, 92% in 2009, and 90% in 2010. I've not seen prior versions of the OAPSE contract, but I believe that in the past, the School District has paid 100% of the health insurance premiums. This is a major issue in the negotiations with the teachers' union as well.
• 20.04 – Vacation leave for year-round employees is 2 weeks for 1-6 years to 4 weeks for after 20 years. No more than 10 vacation days can be taken while school is in session. Very reasonable.
• Article 21 – each employee gets 3 paid personal days each year. Reasonable as well.
• Article 23 – each employee gets 15 days of sick leave each year. Unused sick leave can be accumulated to a maximum of 255 days. I have never been granted 15 sick days in a year, but my guess is that most employees accumulate the sick days for catastrophic situations. It has the same effect as fully paid short-term disability coverage for 100% of the normal wage. Okay with me.
• Article 34 – 34.10 and 34.11 prohibit laying off employees and replacing them with subcontractors. I have no issue with this as long as the wages and benefits remain comparable to private industry.

Of course, the meat of the contract is the wage schedules. As is the case with the current agreement with the teachers' union, there is a pay grid for each of the three contract years: 2008, 2009 and 2010. Across the board, the grid for 2009 provides for pay rates 3% higher than 2008, and the 2010 grid is 3% higher than 2009. Unfortunately, this is all the local newspapers will report and, as is the case with the teachers' pay scales, this is only part of the story.
Like the teachers, the OAPSE contract has a length of service component as well. So the change in one individual's pay from year to year is the combination of the lift of the entire pay scale (3% in the case of this contract) AND the length of service increase. The length of service increase is about 1.3% for most OAPSE jobs, and a little more than 2% for IT (information technology) positions.
The combination of these two raise components is 4.25% to 4.5% raises for most OAPSE members, and 5% raises for IT positions.
These numbers sound reasonable to me. But there's a wild card in the deck:
The Board signed a side agreement with OAPSE which says: "… if the Board's eventual agreement with the Hilliard Education Association… results in a higher percentage general increase on base salary…for teachers than the Board's percentage general wage increase appearing in the Board's tentative agreement reached with OAPSE… and/or a lower teacher contribution toward the monthly cost of health and dental insurance … the Board will thereupon offer to OAPSE a percentage general wage increase and monthly employee insurance contributions that match the … HEA agreement…"
In other words, the teachers are now effectively bargaining for themselves and the OAPSE members. No wonder the OAPSE negotiation was completed so quickly. All the OAPSE members have to do is sit back and let the teachers' union (the Hilliard Education Association) do all the hard work.
This side deal also keeps the two unions out of conflict with each other. The HEA members can't accuse the OAPSE members of undercutting them by taking a lesser deal than the teachers wanted.
Is it really all about the kids?

Being Thankful

I spent the month of September riding my motorcycle cross-country with some friends. We went from the Canadian border in Montana down the Pacific Coast from Oregon, and across the Mexican border in Arizona. Our last point before turning north was New Orleans.

I was somewhat surprised to find a city with lots of people (and terrible traffic jams) and very little damage. Admittedly we didn't make it to the Lower 9th Ward, where most of the flooding took place - a residential area which is substantially gone.

We had dinner with friends who were lifelong residents of St Bernard Parish, another hard hit area. They lost their house, but had excellent insurance, and are now settled north of New Orleans, in Hammond LA. I asked if they intended to move back to New Orleans. They said no, that the city was still unsafe because only a third of the police and fire forces have returned.

These safety forces aren't the only public employees who are missing. I came across this blog by a school official, Dr. Roslyn Smith, who is talking about what it like to restart the school system down there.

As I sit at my desk and watch Bradley High School rise out of the cornfield across Roberts Rd, it strikes me that we have it pretty good here in Hilliard. Our buildings have utilitarian beauty, the faculty and staff is excellent, and our kids perform well both within and outside the classroom.

We've let the economic underpinnings get away from us. Residential development has been out of control, the growth of our commercial tax base has been slow, and the State of Ohio, rather than helping us with new tools such as Impact Fees, is bailing out on us.

Still, we can fix these things. We can insist that the politicians protect our community instead of the developers. We can bring the City of Hilliard and Hilliard City Schools into closer partnership in attracting new businesses. And when we send a new State Representative and State Senator to the General Assembly, we can be sure they are folks who will fight to protect our school district.

And recognize that compared to the people of New Orleans and many other parts of the country, we have it very very good.

The Annual Report Card – What does it mean to Hilliard?

The Ohio Department of Education has published the 2006-2007 School Year Report Cards. You can view the one for Hilliard City Schools here. Soon thereafter, the Columbus Dispatch ran a story summarizing the performance of the many districts in our area.

Once again, Hilliard City Schools was evaluated at the "Continuous Improvement" level. The local news establishment has a habit of equating the performance ratings with the letter grades we all brought home on our own report cards. So "Excellent," "Effective," "Continuous Improvement," "Academic Watch," and "Academic Emergency" are described as "A" to "E" respectively. In the words of The Dispatch, we earned a "C" on our report card. For most of us, that sounds pretty unacceptable.

However, there are problems with this evaluation system, brought about mostly because of our state government's attempt to meld our state evaluation system with the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program. The part of this that trips us up is the requirement that all significant, or "official" subgroups must also meet the federal reading and math levels, otherwise "Continuous Improvement" is the highest level that can be awarded.

It takes only 35 kids to make up an official subgroup. In a district like ours where a few dozen languages are spoken, it's not hard to have a number of these subgroups. I can appreciate the frustration on the part of Andy Riggle's curriculum team, who must design approaches for addressing the needs for all these groups, and of the classroom teachers who are the front lines of the battle.

I also understand the concerns of parents who feel the amount of attention their kids receive from teachers is diminished by the additional effort required to address the needs of these immigrant kids.

One response to this situation has been for school districts to appeal to their state legislators for help in getting this subgroup rule modified so that otherwise high performing districts aren't so severely penalized. Appropriately, our administrators have made that appeal to state Rep. Larry Wolpert and Sen. Steve Stivers.

But the real question is, what do these rating really mean, and what are the consequences of a lower rating?

Part of the answer is that there's an economic driver – the underlying theme in so many aspects of our school system and the community.

There is some justified fear on the part of the school board and school administrators that a low ranking sends a signal to the public that we aren't getting good value for our tax dollars, which means having a tougher time getting new levies passed when needed.

However, that can be easily overcome with an effective communications program within our community, my beef for a couple of years. We have smart people living here. Just tell us the facts with an appropriate amount of analysis, describe what the district intends to do in response, and trust our folks to make a valid determination of the quality of our schools. Our leadership team actually does a pretty good job with this, relative to the report cards at least.

Who else cares about these report cards? The residential real estate industry: developers, home builders and real estate agents. Why? Because folks who are moving into an area often make their decisions about where to buy a house based on the perceived quality of the local school system. So Hilliard's "Continuous Improvement" would scare away many potential homebuyers. Those potential buyers who dig deep enough to find out why our schools got this rating might not be comforted to learn that it is due to the problems serving immigrant subgroups.

For those folks trying to sell existing homes in our school district, I have sympathy for their plight. It is tough enough to sell a house right now, and negative news about the school district is never helpful.

Could this lower rating slow down our student growth rate? While it is true that it might slow down the construction of new single family homes in our school district, the demand for new housing is extremely soft right now anyway. However, the influx of immigrant families may not slow at all. Many live in multi-family housing, and the lower report card rating may not be the same disincentive for folks struggling to make a fresh start. Besides, the case may be that these kids are benefitting from a level of attention not available in many school districts.

There is no question that this rating system has some flaws, and adjustments are needed. But some kind of evaluation system is essential if we want to have high quality education for our kids. The schools grade the kids so parents know how their kids are doing, but grading is relative to the standards of the school district. We also need the school district to be evaluated against some broader standard so we get a sense whether the grades our kids receive are valid. That is measured through standardized testing and state/national standards.

So do I have confidence that our administrators and teachers are doing a good job? I like the answer the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, gave when asked his opinion of the United States: "It's seems like there's more people trying to get in than to get out."

Wrong Side of the Tracks, Part IV

This is the fourth in a series of posts concerning the ethnic imbalance in our schools. The first of the series can be found here.

As their term ended in June, the US Supreme Court released a number of decisions. If you have been listening to the news of the past couple of weeks, you know that an unusual number of those decisions were 5-4, very much along philosophical lines. There has been much concern expressed in the mainstream media that this particular Court is embarking on an effort to reverse many cases which define the liberal position in America. One of those was the Brown vs Board of Education decision which ordered the desegregation of public schools in America.

This year, the case of Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1 was brought before the Supreme Court, and in one of those 5-4 votes, the Court decided that discrimination on the basis of race, even when intention is to promote racial balance, is inappropriate. Since this decision was announced, every single news report I've seen or heard has said that this decision reversed Brown.

I'm not a lawyer, so I won't pretend to say whether this is true or not. But as I have found to be the case so many times, you have to dig past what the press and the politicians are saying and get to the unadulterated facts if you want the truth. It's not hard at all to get on the website for the US Supreme Court and read the text of their decisions. Here is the opinion for this case.

If you have read the rest of this series, you know that I believe that Hilliard Schools are becoming increasingly segregated, and that there is more to it than just the luck of the draw based on where your home is located. So in listening to what the mainstream media was saying about this case, I thought that those who support this resegregation had won the day.

But Justice Kennedy said something interesting in his concurring opinion:

School authorities concerned that their student bodies' racial composition interfere with offering an equal education opportunity to all are free to devise race-conscious measures to address the problem in a general way and without treating each student in different fashion based solely on a systematic, individual typing by race. Such measures may include the strategic site selection of new schools, drawing attendance zones with general recognition of neighborhood demographics, allocating resources for special programs, recruiting students and facilty in a targeted fashion; and tracking enrollments, performance and other statistics by race.

Therefore, as I read it from a layman's perspective, the option remains open to adjust attendance boundaries as long as there is no intent to target individuals.

I understand how difficult it is to change attendance zone for our schools, having served on the Redistricting Committee this last time around. But I also heard enough folks on that Committee use language such as "those people" and "they live there because they want to" to know that racism and elitism exists in our community.

The education we give our kids isn't just what they learn from their teachers in the classrooms, it's also those things they see us parents do and say as members of a community.

The battle to end discrimination in America is NOT over. If anything, we're regressing as new waves of immigrants pour in.

Amendment Supporters Predict Failure to Qualify

First heard from Pho's Akron Pages:

The "Getting It Right For Ohio's Future" team (GIRFOF), the folks who have been driving the campaign to get the proposed school funding amendment on the November ballot, announced today that they did not think sufficient signatures would be collected to qualify.

I have not been a fan of this proposed amendment, for two primary reasons. First is that it takes a good deal of control from the people of the local school district and the elected representatives and places it in the hands of panels appointed at the state level. This is not a solution because the system for allocating state funding has never been the problem. It's that the General Assembly repeatedly has failed to fund schools to the level the current formula requires. We can't fix that problem with an amendment, as the General Assembly can refuse to fund a new system as well.

But my primary complaint has been the misdirection of the conversation by the groups who authored and support the amendment -- the educators themselves. They want us to think this conversation is about Johnny in some dilapidated school in Appalachia not having his own desk.

It's not. The key cost in the operation of a school district is the salaries and benefits of the teachers, administrators and staff -- typically 80% or more of total (it's 87% in Hilliard). This amendment is all about placing control of the funding that pays those salaries in the hands of the State Board of Education, and putting this funding at the head of the line at budget time.

GIRFOF has not actually withdrawn the amendment proposal; they've just said that it looks like they won't get enough signatures by August 8th, when the petitions must be submitted to the Secretary of State (only 150,000 have been collected of the 400,000 required). But who knows, maybe this announcement will motivate rather than demotivate the volunteer solicitors (mostly teachers and administrators), and they'll get the job done.

The debate would have been interesting had this amendment proposal qualified. But not nearly enough people would pay attention to the debate or investigate for themselves. For that reason alone, I'm glad it's not likely to appear on the ballot.