Today's discussion will be regarding the comments made by the RAS Supt.
Sun Sailor Guest Column
Planning for Future Financial Stability
By Supt Aldo Sicoli
In this document, Supt Sicoli discusses the good financial decisions that have been made during the past couple of years, the challenges that all public schools will face and the proactive steps RAS will take to manage the situation. The proactive step of interest to me is requesting community input on how to manage our financial situation and make our community schools excellent. Here are my random thoughts on the topic:
- What will be heard? What will be filtered? What will be laughed at? What if the community demands more competition? (ie sell PLE building to a charter) Would this be taken seriously as a way to improve the education opportunities for the children of our communities? Or if they say IB has to go, because AP district wide is better? Will any critique of the status quo even see the light of day?
- Will the community members that dislike the RAS administration, board and schools even take the time to show up? Or will they give up before they even try like last time where pretty much only school supporters showed up? And they wanted to offer everything to everyone, without giving much thought to the price tag of each? How can we engage those that most want to see the district changed?
So if RAS filters the input to meet their personal interests, and if the Vote No'ers stay home instead of getting actively involved in improving the situation... What is the point ?
Here are my recommendations on how to improve the RAS process:
- Upgrade parent portal so parent's can complete year end or quarter end surveys of their school, administration, classes and teacher's. This is almost free data and it is relatively immediate. Then act on it. Questionable Administrators, Teachers, Processes, Systems, etc need to be dealt with immediately if you truly want to improve. (ie no procrastinating because it is hard)
- Continue with the plan to collect input, however post all improvement ideas in a running list no matter how unflattering it seems to RAS. Only filter for language or possible liability. Affinitize the ideas and post how many times the idea has been raised. (ie a ranked list)
Thoughts ?
5 comments:
The first one sounds good, but I can't imagine it being effective with tenure and union seniority clogging the firing process.
The second one is good, but of questionable methodology and I have serious doubts that the District will accept any of the good ideas.
J. Ewing
I've often wondered if a "Give us Barabas" approach would work, that all the active parents get one vote for worst teacher in the District. The biggest loser is dismissed. Sounds crazy but if Admin agrees that teacher is bad, no problem. If Admin disagrees, then Admin is almost certainly wrong.
I think a survey can be a useful tool, but my thoughts are
a) don't think the results are anything more than anecdotal. Unless you pay for a genuine, statistically valid, quantitative survey, your results are random. That's not necessarily a reason not to do it, but be very clear internally and externally about the findings.
b) Seek positive as well as negative. Best teacher. Program that supported your child's growth. Staff (transportation, nutrition, administration) who deserves recognition.
I agree that surveys are messy business and best left to the professionals. It is so so so easy to bias them intentionally or unintentionally. Or misinterpret the data.
My thought is that if RAS wants people to really trust that they are truly listening, and that they are truly looking out for the best interest of the community's children. (ie not the best interest of RAS) Then they need to find a way to make the input (data), analysis, rationale and results (information) very available and transparent.
The challenge is that many RAS personnel believe that the best interest of RAS and the best interest of the community's children are the same. Which may or may not be the case, given the constraints, contracts and rules that bind the district?
The board would careless what we think. No wait they do care as long as you're giving them positive feedback and the benefits of RSI and IB and why those programs should continue.
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