Yes, we’ve seen Superintendents being hired from outside of the educational establishment, but it has become commonplace and is no longer an innovation. Most significantly, Superintendents with non-traditional backgrounds perform similarly to Superintendents that come from within the educational establishment.

Could it be that the structure of what is managed and governed by Superintendents and Boards is the heart of the problem?

Neerav Kingsland, chief strategy officer for New Schools for New Orleans, recently published a letter on this very issue in EdWeek. Mr. Kingsland argues that we need superintendents who are the “Great Relinquishers.” Under “No Child Left Behind” and other accountability measures, the knee-jerk reaction of administrators has been to strengthen their grip on districts and schools.  It’s an understandable response to the demands of accountability, but it’s the opposite of what will produce results for children and taxpayers.  Tight administrative grip stifles and chokes out real progress and innovation.  When central authority imposes what it determines to be a successful strategy on all schools, uniformity and regimented reporting become the management tools.

While this approach seems rational from the outside, it lacks the agility to address the unique issues that occur within each school and classroom.  It entangles the school level and classroom level professionals and is an obstacle to doing what works best for their communities.

Modern district administration has clung to almost every management fad business schools have spewed over the last decade.  The truth is these management techniques, so carefully codified in management literature, are often themselves unreproducible and yield poor results for businesses who implement them. Click here for a brief review of failed business fads, some of which we still see being tried in school districts today.  If these management fads weren’t successful at producing results for businesses why do Superintendents and their training courses rely so heavily on them?

What we do know from the time of Adam Smith until today, is that the invisible hand works.  No Superintendent or central office bureaucrat can engineer an outcome as optimal as allowing the producers and consumers in the marketplace of education to simply operate as they see fit.  If command and control systems worked to produce the best possible outcomes for society, we would all be speaking Russian today!  Sadly, the educational establishment is trying to make us all speak edu-babble and the business jargon du jour.  When will they learn?

Mr. Kingsland is spot on.  We need The Great Relinquishers.  We need more independent charter schools.  The last 100 years has been the era of The Great Consolidators.  We have gone from more than 100,000 school districts nationwide to less than 15,000 today.  An ever growing percentage of school funding is paid to administrators.  The reformation of education in our state and nation will occur when we move in the opposite direction.

We must free schools and communities from the iron grip of bureaucracies.  No matter how well intentioned, a centrally directed policy, method or program, will fail to maximize educational outcomes for our children.  We need to look for Relinquishers to lead school districts now.  They need to be aggressive in seeking to divest districts of their centrally coordinated practices.  I look forward to the day when philanthropic money rewards the Relinquisher and foundations incentivize leaders to see themselves as the purveyors of educational freedom.

• FY14 Proposed Budget Exported to Excel
• FY14 Proposed Budget
• Executive Summary

The Superintendent is projecting more revenue will be available for the FY14 budget.  Specifically, the Superintendent is projecting DCSS will end FY13 with revenues exceeding expenses.  The primary source is accumulated money in the after school program accounts for various schools.

The after school programs accumulate money for the individual schools they serve.  These funds are to be used at the discretion of the school leadership for purchasing resources for their school; much like fundraising money.  It appears the accumulated money in these accounts is being appropriated to make the overall budget scenario rosier than it otherwise would be.  The majority of the other funds cited as recently found, are “potential” or “estimated”.  I most definitely oppose the use of after school program funds to be pooled into the general fund for budgeting purposes.   It is a complete breach of trust.  As for the other “potential” and “estimated” revenues, I have two thoughts: (1) DeKalb citizens should be vigilant so DCSS does not return to its previously, overly optimistic and spendthrift ways and (2) Will DCSS fire the individuals responsible for grant administration that, allegedly, failed to collect on grant administration money due the district?  The failure to collect this revenue for years cannot be placed on a CFO that served approximately one year and came to the district in the middle of developing the last budget.  Furthermore, this past fiscal year is one of the few we can point to that showed fiscal restraint and will end without seeing expenses exceed revenue.  Had DeKalb been as prudent with past budgets, we would not have found ourselves in deficit.  I have not seen the financial statement for FY12 (the state is currently auditing that year) but DCSS may have exceeded its budgeted expenditures by over $30 million.  One simply cannot run a school district like that.

While I am pleased to hear the Superintendent say he will be cutting central office staffing, I will reserve judgment until I see and can verify the cuts.  One item we have not seen on the chopping block is transportation to magnet programs over and above what is legally required by the district.  Last year, had we cut this, we could have saved almost $3 million dollars.  That money could buy back one furlough day or hire almost 50 teachers.  Has the Board asked the Superintendent to look into these types of trade-offs within the budget?

The next budget hearing has been postponed until June 3^rd.  I hope the administration is working on these issues.  Stay vigilant because, with citizens’ attention focused elsewhere, the Spring and Summer months often bring questionable votes with negative consequences.  Remember cell towers?

Should not this be an important subject throughout K-12 public education? My experience as a parent of three elementary school children has proved to me their formal learning about history is deficient when it comes to understanding the Constitution and Bill of Rights. This is not a deficiency in the teachers. Some teachers bolster their lessons on this topic but our state leaders in education have let us down by not fully investing in teaching our children about their own history and rights. It should be noted that this deficiency exists with Georgia’s current standards for learning and the Common Core does not appear to fix this. My own opinion is that our elementary schools should have far more focus on the philosophical origins of our nation and the documents that bind us to them. By the end of 5th grade, our children should be able to enumerate their rights, with full understanding as to their meaning. If our children are not fully educated about the origins of our Republic, we should all worry about the continuity of their rights and freedom in the future. I want our children to inherit a world where they are secure in their rights and freedom. This latest scandal gives me pause to wonder if those in government bureaucracies are now either uneducated about our history or truly believe that our rights and freedoms are an existential threat to them, or some of both. Whatever the case may be, it is Leviathan Government, which is antithetical to government of the people, by the people, for the people.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/irs-investigation-groups-targets-91243.html?hp=l1_b1

There are a number of important agenda items today. As always, I encourage everyone to closely examine the financial report. There is a sharp increase in legal fees for March. In the last fiscal year (FY12) YTD legal fees were $3.78 million and this fiscal year (FY13) the YTD fees are $6.3 million. I routinely voted against incurring additional legal fees and rejected accepting financial and HR reports with discrepancies. Unfortunately I was not joined in my dissent by most members of the board.

The board is going to approve several policies tonight, including one addressing nepotism. From what I read, I don’t think the new language offers a substantive change. What remains my main concern is the enforcement of the policy. The administration must vigorously enforce the policy.

At the 7pm Business Meeting the CFO will give a FY14 budget update.
In the most recent reports available on the GA DOE websites (FY11), if DeKalb reduced its per pupil general administration costs ($206) to the levels of Cobb County ($83), it could save the district approximately $12 million. I thought it was interesting that Gwinnett’s last report showed that they spent $240 per pupil on general administration. I’m disappointed that these numbers aren’t the most current but they can give insight into budget decisions.

I have long been an advocate for restructuring compensation. Outside of the Superintendent, no central office employee should make more money than the average principal. Highly effective teachers should receive compensation that incentivizes them to remain in the classroom.

Book Recommendations:
I recently read How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character. I recommend it and think it helps direct the conversation about education in a results-oriented direction while avoiding the clichés of much of the “reform” discussion. Another book that also focuses on results and compliments the discussion is Toxic Charity. The author writes about experiences with his urban ministry in Atlanta. I’ll do a blog post in the future discussing these books. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on them as well.

Urgent Action Request

Pursuant to state law (O.C.G.A. § 20-3-519) accreditation by SACS (AdvancEd) or The Georgia Accrediting Commission (GAC) satisfies the HOPE scholarship eligibility requirements.  Many high school communities are asking the Superintendent for permission allowing their school to pursue GAC accreditation with the provision that the school community will pay for it.  So, the budget impact to DeKalb is zero dollars.

Unfortunately, to date after several requests and meetings, the Superintendent has not agreed to allow high schools and their communities to move forward on this matter.  Sadly, the Board of Education has remained silent as well.  Surely our school system and board members can permit the pursuit of GAC accreditation by any school that wants to seek it and is willing to pay the cost.

Dual accreditation is not uncommon.  Columbia County has district accreditation from AdvancEd/SAC and each of their schools is also accredited through the GAC.  Henry County High School is accredited by both Advanc-ED/SACS and GAC.  Ditto for Lanier County High School, North Clayton High School and more.

If you agree with me that the Superintendent and School Board should allow schools to pursue GAC accreditation, please write an email telling them you support this.  We don’t have much time to make this a reality so please send your email as soon as possible.  I’ve listed the board’s emails below.  Feel free to copy me.  Drop me a comment to show your support as well.

CLICK HERE to Email the entire DCSS Board of Education as well as the superintendent.

1. Adopting policies, providing stakeholder education, advocating the work of the strategic plan, and developing and allocating resources to support implementation of the strategic plan.
2. Setting the superintendent’s annual performance goals in alignment with the strategic plan.
3. Acting to support the superintendent to maintain district focus on work and priorities in the approved strategic plan and to avoid distractions by using the strategic planning cycle to collect stakeholder input.
4. Directing all stakeholders’ questions, input and discussion directly to the superintendent, providing the superintendent and fellow board members with proactive notice of issues or concerns.
5. Using board meetings to discuss board issues, current or upcoming, with the community, not email, social media, other channels.
6. Requesting information from the superintendent or actions by the superintendent by a request to the whole board, rather than individually from the superintendent or from staff or school personnel.
7. Interacting as a parent of a CSD student in ways that reflect the separation of parent and board member roles, informing the superintendent before contact with school personnel regarding parental concerns.
8. When expressing ideas, opinions and intentions to stakeholders, prefacing or clarifying the statements as personal expression, not representation of the board’s ideas, opinions or intentions.
9. Model excellence and innovation in education governance for stakeholders and peer boards.
10. In interactions in which stakeholders request or expect district actions and decisions, in addition to or unaligned with the strategic plan, educate stakeholders in the strategic planning process, as the process for providing input to the work of the district and its priorities.

I have several concerns about these “board norms”. In particular, I am concerned #5 will prohibit board members from communicating with citizens. Would this “norm” be acceptable for your state representative or senator? The majority of your tax dollars (property taxes plus more than 50% of state revenues) are spent on education. These “norms” seem to keep citizens separated from the governmental entity that decides how these monies are spent in DeKalb. That structure seems to benefit the administrative class to the detriment of transparency and accountability. Item #8 seems to contradict #5. If a board member expresses their opinion or intention, would that not be a violation of #5? It’s all food for though. I look forward to hearing the board’s discussion on these issues.

DeKalb County School District Board Meetings
2:00pm Work Session
3:00pm Committee of the Whole – Discuss “Board Norms” (below)
5:45pm Community Meeting for Public Comments
7:00pm Business Meeting

1. Establishment of Dates & Times of DeKalb Board of Education Meetings for 2013
Passes 9-0

2. Affirmation of Board Policy, Descriptor Codes BH and BHA
3. Approval of First Amendment to the Employment Contract Between Michael L. Thurmond and the DeKalb County Board of Education
4. Receipt of Findings and Consideration of the Recommendation of the Tribunal in Personnel Case #13-01
5. AMENDMENT TO THE BYLAWS & POLICIES: FIRST READING
a. Amendment to the Bylaws & Policies: Board Policy GAG, Staff Conflict of Interest
Passed 9-0

G. CONSET AGENDA
1. Approval of Minutes
2. Approval of Monthly Financial Report
3. Approval of Human Resources Monthly Report
4. Approval of 2013-2014 School Calendar
5. Ground Lease Agreement with DBOE and GLOBE Academy
6. District-Wide Telecommunications Services (Year 2 of 5)
7. Cellular Carrier Annual Contract
8. Annual Fiber Maintenance Renewal
9. Redan High School Interior Renovations and Storage Facility Contract Award Approval
10. Southwest DeKalb High School Renovations & Capital Renewal A/E Design Firm Approval
11. DeKalb Parks and Recreation 2013 Summer Feeding Program Agreement

Pursuant to a recommendation from the State Board of Education, the Governor suspended the DeKalb Board of Education and appointed new board members. These events were triggered by the district’s accreditation being downgraded to the status of “probation” by AdvancED (the parent company of the regional accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS)) and Senate Bill 84 passed in 2010.

As I told the State Board, I believe DeKalb has three deficits: credibility, academic and financial. Shortly after coming onto the Board in January 2011, I determined budgeting practices were flawed. I publicly discussed my concerns at every stated board meeting during the financial report. I gave spreadsheets to fellow board members and officials showing them the growing financial problem. Until the most recent SACS report, in December 2012, the accreditor (SACS) never mentioned the financial problems. I am the first to discover and state these problems publicly. In my email newsletter of May 20, 2012, Budget And SPLOST Updates, I stated: “For the past year, I have publicly inquired about, and expressed my frustration with, many line items that were significantly over budget. Their consistent variances from the budget suggested that these items were not properly budgeted for years. Still other discretionary items were also over-budget because of a lack of fiscal restraint. These factors, along with a $15 million increase in benefit costs from the state, and falling property tax revenue have resulted in DCSD starting the budgeting process assuming a $73.8 million budget deficit.” I also stated the budget was “a document based on deception”. The SACS Special Review Visit Report contains my research regarding the budget. Anyone can access my blog and see the research I’ve posted. There are a number of other financial concerns I have noted but were not touched upon in the SACS report.

What we have seen with the budget is a symptom of the larger problem: DeKalb has not invested in the classroom. In November 2012, I published a “Salary Analysis From FY2008 – FY2013” that showed every salary category declined except “General Administration”; these salaries increased over 14%. The budgeting practices have led to the academic and credibility deficits. Parents and teachers see increased class size, more furlough days and fewer resources. These developments seem incongruent with having the highest millage rate in the metro area at 23.98 mils. This, along with the opacity of the district and burdensome, often punitive, centralized bureaucratic decision-making, have created the credibility deficit the district faces today.

Our academic deficit is the result of the financial and credibility deficits. The district lost its focus on the classroom. You can see the evidence of this in the drivers of the financial and credibility deficits. Now that AdvancED and the State have recognized what many of us have seen for years, will the system be able to heal itself? Only time will tell. I certainly hope so. I was one vote on a board that did not, as a whole, want to change things. Will the new board, State and AdvancED be able to move the district in the right direction? Replacing the board was one step but it is the administration that has operational control. This insular group has shown little appetite for adjusting their methods. The administration is the driver, while the board is the map. Are the drivers going to stay on the road map? What type of vehicle will they put the district in? Will it be the same vehicle for every school regardless of their needs or accomplishments? Will the administration continue to get the largest luxury vehicle?

I will be writing a series on changes that Georgia must embrace if we are to make it out of the bottom third nationally on achievement measures. Stay tuned for those. It was an honor to serve you on the board. I am happy knowing that my research illuminated the financial problems in our system. I look forward to continuing to serve you in different ways. As always, I remain an advocate for kids and taxpayers.

Much of the “education reform” talk we hear today gets discussed with the tacit assumption of pitting one group against another. The framework often boils down to parents wanting a better education for their children versus teachers who baulk at increased accountability measures that judge the quality of their teaching and represent a threat to their job security and growth. I reject this paradigm.

The architects and beneficiaries of this faux war are the educational bureaucrats. We now have more administrator than teachers in 21 states, including Georgia. Discussions about accountability are really discussions about creating more jobs for them. Anytime you add another bureaucrat, the classroom teacher is burdened. The growth of these bureaucrats has degraded the teaching profession and created the hostile climate we witness today. Bureaucrats sell parents on “accountability” by making them believe some new program, test, measurement or evaluation system will magically turn their child’s classroom experience into a, heretofore unseen, utopia; opening up educational opportunities previously unattainable. We are just one magic idea away from curing what ails education today. I’m sure some bureaucrats even believe this. Sadly, they burden the teacher, charge the taxpayer and generate false hope in parents, all while collecting six-figure salaries, stretching their bureaucratic tentacles and creating growth in government sector jobs. Well played.

I’m not a Pollyanna. Not all teachers are equal. Some are more effective than others. Some teachers are better-suited for the reserved child; while others do better with gregarious, talkative children. I’m keenly aware some people have made it into the classroom that have no business being there. But I’m also aware that somewhere, a bureaucrat hired them and has allowed them to stay. I also know not every parent is an asset to their child’s teacher. Some parents are incredulous when their child doesn’t get a good grade. There are helicopter parents. There are parents that never show-up at all. And there’s no bureaucracy to evaluate and fix those parenting foibles for teachers.

Parents and teachers should unite behind the idea that they aren’t on opposite sides. Parents, children and teachers are pawns on the chessboard of educational bureaucrats. What’s the alternative? Well, lawyers work at law firms, CPAs work at accounting firms and they manage themselves. Teachers should work at teaching firms and be expected to do the same.

When a lawyer or a CPA begins their work, they practice their profession and do so throughout their career. Yes, they may take an off-ramp, but many work in professional firms from the beginning to the end of their careers. They develop their reputations and their specialized skill set. They may become a partner within their firm. Their firm may also specialize in a particular market segment.

I believe we need to see schools as teaching firms. Just as other professionals manage their “firms”, so should teachers. The Principal should be the managing partner of the firm. Generally the managing partner is someone who has been successful at their career and is seen as an asset to the partners, associates and clients of the firm. The partners of the teaching firm would work with the principal in managing budgets, hiring and planning. Each teaching firm would receive its per pupil funds and the partners could determine their own pay structure and deployment of resources. Of course, they would be responsible for complying with all legal requirements. You could allow schools to specialize in areas. Teachers could recognize their talents with different types of learners and specialize within the firm. Right now, we have no organized way to maximize the talents of our teachers. We expect them to be all things to all people. That’s an unrealistic approach.

The parent compliment to the idea of the teaching firm would be the freedom to choose the teaching firm that works best for them. If parents are allowed to find the best fit for their child, teachers and their firms are freed up to embrace the professional specialization and techniques in which they excel.

The bureaucrats are able to keep control and grow their budgets by creating fear, mistrust and false hope. When teachers and parents realize they are both prisoners in the same bureaucratic gulag, then we’ll have a true reformation. The keys to unlocking the prison gates are Teaching Firms and School Choice.

DeKalb County School District
Business Meeting 3/20/2013 @ 6:00 PM
Meeting Agenda

1. Approval of Minutes

2. Approval of Financial Monthly Report
Report passes 9-0

3. Approval of Human Resources Monthly Board Report
Report passed with no discussions and no questions. 9-0

4. SPLOST IV Acquisition of Support Service Vehicles
Report passes 9-0

5. Approval of Resolution to Phase Out Twelve Instructional Facilities
Report passes 9-0

6. Approval of Plan to Officer Two Surplus Properties for Lease or Sale
Report passes 9-0

7. Approval to Declare 10 Properties as Surplus
Report passes 9-0

8. Dunwoody High School Parking Lot Repair and Repaving Contract Award Approval
Report passes 9-0

9. District Wide Moving Services RFP# 752-13001 Approval
Report passes 9-0

10. System-Wide Imaging Solution Contract Extension Approval
Report passes 9-0

11. Approval of Portable Classroom Lease Extension and Purchase – Williams Scotsman
Report passes 8-1 with Mayfield voting ‘No’

12. Modular Classroom – ModSpace Lease Extension Approval
Report passes 9-0

13. Termination of the DeKalb County School District’s status as a plaintiff in The DeKalb County School District vs. The Georgia State Board of Education

In the upcoming weeks, I’ll be blogging about various educational issues, legislation and events of importance to DeKalb and our state. We have so much work to do together. As always, I remain steadfastly committed to being an advocate for children and taxpayers.

I look forward to seeing new faces on the DeKalb Board. I hope the new board and administrative team will reflect on what I said at our February board meeting about reforming our district. My remarks are available on my blog. http://whatsupwiththat.nancyjester.com/2013/02/12/308/

For clarity, I wanted to resign from the board in advance of the hearing in February, but refrained from doing so because of the pending court case. If the ruling had gone the other way, the remaining board members would have remained on the board and they would select my successor. I wanted to prevent that. I am more comfortable with the Governor and his team selecting my replacement. Additionally, it is a matter of public record that I voted “no” on February 1st, to the hiring of the attorney to pursue the board’s legal challenges in the first place. I did not support in any way, the filing of legal action and I expressed my opposition in board meetings. Because the court has vacated their previous stay, the board members subject to the Governor’s executive order are now, no longer on the board. Once the Governor appoints new members, the board will have a quorum and be able to meet. At that point, the board will be able to make decisions regarding the use of district resources.

I hope that the next chapter for DeKalb schools brings about a reformation that begins to fulfill our obligation to our children. I hope this next chapter offers the taxpayers a product worthy of their investment. Thank you again for allowing me to serve you. I look forward to working with you to promote ideas and strategies that will empower parents and teachers and improve the educational lives of children.

* Sam Moss Service Center is located at 1780 Montreal Road, Tucker, Georgia 30084.
** November 15, 2012 meeting was held from 5:30 PM until 7:00 PM at Ale.
*** Transition meeting consisting of currently-appointed and newly-appointed committee members.

I want to welcome Mr. Thurmond to his first board meeting as our interim superintendent.  You have come to us in tumultuous times.  On behalf of all the children and taxpayers in DeKalb, I wish you much success.

I shared with the State Board of Education, on my blog, and now I share with you -  We have three deficits:
1.  Academic achievement
2.  Credibility
3.  Financial

Please seriously examine and address these deficits.  Focus on returning competence and skills as the only credentials for hiring.  Please make every decision in the best interest of kids and taxpayers.  This sounds simple.  But it often gets confused when the board talks about “things”.  Remember, every dollar spent on something beyond the classroom teacher and other staff directly engaged with children in a classroom, is a dollar not invested in education.  Things don’t teach children.  Programs don’t teach children.  Scripts do not teach children.  Good teachers teach children.  This is especially important for our most impoverished communities.  Nothing can replace the gentle hand of a teacher reading and rereading a passage in a book and encouraging a child to think beyond herself, beyond today and imagine the possibilities of a full future.

Please communicate with the public.  Please don’t let that be one-sided.

Please watch the budget like a hawk.  I will.

Meet every principal and empower them.  Tell them to tell you when they face a bureaucratic obstacle.  Then, remove it for them.  Principals are your CEOs; your field generals.

Empower each school community.  Return discernment to our system.  Don’t let heavy-handed, onerous, administrative regulations put up a wall between the school and the community of parents.  Give principals, indeed every employee, the power to do what is in the best interests of children on the spot.  Support them.

–Nancy

While I am prohibited from speaking about the separation agreement, I can state that I am philosophically opposed to the level of compensation and perks that superintendents routinely receive not only in our metro area but across the nation. The golden parachutes that are also typically given at their exit are equally problematic. Given the state of affairs in DeKalb, I do not believe there is any credible rationale for paying severance to anyone.

Regarding the new interim superintendent, I believe it was a mistake not to engage the State Board of Education, the State Department of Education, the Governor’s Office and AdvancED in the selection process of an interim leader. I believe these actions represent insular thinking which will further erode the relationships between DeKalb, these entities and the public.

On a broader note, I have been disappointed with the institutional limitations that have failed to arrest the declination of DeKalb’s school system. The state’s third largest system has been on a precarious path for many years. All along the way, the institutions of our state should have recognized the unsustainable and reckless path that was before us and engaged in increased and more effective oversight of this district. I’ve blogged before about our state’s need to move to an accreditation model based on student achievement results and financial management as is done in many states. Had such a system been in place a decade ago, DeKalb would not find itself in this situation. I will continue to advocate for our state to restructure our state department of education to produce this type of accreditation model. We cannot allow our state to continue investing in failure with no mechanism to identify and solve the persistent and developing problems with education in Georgia. The same state framework that led to our state and DeKalb’s problems is not capable of correcting them.

There are other steps that can help mitigate the footprint of district failure and incentivize DeKalb and other districts to improve their trajectory. Here are my top recommendations for immediate consideration to the state department of education and to our legislators.

1. Eliminate compensation to board members in districts that have deficits on their year-end financial statement.
2. Eliminate compensation to board members if their districts have achievement levels below state averages.
3. Eliminate compensation to board members if their district must request class size waivers.
4. Revoke the license of any superintendent that has 2 years of declination in student achievement results in their district.
5. Allow portability of per pupil state funding for students who are in districts that have seen declining achievement levels, are operating in deficit or have increased class sizes beyond the state standards. The portability of these funds should allow the students to attend public school in any other district or an independent charter school, should they so choose.
6. Should a district be put on probation or lose accreditation, mandate that the district must allow parents and teachers to enter into a contract to self-manage their school or chose an independent management company to provide services to their school. These schools must have full control over their per pupil funds.
7. Should a district be put on probation or lose accreditation, mandate that any community organization that wishes to pursue and fund alternate accreditation through another statutorily approved accreditor (such as the Georgia Accreditation Commission), may do so for any school with the full cooperation of the school district.

I hope that you will join me in advocating for these immediate measures to be put in place. If you agree with them, please tell your legislators, the state board and the Governor.

I also encourage parents to support the Parent Trigger bill (HB123) that made it out of subcommittee yesterday and will soon be before the full House Education Committee. Tell your legislators to vote for it.

I think that DeKalb is a cautionary tale for our state. Other communities are also experiencing changes that may lead them to face challenges and conflicts similar to DeKalb. If we can implement a framework on the state level that prevents these challenges and conflicts from festering into system failure, other districts can avoid DeKalb’s predicament.

1. The SBOE must conduct a hearing pursuant to O.C.G.A. § 20-2-73.
2. The hearing must be conducted subject to SBOE Rule 160-5-1-.36.
3. The “Notice and Order” sent by the SBOE required both parties (SBOE and DBOE) to file witness and document lists by 1/11/13.  It is my understanding that it was acknowledged that neither party had adequate time to prepare complete lists as necessary to conduct a formal hearing.  Furthermore, former board members who had received the Notice were instructed that their presence would not be required on the 17^th.
4. If a formal hearing was anticipated, given that the 3 former board members would have pertinent testimony, they would not have been released from attending the proceeding.
5. Furthermore, there are many documents to admit into evidence and witnesses to testify to various matters discussed in the AdvancED/SACS Special Review Report on behalf of both parties.  Neither party had produced a comprehensive list of witnesses or documents.  Certainly, staff members from DCSD and AdvancED would need to be present, along with documents, to discuss the issues in the report.  Staff members and documents were conspicuously absent.
6. The statute provides that the hearing must be held no later than 30 days after receipt of the report from AdvancED.  Given the prerequisites for a hearing were not met, why wasn’t the proceeding officially begun and immediately set to reconvene at the next available date?  Knowing in advance that the requirements to hold the hearing were not met, why was the public not informed that the hearing would be adjourned to reconvene in February?

I know many of you took time away from family responsibilities and work to attend the proceeding.  Many of you obtained childcare so you could be present.  As no action could be taken on the 17^th given the procedural constraints, I wish the SBOE had notified you in advance that the proceeding could only culminate in a hearing at a later date.

It was interesting to note several SBOE members testified that the DeKalb BOE should be more “aggressive” in getting information from the DCSD administration about various issues, including financial data.  This seems at odds with statements in the AdvancED/SACS report.  I’m in agreement with the SBOE.  Board members must have a full and unobstructed view of the facts.  Well paid administrators shouldn’t be prickly or sensitive about questions from the board.  If board members had been more aggressive over the past decade, we wouldn’t have found ourselves in this mess.  Sometimes the “governance team” paradigm that is held up as a model of unity makes me wonder what “team” everyone is playing for.  What if the “governance team” sells mediocrity as success and avoidable financial disasters as simple errors?  Today’s citizens are savvy enough to see through that type of spin and rightly demand much more.  Food for thought.

School Choice Week – Empowering Parents in DeKalb

This week is National School Choice Week.  School Choice is about parent empowerment.  If we return the power to parents to govern schools alongside principals and teachers, the cause of education will be well-served.  It also turns schools into innovation laboratories.  It dislodges the bureaucratic hold on budgets and policy.  It allows teachers to teach unencumbered by one-size-fits-all programs, paperwork and creativity-killing dictates.  It allows principals to develop policies that are right for their school.  It minimizes the footprint and potential entanglements of district-wide financial problems.  I’m an advocate for implementing this type of real local control in DeKalb.  It would be a reforming and sustainable model for successful outcomes for kids.   This model is called the Portfolio Strategy.  It empowers parents and gives them choices.

If you support empowering parents, communities and teachers, please join me at the School Choice Rally at the Capitol on Thursday at 10am.  For more details, go to this website:  http://www.schoolchoicerally.com/ .  You can also show your support for reforming our district by reading my Declaration of Parent Empowerment and sharing it with other parents and leaders.

My blog posts covered the tortured logic of “The Circle of Trust”.  It showed no matter the mistakes or misinformation of the educrats in writing, reviewing and implementing policy, it is always the board’s fault.  If I ask too many questions, it’s pestering, suspicious or distrustful.   If I am misled by staff, that’s on me too.  Rigid policy is extremely important in accreditation and, as it turns out, in insulating bureaucracies from real accountability and responsiveness.  It has the added bureaucratic benefit of sanitizing the bad decisions made every day.  Remember, “it’s policy”.  Unfortunately, policy is no replacement for human discernment in the life of a child or a community.  We have been victims of policy.

I understand your frustration with the board.  As the most consistent “no” vote, I experience this frustration more than most.  For what it’s worth, if the board cannot agree to a drastically new approach to the delivery of education and governance of our district, the board should be removed.  I believe all the members of the board and most of the DCSD administration want better results for children.  But, they want other things more.  Board members and administrators can be removed and the game remains.  Rearranging or replacing the chess pieces won’t result in improved outcomes.   The game itself is rigged.

The only way to truly affect change is to change the game.

My fellow citizens, along with the challenges presented by probation, comes opportunity.  We can either leverage that opportunity to fundamentally change and reinvent education in DeKalb or things will remain the same.  The board or administration can be removed but the deep systemic problems will continue, and possibly worsen in the short term, despite the false hope this action might give.  The persistent and intractable problems that have plagued DeKalb for more than a decade will erupt again.  Look at the outcomes where accreditation and various state actions have temporarily given relief and hope; only to see the systems plunge right back into the same quicksand.  But there is a way out.

Here are my solutions:

1. Consent Decree – The current or newly appointed DeKalb Board must enter into a consent decree with the State that contains provisions for addressing the “required actions” in the AdvancED report. This decree must do more than offer a weak promise to implement yet another plan and another round of stakeholder engagement meetings.  It must demand that DeKalb reinvent the way public education is delivered and governed.  The consent decree must demand that we push governance and autonomy to each individual school or cluster of schools.  This approach is called The Portfolio Strategy.  Using the Portfolio Strategy approach:
   •    The district can meet the required actions listed in the AdvancED report and ensure that the district retains accreditation;
   •    Design a new governance system that minimizes the risk and footprint of financial malfeasance;
   •    Eliminates the governance, policy and advocacy conflicts that entangle all layers of the district and;
   •    Provides a robust and authentic community engagement process that yields results to meet the unique demands of a diverse set of communities.
2. Georgia needs to adopt a model for accrediting schools and/or districts based on the merits of their work.  Accreditation should not be linked to anything but results for children and prudent financial management for the taxpayers.  The state of Texas does this and we can too.  Check out the value the Texas Education Agency adds to their systems.  The state continually monitors and works with their systems and does not cede their oversight role.  It is a transparent system based on student results and financial stability.  Read how Texas determines accreditation for schools and districts.  And, it has generated results.  Read the news on their graduation rates.

The Texas model has worked.
•    Number 1 with Asian students with a graduation rate of 95 percent. (Georgia 79%)
•    Number 1 for white students with a graduation rate of 92 percent. (Georgia 76%)
•    Tied for 1 with a graduation rate of 81 percent for African-American students. (Georgia 60%)
•    Has the 3rd highest graduation rate for all students with a rate of 86 percent. (Georgia 67%)
•    Number 2 for Hispanic students with a graduation rate of 82 percent, behind only Maine. (Georgia 58%)
•    Number 2 for children with disabilities who graduate at a rate of 77 percent. Only South Dakota had a higher rate.  (Georgia 30%)
•    Number 2 for economically-disadvantaged students who graduate at a rate of 84 percent, behind only South Dakota. (Georgia 59%)
•    Number 26 for limited English proficient students who have a graduation rate of 58 percent. Those who become proficient in English are removed from the limited English proficient category. (Georgia 32%)

The Portfolio District

According to the Center for Reinventing Public Education, “A growing number of urban districts including New York City, New Orleans, Chicago, Denver, Hartford, and Baltimore are pursuing the portfolio strategy. The portfolio strategy is a continuous improvement model for districts that aims to dramatically affect student outcomes at scale. The strategy, built around 7 key components, creates diverse options for families in disadvantaged neighborhoods by opening new high-performing, autonomous schools; giving all schools control of budgeting and hiring; and holding schools accountable to common performance standards.”  Most recently, the Cleveland Plan has been set in motion to reimagine and improve public education.  Click here to read about their plan.

The Portfolio District strategy acknowledges the realities and complexities of a large, diverse community.  The strategy allows the district to jettison the notions of “one size fits all” and “top down” implementation of policy, procedures, curriculum, hiring and more.  This model removes the intractable governance issues by changing the function of the district from a unit responsible for all policy, budgeting, curriculum, HR decisions, etc. to a purely supportive role.  Schools and communities around the district are given autonomy and then held accountable for their results.  The district would simply be a conduit for funding and could provide other services at the request of individual schools.  Innovative districts around the nation are using this strategy.  You can read more about it by visiting the website of The Center on Reinventing Public Education.

The Portfolio District strategy also establishes a partnership with the community, business leaders and foundations.  This public-private partnership helps guide the implementation of the strategy; ensuring that all communities receive the choices and support they need.  This partnership is critical to reestablishing credibility with the citizens and parents.  It will provide for authentic stakeholder engagement that will yield the results each community wants; rather than the false hope of surveys, task forces and commissions long ignored.

Parents, teachers, citizens, I hope that you will join with me in asserting your ownership of the school district.  For too long, the bureaucrats have controlled and affected your communities while your voice carried little authority to demand change.  The mantra of accountability sadly has held almost no one to account.  Don’t let this opportunity leave us with false hope.  Let’s leverage this situation to bring about meaningful reform in DeKalb and our state.

Please join me in asking The State Board of Education and Governor Deal to return power to the parents and the school communities.  If we don’t make this structural change now, I fear that we’ll limp along with ambiguous plans to “do better” or with a new board that either plays the same game or gets rolled by the educrats.  You deserve a seat at the table that determines how your school is run.  You know what is best for your child and you should have a governance system that allows you to use the tools, strategy, calendar, schedules, budgets and staffing models that work best for your specific community.

Please request that the State Board and Governor decree that DCSD must take immediate steps to begin converting our district into a Portfolio District.  Ask them to study the Texas model for accreditation.  If you agree with my approach, let them know.  Let’s use this opportunity to take back our schools, empower parents and give every child in DeKalb the education they deserve.  

The October 17, 2012 AdvancED/SACS Special Review Report states:

“Based upon the information collected and reviewed, the Special Review Team found sufficient evidence to support a finding that the actions and behaviors of the DeKalb County Board of Education are in violation of AdvancED Standards and policies and its [DCSD’s] own established policies.”

For the purposes of this blog posting , we’ll ignore the fact that the AdvancED Standards and policies are designed by educrats, in part, to protect and insulate educrats from the very community they serve: students, classroom teachers, parents, board members and the taxpayers who are footing the bills.  There is little in these policies that address effective education of students.  AdvancED/SACS and the Superintendent/administration/staff (SAS) give lip service to “stakeholder engagement,” which they usually promptly ignore, and they hide behind the mantra of “policy” when it is a convenient shield or callous substitute for human discernment.  All the while, the non-student-centered decisions are made because there’s a “procedure” or “policy” that cleverly protects any one educrat from having to shoulder responsibility.  It is insidious and it harms children and taxpayers.  But, I’ll talk more about this later.  Back to Policy; more specifically back to Policy DJE which said report discusses beginning on page 5.

I have spent some time reviewing Policy DJE and the portion of the AdvancED/SACS report referencing this policy.  Click here to review any of the various DeKalb County School District (DCSD) policies.

Whatever in the world is Policy DJE? 

Policy DJE covers the purchasing policy of DCSD.  The AdvancED/SACS report ostensibly addresses compliance issues with Policy DJE, Section V(c)(4).

The October 17, 2012 AdvancED/SACS Special Teams Report states:

“Clearly, the Board is ignoring the difference between governing the system and managing the operations of the system.  Another example, involves an issue that has arisen in relation to Policy DJE – Purchasing, which specifies the following:  All purchases and contracts under $100,000.00 shall be reported to the Board monthly for information only, reflecting vendor, goods or services purchased, amount of purchase, and the name(s) of staff member(s) who signed the approval.”

“The board chair requested a report to document compliance with the policy.”

This is good, right?  The board chair is documenting compliance with a policy requested two years ago by AdvancED/SACS; one that allows the Superintendent/administration to spend money without Board approval up to $100,000.

The report continues:

 “In turn, the Superintendent has indicated that the system’s technology structure and software are not designed to provide the detailed report without extensively revamping the database. Reportedly, producing the report would require excessive staff time that would ultimately interfere with job performance in the delivery of services to staff and students.”

OK, so Boards of Education should follow policy.  In fact, this very policy was adopted in the wake of the AdvancED/SACS investigation from 2010 and amended later, at the Superintendent Atkinson’s request, to change the dollar limit from $50,000 to $100,000 thus giving the Superintendent and the administration even more latitude in spending money without board approval.  The only requirement of this policy was that the Superintendent/administration had to provide the board with a monthly list of the purchases made and the money spent under this policy.

How Are Policies Made in DCSD?
The Superintendent/Administration/Staff  (SAS) researches and brings policies to the board for board approval.  So, DCSD staff wrote Policy DJE.  Additionally, once a policy is first brought to the board it must sit for 30 days while all interested parties have the opportunity to vet it.  Early in 2012, the Superintendent/Administration/staff (SAS) first developed this policy and then had 30 days to communicate to the board that they would not be able to comply with it.

Apparently staff didn’t inform the board they couldn’t comply, even though staff wrote the policy.

Now, AdvancED/SACS has put DCSD on probation and is blaming the board, at least in part, because the board isn’t following policy.  The AdvancED/SACS report criticizes the board chair for requesting that DCSD Superintendent/administration/staff follow the policy that DCSD Superintendent/administration/ staff wrote.

The AdvancED/SACS report goes on to say:

“Meanwhile, the board chair unilaterally made an arbitrary decision, without further discussion and direction by the full Board, to set a new, lower floor for purchases for which the Superintendent needed to submit a report. It appeared that the Board and administration had reached a stalemate in resolving the issue, but rather than initiating the policy revision process to rectify the dispute, the board chair attempted to create a work around solution. This type of resolution without appropriate policy vetting, approval, and implementation leads to lack of clear requirements for the direction and oversight of fiscal management at all levels of the system.”

I reviewed the emails I received regarding the Curious Case of DJE.  Here’s what I found:

• Our board chair did send emails requesting that the administration comply with this policy and was told that the existing financial software used by DCSD did not support generating this report. (Why we don’t have robust software is also another blog for another day.)
• If the district were to comply, the board was told that 5-7 additional staff members would need to be hired at a total cost of approximately $490,000 to review the more than 28,000 transactions that might fall under this policy.
• Nothing in the emails indicated the Chair made an “arbitrary decision” regarding complying with this policy.  So, I called the Board Chair to discuss what this statement in the AdvancED/SACS report meant.
• The board chair asked the superintendent to make an effort to comply with the policy even if it meant, providing a report on a smaller subset of transactions (i.e., $75,000 – $100,000 or any other subset).

It appears that, after writing a policy it could not comply with and silently waiting out the 30-day comment period, the administration (superintendent) decided that this represented a “dysfunctional” board and submitted this incident to AdvancED/SACS as proof.

So, let me sum it up for you.  Staff writes policy and the board approves it after giving everyone a 30-day window to comment or bring up any potential conflicts with the policy.  Board Chair asks staff to comply.  Staff says they can’t because previous staff didn’t purchase the right software.  AdvancED cites the board for both following and not following policy.

I could close this blog right here but, as the late Paul Harvey used to say, here is “the rest of the story.  Page 2.”

Are you familiar with the www.open.georgia.gov website?

“Open Georgia is a gateway for obtaining information and key documents about how the State of Georgia spends tax dollars and other revenues to provide services to Georgians. The information maintained on this site comes from various state agencies and is updated annually.” 

DCSD is required to send data for this website to Georgia.  For example, you can look up salary information on any DCSD employee – or any other state employee.  There’s another handy feature.  You can look up information on all payments issued by DCSD on the open.georgia.gov website.  The website states,

“In accordance with the Official Code of Georgia Annotated 50-6-32, we have provided a list of the names of each person, firm or corporation that has received payments from each department, commission, authority and agency of State government; ”

Pull up the “Fiscal Year 2012 Detailed Payments” report.  The report lists 7,547 payment entries.  The payments span $2.58 paid to AT&T Long Distance Service to $318,455,289.84 in aggregated teaching salaries.  So, apparently DCSD is keeping and producing information on payments that can be uploaded in a searchable database.  In fact, DCSD sends this data to the state on an annual basis.  This begs the following questions:

• Policy DJE specifies a monthly report to the board for purchases of under $100,000.  According to what is sent to the state, DCSD is tracking most of the information needed to fulfill Policy DJE.  So why was the Board told it would cost near $500,000 to develop the information?

• Why didn’t the superintendent simply offer to provide a list of transactions (including the amount and the vendor) pursuant to Policy DJE, with this caveat:   details on the specific materials or services purchased and the name of the authorizing staff member (two pieces of information required by Policy DJE), could be available on request as needed?

• Why wasn’t the Superintendent cited in the AdvancED/SACS report as being obstructionist or, at least, obtuse?

• Shouldn’t the Superintendent — CEO of the third largest school district in Georgia — have some affirmative responsibility to address the policy given that the Superintendent’s staff wrote the policy and then neglected to note any compliance issues?

Certainly we can expect better from our well-paid educrats.  But, perhaps, this issue was engineered to cast the Board Chair as difficult to work with and then served up to AdvancED/SACS for their report.  The reality is the facts don’t match the administration’s, and thus AdvancED’s, position.

To quote Paul Harvey, “And now you know the rest of the story.”

–Stay tuned for more myth busting, my take on School Council empowerment and the complete lack of human discernment in education today.  My final blog on this subject will contain my action recommendations.

Do you know what the teams of accreditors (all expenses charged to DCSD) missed in the AdvancED report?  They missed the “mother of all financial problems.”  They said nothing about the accounting methodology used by DCSD.  The third largest school system in the state (approximately the 24th largest in the nation), has been reporting to the board of education using a cash basis.

Why is this a big deal?  For starters, the cash basis will always overstate account balances because it doesn’t include liabilities already incurred but not yet paid out.  The board would then approve budgets for the next fiscal year without a true picture of where the last year ended.   But that’s just one reason the DCSD accounting methodology is a “big deal.”

I’m just a mom with a calculator, but even I know there are standards for accounting methodologies.  The Georgia Department of Education (GA DOE) says that districts should use an accrual or modified accrual method.  The GA DOE’s manual for financial reporting, Section 1, Chapter 7 states:  “LUAs are urged to follow GAAP during their daily accounting and financial reporting.”

•    LUA stands for “local unit of administration” – that’s accounting-speak for “school district.”
•    GAAP stands for “Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.”
•    Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB)

So, why would an accreditation agency that has best practices embedded in its “standards and indicators” ever accredit a district or school that used an accounting methodology that did not conform to the GAAP or requirements from their own state’s Department of Education?

Why would the GA DOE continue to allow a district to operate against GA DOE’s own financial manual; using a method that, in their words: “permits distortions in financial statement representations due to shifts in the timing of cash receipts and disbursements relative to underlying economic events near the end of a fiscal period?” (Section 1, Chapter 7, page 2.)

Doesn’t it seem odd to you that these issues were never brought to the attention of the board or the public by AdvancED/SACS?

Since at least half of the state budget is spent on education, shouldn’t Georgia have ensured that the third largest school district in the state was compliant with common accounting standards?  (I’ll blog later about what I learned during a meeting with state auditors.  Meanwhile, consider this:  in all my time being interviewed I never encountered a financial professional/expert; only educrats and one lawyer.)

I contrast the academic and financial failures that I have noted here with the issues that were highlighted in the AdvancED/SACS Special Review Report.  My personal favorite, I have labeled, “The Pronoun Police.”  On page 11, the report states:  “During interviews, board members used pronouns like “I,” “me,” and “mine.”

Were you aware that a school board member has their First Amendment rights curtailed and must refrain from using these pronouns?  Does that seem like a silly thing to note given the major financial and academic issues on which we should focus?  Yet, the report states, mildly, only that academic achievement has declined.  It does not speak to the administrations’ responsibility in said decline.  It doesn’t even address the competency issue at the heart of the academic failures we have witnessed.  But, it was apparently noteworthy to discuss the pronoun usage of board members.

The DeKalb school system has faced significant challenges over the last several years.  These challenges are what motivated me to run for the board.   I took office in January 2011 and was promptly fed a diet of misleading and false information throughout my tenure on the board.  I consistently pointed out the problems I saw.  Just to note a few:

• 7.11.11 Board meeting @ 1:31:48 on the recording of the BOE meeting I note the variances in the budget concerning electricity and legal fees.  Mr. McChesney supports me.  
• 10.03.11 BOE meeting @ 1:04 on the recording I ask about legal fees; @1:05, I note that I continue to “harp” on the electricity issue as we are more than $1 million over-budget; @1:06:11, I ask why we aren’t preparing better budget assumptions; @1:06:39 I am mislead about the reasons the overage has occurred.  
• 1.19.12 BOE meeting @ 1:46 I bring up electricity again.  Mr. McChesney supports me.  Other BOE members try to prove me wrong, saying that the increase is due to rate increases.

As I highlighted in my December 26, 2012 blog, the AdvancED/SACS report states, “The board members’ questions to the staff displayed a suspicion and lack of trust for any information provided by the staff.”  But AdvancED/SACS fails to ask these critical questions:
•    “Why does the staff provide misleading, incomplete or false information to the board?”
•    “What if staff continues to provide misleading, incomplete or false information to the board?”
•    “What if many of those staff members are still employed by DCSD and continue this practice?”
•    “What if some newly hired staff also engages in similar behavior?”

Part of my “take away” from reading the AdvancED/SACS Special Review Report is that accreditation is attached to pronoun usage of board members, as well as their gullibility.  A friend of mine helped put together a “Circle of Trust” graphic that represents what I see as the paradigm for trust within the AdvancED/SACS accreditation best practices framework:

So, to anyone who wants to be a board of education member, make sure you are comfortable with the “Circle of Trust” — or give me call and I’ll tell you what you are really in for.

–Stay tuned for Fun with Policy DJE and Solutions.

It does not.

Accreditation by SACS/AdvancED is big on “process” and “continuous improvement.”  It does not rate how well schools perform their mission to educate children.  Given the recent graduation rates that were released nationally one must wonder about the nature and efficacy of accreditation “processes” and to whom the benefits of “continuous improvement” accrue.

Click here to read the November 26^th AJC article showing Georgia ranked 48^th out of 50 states in graduation rate.  For even more detail, you can read my November 5^th blog.

You will note that we are not graduating even 50% of our African American students in four years of high school instruction, even with an opportunity to take 32 credits on a block schedule of the 24 required to graduate.  Yet, we are in the top ten for money spent on education.   It appears to me that our emphasis on process is quite expensive, but ineffective.  How can we have such poor aggregate graduation rate results and have so many accredited schools and districts in our state?  Shouldn’t we be focused on honestly assessing the results?

State law requires that I must have 9 hours of training annually.  The Georgia School Boards Association (GSBA) holds large conferences where board members can attend seminars to meet the training requirements.  Your tax dollars pay for board members to attend these conferences.

I recently attended a GSBA conference to get my required training hours.  (I’ll have to blog in the future about how much of the seminar seemed designed as an infomercial for products that GSBA or their vendors sell.  Also, the seminars are largely conducted by educational bureaucrats that tell elected officials how to treat the educational bureaucrats in their district.  But I digress …)

During my seminar, two executives from AdvancED spoke to the group.  I learned that the concept of “district accreditation” is relatively new.  This accreditation product was rolled out from 2004-08.  Many districts in the state do not seek district accreditation. Instead, they have only their schools – or only their high schools — accredited.   State law requires students to graduate from an accredited school to qualify for the HOPE scholarship.  There is NO requirement that a district be accredited.  For Georgia public schools the law permits accreditation by either SACS or the Georgia Accrediting Commission (GAC).  State law also provides methods for homeschoolers to qualify for HOPE scholarships.

During the Q&A at the GSBA conference, I asked AdvancED officials questions about how student achievement should factor into accreditation.  (I recorded this exchange and I’ll try to put it up on my website.)  I noted that our state does not compare well in the recently released graduation statistics.  I further asked:

“If processes are used effectively, but achievement results are not improved, what does that say about accreditation?  What is it we’re accrediting?  If it doesn’t correlate strongly with, or have a causal relationship actually, to results for children in achievement then it is a …  the whole process seems to dichotomize there and I’m concerned about that.  Are we focused on process or are we focused on results?”

The response from the AdvancEd official was:

“As far as results … it is a process.  Going through this process, the school or district will go through and look at what is happening.  Accreditation is not based solely on student results.” 

So, there you have it.  And you pay for this process with your tax dollars and cede power over your property values to a concept administered by an unaccountable group, made up of educational bureaucrats.  In the end, the process does not guarantee, judge or rank the quality or results of the education provided to students in your school or district.

Our graduates – our frighteningly few graduates – cannot take “process” to the bank.

Additional reading on this subject:  http://www.nccivitas.org/2011/to-accredit-or-not-to-accredit/

–Stay tuned for more of my thoughts, including: the pronoun police, the circle of trust and solutions.

No one knows better than I do, that the board as a whole can be very frustrating to watch.  As the board member who most often votes “no”, I endure this frustration more than most.  I am the board member who identified and publically discussed the financial issues that were cited in this report.  For almost two years, I have publically inquired during the presentation of the monthly financial report about the discrepancies that I uncovered.  My public statements at board meetings span two administrations.  I have written that it appears to me that our budgets for the past six years were, at best, a weak suggestion of how to spend money and, at worst, a document based on deception.  I received support for my analysis from only Don McChesney and Pam Speaks.  I was publically misled by administration officials who stated at board meetings that our budgeting issues with electricity (one of the many areas I cited as problematic) were due to (1) unseasonably hot/cold summers/winters and (2) increases in electricity rates.  These statements were demonstrably false.

No agency, government department or official was interested in my findings.  Eventually I posted them on my website (here’s the link to my September 13th entry:  http://whatsupwiththat.nancyjester.com/2012/09/13/5-year-budget-analysis/ ).  My public statements at Board meetings go back to almost the beginning of my service.

Additionally, I discovered that “general administration salaries” have been the only salary category that has increased over six years; including the current budget.  I inquired into this matter at two board meetings but did not receive a response.  Here is the link t0 my analysis:  http://whatsupwiththat.nancyjester.com/2012/11/16/salary-analysis-fy2008-fy2013/.

While I’m flattered by AdvancED’s extensive use of my research and statements; their conclusions, required actions, indeed, their paradigm for “team governance” would prevent me or any other board member from discovering and properly alerting the public to these misdeeds (see required action #5).

The report also states, “The board members’ questions to the staff displayed a suspicion and lack of trust for any information provided by the staff.”  As I stated above, I have been misled and stonewalled when uncovering some of the very financial malfeasance that AdvancED now has decided to recognize.  Suspicion and lack of trust, at this point, is clearly justified as I and my fellow board members are legally accountable as stewards of tax dollars.

I’m also curious as to why, with all of their teams of professional educational bureaucrats visiting and researching DSCD (at our expense),  AdvancED never discovered the financial malfeasance that I brought to light.  I’m just one mom with a calculator.  Given the record of misleading statements and nonresponsive behavior I have dealt with from administrators around the financial issues that AdvancED has now chosen to present as evidence to warrant placing DeKalb on probation, it seems odd that they would then simultaneously hold the position that Board members just need to be less suspicious and more trusting of staff members.

If I were an employee, I would most likely be protected under whistleblower laws.  How ironic that I may be removed from office exactly because I discovered and made public the financial misdeeds of the third largest school district in our state.  What message does this send to board members around the state or to future board members in DeKalb?  Given that the majority of our state budget goes to education, I would think that the state would incentivize and welcome local board members to be watchdogs over these finite resources.  To do otherwise is to steal from the educational lives of children.

Stay tuned – tomorrow, I’ll post my thoughts on the education bureaucrats’ construct of “the governance team” and what that means for your children and tax dollars.

Proposed 2016-2017 School Organization Attendance Zone Adjustments And Bond Financing

details for elementary schools Attendance Area Changes, Proposed Organization, November 27, 2012

Details for Middle and High Schools Attendance Area Changes, Proposed Organization, Nov 27, 2012

Source Of Data
June 2007 Financial Report
June 2008 Financial Report
June 2009 Financial Report
June 2010 Financial Report
June 2011 Financial Statements
June 2012 Monthly Financial Report

We know that we’re close to the bottom in many of our achievement statistics. Our state graduation rate is 54% in aggregate ( 44% (African American), 32% (Latino), 61% (White) ). Our ranking is 46th out of 50 states. (That is also with an inflated rate of 64%).

So, how much money are we spending?
We keep hearing that education spending has been cut in Georgia. You can see the amount of money Georgia has spent on Education since 1996. There are only 3 years where the state has sent less money to school districts (2004, 2009, 2010 – by 2011, funding went up again).

Where do we rank?
Georgia is in the “Top Ten” states for education expenditures. So, we’re in the top ten on spending and in the bottom ten in achievement. What’s up with that? Here’s the ranking:
1. California
2. New York
3. Texas
4. Illinois
5. New Jersey
6. Florida
7. Pennsylvania
8. Ohio
9. Michigan
10. Georgia

Sources:
http://www2.census.gov/govs/school/10f33pub.pdf
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0014.pdf

It’s called a Balance Sheet
assets = liability + equity

Yes, if a student leaves a traditional school the local district will no longer receive state funding for this student.  But the opposition fails to acknowledge that the corresponding “liability” (the cost of educating that child) is also removed from the balance sheet. Because the cost to educate that one child is greater than the amount that the state sends to the district, combined with the fact that the district will keep all of their local tax dollars; the end result is that they removed more liabilities (i.e. cost to educate) than they removed “assets” (state funding). This results in an overall improvement on their balance sheet and improved position relative to every other child in the district. They now have more money per student than they did before.

Don’t let anyone fool you – you must look at both sides of the equation.

Here’s an extremely simple example:

Before charter in district (100 students):

After Charter enrolls 10 students from district:

Thank you for your consideration

Let’s set the record straight about who controls education in Georgia.   Superintendents and their administrators do.  Local boards of education do hire the Superintendent but once in place, these educrats are in the driver’s seat.  The legal framework in our state reinforces the supremacy of the superintendent’s position relative to a board.

School system administrations choose who works in the system and what they do.  We often hear that the board and administration are a “governance team”.   Sadly, “the team” is dominated by board members with “Stockholm Syndrome” or they are accomplices in the abduction of local control.  All of this power comes with a hefty contract that insulates superintendents and gives them a golden parachute at taxpayer’s expense even if their tenure is marked by failure.  Make no mistake about it.  Local control is superintendent control.  If you agree with the superintendent and they are making good decisions for your particular community, you’re probably content.  But, if they are not, you are in a constant struggle with little to no redress.

The charter school amendment is perceived as an existential threat to the gravy train for educrats throughout the state.  That is what the fight is about.  The “local control” that is hailed by the current purveyors of the fine educational products in Georgia, is “educrat control”.  They push the buttons and pull the levers and try to make you believe that “stakeholders” have a say in it all.  Despite state legislation on school councils, parents don’t get a seat at the table when selecting a principal for their school.  In the struggle for power and control, the educrats have failed you and your children; all the while collecting fat paychecks and doling out six-figure jobs and lucrative contracts to more educrats.  If you realize that your voice as a citizen is so diminished within the current power structure of education, you will know that voting for the charter amendment is one of the solutions.

Parents deserve more choices.  Communities deserve more input into how their schoolhouses are run.  Charter schools are innovation incubators and are governed by a volunteer group of parents, teachers and community members.  That’s local control.  They get to choose the companies that provide services to their school.  If they do a bad job, they will lose their charter and parents will leave their school for a better product.  If they are responsible and create a valuable product for their community they will thrive and our children will get the education they deserve.  This responsiveness is completely missing in education today.  In fact, in DeKalb we have some schools that have been labeled “failing” for as long as a decade, yet remain open with no replacement of staff. All of the “turn around” plans, accountability measures and excuses brought to us courtesy of the “local control” we have today do nothing to rid our system of failure or make it more efficient, helpful and valuable for the students and community.  Please join me in supporting real local control.  Please join me in advocating for kids and taxpayers in DeKalb County and throughout our state.  Please join me by voting YES on the charter school amendment.

Dr. Atkinson’s Response to SACS
Don McChesney’s Comments
Pam Speaks’s Comments

From: Nancy Jester [mailto:nancyjester@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2012
To: ‘cheryl_atkinson@fc.dekalb.k12.ga.us’
Subject: My comments on the SACS response letter

Dr. Atkinson,

Thank you for sending your draft response to the SACS letter to me for comment. Here are my thoughts:

You have listed some of the important steps that you and your team have initiated to set DCSD on a path for both academic and fiscal success. I certainly appreciate the efforts you have made to change the trajectory of our district and I am glad you enumerated them for SACS. I often think that some of my colleagues do not acknowledge the dire straits we are navigating. Why they chose to not accept the reality of our difficult fiscal situation and the abysmal academic performance of so many of our schools is not clear to me. All evidence that I see, tells me that you appreciate the gravity of the situation. I am invested with you in your efforts.

One of the most important improvements that you have made is to bring new, talented leaders to our district. My observations are that DSCD was far too insular and in desperate need of an infusion of new ideas and modern expertise. New, outside talent helps break the hegemony of inefficient and questionable past practices in many areas.

It is unfortunate that you have been charged with drafting a response to a letter that deals with allegations of board member misconduct. You chose to highlight your accomplishments and the perfunctory steps that the district has taken based on previous input from SACS. While I believe that your efforts are sincere and based upon facts, I do not see evidence that the board, as a whole, has joined with you to steer the district into calm financial waters and accomplish our mission to properly educate the students in DeKalb. The reasons for the resistance from some board members remain opaque to me. I only see the fragments of “a posteriori” evidence of their resistance. The letter from SACS is an additional clue to me that there is much going on beneath the surface that is not disclosed to all board members. This is not healthy and I am left to surmise that it has encumbered you in your ability to execute actions that move the district forward.

Specifically, the letter asks that the district address the allegations of poor financial management, board interference with operations and continued/multiple violations of board policy. While your letter addresses the positive and sincere steps you have taken, it does not address these allegations directly. Indeed, these allegations pertain to behavior that existed prior to your arrival. I do not know of a way that you could address those experiences. I, however, can say what I see.

Regarding the fiscal management of the district, since almost the very beginning of my time on the board (January 11), I began to unravel what appeared to me to be a budget that was, at best, a weak suggestion on how to spend money and, at worst, a document based on deception. Monthly, I queried, the CFO at the time and did not receive answers that could withstand the scrutiny of the facts. I have been specifically focused on the large variance in our electricity budget and our legal fees. As you know, our electricity budget has been significantly under-budgeted for at least 5 years. Earlier this year, I did a spreadsheet demonstrating this fact. Unfortunately, last year, when I would ask questions of our previous CFO, the response was either about the temperatures being above average or a rate increase. The facts are the our “actual” expenditures have been $15-16 million dollars for the last 5 years but we have consistently budgeted $10.5 million for this line item. Over the course of 5 years, that is a net of approximately $25 million in deficit on this one line item. A similar analysis can be made about legal fees. If you compare the volume of total disbursements to the budget over the last five years, we have spent over $50 million more than we budgeted. As you know since you have been in the district, I have continued to point this out to the public and asked for a culture of fiscal restraint to take root. I have publically discussed this at board meetings for over a year. Thankfully, your new CFO, Mr. Perrone has improved our budget and brought a high degree of professionalism and expertise to our financial department. Without a solid financial footing we cannot educate our children.

I am disturbed, but not surprised, by the allegations of board misconduct. As I stated, I only see the aftereffect; while the action remains opaque to me. I am deeply concerned that misconduct could undermine the efforts you are making. We cannot afford to return to the days of old when fiscal irresponsibility, divisiveness, opacity and punitive resource allocations ruled the day. I fear that if this type of behavior continues to go unchecked, it will be impossible for you or any superintendent to be successful. Our children and our taxpayers will suffer. Indeed, because we are part of a larger metro area, a failure of DeKalb, has broad reaching implications for the economic development of our region and state. There is much as stake.

I will make my comments available to Dr. Elgart in addition to the letter that you send. I have asked for a board meeting to discuss this matter but it appears that this will not occur. In the absence of a meeting, I intend to make my comments public. In the meantime, please keep moving the district towards stability and success.

Sincerely,
–Nancy Jester