I was planning to write about my adventures in opting out of the STAR Enterprise test next, but it seems that the board and the superintendent with the assistance of The Huntsville Times reporter Challen Stephens has decided that today, without any prior public discussion of the issue, was a good day to announce to the city that we should “Get Ready for the Rezoning of Huntsville City Schools.” As such, the discussion of opting out will have to wait a day or so.

Today Mr. Stephens, as a mouthpiece for the superintendent and the board of education, told the city that, “it’s time to redraw school zones throughout Huntsville.” He went on to write:

But change itself should not come as a surprise. Huntsville almost two years ago hired a retired Army colonel to fix its school system, and the board made a point of asking him to end the 43-year-old court order to desegregate city schools. Rezoning is a small part of the plan to do just that.

It’s a shame that Mr. Stephens decided to reprint what basically amounts to a press release from the board announcing this as if the decision has long since been made about rezoning. But he went further by claiming that no one should be surprised by this necessity because we all knew this was coming when we hired Wardynski and the board made achieving unitary status one of his priorities.

This sounds awfully good on paper; it’s a shame that there’s so little truth in this statement.

No Mention of Rezoning

You see, I’ve attended all but three board meetings held during Dr. Wardynski’s tenure. The three that I missed, I watched from home or on the DVD recordings available from ETV.

I’ve heard every single public discussion concerning unitary status that has occurred at a board meeting. Every single one. And you know what, not once since Wardynski was hired has there been a single public mention of rezoning during a board meeting.

Not one single mention.

So, I’m not sure what Mr. Stephens is basing his claim that “change itself should not come as a surprise.”

When the district, when the superintendent specifically state that rezoning will not occur, I’m sorry, but it does tend to come as a bit of a surprise, no matter how the Times might wish to spin it.

Wardynski Told Public No Rezoning

On January 14th, Dr. Wardynski met with the public to discuss moving Grissom High School to a new location just behind Sam’s Club on South Parkway.

During this meeting, Dr. Wardynski was asked a question about rezoning that he responded to fairly (for him, anyway) directly.

Q: Are you considering rezoning with the new Grissom?

A: No. If there is [any rezoning], it will be for currently zoned students, not transferring students.”

Dr. Wardynski went on to say that he “will not have students transferring across town – students will go to new schools at Johnson or Butler in their home school zone.”

As I said, for him, this was a fairly direct and to the point response to a direct question. It’s a shame that Mr. Stephens was evidently unaware that Wardynski had long since told us that there would not be any rezoning of Grissom High.

So yes, it does indeed come as a surprise that rezoning is now being presented as a necessity.

And really, since evidently not even the board has seen the final plan (which is nearly impossible to believe, by the way), I do have to ask how Mr. Stephens knows that “Rezoning is a small part of the plan to do just that.”

And again, if the board hasn’t seen the plan yet (as the article claims), how does Mr. Blair know that “the current plan would not rezone Blossomwood into Lee High?” How does he know that “I think Huntsville High stays pretty strong” (quite a reassuring endorsement, isn’t it)? How can Dr. Robinson claim, “I’m not seeing anything that gives me a great deal of concern?” (And really, can anyone name anything that Wardynski has done that has given Robinson “a great deal of concern?”)

What we have here is another attempt by Wardynski to use “the press” and the board of education to push his agenda on the city without any public input at all.

Even though there has been zero mention of rezoning in a public meeting, even though Dr. Wardynski himself assured the public at the town hall meeting that there would be no rezoning, we’re already being told that anyone who has a problem with this “plan” simply hasn’t been paying attention.

It seems that it is instead the Huntsville Times that hasn’t been paying attention. Isn’t that actually the only job the paper has? Shame they refuse to do it.

This is Our City. These are Our Schools.

This city belongs to us, the people. It doesn’t belong to the Huntsville Times. It doesn’t belong to the Huntsville Board of Education. It doesn’t belong to Dr. Wardynski. It belongs to us.

It’s time to remind Dr. Wardynski, the feckless board of education, Mr. Brooks and the Times that this is our city.

If you wish to do this, you may wish to speak during the public comments section of the board meeting scheduled for Thursday night at 5:30pm. If you wish to speak on this or any issue, you have to sign up before the meeting. The easiest way to do this is to email Debbie Jennings the Superintendent’s secretary at debby.jennings@hsv-k12.org. Tell her that you would like to be placed on the citizens’ comments list representing yourself to speak to the issue of rezoning.

You should demand to see the rezoning plan. You should insist that the public have input into developing the plan.

The district employees and the board of education work for us. They owe us specific answers without pushing for acceptance of the “plan” before we’ve even seen it.

The post Rezoning Without Involving the Public appeared first on Geek Palaver.

In a surprise move, the board actually discussed yet another new site location for Grissom High School tonight. Since there were objections to the first “Weatherly Road” site, they have talked with the Hays family and have instead settled on a site that is directly south of that site, immediately behind Sam’s Club on South Parkway.

Here’s a picture of the “new” new Grissom site.

Supposedly this location is “even better” that the first new Grissom site that was originally considered just north of this location in the reddish area pictured above.

Dr. Wardynski, with his trademarked smirk, even made a point of thanking all the people who “were worried about this issue. They helped us get a better piece of land.” (Dr. Robinson, ever the cheerleader, can be heard in the background giggling at this remark.) Dr. Wardynski completed his comments by saying that they would be bringing a proposal to the board to vote on this new site in April.

Then Dr. Robinson chimed in. Dr. Robinson is the board member for Grissom High, and there has never been a Wardynski nor a development proposal that she didn’t love.

Here’s what she had to say about this presentation.

Robinson: I just want to say how excited I am to see this. I’ve been waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and I know the community has as well, for just, for something definitive. And y’all have done a remarkable job of negotiating this and finding the very best possible piece of land, and I can’t wait to see what we do as we go forward. Just to clarify then, we will have a contract at some point in April? According to this timeline?

Wardynski: If not sooner.

Robinson: If not sooner? Excellent. And the key piece of concern is what happens to the existing site, and plans are in place there, and so we should have that also in April, if not sooner? Some sense of what that will look like?

Wardynski: We’re working on a separate agreement with the city.

Robinson: But the assurance is, that whatever goes into that site will add value to the neighborhood. We’re not hanging a for sale sign on it. It’s not going to be an empty space. It’s going to be a partnership that will really increase the value of that . . .

Wardynski: (interrupting) It’ll become city property. And their intentions, I’ve been talking to the mayor, is theater, gym, athletic facilities, and maybe some other additional features. s

Robinson: But again, it’ll be a strength to that neighborhood. It’s sort of a part of a package?

Upchurch: The words up there “Community Asset” came right out of Mayor Battle’s off . . . uh mouth. I used his words.

Robinson: Thank you, very much, everybody, for your work on this.

She’s really excited about this.

And you’ll notice how she and Dr. Wardynski are speaking of this: it’s a done deal. Back in January during the single community meeting that they held, they (Wardynski, Upchurch, and Wilson) made a point of telling the community that no decision had been made yet concerning the location of Grissom.

Then on Saturday, Councilman Olshefski told the Times:  ”Dr. Wardynski is getting ready to come out with a plan, that’s going to show what happens if the school moves over to another site.”

I guess this is that plan. And you’ll note that the plan made no mention of leaving Grissom in its current location. As Robinson referred to this plan, this is “something definitive.” In other words, when they bring a recommendation to the board in April (if not sooner), Wardynski will recommend exactly one location: directly behind Sam’s Club.

Rebuilding on the current site is a dead deal. It’s time to put your house on the market. The current Grissom will be closed in three years.

Robinson then followed up her sycophantic praise with another “interesting” claim:

But you know, I would also note that the letters that we got, and I think we got ten of them, were from out of state. They weren’t from the local community. They weren’t from people who had concerns for the needs of our children. And that’s our prime responsibility. So, you know, while I appreciate their efforts to share with us where archeological remains are located so they could continue to hunt, we have a responsibility to educate our kids and provide the best possible resources for them, and I think we’ve done that.

So evidently, the only opposition that Robinson received was from groups who were out of state and only concerned about hunting. She received no other “letters” from “the local community.”

“Interesting,” isn’t it? Someone asked me after hearing this: “Did you check to see if her pants were on fire?”

Wardynski, ever one to suck up to the business interests in this town corrected her statement that they were doing this “for the kids,” by saying:

Well, and I always think we’re here to add value to our city. And for the folks in that area (which are whom, exactly?) this ought to add a  nice boost to property values, growth and all that.

And so we close on the truth. What really concerns Wardynski isn’t the kids and their education, but rather “adding value to our city.”

One question, Dr. Robinson, if I may. If you’re right that the community fully supports this plan to move Grissom from its current location, then why exactly was this discussion held under an agenda item entitled, “G. High School Update“? If the community truly does support the moving of Grissom High to a parkway location, then why was the agenda specifically and intentionally misleading? Surely it wouldn’t have taken that much more time to write, “G. Grissom High School Update,” would it?

(Not to worry. I’ll be sure and send you this question via certified letter tomorrow morning. What’s that address again? Oh that’s right, you don’t publish your mailing address on the district’s website, do you?)

No, they couldn’t let people know what they were talking about tonight because then people in the community might have actually shown up for the meeting to hear Robinson claim that the only complaints she’s received were from out of state.

Then people in the community might have been their to see Mr. Upchurch celebrating his easy presentation to the board in the hallway once he had been dismissed.

Then people would have been there to ask questions about this move and the motivations driving it.

Then, people would have heard Wardynski state that this decision was made to “add value to our city.”

They were, in fact, so afraid that the public might show up that they couldn’t even give the public 24 hours notice that they were talking about Grissom again.

These are the moves and actions of cowards who obviously do not believe that the decisions they’re making are the best for “our children” as Robinson claimed.

They are the best decisions for the Hays family and all the developers who are just chomping at the bit to start building a new subdivision in that area.

That’s what this board cares about. They’re just too cowardly to admit it before a room full of citizens who might call them out for putting developers ahead of children.

Rumor has it that land moving equipment was seen on this location today. So much for involving the public in this decision.

The post Another New Grissom Site to “Add Value To City” appeared first on Geek Palaver.

In August 2011, Dr. Wardynski was on the campaign trail pushing for the renewal of the 6.5 mil property tax. During this push, he met with many various groups across the city, and in particular with groups associated with Grissom High School. In particular, he met with the South Huntsville Civic Association, and assured them that Grissom would be rebuilt on its current site.

He’s always been quick to make promises when he believes it will work to his advantage.

Beginning in October, however, rumors began to surface that Grissom might actually be moved, but of course, these rumors were “unfounded.”

Unfounded rumors seem to always have a way of turning out to be true in this district, don’t they?

On September 28, 2012, the consultant firm hired to do the work of the district in planning for the new Grissom, TCU Consultant Services, sent a letter to potential architect firms concerning the building of the new Grissom High. Yes, we are contracting our contracting now, but don’t distract me.

This letter laid out for the bidders a few general specifications concerning the new building which looked something like this:

New Grissom High School Design for an enrollment, when fully developed, of 2200-2400 students. Initial design for approximately 330,000 sq ft with a construction budget of approximately $48,000,000.00.

Now, you’ll note that there is no discussion of a location in this description from September 28th, but there are a few points that raise several questions about where the new school might be located. When meeting with the public for the first time on January 14th, Dr. Wilson and Dr. Wardynski shared with the public a brief description of the two locations under consideration. According to Dr. Wilson there would be a dramatic difference in the size of the two schools depending on which location was chosen. If the new Grissom were rebuilt on its current site, that building would hold approximately 1,800 students.

If instead the new Grissom were relocated to the “Weatherly Road” site (behind Sam’s Club), this would result in a building with a capacity for 2,200.

Furthermore if the new Grissom were built on the current site, the square footage of the new Grissom would be comparable to the current Grissom of about 280,000. If the new Grissom were instead relocated to the “Weatherly Road” site, it would (wait for it) have a square footage of 330,000.

Approximately one month after Dr. Wardynski assured the South Huntsville Civic Association that he had a specific plan for rebuilding Grissom on its current site, the architects were being asked to bid on a completely different plan.

But wait, there’s more.

If you look further into the letters sent from TCU Consultant Services to the potential architect firms you’ll find a letter dated October 23, 2012 that contains a slightly more detailed project description that reads:

New Grissom High School — will be approximately an 2200-2400 student new school, built on a newly selected site to be determined. The project size is approximately 330,000 sqft and has an approximate construction budget of $48,000,000.00.

So you see, at least as early as September 28th (and likely earlier) and definitely as early as October 23rd, the district was seeking architectural bids for a new Grissom that could not fit on the current Grissom location.

This is how Dr. Wardynski operates. He freely tells “concerned citizens” what he believes that they want to hear, then proceeds to follow a different plan behind closed doors. And while doing so, he happily sends his cheerleaders, like say Dr. Jennie Robinson, to speak to the press (as she did on November 26, 2012 or two months after the request for bids was sent to the architects) to say the following:

School board member Jennie Robinson, whose district includes Grissom, said there should be concerns when the district is contemplating a $60 million investment like a new high school. Like Brown, Robinson said the biggest concern she’s heard is what will become of the old Grissom campus.

“What do you put there that builds value to the neighborhood?” Robinson said. “You don’t hurt a neighborhood in the process of trying to build a school in a different place.”

She said relocating the school is still just a possibility and that no specific site is outweighing the others.

“All of the sites have considerations,” Robinson said. “Some have more challenges than others. Some have more advantages than others.

“In the end, it comes down to which one makes the most sense,” she said.

No, Dr. Robinson, in the end, it comes down to which location Dr. Wardynski actually wants to use, not which one makes the most sense. Despite her willingness to voice concern on behalf of the existing neighborhoods, she knew, or as a board member should have known, when she said that “no specific site is outweighing the others” that one specific site, specifically the misleadingly named “Weatherly Road” site, was far better suited to meeting the specifications that the district had already published.

The decision to move Grissom High to a new location had been made at least as early as September 28, 2012.

When Dr. Wardynski was first hired by the district in July 2011, he posted a document on the website entitled, “Preliminary Draft 60 Day Entry Plan.” For obvious reasons, this document is no longer posted on the district’s site, but since I have a few hoarder-like tendencies, I just happen to have a copy of his entry plan, the second page of which shows the following:

If he truly wanted to be “Our Superintendent” rather than “The Superintendent,” wouldn’t it make it easier if he openly and clearly discussed his plans for our district with us rather than continually telling us that decisions haven’t been made when we know that they have?

Respectfully, Dr. Wardynski and Dr. Robinson, it isn’t that hard to earn the confidence of “All Members of the Huntsville Community.” All you really have to do is to be concerned about all of the community’s members rather than just the business members of the community.

The post New Grissom Broken Promises appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Tuesday I spent my lunch hour being honored at the American Education Week Luncheon which was sponsored by the NEA and a local organizing committee under the direction of Dr. Roy E. Malcolm of Oakwood University. It was a nice luncheon, and being recognized as a Chancellor’s Award nominee from Drake State was quite nice. Frankly being in the room with a few of the Teachers of the Year in the Madison County area was the true honor. It was clear that I was among a group of educators who have committed their lives to improving our nation through education.

Honestly, I’m not at that level yet. I appreciated the nod, but I’m still learning this craft of education. Maybe when I’m 90, and I’ve been teaching for fifty or sixty years, I might be worthy of having my name called out with those teachers I had lunch with yesterday.

Maybe.

But I wasn’t the only one recognized at the luncheon.

You see, all of the area Superintendents were there and present to honor their teachers of the year. But unlike Dr. Copeland and Dr. Fowler, Dr. Wardynski was honored at the luncheon as well. The introduction and justification for his Special Award was long, and I didn’t capture it all between bites of carrot cake, but the gist of the award was for bringing technology into the district and “being an agent of change.”

An Agent of Change

Education is about change. When I was much younger and deciding where to attend seminary after college, I had a bunch of friends from church warn me about going off to Southern Seminary in Louisville. Their constant refrain was, “Don’t let it change you.”

I never understood that sentiment.

If education doesn’t change you, what good does it accomplish?

I sincerely hope that I am an agent of change in the lives of my students. God knows, they are an agent of change for me. That’s what education is: exposure to the new and unknown and allowing that to change your outlook on life.

And so, being known as an agent of change can be high praise. But in order for to evaluate this, we have to have some context to the changes he has brought to the district. Otherwise being an agent of change is just as nebulous as Atticus telling Mrs. Debose that she looks like a picture. He don’t say a picture of what.

Unless we place Dr. Wardynski’s change within context, there’s little way to know if his agency is good or bad.

Running Good Teachers Off

One contextual clue that we can use to evaluate Dr. Wardynski’s agency of change is the number of mid year retirement and resignations. As of November 1, 2012, or the 53rd day of school, we have seen a total of 52 district employees either resign or retire.

This number doesn’t include the 46 who stood in line on November 1st to sign up for the district’s new retirement incentive.

He has certainly been an agent of change in the makeup of our schools this year.

Some of you may be like a few of our board members when you read this number and think, great, lazy teachers who don’t want to teach are getting out. It’s about time.

Perhaps your opinion is similar to Mrs. Morrison’s and Mr. Blair’s opinions on September 20th when they claimed that the young TFAers were better able to “relate” to their students because they are so young themselves? Perhaps you agree with Mrs. Morrison at the last board meeting on the 1st when she proclaimed, “Teachers are children grown tall” to supposedly defend them against Dr. Robinson’s feigned outrage that we have to incentivize teachers to not take time off. (Yes, Dr. Robinson, even in the “real” world, people get time off.)

With friends like these on the board, is it any wonder that our teachers and staff are leaving in droves?

Honestly, the real question should be why more haven’t left.

The answer to that is simple, but sometimes the simple answers are the hardest to grasp: Our teachers stay and teach, BECAUSE THEY LOVE OUR KIDS.

What We Are Losing

TFAers get praised (usually by other TFAers) for being “involved in their students’ lives.” Mr. Blair certainly took up that argument when they invited him to attend a reception for the new TFAers we’ve hired here in Huntsville. His claim that their youth helps them relate to their students is regularly touted as one of the strengths of having a young teacher.

My experience is significantly different.

One of the 46 who stood in line on November 1st to retire was Mrs. Jerilyn Pang, a second grade teacher at Mt. Gap Elementary (oh, excuse me, just Mt. Gap now thanks to some other of the “change” Wardynski has enacted).

Mrs. Pang has been teaching for nearly 30+ years. She has raised a daughter who has followed in her footsteps as a teacher. She has sponsored the Math Club at Mt. Gap for years and is one of the primary reasons that Grissom has regularly produced a world class math team for so long. Mrs. Pang could have, and probably would have, retired years ago. Honestly, it would have made good financial sense for her to do so.

But she didn’t.

And do you know why?

Because she loves her students. She loves seeing them excel. She loves helping them fall in love with education.

Mrs. Pang is retiring at the end of the year.

She will be joined in retirement by one of the best second grade teachers I have ever known, Mrs. Gayle Dodson.

This is the change that the AEW Committee “honored” on Tuesday. A change that drives the best of our teachers out the door. A change that drives our teachers who give their own time, energy and love to their students out of the classroom. A change that replaces a teacher with the experience to be able to look at a child and know exactly the right thing to say to heal a broken heart because they’ve done it a thousand times.

That’s the change that the American Educator’s Week and the NEA were honoring on Tuesday when they honored Dr. Wardynski.

As I said, with “friends” like these, it’s a wonder that any of our teachers survive long enough to reach retirement age.

But that’s the goal of this change. To make sure that our schools are staffed with cheap, inexperienced test proctors. Teachers just aren’t worth it to Dr. Wardynski and his corporate backers any more.

And every day we lose another lifetime of experience and expertise to this man’s inept handling of our district.

The More Things Change . . .

At the board meeting tonight, the school board will be discussing some “modifications” to the superintendent’s contract. If I had to bet, I would put my money on an extension. After all, none of the three board members who voted to hire him will want to deal with his contract during an election year.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

There will be a board meeting tonight at 5:30. If you can’t come in person, please follow me on twitter @russwinn or on the GeekPalaver Facebook Page. You can also watch the meeting live on channels 17 (Comcast) or 99 (Knology) beginning at 5:30pm. The district also streams the meeting on the web on the district web site.

The post “An Agent Of Change” appeared first on Geek Palaver.

When your goal is to replace as many qualified teachers as possible, even leaving them with the last week of school to celebrate and say goodbye to their kids is just too rich an opportunity to pass up. After all, if you can get one final kick in as someone is walking out the door, perhaps they’ll keep on going.

And so on Wednesday of last week, tenured teachers were called into principal’s offices all over the district to be informed that they were being transferred to other schools in the district. They were often given their orders in the morning, sometimes with their kids sitting in the hallway waiting for their teacher to return, and told to sign them in the afternoon.

If they didn’t sign them, they often received a visit from Mr. Al Lankford the following day requesting that they sign a document that they had received their orders. They didn’t have to agree with the orders, Mr. Lankford wasn’t forcing them to agree to the move, but they did have to sign a document stating that they had received the orders.

Having Mr. Lankford deliver the paperwork was, evidently, standard operating procedure.

Despite the implication offered at the called board meeting at 8:00am on Monday, not all of these teachers have agreed with these transfers. Many excellent teachers, including one dear to my son’s heart, have decided enough is enough. They are looking for and accepting positions with the surrounding school districts right now.

Our superintendent is doing an excellent job of driving off good, dedicated, devoted, and successful teachers to neighboring systems.

As a friend of mine said the other day, perhaps we should call this “Wardynski-flight.”

The only problem with that name is that I believe Dr. Wardynski would take it as a compliment. Trust me sir, breaking my boy’s heart over the loss of the single, stable figure in his educational life is not a compliment.

But that wasn’t the end of the fun times for teachers in the district.

On Monday, the board met at 8:00am to fire 122 non-tenured teachers.

(Interestingly, during the meeting when 122 people were fired, they had, from what I could see on the video, exactly two district security officers present in the room. I guess they didn’t expect a disturbance from a sufficiently demoralized group like our teachers. No need for HPD to have five or six armed officers on hand for that.)

One-hundred and twenty-two.

Last year during the RIF, the board fired only 154 teachers, but since there were very few details offered about these terminations, it’s hard for us to know much about them. We’re simply supposed to trust that the evaluation process that the superintendent developed was fair.

Dr. Robinson went out of her way to stress that many of “these folks can potentially be rehired” because this is simply what we used to call “non-renewal.” She and the rest of the board went on to complain about how mean the word “termination” is and that they wished the state would change it.

Funny. Non-renewal seems fairly mean to those facing it. I’d bet that the board and Dr. Wardynski would find non-renewal fairly frustrating if they were facing it every nine months.

But no. Board members are elected for four year terms. Dr. Wardynski’s contract is for three.

But there’s no reason to get excited, upset, or (god-forbid) angry over something as simple as “non-renewal.”

One-hundred and twenty-two.

Here’s a silly question: if the superintendent and the board are so sure that these “non-renewals” are going to be rehired, why not find a way to just go ahead and renew them?

Impossible you say? No so, say I. Just take a look at the contract that we’ve signed with Teach for America. Anyone want to make a bet that the 40 TFAers hired this summer will not have to worry about having a job in the 2013-2014 school year?

Could it be that the board wants to distance themselves from the impact of their actions? After all, no one who thinks it that they will be re-hired is likely to raise much of a fuss right now. And if they aren’t rehired come fall, well, that’s just old-news at that point isn’t it?

One-hundred and twenty-two.

I’ve heard from many schools in the district and from other sources that that 122 number comes remarkably close to representing all of the non-tenured teachers in Huntsville City.

So not one of the teachers we’ve hired in the last nine months was worth keeping?

One-hundred and twenty-two.

Additionally, as Dr. Wardynski said he would, nearly every principal in the district has now been moved to a new school.

We are again just supposed to accept that these transfers are being done for good, solid, justifiable reasons. We’re supposed to believe that being moved from a high school principal’s position to the principal of a ninth grade academy is a promotion. We’re supposed to accept that moving a principal from one of the finest middle schools in the city to one of the weakest is a celebration of a job well done.

We’re supposed to accept that Dr. Wardynski promising Mr. King a principal’s position back in a September 15th board meeting, represented the culmination of a search for the most qualified principals available. (That’s right. Since the middle of September, Dr. Wardynski has been talking publicly about King “transitioning” to a principal during the summer. It must be nice to have the promise of a job waiting out there for you.)

It seems that what is guiding Dr. Wardynski’s decisions here has more to do with rewarding his friends than what is best for the students in the district.

That and doing his best to drive off good, talented individuals who have dedicated their lives, rather than just two years, to meeting the needs of all of our children.

And the board continues to support him and shrug at those who do not.

This was perhaps best captured by Dr. Robinson’s defending this constant shuffling of teachers and principals:

Robinson: “I know that schools get real attached to their school leaders. But this is a corporate model. And it’s what corporations use to develop leadership strengths.”

Wardynski: “Right.”

Robinson: [Shrugging as if that resolves the matter once and for all, says before the board moves on] “That’s what we’re going to do.”

While I realize that our country seems confused at the moment about the differences between a corporation and a person, perhaps it would be helpful to Dr. Robinson and Dr. Wardynski if they could remember this one simple truth:

Education’s goal isn’t to increase profits for shareholders. Education’s goal is to encourage children to continue to ask questions about the world in which we live. While that may result in profit, it may also, just as easily, result in a loss of profit from an ethical decision to put people, to put children, first.

I know it’s difficult for someone making $175,000 a year with a $10,000 bonus out in front of him for simply doing his job (or someone who spent $60,000 to win a seat on the board) to remember this, but believe it or not, there is more to life than just the bottom line.

Treating people with dignity, honor and respect are just three of those things that matter more.

Watching the dawning of understanding come into a child’s eyes is another.

On Friday, May 25, 2012 at 11:30am, the board will meet again to, I suspect, continue to distance themselves from the thousands of lives that they are disrupting. The changes aren’t anywhere near over yet.

The post Another Bad Week For Teachers and Principals appeared first on Geek Palaver.

So there’s another board meeting tomorrow night at 5:30pm at the Merts Center, 200 White Street. I’ll be there, and supposing that there aren’t any technical issues that halt the broadcast as there was two weeks ago, you can watch it at home on ETV (Comcast 17, Knology 99), and at the Huntsville City Schools website. I’ll be whining away on Twitter @russwinn during the meeting. You can also catch my posts on the Geek Palaver Facebook Page. All of this supposes of course that I will be allowed to attend the meeting.

The agenda for tomorrow has been published, and they’re going to talk (again?!?) about evaluating the superintendent, the new school calendar,  and just how wonderful hiring countless numbers of consultants has been for the district.

So, again, while teachers salaries are still set at the state minimum, while teachers STEP raises are still frozen, on a night when they are going to discuss “Principals’ Terminations,” the superintendent will likely walk home with a $10,000 bonus in his pocket for successfully passing the test that the board specifically designed for him to be able to pass.

(One of the standards of evaluation that was placed upon Dr. Wardynski was to raise AP participation rates. As he himself indicated even before they voted to approve that as one of his goals, he had already accomplished that. It’s nice when your standard for success includes items that you’ve already completed.)

Yes, they will be discussing this bonus even before they discuss the new state assembly mandated school calendar.

Concerning the calendar: it seems that Dr. Wardynski and the board should actually thank the assembly for providing political cover for his decision to remove fall break from the calendar. Remember tomorrow night when Dr. Robinson calls for citizens to complain about their loss of a fall break to their representatives in Montgomery that she, along with every member of the board except Mr. Blair, had already approved a school calendar that removed fall break.

Here’s a listing of the significant dates including closed dates:

• August 20, 2012: First Day of School
• September 3, 2012: Labor Day
• No Fall Break (This was already gone in Dr. Wardynski’s original calendar for 2012-2013)
• November 12, 2012: Veterans Day
• November 21-23, 2012: Thanksgiving Break
• December 24-January 2: Christmas Break
• January 21, 2013: MLK Day
• March 25-29, 2013: Spring Break
• May 23, 2013: Last Day of School

There are no built-in weather days, but it is unclear at this time how weather days will be handled. It is at least possible by one interpretation of the “Beach Bill” that those days might be allowed to occur after May 23, 2013. Another interpretation would mean that the school day would be required to be extended until the hours are made up. I would be quite surprised if even our esteemed representatives know for sure.

It’s always nice when education suffers as a direct result of industry lobbying. I love the Alabama Gulf Coast, but this is an evil decision they have forced upon the state. It’s remarkably similar to Dr. Wardynski’s decisions to privatize so many of the district’s functions. Again, if it weren’t for the district taking his control, Dr. Wardynski would, I’m sure, love the sentiment behind the decision: namely that public education should be run by private organizations, industries, and businesses.

There will, after all, be at least four new contracts approved tomorrow night with private organizations.

After this discussion they will move on to an encomium of all the amazing, wonderful, fantastic, astonishing contractors who don’t cost us anything, they save us money. I’m sure it will sound nothing like a (warning: stereotype ahead) woman coming home from the store with three-hundred dollars on the credit card talking about all the money she “saved.” Verifiable evidence will be in short supply.

Oh, and there’s an ominously titled item called “Principals’ Terminations” under new business.

And finally, despite my best efforts to clear all of this mess up before tomorrow’s meeting, I still don’t know if the board or Dr. Wardynski will allow the public to video record the meeting tomorrow night.

Here’s the question I asked of Mrs. McCaulley as School Board President:

Will I be allowed to record future public board meetings in accordance with Alabama State Code 36-35A-6? [This section states: "A meeting of a governmental body, except while in executive session, may be openly recorded by any person in attendance by means of a tape recorder or any other means of sonic, photographic or video reproduction provided the recording does not disrupt the conduct of the meeting. The governmental body may adopt reasonable rules for the implementation of this section."].

To this question, Mrs. McCaulley responded on Sunday, May 13, 2012 at 9:28pm:

Response: As president of the board you have my permission to operate within the perimeters of the law. After I read the Alabama State Code Section 36-35A-6, you cited above, I noticed it used the term “may be openly recorded”   therefore one could interpret openly recording is not a mandate or requirement but optional.

You’ll note that she has not stated if I may actually record the meeting tomorrow night without being asked to leave the meeting again, and without being told I was “intimidating the board” as Mr. Lankford said, or called “intimidating and threatening” as Mrs. Anderson stated in an email to the Huntsville Times last Tuesday.

I followed up this non-response from the board President by asking:

“If on Thursday, May 17th, I attempt to record the board meeting in exactly the same manner as I did on Thursday, May 3rd, should I expect to be asked to leave the meeting?”

I have received no response to this question.

So, if I should attempt to record the meeting tomorrow night, I have no idea how the Superintendent will direct his staff to react.

Please note, it is not my intention to “intimidate,” “disrupt,” or “threaten” anyone or anything.

I am grateful to Mrs. McCaulley for saying that I have not intimidated her. I also appreciate the communications I received from Mrs. Morrison and Mr. Birney saying the same thing. Mr. Blair chose to state in the press that he had always found me “pleasant and cordial.”

So I’ve got that going for me.

I have not, however, heard anything at all from my board member Dr. Jennie Robinson. Neither have I heard anything from Dr. Wardynski.

I suppose that when Mr. Lankford said I was “intimidating the board” by recording them, and when Mrs. Anderson stated that I “had been described as intimidating and threatening” (that, by the way, was the first time that I’ve been informed that I was “threatening”) for doing so, that they were talking about how Dr. Robinson and Dr. Wardynski felt. They are, after all the only ones left.

I have asked for any specific documented evidence that I have intimidated, disrupted, or threatened anyone at the district level.

The only response I’ve received from Mrs. McCaulley is:

Again to your inquiry about any written incidents reports concerning you, to my knowledge there are none.

Thus there is, at least to Mrs. McCaulley’s knowledge, no documented evidence that I have done any of the things I’ve been accused of doing.

I have also, not received anything approaching an apology for the district staff’s response to me, but that’s okay. I’m not really sure that it would mean much at this point anyway.

And frankly, I’m certain that they were only following orders.

You see, I don’t actually care what they say about me. And truthfully, I don’t care if they allow me to record the meeting or not.

None of that is important to me.

What is important is that my children receive an appropriate education. I am convinced that cutting Special Education by seven million dollars (or the exact amount of surplus the district is anticipating at the end of the fiscal year) has kept my boy from having an appropriate education. I am convinced that merging my girl’s school without discussing it with parents first will keep my girl from having an appropriate education.

I am convinced that having a demoralized faculty and staff in our schools keeps my children from having an appropriate education.

I am convinced that having people who don’t want to be teachers, teach keeps my children from having an appropriate education.

I am convinced that having a CSFO who can spend $28,790 without documentation keeps my children from having an appropriate education.

I am convinced that having district leadership that attempts to intimidate parents and teachers for asking questions keeps my children from having an appropriate education. When people aren’t allowed to ask questions, education has been replaced by indoctrination.

This is what I’m concerned about. These are a few of the issues that really matter.

The post An Appropriate Education appeared first on Geek Palaver.

So the superintendent has been on a hiring binge of late for principals. He has also been actively firing and moving current principals out of their positions and into new ones without preamble, preparation, or pause.

To what end?

Well, as with everything the superintendent does, these moves are entirely about control. In order to control the district, he must control the teachers and employees. For that to occur he must control the schools, and the schools are under the control of the principals.

So, first you threaten all of them by saying that all of their jobs are on the table. Those who can retire, probably will.

Then you actively move principals out of the schools they are currently serving and into new, increasingly difficult situations as he has done with Leslie Esneault by calling it a promotion.

And you do the same with a principal who you moved into her current position less than a year ago as with Ava Waters-Maze.

And of course, you fire everyone you can, like Chad Laqua and Kurus Jamison, even if you were singing their praises just eight months ago.

All of this to establish control over a system. To make the system ready to be remade in Eli Broad’s image and idea of what education should be.

As a prelude to all of this, you hire PROACT Search to conduct “six to ten national searches” for suitable principals to replace all those you’re firing or “promoting.” Yes, PROACT Search has direct ties to Eli Broad supported activities. What of it?

So we pay PROACT to conduct a “national search that we couldn’t conduct on our own” $11,000 (with up to $2,000 per search to cover expenses) for every candidate that they find.

To date, we’ve paid PROACT a total of $77,999.99 according to the district’s check registry since September of 2011.

Here are the actual links if you want to check the numbers for yourself:

• February 2012: $13,000.00 (Pg. 4)
• February 2012: $26,000.00 (Pg. 29)
• December 2011: $5,500.00 (Pg. 3)
• November 2011: $14,666.66 (Pg. 31)
• October 2011: $7,500.00 (Pg. 24)
• September 2011: $11,333.33 (Pg. 32)

By those figures according to the original contract, we should have hired about seven new, “nationally competitive” principals.

We have, insofar as I can tell, hired four principals as a result of a search conducted by PROACT Search. Bet you’ll never guess which four were recommended by PROACT?

• Michael Scott Campbell of Fairfax, VA.
• Ray Landers, of Attalla, AL.
• Dan Meier, of Fairfax, VA.
• Paul Bonner, of Charlotte, NC.

So, we’re paying PROACT Search $11,000.00 (plus $2,000.00 expenses) per search to find two new principals from Fairfax, VA., one from Attalla, AL., and one from Charlotte, NC. All four of these new principals were hired with probationary contracts that would establish which school they would be placed at, at a later date. This past Thursday, Wardynski claimed it would be the end of May before these placements would be decided.

One of these contracts, Mr. Meier’s, was rescinded at a specially called board meeting on Thursday, April 12, 2012. Despite Dr. Robinson’s claim that the rescinding of the contract proved that “Dr. Wardynski is doing things in new ways and developing new processes,” the board, on the day they voted to rescind the contract, did not discuss the action at all. They simply voted, as unanimously as they did to approve the contract to rescind it.

Again, there was no public discussion of any of the “new processes” of which Dr. Robinson spoke.

I suppose we’re just supposed to trust her on this. Just as we were supposed to trust her when she praised each and every one of the recommendations Dr. Wardynski has brought to the board.

Note: There is a rumor floating around that Dan Meier wasn’t one of the PROACT Search recommendations. It’s possible that someone saw his name on a PROACT list and said, “we already know about him, so we’re not going to pay for PROACT to recommend him.” Thus, it is possible that it wasn’t PROACT’s responsibility to vet Mr. Meier before he was hired as has been reported. (This despite the fact that both the Board President and Vice-President claimed that PROACT Search did not inform the board that they knew about Mr. Meier’s past.)

If this is in fact the case, this still means that we’ve paid PROACT nearly $80,000 over six months to find exactly three candidates. In other words, we’re paying more than twice the amount that the contract calls for us to pay.

So much for a “new” way of doing business.

And this assumes that the other three all work out.

This is a big assumption where Ray Landers is concerned. Somehow I think once the RSA informs him that this will impact his retirement that he will also quickly discover that he too has a family that he wants to spend more time with (as Merts Center Monitor points out that Dan Meier realized).

By the way, if you’re not following that Blog, you should be.

So that leaves us having sent $80,000 to a Eli Broad connected company to hire two principals, one of whom (Paul Bonner) has already a $1 million dollar Broad Prize (as Bonvillian points out in her article about his hiring).

It’s always nice when Broad Foundation people can keep public money within the Board Foundation Family, isn’t it? I’m sure this should prove to me that Eli Broad cares for my kids nearly as much as I do.

Right?

$80,000 just to find and recommend two principals is an excellent return on investment, supposing that you’re on the receiving end rather than the spending one.

By the way, in case you were wondering why we have to pay our teachers the state minimum salary, we have to free up funding to keep hiring these amazing, awesome contractors to do the work that we already pay the central office to do.

This is why we can’t pay instructional assistants more than they would make working at a fast food joint to work with our children.

Keep this in mind the next time that Dr. Wardynski, or his biggest cheerleader Dr. Robinson, tries to tell you that they are doing all of this, you know, for kids.

;

$80,000 just to find two principals doesn’t sound like it’s going to benefit the kids too much to me. Does it to you?

The post Firing and Hiring Principals appeared first on Geek Palaver.

This posting has been updated with additional information below.

I don’t really know Chad Laqua, but I have met him on a couple of occasions at the central office. On both occasions I found him to be open, approachable, and genuinely excited about education. In particular, during a time when much of the central office leadership was giving off the impression of simply not giving a damn about special education, he spoke to me of his passionate belief that every child deserved an education and that every child could learn if given the resources and opportunities.

Needless to say, I liked him.

He was a first year principal placed at a school that was, in a polite assessment, was not doing well. Due to questionable decisions in districting by the board that they seemed unwilling to actually question, a great school was in decline.

Wardynski seemed to like him too.

At the Saturday Board meeting where he was hired, Wardynski singled him out as one of the best of the eight new hires. He regularly described him in the press as “a great new principal.”

And as reported yesterday, Mr. Laqua, along with the new principal at Davis Hills, Kurus Jamison, have offered their resignations to Dr. Wardynski.

As The Huntsville Times reported, Mr. Laqua said, “I had a discussion with the superintendent and he thought that it would be best.”

When Mr. Laqua was hired, Dr. Robinson sung the praises of Dr. Wardynski’s new “process” for hiring principals saying, “I’m impressed with the process you used, and I hope that you continue to use this process.”

If this were such a great process, why wasn’t it used again? Why did all subsequent principal hires get moved inside the superintendent’s office?

As I said, I don’t know Mr. Laqua very well, but my experience with him was positive. It seems now that Dr. Wardynski has changed his mind about him for some unknown reason.

And that’s the problem. While I agree that personnel issues should be dealt with by using a bit more discretion than he typically uses (particularly since he usually uses these issues for his own political advantage), the process by which principals have been evaluated has not been open to the public.

How is it possible that a process that the board was praising for selecting principals just a short eight months ago have resulted in 25% of the new hires that Dr. Wardynski recommended and that the board unanimously and excitedly approved are now being asked/forced to resign?

At the very least, this should raise questions about Wardynski’s ability to hire people. It should raise questions about the way that the board votes to approve new hires recommended by Wardynski.

Update: Need more evidence that Wardynski doesn’t know what he’s doing? Take a look at the Time’s article on the hiring of Ray Landers. As is common whenever he’s caught doing something stupid, “Wardynski did not respond to a request for comment.”

Spinelli defends this strong leadership by saying that this convoluted method of paying both a principal and a consultant saves “$4,000 per year” (which assumes we would actually have paid him $209,090 for two years of service).

Laurie McCaulley, the board president–who did at least respond to questions–said, “we assumed he was retired.”

Indeed. Our school board has done far too much assuming of late and far too little verification.

As such, it should raise questions about some of the new principals that Wardynski has been hiring from Fairfax, VA without giving them specific assignments. (Why do Wardynski’s “national” searches always result in hiring multiple people from the same districts like Aurora, Colorado and Fairfax, Virginia?)

For example, who is Dan Meier, and what vetting process was used to hire a person who was “linked” to a “North Carolina land scam?” It seems that Mr. Meier was eventually cleared, but this does raise questions about the board’s refusal to question the superintendent’s recommendations. They should at least learn to use google in the process of supporting the superintendent’s recommendations. It might save them some embarrassment of having to force resignations on people they hire after a mere eight months of service.

But that would require them to actually do their jobs of representing the public, which is something that they seem fundamentally opposed to doing.

They would rather, as they did on Thursday night, praise Dr. Wardynski for his visionary leadership and his commitment to “communicating with the public.”

(Yes, I am the one laughing in the background when that was said. Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself.)

If the board were actually doing their jobs, maybe we could manage to create some sense of continuity in this district among those teachers and administrators who actually give a damn about students and education.

As it is, they will simply continue to support whatever bad idea Wardynski will bring to them. They will continue to play fruit basket turnover with our children’s schools and lives.

Disruption for the sake of disruption is not helpful.

I wish Mr. Laqua well in his future endeavors, and I thank him for his service to our schools and our country. He had eight months to effect change. Eight whole months.

The post Updated: Wardynski’s Principals Forced To Resign appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Yes, I am a something of a broken record, asking the same questions over and over. But occasionally the Huntsville City School’s district leaders say something new that changes the playing field.

On March 22, Frank Spinelli, the CSFO of Huntsville City Schools, and Dr. Wardynski’s personal friend whom he brought with him from Aurora, Colorado last August, finally decided to respond to a request that I had been making since March 7th.

Specifically, I was requesting from him a copy of the initial LEAN Frog contract for an audit that was conducted from October 2011 through February 2012. This was the audit that Wardynski claimed proved that he was a strong leader and everyone who opposed his ideas were just whiners.

This was the audit that was supposed to change everything.

Except, all it really did was allow Wardynski to redirect attention away from himself and his decision and point the finger at others.

Case in point.

You would think that asking for a copy of a contract would be a simple thing to do. After all, the second contract with LEAN Frog that was approved on February 25th is readily available online. In case you don’t want to download it, that contract was for $152,761 and is scheduled to be completed by September 25th.

A third contract with LEAN Frog was approved tonight to revamp the Human Resources department. I suspect that that contract will be posted on the district eBoards site tomorrow. We’ll have to wait until then to find out how much that contract was for, though, since there was no discussion of the costs of any of the approved contracts during the board meeting tonight.

Nope, the only person who discussed money tonight was me in reference to the first LEAN Frog agreement that covered services from October 2011 through February 2012.

According to the District’s Check Registers, the district paid Mr. Headrick of LEAN Frog a total of $28,790.00 during those five months.

Here’s a listing of the checks if you wish to look for yourself:

• November 2011: ;$2,890.00 (Pg. 20)
• December 2011: $5,760.00 (Pg. 25)
• January 2012: $5,760.00 (Pg. 3)
• January 2012: $5,380.00 (Pg. 9)
• January 2012: $6,480.00 (Pg. 16)
• February 2012: $2,520.00 (Pg. 10)

Since this is about 5 times less than the contract they’ve already published, you would think that they would be happy to share it with the public as required by Board Policy 102-1 Access to Information.

But no.

Spinelli decided instead to stonewall. It wasn’t until I sent my request concerning this contract to both him and the entire board of education that he decided to respond.

Here’s the text of an email that I received from Mr. Spinelli on March 22, 2012 at 6:23pm. This email was sent from Frank Spinelli (frank.spinelli@hsv-k12.org) to myself, every member of the board of education, Dr. Wardynski and J. R. Brooks, the school board attorney.

Mr. Spinelli wrote:

Mr. Winn, the district does not have any documents responsive to your request.

Also, the district had been advised by the school board’s attorney that Alabama bid law does not require bids in this type of contract, Ala. Code Sec. 16-13B-2(a)(2).

Frank

That’s right. Mr. Spinelli was telling me that the very audit that unearthed all the “incompetence” that Dr. Wardynski liked to nearly brag about, was paid for without a contract of any kind.

And evidently, there were no “documents responsive to your request” to be had covering the writing of nearly $30,000 of district checks.

Surely this is a mistake, right? Surely Mr. Spinelli is not saying that he wrote six district checks over a period of four months without a contract approving the expenditures of those funds, right?

Now, the second part of Mr. Spinelli’s email concerning Alabama’s bid law was in reference to my request to receive evidence that the bid law was followed in this contract. Unfortunately the Alabama State Code that Mr. Spinelli referenced in his response to me does not exist.

There is no code section 16-13B-2(a)(2). This is, however, an Alabama code section 16-13B-2(b)(2) which states:

Purchases made by individual schools of the county or municipal public school systems from moneys other than those raised by taxation or received through appropriations from state or county sources.

Thus, Mr. Spinelli seems to be trying to tell me that the funds that were used to pay for the first LEAN Frog audit were not actually public funds. (I don’t know this for certain because Spinelli is refusing to answer my questions yet again.)

He does not say where the money came from to pay Mr. Headrick, but I have an idea about that. Back in July 2011, Dr. Wardynski told a group of Special Education parents that he would be “getting an audit” that he would use to evaluate the special education department with. The implication was that this audit would be paid for by The Board Foundation that had “trained” him in how to be a superintendent.

I am convinced that The Broad Foundation paid for the LEAN Frog audit, and if that does indeed turn out to be the case, the “findings” of that audit should be examined quite closely. For as seen during the give and take between Wardynski and Bryon Headrick on February 16th, the LEAN Frog report was couched in such a way to make Wardynski look as good as possible as a “strong leader.”

Doing so would certainly be worth $28,790 to a man like Eli Broad who is worth hundreds of millions, wouldn’t it?

So with all this in mind, I decided to ask the board about these things tonight:

On February 25th, I began asking Dr. Robinson for a copy of the contract for the services that Mr. Headrick of LEAN Frog offered to the district from October 2011 through February 2012. Since his audit was ushering in, in Dr. Robinson’s words, the removal of “business practices that permitted fraud and negligence,” I was curious how much this new culture was costing us.

In accordance with Huntsville City School Board Policy 102-1 Access to Information, I wrote Mr. Marc Seldon to ask for a copy of the contract with LEAN Frog that allowed the district to pay him $28,790.00 from October 2011 to February 2012.

Mr. Seldon, before being placed on administrative leave, directed me to Mr. Spinelli.

On March 7th, I wrote Mr. Spinelli asking for a copy of the October to February LEAN Frog contract.

Mr. Spinelli finally responded on March 22nd to say, and I quote:

“The district does not have any documents responsive to your request.”

I wrote back to ask him how the district was able to write checks totaling $28,790 to LEAN Frog without producing “any documents responsive to my request?”

He has not responded to my questions.

And so, I’m here tonight to ask the board as I have already asked in emails that have been sent to you, how can nearly $30,000 in checks be written on the district’s checking account to a vendor without a contract?

How does this total absence of checks and balances insure, Dr. Robinson, that we are indeed changing our “business practices that permitted fraud and negligence?”

Did the funding for the October – February LEAN Frog contract come from the Broad Foundation?

As Sue Peters of Seattle asks, Why should Mr. Eli Broad have more say in my children’s schools than I do?

And finally, per Dr. Robinson’s suggestion for the kinds of questions she thinks I should be asking, “What is the impact these actions are going to have on the education of our children?”

Having a district that spends nearly $30,000 without any documentation seems to be bad for our children, don’t you think?

I, of course, received no response to these questions.

That’s right. There were no cries of outrage that I would make such ridiculous accusations. There was no denial. There was no explanation offered of any kind other than Dr. Robinson’s frustrated stares. I guess that she didn’t really want me to ask “what impact these actions are going to have on the education of our children,” after all.

What exactly is Wardynski and the board trying to hide? What could they be afraid of? Why aren’t they required to follow their own policies regarding releasing public information to the public?

It would be nice if some of the news organizations who were present tonight could ask this question. Wardynski and the board have taken to ignoring me of late.

Maybe someday we’ll get the truth.

The post No Documents Responsive to Your Request appeared first on Geek Palaver.

At the Mt. Gap Merger meeting, Dr. Wardynski did something rather astonishing. Like a student who cheats on his math quiz, he refused to show his work.

As most of us learned in about the second grade, when you’re solving a math problem, it is crucial that you also show your work. It allows people to understand one another. If you know how to solve a problem, and if you’re showing me how to do it, it isn’t helpful to simply jump directly to the solution. Instead, if you allow me to follow your work, step-by-step, I too will learn what you know.

And if we both know the same thing, in all likelihood, we’ll arrive at the same solution.

In other words, showing your work is a great way to avoid misunderstanding, needless arguments, and war.

Showing your work is education, and education when done properly leads to understanding and consensus.

Dr. Wardynski and the Huntsville City Board of Education do not care about consensus, understanding, nor education as our “top educator” is steadfastly refusing to show his work concerning his justifications for closing Mt. Gap Elementary and Mt. Gap Middle by merging them together.

On Tuesday, March 13th during the Merger meeting, Dr. Wardynski presented a slide show for the first hour of the approximately 90 minutes meeting. This slide show contained an overview of his plans and ideas for Huntsville City Schools and eventually the slides offered some “data” directly related to Mt. Gap and her performance on his beloved STAR Enterprise Standardized Test. It contained several slides that were both too dim and blurry to easily see during the meeting. (Mt. Gap clearly needs a better projector, but it certainly served Wardynski’s purposes that night.)

About halfway through the meeting, Dr. Wardynski was asked by a person present at the meeting if he was planning to post these slide on a web site somewhere so that people could review them later.

Here’s how he responded to this request:

No.

No, I prepared these tonight for your meeting. So, and at the first board meeting in April, we’re going to have a lot more of this kind of information, and it will be based on what we call benchmark three, our third assessment. This was based on benchmark one and benchmark two. The slides that we will show to the public on the website will be benchmark two and benchmark three. So this is just to give you a taste of where we’re going. It’s very preliminary. The work we’ll show you in April will be much more detailed.

Dr. Wardynski refused to show his work in a way that was accessible to the public.

I really had a hard time believing what I heard. Here was our superintendent, a public employee, directly refusing a specific request from the public, from his boss and employer.

What’s the word for refusing a specific and direct request from your boss?

Oh yeah, insubordination.

Since this didn’t seem like something that Dr. Wardynski would do, I decided to write him to ask if I could get a copy of the slide show.

I mean, it’s just a simple slide show that he’s likely already shown to the public three times at the Whitesburg merger meeting as well as at the Chapman merger meeting. What could possibly be his thinking in risking insubordination over a public slide show, put together with public funds, containing public data?

On Wednesday, March 14th, I sent Dr. Wardynski an email requesting a copy of this public slide show.

I received no response.

On March 20th, I sent Dr. Wardynski another email requesting a copy of this public slide show. This time I sent the request to Dr. Wardynski and the entire Board of Education as well. Dr. Robinson had suggested to me that perhaps the reason he hadn’t responded to my first email was that the switch over to a “cloud based” email service from TekLinks that the board had approved on Saturday, February 25th meeting was resulting in emails being lost.

When I sent the request to the entire board, Dr. Robinson, to her credit, decided to respond, even though Dr. Wardynski was still refusing to do so.

Dr. Robinson said that she would forward my request to Dr. Wardynski; however, he still refused to respond.

This is truly difficult to understand. In addition to being insubordinate, he is also directly violating School Board Policy 102-1 “Access To Information.” This policy states:

The public shall have the right to any information concerning the Huntsville Public Schools except that which disclosure violates the right of privacy of any employee, student, or person or compromises the Board of Education’s ability to properly protect public interest. Decisions regarding the release of information that is compromising in nature rests with the Board of Education.

Information that is in printed or published form shall be made available upon request. Information or extracts from original documents shall be reproduced upon request and the cost of reproduction charged to the requester.

The only exception allowed to this public right is when “disclosure violates the right of privacy of any employee, student, or person or compromises the Board of Education’s ability to protect public interest.”

Exactly how can releasing a slide show that was shown to a group of about a hundred, parents, children, and employees violate or compromise anything? If it did, then Dr. Wardynski should never have displayed the information to begin with.

So, Dr. Wardynski, by refusing to release this information that has been requested four separate times, has violated Huntsville City School Board Policy.

And the Board of Education, whom I have informed of this request, has been silent about this violation of their own policy.

Would the Board be silent if someone outside of Wardynski’s inner circle violated board policy? Would the Board be silent if a teacher violated board policy?

The clear answer to that is no, no, and no.

So why does Dr. Wardynski get a free pass?

You know, I honestly don’t care if Wardynski violates board policy. That really isn’t the issue or the problem. The problem is that the “top educator” of our district is specifically and intentionally refuses to educate. As I explained to Dr. Robinson in an email exchange about this issue on March 20th, Dr. Wardynski used that public slide show to support his arguments, thin though they were, to merge the two schools into one. By refusing to show his work, Dr. Wardynski, Dr. Robinson and the entire Board of Education are refusing to engage in one of the oldest and most important of educational principles: Where there is confusion and misunderstanding, a teacher attempts to explain and correct the misunderstanding.

By refusing to show their work, none of these people, Wardynski, Robinson, Blair, Birney, McCaulley, or even Morrison, deserve the title of educator.

And just like in the second grade when a student refuses to show his work, he gets no credit for getting the right solution, Dr. Wardynski deserves no credit and no trust for his insubordinate refusal either.

__________

There’s an article about what happens to your school district when it is invaded by “The Broad Virus” making the rounds this week. It’s an excellent article that I’ve recommended before and that I still highly recommend.

Number two, on the list of identifiable symptoms for “How to Tell if Your District is Infected by the Broad Virus” is as follows:

Even top-performing schools, alternative schools, schools for the gifted, are inexplicably and suddenly targeted for closure or mergers.

The first step in getting better is to realize that you’re actually sick. Huntsville City Schools is sick and infected. And our Board Members are the carriers.

The post Saving Mt. Gap: Wardynski Refuses To Show His Work appeared first on Geek Palaver.

I just received a comment on an early post that greatly concerns me, and so I want to make sure that my position concerning the Mt. Gap Elementary School PTA is crystal clear: I greatly appreciate and support the work that our PTA leadership team has done this year. It is in no way my intention to criticize the organization, the leadership, nor it’s members in any of the posts that I have made about the plan to merge/close Mt. Gap Elementary School.

Here was the reader’s comment:

At least three emails were sent out to all parents in the middle school about the meeting. It was also posted on the sign in front of the school. There are only so many things they can do to notify parents. If they send home papers they end up left in the kids lockers. No need to blast the PTA. We don’t need to turn against each other. The elementary PTA president planned the meeting. That was when he said he could come. All three schools were invited. I have three kids at 3 different schools. My husband and I have to split up all the time got meetings and such. It’s a way of life when your kids get to a certain age.

I really appreciate it when readers take the time to comment, or send me private emails. It helps me understand when I haven’t made my self clear enough in my writing.

Clarity in thought and word is the single most important part of being a writer, and it is what I strive for above all else.

Since it seems that I may have been misunderstood, let me make my opinion as clear as I can.

I greatly appreciate the endless and tireless work that the PTA leadership, and in particular our president, has done this year. It has been an extremely difficult year for everyone connected to the school system (including the superintendent and the board even though I believe them to be the cause of most of the difficulty).

Our teachers and administrators have operated under more stress, pressure, and both overt and covert threats from the state and the city leadership than in any year in recent history. Our PTA has been under a similar stress. While their “jobs” and livelihood are not on the line, clearly these are concerned parents, each and every one of them. And when our teachers are stressed, good parents become concerned and stressed as well.

I know for a fact that this is true of our PTA leadership, and it is certainly true of our president. Gwen Lindsey is an excellent parent and a caring leader for our PTA.

It has not been my intention to be critical of the PTA’s attempts to schedule the meeting with Dr. Wardynski. All of my criticism for the delays in scheduling the meeting are directed toward Dr. Wardynski and Dr. Robinson.

I am convinced that Dr. Wardynski intentionally delayed having a meeting with parents in order to be able to approach the meeting as if it was a completed deal.

And that is exactly what happened.

The reason that attendance at the Merger Meeting (it’s difficult to call it that since the vast majority of the meeting was spent talking about everything but the merger) was low was because Dr. Wardynski with the support of Dr. Robinson designed it so.

Why would busy parents whom, as the reader stated, have to “split up” to attend meetings bother to attend a meeting to discuss a plan that was introduced six months earlier, and approved and implemented four months earlier?

Truthfully, as Tuesday is “date night” for my little girl and me, I nearly talked myself into not attending the meeting as well. If I hadn’t been able to reschedule our typical dinner together until after the meeting, I probably wouldn’t have gone.

But you see, that was exactly what Dr. Wardynski intended when he finally agreed to meet with parents. He was counting on people staying away.

So, no, I do not believe that there was anything else that the PTA leadership teams could have or should have done to promote attendance at the meeting.

I am not attempting to “blast the PTA.”

I consider our PTA president to be a friend, and I am not attempting to criticize her or her actions in any way. While I have not had the opportunity to discuss the merger meeting with her since Tuesday, I believe that she, in principal, supports the idea of the merger. She sees it as a way of keeping Mt. Gap open. While we may disagree on the merger, I do not hold any ill will toward her for viewing things differently than I. It is not my intention to “turn against each other” in this discussion.

To the contrary: the only persons that I am attempting to blast here are Dr. Wardynski and Dr. Robinson for pushing through this decision without, as Dr. Wardynski promised, discussing it with parents first. I think doing so was a blatant attempt to disenfranchise anyone who opposes his ideas.

How we do a thing is just as important as what we do. One cannot make a good decision in a bad way. The ends never justify the means.

How Dr. Wardynski is running our system is wrong. It is rife with opportunities for fraud, and I believe that is reason enough to oppose the decisions he is ramming through.

I think he is destroying our school system with his methods, and I am doing what I can to oppose his attempts to hurt my, our, kids’ education.

So, just so we’re clear, I oppose Dr. Wardynski’s plan to harm Mt. Gap Elementary School. I oppose his refusal to answer questions or discuss reasons for the merger.

I do not oppose the Mt. Gap Elementary PTA. These dedicated women and men are the reason that we’re celebrating my daughter’s Reflection video. They are a crucial part of the reason that Mt. Gap Elementary is such as wonderful school, and they have my thanks.

The post Saving Mt. Gap: Wardynski is to Blame, Not the PTA appeared first on Geek Palaver.

I’ve gotten many questions about my posts over the past few days, and so I feel that I need to summarize where we are in the process of the merger between Mt. Gap Elementary and Mt. Gap Middle.

On September 15th, Dr. Wardynski first introduced the idea of merging Mt. Gap Elementary and Middle Schools into a Mt. Gap Pre-8th Grade school. During this presentation, he stated:

We’re going to go down and have a discussion with the community, the PTAs and the principals and make sure that that concept fits with what the community would like to see. And then once we’ve got that, John’s already working on some concept drawings, come back to the board with a discussion about how that would unfold for board approval.

On the morning of September 26th, Dr. Wardynski and Dr. Robinson met with the PTA boards for Mt. Gap Elementary and Middle Schools to discuss this merger. These meetings were not open to the entire PTA membership of either of the schools, and so far as I am aware the only public details released from this meeting to the PTA of the elementary school may be seen in the two posts below. This was shared on the Mt. Gap Elementary School PTA Facebook on September 26th:

At the board meeting on November 3rd, briefly after the Lee High naming debacle, the board of education, with Dr. Robinson’s full and vocal support, approved Dr. Wardynski’s recommendation to merge Mt. Gap Elementary and Middle Schools. You’ll note that there is no discussion about why he believes the merger is necessary.

There is no justification for the merger offered of any kind.

We were told that “all along the way” Dr. Wardynski “will be working with our PTA and families to seek input and ideas on the proposed changes.”

So far as I am aware, the only meeting that Dr. Wardynski had with our PTA and families was this past Tuesday, March 13, 2012. During this meeting, he pointedly refused to accept any input and ideas on the proposed changes.

I feel it necessary to point out that I am was not convinced that this merger was a bad idea. On September 15th, shortly after the announcement of the idea, I posted on Mt. Gap Elementary’s Facebook page the following:

If I, as a parent, could find those two examples in about 15 minutes of looking, surely, Dr. Wardynski has far greater access to research on this plan than I. I mean, that is what we pay him for right?

And yet, when I asked him for specific evidence showing that P-8s perform better than separate elementary and middle schools, his only response, his only evidence was to say that a closed school doesn’t out perform anyone.

In other words, the top educator of Huntsville City Schools refused to educate the public when offered the opportunity.

A teacher never misses an opportunity to teach. Dr. Wardynski is no teacher.

But my point here is that until they refused to talk with the public, until they decided to pretend that public opinion doesn’t matter, until they decided to attack people who are simply seeking information, my mind was open concerning the merger. This is why I did not actively write about this issue until after the meeting this past week.

As I wrote on November 4th, Dr. Wardynski broke his promise to meet with the community to discuss if this merger plan was what we wanted.

So, yes, the decision to merge the two schools has been made. The board approved this decision four months ago. Since that time, there has been one and only one meeting with Dr. Wardynski and the whole PTA. During this meeting, he spent an hour talking about the system as a whole and approximately 30 minutes responding to a few questions concerning the merger.

He accepted no suggestions or input concerning the proposed changes.

He offered no justification for his actions other than, Mt. Gap Elementary is inefficient. He offered no evidence of this at all. Not one single, verifiable piece of evidence.

Thus, despite having an open mind six months ago, I now believe that this merger plan is wrong.

Dr. Wardynski works for us; we do not work for him. We do not need to be afraid to ask questions; he must be afraid of not answering them. We do not need to go to him with our hats in our hands begging him to have mercy upon us; he needs to be asking us for our forgiveness for breaking his word to us.

Will contacting Dr. Robinson, as I suggested in an earlier post, keep the merger from happening?

Honestly, probably not.

But that doesn’t mean that contacting her to let her know that we’re dissatisfied with Dr. Wardynski’s broken promise will accomplish nothing. Call Dr. Robinson and Dr. Wardynski and insisting that they offer an educational justification for combining the two schools will let them know that we are here, and that we are paying attention to what they are doing to our schools.

It will remind them that education is entirely about the asking and answering of questions. It will remind them that they must do more than just say “this is what we decided to do regardless of what you think or want.”

It will remind them that this is not a monarchy, and Dr. Wardynski is not our king.

If you agree, please contact Dr. Wardynski and Dr. Robinson and tell them so.

If you disagree, please contact Dr. Wardynski and Dr. Robinson and tell them so.

Either way, they will be reminded that they work for us.

You may reach Dr. Robinson at personalbest@knology.net. You may reach Dr. Wardynski at drw@hsv.k12.al.us or via telephone at 256-428-6810.

The post Saving Mt. Gap appeared first on Geek Palaver.

On Tuesday night, Dr. Wardynski told a gathered group of parents and teachers of the Mt. Gap and Weatherly communities that Mt. Gap Elementary School would be closed because it was “inefficient.” To support this claim, he cited one and only one statistic: classroom usage.

He claimed that Mt. Gap Elementary had a total of 29 classrooms, but that only 18 of them were being used. As such, Mt. Gap Elementary School and Mt. Gap Middle School must either be merged or closed. He also cited the same problem at Mt. Gap Middle.

Here’s a quick question though: If two schools are operating “inefficiently,” how is merging them going to help?

While I realize that expecting logical consistency, or frankly any logical support for his arguments at all is a futile exercise, I expect it still. I’m silly that way, but really, shouldn’t we be able to expect the head educator of the town to at least attempt to support his suggestions with an argument that makes sense? His desire to close and merge schools has no basis in logic. None at all.

We’re not becoming more efficient in building size. If anything, once the merger is completed, there will likely be more under utilized classrooms and space than there was before. There will be one nursing office and one library in the future. Thus, there will be at least two extra rooms in the building after the merger.

Then, there must be more students coming to the new “one” school right?

Nope. The new merged school will have 671 students. This is the combined enrollment of both schools now. The merger isn’t going to result in more students attending the new school.

Well, clearly there will be fewer personnel, right?

Nope. Wardynski said, and I quote, “No one will lose a job” and he’s “not moving any of your teachers.” So, the faculty will remain exactly the same. (Just for the record, Wardynski was speaking out of both sides of his mouth when he was talking about this. Anyone who believes that he’s not going to move teachers is deluding themselves. Teachers will absolutely be moved at the Superintendent’s discretion. This is why he emphasizes that teachers are district employees rather than school employees.)

Then, there will surely be fewer administrators at least?

Not according to what Dr. Wardynski had to say on Tuesday. Currently there are two principals and one assistant principal at the two schools. After the merger, there will be one principal, one assistant principal, and a “Teacher on Special Assignment,” who will be an “administrator in training.”

So the administration will stay exactly the same.

All that will be saved are one nurse, and one librarian. That’s it. Does that sound more “efficient” to you? (Since the work load on the remaining nurse and librarian will be overwhelming, it doesn’t sound more efficient to me.)

This isn’t about efficiency. It’s about control.

He’s using the same arguments that the overpaid demographer from the summer was making, and these arguments make even less sense now. In support of the report, Dr. Richardson released a Expenditure_School_FY10.pdfreport showing the costs per student of operating the two schools. Mt. Gap Elementary spent $9,718 per student. Mt. Gap Middle spent $10,948 per student. The system as a whole spent $10,040 per student.

Neither of these schools are extreme examples of inefficiency. In fact, Mt. Gap Elementary is a model of efficiency when compared to the system as a whole.

So, what’s this about?

Both of the current principals of these two schools are tenured. This is strange among principals in the system these days. (In fact, we now seem to be contracting our principals out, but more about that later.) Both of the principals at Mt. Gap are tenured, and dramatically altering the structure and organization of the schools is the only way Wardynski can control them.

As a result of the changes, Mrs. Murphree has announced her retirement.

Wardynski doesn’t care about schools. He doesn’t care about teachers or educators who have dedicated their lives to education. He doesn’t care about communities. He doesn’t care about parents, and he doesn’t care about students.

All he cares about is control. And this is why he’s merging Mt. Gap.

If you think this is a mistake, contact our board member Dr. Jennie Robinson. You may email her at personalbest@knology.net. Let her know that you think this is wrong for Mt. Gap. Tell her that she needs to be concerned about the impact this radical decision is having upon our kids because it doesn’t seem that neither she nor Dr. Wardynski care right now.

The post Wardynski’s Inefficient Ideas appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Remember back with Dr. Moore was our superintendent? It was an interesting time right there toward the end of her tenure. It was “clear” that Huntsville City Schools was in trouble. It was also clear that the board was looking for nearly anyone to take the blame for that trouble other than themselves.

And yet, at Dr. Moore’s final evaluation, the board gave her a perfect evaluation. Not only that, but at the previous evaluation in 2009 (before everyone was aware of the issues facing the system), she also received, you guessed it, a perfect evaluation.

Strange, don’t you think?

Dr. Robinson thought it was strange as well. In fact, she said as much in May of 2010. She complained that, “if we have an instrument that does not permit us to accurately evaluate the superintendent, I think there’s a problem.”

That’s right, Dr. Robinson, defender extraordinaire of the new Superintendent and all of his work to change the culture of our system by forcing strict evaluation of teachers based on student performance on standardized testing scores, was two years ago complaining about the failure of a standardized test for Dr. Moore.

So she criticizes standardized testing when it doesn’t suit her purpose (to get rid of Dr. Moore), and she specifically volunteers to develop a personalized evaluation test for Dr. Wardynski to convince the city that he is in fact worth, in her words, “every penny.”

Dr. Robinson developed these standards of evaluation specifically for him with specific input from him concerning what and how he should be evaluated.

So let’s follow the logic here for a minute.

• Standardized testing is flawed when it comes to evaluating Dr. Moore. (It was flawed in 2009 and again in 2010 even though nothing was done to change it during the intervening year.)
• Since standardized testing was flawed with Dr. Moore, the evaluation tool we use for Dr. Wardynski must be personalized to him and by him.
• However, Dr. Wardynski’s constant claims that standardized testing is the only way for teachers to know how well their students are performing in the classroom are in no way hypocritical. We should simply realize that like the double standard in hiring and salaries (and bonuses before employees even start), means that there must be a double standard in evaluation of those employees.

So we have two standards when people raise issues about professional misconduct, two standards for complaints about employees, two standards for hiring policies, and two standards for evaluation. Our superintendent has the benefit of having an evaluation that was designed specifically for him. In fact, he had significant input into the method of evaluation that would be used.

If he fails his evaluation, he won’t get an additional $10,000. I’m sure that will be just terrible for him.

If our kids fail their evaluation, they’re marked for life, and their teachers are threatened or fired.

It must be nice to be able to evaluated on your strengths rather than others’ weaknesses.

A “strong leader” leads by example, not by hypocrisy.

The post Standardized Testing For Everyone Except Wardynski appeared first on Geek Palaver.

There is an idea in this town that if it isn’t happening at my school, I don’t need to worry about it.

There are a lot of reasons for this. One might be that people are simply too busy to keep up with more than one school. As a parent who has children at two different elementary schools, I really understand this one. Even though the boy and the girl are a mere 19 months apart in age, they’re in separate schools and have been since they started thanks to the decision of the central office to move special needs kids out of their home schools and consolidate them in just a few schools in the system. One school has enough politics, programs, and problems of its own. There just isn’t time to worry about the other schools in the system.

Another reason is that life itself tends to intervene enough. Not only is one school enough, usually, one school is simply too much. There just aren’t enough hours in the day for everything that needs to get done. Work, kids activities, health question, car trouble, cleaning the house, church commitments and occasionally sleeping later than 6am, all take priority over the politics of the school system, especially when my kid’s school isn’t affected.

I’m hopeful that these are the primary reasons why when some bad decision doesn’t directly affect us, we find it easy and frankly justifiable to ignore what’s happening with other schools and other demographics.

If it doesn’t affect my kids, I simply don’t have time to worry about it.

I’m hopeful that’s it. I’m hopeful that it isn’t a deeper, more troubling reason like maybe “those” schools don’t deserve more resources, better buildings or good teachers. I’m hopeful that isn’t the case.

In our recent questions, comments and debates about Teach For America, I’ve occasionally sensed from people the attitude that since TFA isn’t coming to my kids’ schools, it’s not worth being concerned over.

Or as one commentator stated, “Those schools are failing. Anything is better than what they have now.” Beggars can’t be choosers, you know. So, why worry about TFAers?

The best answer is: Because it’s the right thing to do. If my children deserve teachers who are properly trained and committed to the goal of educating our children, then all children deserve similar teachers. If my children deserve teachers who are experienced, and who work everyday to apply that experience to the craft of education, then all children deserve such teachers.

A secondary answer, a more pragmatic answer is: If the district believes it’s okay to put inexperienced, untrained, uncertified “teachers” (who don’t want to be teachers) in one classroom, it can and will place them in every classroom.

But that won’t happen, right? The TFAers are going to schools that are failing, right? They, surely, won’t be placed in my child’s school.

Right?

The best answer that I can give you is that despite nearly a month of asking for details on where the TFAers will be placed, I still haven’t been able to get a straight answer.

No Straight Answers

Straight answers: Why are they so difficult to come by from Huntsville City Schools?

You should know that I am arguing from an absence of evidence in this case. Most of my posts are not based upon my opinions or assessments. I typically stick with exactly what a person says. Arguing from a lack of evidence is fraught with issues, but sometimes a lack of evidence is also telling. I believe that it is in this case as well.

I am convinced that Dr. Wardynski is planning to hire significantly more TFAers in August 2012 than the 30-40 he has previously indicated, and I believe that he is planning to place TFAers at schools all over the district.

Over the past month, I have been asking Dr. Robinson for details concerning the placement plan for the TFAers.

On February 9, 2012, I wrote Dr. Robinson to ask which schools would be receiving the TFA recruits in the district. On the 10th, Dr. Robinson responded:

A placement plan for TFA teachers will not be created until we know which teachers at which schools are retiring. That could be as late a June.

This is as close to a direct answer as I was able to receive, but as I told Dr. Robinson, this answer did not satisfy me. I wrote back to ask:

I am sure that someone in the central office has at least an idea where they are planning to place the TFA recruits starting in August, otherwise it would have been foolish to enter into a contract in November of 2011 to hire at least 30 TFAers [no later than] 14 days before the start of school. This is particularly true since we will have to pay $40 a day for those recruits that do not have positions on the first day of class.

Let me see if I can rephrase my question in such a way that you might be able to provide me with at least the beginnings of an answer.

Which of the schools in the district will not, regardless of retirements or non-renewal status, be receiving these TFA recruits? We can get to the actual numbers and placements later in the process. For now, I’ll be satisfied knowing where they won’t be placed.

Since she wasn’t willing to say how many and where those recruits would be placed, even though we’re going to have to pay at least 30 of them regardless of whether we have a job for them or not, I decided to ask where the TFAers will not be placed. Surely this should be a simple question to answer, right? After all, nearly every public discussion of the TFA contract has implied that these recruits are only placed at schools where the students are at high risk. In other words, TFA typically only serves schools where 70% or more of the school’s population are receiving free or reduced lunch.

Poverty and School Performance

Poverty, in other words, is one of the most accurate indicators we have for the potential success of a student. The lower the family income, the higher the risk for students to underperform in schools. If you want to get into the scientific evidence supporting this thesis, take a look at “Childhood Poverty, Chronic Stress, and Adult Working Memory” by Gary W. Evans and Michelle A. Schamberg. You may see an abstract here.

As I said, TFAers are typically placed at schools with 70% or more of the school’s population receives free or reduced lunch. The contract itself requires this.

Or, as we’ll see in a moment, it implies that this will be the standard.

In response to my follow up question, Dr. Robinson told me later in the day on February 10th:

I have asked the staff to provide the information you requested.

I expected that she would let me know that the TFAers will be placed at our Title I schools here in Huntsville. After all, the Title I schools are Title I schools because of the percentage of students they have receiving a free or reduced lunch. This is why Dr. Wardynski was pushing for students to complete the forms required for the Free or Reduced Lunch at the beginning of the school year. Here’s a listing of the Huntsville City Schools Title I schools as of August 15, 2011.

• Butler High
• Chapman Middle
• Davis Hills Middle
• Ed White Middle
• Highlands Elementary
• Lakewood Elementary
• Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary
• McDonnell Elementary
• Montview Elementary
• Morris Elementary
• Ridgecrest Elementary
• Rolling Hills Elementary
• University Place Elementary
• West Mastin Lake Elementary
• Westlawn Middle

The reason that I started asking about the placement of the TFAers was that there is only one high school on this list. As you’ll recall, Dr. Robinson stated that our TFAers will be primarily placed at secondary schools rather than elementary schools.

The problem is that there just aren’t that many secondary schools on the list.

I asked Dr. Robinson about this when I noticed that Dr. Wardynski was regularly talking about placing TFAers at elementary, middle and high schools. He said as much in his interview with Rocket City Mom on January 31st. When I asked Dr. Robinson about this on February 2nd, she told me that it had in fact “always been the plan” to place TFAers at both elementary and secondary schools.

Still No Answer

About two weeks later, I followed up with Dr. Robinson asking if the “staff” had responded to her request for a listing of schools where the TFAers will not be placed.

She responded on February 22nd:

Any determination about which schools will and will not receive TFA teachers will be made at a later date.

As I stated, the most informative response she gave me was the very first one, we won’t “know” until late June.

I wrote her back quoting the TFA contract which states on page two paragraph I.A.v.:

School District will restrict hiring of each such Teacher to schools where at least 70% of attending students are eligible for free or reduced lunch unless mutually agreed upon by School District and Teach For America.

And so I asked:

The hesitancy on the part of the school district to inform the public which schools will or will not be receiving TFAers leads me to believe that the school district and Teach For America have arrived at a mutual agreement to allow TFAers to be placed at schools where less than 70% of the attending students are eligible for free or reduced lunch. Is this the case?

Has the district and TFA arrived at an agreement to place TFAers at schools where less that 70% of the student population receives a free or reduced lunch? If so, when will this agreement be made public?

What is the new cut-off percentage being employed, and what schools meet that new requirement? If not, why is it so difficult to provide me with a listing of schools that have a percentage of free and reduced lunch that is below 70%?

If they’ve not come up with a new standard by which they will decide where TFAers will be placed, why is it so difficult to give me a straight answer about where they will or won’t be placed?

I’m convinced that Dr. Wardynski and the Board are planning to place TFAers at schools with a standard significantly below 70% free and reduced lunch.

Dr. Robinson’s response did nothing to change my mind. On February 22nd, she wrote back:

We are still determining which schools qualify for TFA teachers.

Unless their standard of 70% free and reduced lunch has changed, why would they need to be “still determining which schools qualify?

Why is the district unable to communicate the criteria by which they will decide which schools will receive and which schools will not receive the TFA recruits?

Can You Think of a Reason?

The only reason I can think of is that the district is planning to use TFAers are significantly higher levels than the contract calls for (30 or more) and significantly higher than the number that Dr. Wardynski shared with Dr. Robinson via email when I asked about the cost of the contract (40).

Dr. Robinson’s hesitancy to provide me with a simple and direct answer combined with Dr. Wardynski regular claims that, “Many people who think they were going to be tenured will not,” leads me to one and only one conclusion: Dr. Wardynski is planning to hire significantly more TFAers than he has revealed publicly.

The contract is loaded with clues to this effect.

First, there is not an upper limit to the number of TFA recruits hired by our system (30 or more, 40 or more).

Second, the contract allows for both parties to change the placement rule of at least 70% or more free and reduced lunch by mutual consent. Since TFA Alabama would love to place record numbers of recruits in Huntsville, and since Dr. Wardynski is constantly raising the number and cheerleading for TFA, what, other than public opinion, is to stop both parties from raising the numbers?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

Sometimes we speak loudest, Dr. Robinson, by saying nothing at all. Right now, the district’s silence is screaming that they’re planning to hire far more than 30 or 40 TFAers. The district’s silence is screaming that they’re planning to place these recruits at all of the schools in the district.

So What’s A Parent To Do?

Ask Questions.

As you can see, my questions often go unanswered. If you think these are valid questions, ask them yourself. Perhaps you will receive a different answer than I have received.

When your child is assigned a classroom teacher for the fall, request that the school provide you with a completely and detailed accounting of that teacher’s training. You may do this by filing out a “Parent’s Right-To-Know” request. This form will advise you concerning your teacher’s and paraprofessional’s credentials.

If your children are being taught by a teacher teaching under a “provisional” or “emergency” status, if his or her undergraduate degree is in something other than Education, and he or she doesn’t have a master’s degree in Education, I would advise you to request that your child be transferred out of that teacher’s classroom.

All of our children deserve the best opportunity to succeed in their education. I, for one, do not want my children taught by a “teacher” who doesn’t want to be a teacher. TFA “teachers” don’t want to be teachers. We should make it easy for them to do something else.

The post Teach For America: Coming to Your Child’s School appeared first on Geek Palaver.

As jaded as I like to think I am about the school board, and the senior administration of our district, I have to say, there are times when they still manage to shock me. Last night was just such a night.

As I mentioned in my last post, I had asked Dr. Robinson for an explanation of a few of the recent actions (or lack of actions) on the part of the board.

Specifically, I wanted to know:

• When did the board approve the contract with Mr. Headrick and LEAN Frog to conduct the audit that was completed with a reporting of his findings on February 16th?
• How much did the audit cost?
• Why is the company that conducted the audit now being hired to recommend changes to the business practices of the district based upon the findings of the audit?
• Was this contract with LEAN Frog executed in accordance with the bid law?

Interestingly enough, LEAN Frog was specifically hired (at some undetermined point, but probably around October) to review the business practices of the district.

One significant part of the findings that Mr. Headrick presented to the board on February 16th had to do with the Procurement Department. This department is responsible for overseeing the “Bid Invitation/Analysis Process,” “Purchase Orders,” and “Inventory Control.”

As I pointed out, I had no recollection of the board actually approving the hiring of Mr. Headrick and LEAN Frog Consulting. A subsequent review of the minutes of the meetings since that time confirmed my recollection as correct. Since through January the district has paid Mr. Headrick, $26,270, I was surprised that I could not find any record of the board approving his contract for those services conducted from October 2011 through February 16, 2012.

Yesterday at 9:31:48 PM CST, Dr. Robinson responded to my questions with the following email:

As necessary to ensure the integrity of district financial and business activities, and to ensure to their conformity to statute, and regulation, the CFO engages auditors and other experts to review transactions, policies, and regulatory guidance and to render opinions. In audit functions, discretion in the use of external auditors is particularly important when fraud or abuse are suspected as was the case in the present situation. Therefore, in such cases public BOE (Board of Education) discussion is inappropriate.

Funds expended for Leanfrog we disbursed from the board approved budget and the CFO has authority for certain budgeted expenditures.

Also note that Lean Frog has moved beyond an audit function to the creation of processes and operating procedures and thus their services have been engaged via BOE action.

Jennie Robinson, PhD.

Lets unpack this response just a bit.

It’s Not the CFO’s Job

First, Dr. Robinson seems to be quoting a specific policy statement in her opening comment. I’ve asked her where that policy can be found, but she hasn’t responded yet. Since I’ve never been good at waiting, I went online to review the policies myself.

Guess what, that is not a Huntsville City Schools policy. In fact, nearly the only comment that the Policy Manual makes on audits is found in Procedure 100-1P “Functions of the Board of Education” Paragraph C, on page 2 of that procedure entitled Audit states:

The accounts of the Huntsville City Schools shall be audited annually by a certified public accountant selected by the Board of Education. Reports of such audits shall be delivered to the Board of Education, the superintendent of schools, and others as the Board may direct. (Emphasis Added)

So you see, it is not the job of the CFO to “engage auditors and other experts to review transactions, policies, and regulatory guidance and to render opinions” as Dr. Robinson claimed. It is instead the job of the Board of Education to select the auditor to be used.

This kinda makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean if an audit is going to be conducted of the business practices of the district, the Chief School Financial Officer also needs to be audited, doesn’t he?

Who Is The Discretion For?

Second, Dr. Robinson claims that, “In audit functions, discretion in the use of external auditors is particularly important when fraud or abuse are suspected as was the case in the present situation. Therefore, in such cases public BOE discussion is inappropriate.”

Who is the discretion necessary for? Should we keep the audit quiet from the public? If so, then why did Dr. Wardynski, in one of his first meetings with the public on July 25, 2011 tell a group of Special Education parents that he would soon be conducting a full audit of the Special Education and other Departments in the central office.

Discretion wasn’t necessary for the public.

How about the people being audited? Well, we certainly don’t want them to know they’re being audited. But, of course, the first people in the district to know that they were being audited were the directors and their directorships. Mr. Headrick stated that he began the audit by “conducting interviews” with the directors.

It’s kinda hard to conduct an audit interview without the person being interviewed knowing that an audit is going on, isn’t it? I began hearing from multiple district personnel that LEAN Frog was conducting an audit beginning in November 2011.

Discretion wasn’t necessary for the district personnel.

So, who exactly was the discretion for? Perhaps the discretion was for the board as they seemed to be the only group in the city who didn’t know it was happening.

CFO Has Authority For Certain Expenditures

The next second of her response contains the true kickers. Dr. Robinson stated that, “Funds expended for Leanfrog we disbursed from the board approved budget and the CFO has authority for certain budgeted expenditures.”

Dr. Robinson seems to be claiming that Mr. Frank Spinelli has the authority to expend district funds, accepting of bids, and contracting with vendors all without any board or public oversight. As I mentioned on Saturday, through January, the district has paid LEAN Frog $26,270.00. As the report to the board did not take place until February, once the check register is published for that month, I’m sure we’ll find that the $26,270.00 has increased to nearly $30,000.

So, according to Dr. Robinson, Mr. Spinelli, has the authority to commit and expend $30,000 in public funds without any oversight.

You’ll note, as I did, that there was no discussion of the questions concerning the bid law. While there are perhaps hundreds of Lean Six Sigma consultants in the country, and surely dozens of them in Huntsville (as this is a standard evaluation for military contractors), did Mr. Spinelli issue a call for bids?

I have no idea.

Significant Opportunity For Fraud

Mr. Headrick stated in his presentation on February 16th that the current business practices and System-Wide Issues/Opportunities for Huntsville City Schools presented:

Significant opportunity for fraud, waste and abuse and legal liabilities associated with non-compliance to state and federal law.

It’s a shame that Mr. Headrick wasn’t tasked to audit the means and methods that were used to actually hire him. Perhaps then his findings wouldn’t be tainted by the superintendent having refused to bring a recommendation to the board to hire him as is required by board policy and state law.

As it stands, the audit that will be used on Thursday night, March 1st to fire up to one hundred directors, coordinators, principals and teachers, and staff should itself be considered in non-compliance. Thus every single one of the district employees who are fired tomorrow night should challenge their dismissal in a court of law.

Wardynski’s going to be known as the best friend to lawyers in this town as he’ll not have doubled legal fees but rather quadrupled them.

Is it possible that there were some legal violations found by Mr. Headrick? Yes, there are. Three of the five board members who are allowing Mr. Spinelli to expend district funds without oversight likely did the same thing five years ago. And anyone found breaking the law should be punished.

If this contract was not approved by the board, and it doesn’t appear that it was, the money should be refunded, the findings should be dismissed, and those violating standard practices should be fired.

However, Dr. Robinson, the ends never justify the means.

Since Mr. King has been advertising positions for the district on his Facebook wall since January 2nd, he can just add a few more positions to his list.

Tomorrow night’s board meeting is the culmination of a witch hunt that is being used to cover up current violations. It’s time that we the public take back our school system.

The post Significant Opportunity For Fraud appeared first on Geek Palaver.

On Thursday, February 16th, Dr. Wardynski began to make public a process that he started in private in October with the hiring of Bryon Headrick of LEAN Frog. Speaking of the findings, Dr. Wardynski has claimed, “this is what incompetence looks like.” Dr. Robinson, as usual, praised Wardynski for bringing in a “culture of change.”

There are going to be “firings, demotions, and transfer,” and everyone said, “STRONG LEADER, STRONG LEADER” because that’s exactly what Wardynski paid them to say. And when they didn’t say it often enough, he led the chorus himself.

And much of the public buys into the message that our schools are finally going to be run by people who do things the right way, who follow the rules, who don’t just put their friends, regardless of their inexperience or incompetence into highly paid positions of power.

So where’s the evidence that Dr. Wardynski and his administrative team are doing things any differently?

There doesn’t seem to be any, and as Mr. Blair pointed out on Thursday, February 16th, that doesn’t make us feel any better.

Everyone knows that Dr. Wardynski has made a habit of hiring his friends. That’s old news.

Everyone knows that Dr. Wardynski is bringing in TFAers, even though they cost more and there is no shortages of highly qualified and fully certified teachers in the district.

As I said, old news. What have they done lately?

What about these two tidbits of information:

On Thursday, Mr. Headrick criticized the District’s Procurement Process. He claimed that there was “Significant opportunity for fraud, waste and abuse, and legal liabilities associated with non-compliance to state and federal law.”

The bid law is indeed state law. Was this contract with LEAN Frog executed in accordance with the bid law? That the school board approves the contracts that Dr. Wardynski enters into is also a requirement. (And since they’ve approved every single recommendation the man has brought so far, that shouldn’t be too onerous of a requirement, should it?) Was this contract approved by the board? If so, when?

Also who paid for this LEAN Frog evaluation that is offering Dr. Wardynski political cover to do whatever he wants? The first time that the school board voted to approve hiring Mr. Headrick of LEAN Frog was yesterday at a special called board meeting. AND YET, Huntsville City Schools has been paying LEAN Frog since November. Here are the numbers

• November 2011: ;$2,890.00 (Pg. 20)
• December 2011: $5,760.00 (Pg. 25)
• January 2012: $5,760.00 (Pg. 3)
• January 2012: $5,380.00 (Pg. 9)
• January 2012: $6,480.00 (Pg. 16)

So, the Huntsville City Schools has paid LEAN Frog at total of $26,270.00 since November 2011, but the first time the board approved hiring of this company was February 25, 2012. I have asked Dr. Robinson about this oversight in oversight, but as of this writing she hasn’t responded to my question.

A culture of change indeed, Dr. Robinson.

What about hiring practices, and the posting of jobs?

On Thursday, February 16th, Mr. Headrick pointedly stated that the Human Resource department was “inefficient” and “2.5 to 3 months behind at time of assessment.” He claimed that HR received “32 hours of interruptions in two days.” (You’ll note that he did not offer any details to put these numbers into context like sharing how many total working hours were performed in that office in those two days. That would be helpful information, wouldn’t it?) Mr. Headrick claimed that the department was having to waste time examining and re-doing work.

Perhaps one reason that HR is running behind is because Dr. Wardynski and his Administrative team aren’t following the standards and procedures for hiring themselves.

Goodness, but wouldn’t it be embarrassing if, say the then Director of Transition and the now Director of Operations were, oh I don’t know, posting jobs that haven’t even opened yet on his Facebook Wall?

That would require some additional oversight and re-doing of work on the part of the HR department, don’t you think?

Here’s a screen shot from Mr. Aaron King’s Facebook Wall. Assuming that he doesn’t lock his Facebook account down in the near future, you can see this for yourself if you wish. Just scroll down to a post on January 2, 2012.

In addition, I’ve “shared” this posting on the Geek Palaver Facebook Page. Here’s a screen capture of the posting for those of you who don’t use Facebook.

I wonder if this posting, “for all positions (directors, coordinators, principals, teachers, etc)” is following the standards established by the HR department, state and federal law? Perhaps the New Employee Orientation Materials that Mr. King received were not current. That must be the problem, right?

Giving your friends a two month head start on applying for state jobs, jobs that must be open to everyone, jobs that were not open on January 2nd, is a violation of the state requirements for hiring. And as Mr. King posted, he and Col. Wardynski, should “take ownership for their decisions.”

Doesn’t this basically prove that the current witch hunt that Dr. Wardynski is engaged in is politically motivated? I mean, why else would he instruct his XO to talk to his buddies about jobs nearly two months before he discusses any of this with the public? It would seem that he is hoping to take advantage of the public outcry over this issue to place yet more like-minded, inexperienced people into positions of power (that pay well) throughout the district, don’t you think?

See, I’ve gotten a good amount of grief since the 16th of February for questioning our “Strong Leader.” I’ve been told that I should just support what he’s doing to clean up Huntsville City Schools. I’ve been told that these changes, this culture of change that he’s bringing in, will be good for our schools. I’ve been told that ultimately these changes will be good for the system. I’ve been told I should quit being apprehensive and that the whining must stop.

But the simple fact of the matter is that all this talk of inefficiencies and criminal behavior that happened in the past is simply being used to cover up inefficiencies and criminal behavior that is happening right now.

As I said long ago, the new boss is the same as the old boss, and anyone telling you differently isn’t paying attention.

The post Culture of Change? appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Wardynski: “Now, what is, what’s the word? Apprehension?

Headrick: “That’s a soft way of saying it.”

Wardynski: “In the Army, we call that whining.” [Greeted with laughter and smiles by several of the board members.]

Tonight, I guess I’m just going to whine a bit.

It’s always nice when the superintendent of the school system decides to engage in ad hominem attacks by referring to anyone who is apprehensive about the changes he’s forcing through, or anyone who just has questions about his actions, as a bunch of whiners.

I’ve been called worse.

So the witch hunt continues, and tomorrow (February 25, 2012) at 10:30am, the Huntsville City School Board will meet to potentially fired, demote, reprimand, or otherwise embarrass up to eight departmental directors for actions that may have, or may not have, taken place up to ten years ago.

Mr. King, Dr. Wardynski’s XO, has been appointed as his new “acting director of operations,” while receiving a 49% raise. This is just a sideline job however as Mr. King is quickly on his way to becoming one of the new principals who will be replacing one of those ineffective principals (you know, one of those whose job is on the table) starting in July. The Director of Operations gig is scheduled to end June 30th. Not bad for a guy who spent a year or so slaving away in a Chemistry classroom. (Of course, he still has more experience than his superintendent.)

Mr. King will be making $88,000 a year a 49% raise over his $59,211 salary to make PowerPoint presentations about topics for which he has no training or experience. Nice work if you can get it.

In case you haven’t heard, Dr. Wardynski announced to the board back in September that Mr. King would be “transitioning” into a principal’s position beginning in the 2012-2013 school year. Funny, I thought those positions were required to be posted before a specific person could be promised a position.

I guess, again, that the rules don’t apply to Dr. Wardynski and his friends.

But that doesn’t matter, does it?

All that really matters are problems that were uncovered in 2005. Problems that Dr. Moore decided, with approval of three of our current board members, to ignore. But we need to address them now because, well because people must be held accountable and responsible for things that they might have, or might not have done back then.

It certainly has nothing to do with redirecting our attention away from Dr. Wardynski’s current actions such as hiring friends, and defending their actions at all cost even if they’re supposedly accused of sexual harassment.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

None of that matters. All that matters is that you believe that Dr. Wardynski is a “strong leader” for taking a hard line on issues for which he cannot be blamed.

All together now: Strong Leader. Strong Leader.

And we should just trust him when he says that he’s not doing the same thing. It’s such a good thing that we have a school board to watch over his actions, and to vote against them when they have questions.

Oh, wait . . . our board members with questions just go right ahead and vote along with him even when his answers leave them not “feeling better” about his decisions.

Tomorrow, everything will be made clear. And we’ll understand that it he really is the best kept secret in Huntsville as Dr. Robinson likes to claim. And anyone left asking questions at that point, assuming that we haven’t fired them in this process, well, they’re just whiners anyway.

After all, “effective” teachers, administrators, directors and even parents “have no need to be concerned” about the direction Wardynski is taking us. Surely he has our Broad interests at heart. Right?

Right?

I’ll be whining away on Twitter @russwinn during the meeting. You can also catch my posts on the Geek Palaver Facebook Page. You can also watch the meeting on ETV (Comcast 17, Knology 99), and at the Huntsville City Schools website.

The post “In the Army, We Call That Whining.” appeared first on Geek Palaver.

In a move that is somewhat out of character, Dr. Wardynski offered an interview to the editor of Rocket City Mom yesterday in the third article of a series concerning the reasons for and role that Teach for America will play in Huntsville City Schools beginning later this year. If you haven’t already read the article, please take a few moments to go read the entire series.

The discussion began with a posting by Dr. Jason O’Brien on January 17th entitled, “Teach For America Explained.” Dr. O’Brien is a teacher and the father of five kids in Huntsville City Schools. He makes an effective argument that TFA is based upon a fallacious argument that “anyone can teach.”

Such a suggestion is as wrong as it is offensive. Just as some individuals are particularly gifted writers, artists, designers, doctors, lawyers, military leaders and ministers, some individuals are particularly gifted teachers.

The central issue facing student achievement is not that they don’t have the right technology, home life, or even clothes (as much as my daughter would disagree), the central issue facing achievement is student motivation.

Good students are motivated students. Weak students aren’t.

And time and again, we have learned that the single best way to improve student motivation is through direct, personal interaction with a teacher who is committed to connecting to a child and pulling them, kicking and screaming if necessary, into a world that stimulates and captures their interest. In short, a child who wants to learn will do so regardless of the obstacles that stand in that child’s way. A child who doesn’t can rarely be taught anything regardless of how excellent their technology or building is. (An excellent technology blogger, Bob Cringely, is writing about this very point in connection to technology right now. Go take a look at his argument.)

And so finding, keeping and rewarding teachers who have the experience to understand that finding a way to motivate a child to learn is the first and most difficult step of education is central to improving student achievement.

But as any parent, and in particular a SPED parent can tell you, motivating students to learn is often the single most difficult job on the planet. The fact that anyone manages to consistently find ways to motivate and encourage curiosity is clearly miraculous, and it should be celebrated as such. Finding, developing and implementing motivational techniques requires time and experience.

Dr. Wardynski ignores this truth in his support of hiring TFA in the article entitled, “TFA: Dr. Wardynski Responds.”

Since he was kind enough to offer his responses to the Editor’s questions, I would also like to offer a rebuttal to some of his more egregious claims.

Dr. Wardynski wrote:

We will be using Teach for America to address the problem of persistent low performance in several schools with high rates of poverty. Within the Huntsville system we have such schools that have been in school improvement for up to seven years. Traditional approaches to raising achievement in these schools have not worked and other approaches are required. In addition to low performance, these schools are characterized by high teacher turnover.

It certainly appears to be true that there is an “achievement gap” in Huntsville City Schools and that gap absolutely must be addressed, but once again, Dr. Wardynski is laying out ideas, hinting at reports and statistics without offering any direct evidence. Were he a student in my English 101 class, I would send his argument back to him with the suggestion that he offer specific evidence. Show us, Dr. Wardynski, exactly how bad the “persistent low performance” is and has been. Perhaps he was referring to a 2010 report in the Huntsville Timesthat stated that thirteen Huntsville schools were “persistently low-achieving.”

But who knows.

He offers no evidence supporting his claim that “traditional approaches to raising achievement in these schools have not worked” either. What does he consider a “traditional approach?” When were these approaches tried? How effective were these approaches? If they failed, why did they fail? All of these are questions that should be considered and answered before making a decision to move in a radical new direction, shouldn’t they? Especially if the goal is indeed to address the achievement gap?

It’s hard to make informed decisions when the top educator of the city refuses to take opportunities to teach and support his case. (Refusing to support your claims with data is however a common characteristic of the Broad Foundation’s disciples.)

But setting that aside for a moment, let’s consider his claim that using untrained, uncertified, TFAers (80% of whom will be gone after the third year, I doubt that these “persistent[ly] low performing” have a turnover rate that high), will actually close the achievement gap. Somehow that seems to shout in the face of logic, doesn’t it? What it really means is that Huntsville City Schools will spend at least 1.9 million dollars over the next five years to help an organization whose own tax returns from 2010 show that they have over $309,115,182.00 in NET assets.

Perhaps instead of sending $1.9 million out of city and state, we would be better served using some of these funds to address the “high teacher turnover” rate at these schools?

I’m certain that we will find that the “traditional approaches” he claims have failed do not include offering a financial incentive, or additional costly professional development to the teachers who are already teaching at these “persistent[ly] low performing” schools. Anyone willing to offer me odds on that one?

Last year Teach for America received over 48,000 applications for 5,200 teaching positions. This level of selectivity is without peer and brings unparalleled levels of talent to schools for which we have traditionally seen very few applications.

Once again, our top educator has failed to offer any evidence supporting his claim that the “persistent[ly] low performing” schools do indeed receive “very few applications.”

Where’s the evidence of this? I know that it’s considered to be conventional wisdom that this is true, but we’re dealing with our students’ lives here. Give us something to base these decisions on other than conventional wisdom. Show us the actual numbers. Show us the “traditional approaches” that have failed. Surely this information is sitting in a folder on Dr. Wardynski’s desk. Publish it. Prove it to us.

Furthermore, what exactly is the TFA measure of this “talent?” Is this based on GPA’s? Communication skills? Connectedness of their parents? Since TFA refuses to share their selection criteria with the public(gosh, I wonder where they learned that?learned that), it is impossible to assess or evaluate the actual level of this “unparalleled” talent by any objective standard.

How helpful are good grades in engineering classes when attempting to teach an unmotivated student to read? Last time I checked, the basic skills required to instruct and motivate a student to read were not standard curricula in those classes.

But, now we move on to a BIG claim.

Beyond being highly selective, Teach for America provides initial and ongoing professional development to new teachers focused upon the challenges of teaching in high poverty schools – a focus not found within traditional teacher preparation programs.

You’ll have to forgive Dr. Wardynski for this one. His lack of time in Alabama and lack of experience in education has meant that he likely is unaware that this statement just simply isn’t true. He claims that “traditional teacher preparation programs” don’t train their students for the challenges of teaching in high poverty schools.

The truth is that they certainly can, do and will if they are asked. You see, unlike TFA which charges extra for their “training,” traditional teacher preparation programs at the “teacher colleges” that Wardynski is so quick to dismiss actually provide the following Teacher Warranty:

Teacher warranty. According to regulations mandated by the Alabama State Board of Education, the College of Education ensures that “a candidate’s competency to begin his or her professional role in schools is assessed prior to completion of the program and/or recommendation for certification” and establishes, publishes, and implements “policies to guarantee the success of individuals who complete its approved programs and are employed in their area(s) of specialization.” The College of Education provides “remediation at no cost to such individuals who are recommended . . . and are deemed to be unsatisfactory based on performance evaluations established by the State Board of Education and within two years after program completion.” (University of Alabama 2010-2012 Undergraduate Catalog)

In other words, these “traditional teacher” colleges and universities actually provide a three year warranty for the teachers they produce. If within three years of graduation, a candidate’s competency to serve his or her school’s particular needs is questioned due to a need for additional training, such as how to teach in high poverty schools, the “traditional teacher” colleges and universities here in Alabama will provide that training “at no cost to such individuals who are recommended.”

Traditional teachers come with a warranty, cost less, and have full certification. And yet, Dr. Wardynski is unaware of this. Perhaps this will help him in the future.

He continues to press his point.

Within Alabama there are several routes to teacher certification ranging from traditional teacher preparation programs to the Troops to Teachers program. These alternatives are designed to bring talented individuals into K-12 education to meet the varied needs of students.

Under alternative certification programs, candidates are usually required to successfully complete a 16 week, split placement internship. Under the tutelage of experienced mentor teachers (and university supervisors who teach pedagogy), student teachers learn the “craft” of teaching. When newly hired teachers enter the classroom without this experience, they end up “learning on the job.” For a detailed description of this, please see Dr. Veltri’s book, “Learning On Other People’s Kids: Becoming a Teach For America Teacher” which details the struggles of TFA participants who consistently report feeling “overwhelmed” and “underprepared” for their initial classroom experiences.

As Dr. Veltri concludes:

I wondered, “Who’s America is Teach for America really teaching for? Why is it tolerable for education to be less than for other people’s kids? And, what are we, as a nation, really prepared to do about it?

I have asked Dr. Robinson for a specific detailed listing of which schools the TFAers are going to be placed. The contract calls for their placement to be restricted to schools where at least “70% of attending students are eligible for free or reduced lunch unless mutually agreed upon by School District and Teach for America,” but the discussion that Dr. Wardynski has had with Rocket City Mom implies that the placement of these teachers could be much broader than anticipated. Dr. Robinson, for example, told me November 3rd that all of the TFAers were going to be placed at “secondary schools.”

It seems that I must have misheard her because when I asked why TFA were now going to be placed at elementary schools she responded:

A small number of the TFA teachers will go in elementary schools. The vast majority will go to middle and high schools. That’s always been the plan. (February 2, 2012)

I apologize for my misunderstanding. I suppose that I merely assumed that when Dr. Robinson was critiquing the Heilig and Jez study as having focused on elementary eduction, and that our TFAers were going to be placed at the “secondary” level that she meant that there wouldn’t be any TFAers in the elementary schools.

Unfortunately, Dr. Robinson hasn’t responded yet to my request for a listing of the schools where TFAers will be used. Since these candidates are so excellent, I have to wonder why they aren’t being placed at every school in the system and why Dr. Robinson and Dr. Wardynski aren’t screaming from the rooftops the names of the lucky schools selected to participate.

Wardynski continues:

We will measure the results obtained by Teach for America teachers and teachers from traditional programs. We will make future teacher selections decisions with these results in view. We are not wedded to specific teacher programs or certification pathways.

This is excellent news. Well, except that Dr. Wardynski has demonstrated a stubborn refusal to actually produce one scintilla of actual evidence supporting his claims so far. I’m sure, however, that a Broad Foundation trained superintendent, evaluating a Broad Foundation teacher training program will be completely objective in his evaluation.

For example, many of our high poverty schools already see 200 to 300 percent higher turnover than other schools. By using our Teach for America teachers in teams and by supporting their development in the education profession we anticipate reducing turnover in our high poverty schools.

Higher than average turnover in “persistent[ly] low performing” schools is a problem nationwide. It is still a problem in areas where TFAers have been placed because, as cited above, TFA does nothing but perpetuate the problem of rapid turnover.

Wardynski wraps up:

We seek to hire highly talented staff who can deliver results in the form of raising student achievement. Teach for America has a track record of delivering such teachers.

Actually, as has been demonstrated time after time after time, TFAers do not out perform traditionally trained teachers. They, in particular, cannot compete with experienced teachers in raising student achievement.

In conclusion, this push to replace traditionally trained teachers who are certified, warrantied, and experienced has little to nothing to do with a desire on Dr. Wardynski’s part to “raise student achievement.” It is, instead, a desire to control a school system from top to bottom and to remake it into the Broad Foundation’s image regardless of the studies that show it won’t work, regardless of the cries from teachers and administrators who have been begging for the resources and support to effect change at our struggling schools, and regardless of the parents who are concerned that their children are being used a pawns in a national game.

This is about control, pure and simple. And unfortunately for us, our elected representatives are falling over themselves to let him take over and take our limited funds out of our schools and into the coffers of a multi-million dollar corporation that has a history of ignoring the public’s calls for transparency.

Our city deserves better. Our schools, administrators, and teachers deserve better. And by god our kids absolutely do.

The post Teach For America’s Biggest Cheerleader Speaks appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Please feel free to file this under the “you-couldn’t-make-this-stuff-up-if-you-tried” category.

Before writing my last post about Filing a Grievance with Huntsville City Schools, I verified that the form that I had found and linked to, was the correct form to use when submitting a grievance against the board and superintendent. I was concerned about it because, as Redeye pointed out, this was the same form that is used when a parent wishes to file a grievance against a teacher, or other staff member at a school.

I wondered about that when I asked Mrs. McCaulley about the form after the board meeting and she suggested that I pick one up at the schools, but both she and Dr. Robinson had left me with the impression that there was a form to use when a parent had an issue with a board decision.

In fact, I received an email from Dr. Robinson this morning confirming for me that I was indeed using the correct form and that I should submit this form to Dr. Wardynski.

Except now it’s not. (Really. I told you, I couldn’t make this up.)

Moments after posting my last blog, I received a call from Mrs. McCaulley. She informed me that I had indeed filled the form out correctly, but that she had just realized that the board “does not have a policy for when the citizen concern is really against the board.”

She kindly and generously informed me that the 102-7 Policy is really designed for concerns with a teacher, principal, staff member or assistant superintendent, but that when the concern is with the superintendent or the board that the board does not currently have a policy designed to handle those types of grievances.

She assured me that she would look into developing a procedure to handle grievances against the board and superintendent. I believe that she is genuine in her desire to create this, but I have no faith that it will actually happen.

I have asked Dr. Wardynski to respond to the spirit of the request I have made even though there is no policy at the present time that requires him to do so. Shall I hold my breath?

So, once again, the hoop that I was asked to jump through has been pulled away. Do you ever feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick a football that Lucy is holding? Cause I do.

The post No Grievance Policy Against the Board or Superintendent appeared first on Geek Palaver.

[Update: After you read this, make sure that you read the next blog that I have posted as well. It's called, "No Grievance Policy Against the Board or Superintendent." No, I'm not making this stuff up.]

During the board meeting last night, Mrs. McCaulley and Dr. Robinson announced for the first time in my hearing that there was yet another hoop to jump through if you expect to receive a response from the central office or the board concerning a question, issue or grievance that you have.

Interesting isn’t it? I’ve been bringing questions, issues and grievances to the board both privately via phone calls and emails, and publicly via the citizen comments section of the board meetings since April. This is the first time that I’ve been informed of the formal grievance policy and procedure during that time.

I suppose that it didn’t occur to Dr. Robinson to mention this process to me before.

So, despite having regularly and consistently contacted my board member in private, despite having raised the issue of the $7 million dollars in Special Education funding cuts from FY2011 – FY2012 repeatedly in private and public, last night I discover that there was yet another hoop that a parent or a concerned citizen must jump through in order to get an answer from the board or the superintendent.

When I asked Mrs. McCaulley for a copy of the required form to file a grievance, she directed me to pick one up from my local school. While I appreciated that Mrs. McCaulley shared this new method of receiving an answer from the board with me and the public last night, I really wanted to find the form online so that I could begin the process last night

Fortunately, I was able to find the form on my own.

The Grievance Policy, Procedure and Form may be downloaded from the Huntsville City website at the following links: 102-7: Parental/Citizen Concerns Policy, 102-7: Parental/Citizen Concerns Procedure, and 102-7: Parental/Citizen Concerns Appendix A (The Form).

Once you have downloaded and completed the form, the procedure for submitting the form is vague. Here’s the approach I have take concerning my grievance over the cuts to Special Education Funding.

First, I completed the form as follows:

• School Name: Here I listed the Huntsville City Schools Board of Education since my grievance concerns the superintendent’s recommended budget that the board has approved.
• Complaint/Concern Regarding: Here I used the “Other” field and listed Dr. Wardynski and the Board.
• Check One List: I marked Superintendent – 5th Stage as my issue is with Dr. Wardynski and the Board.
• Complainant: I offered my contact information.
• Issue: I stated the issue that I have with the board cutting special education funding more than any other department or student population in violation of Alabama State Code 16-39-3.
• Action Requested By Parent/Citizen: Here I requested a formal and public review of these numbers, and a written justification for why these cuts have been applied in such an unbalanced and unfair fashion. I also requested that the school board correct this budgeting error.
• Resolution: I left this part of the form blank assuming that it is the Superintendent and the Board’s responsibility to respond.

I also attached a copy of the report that Mr. Spinelli sent me showing the $7 million in cuts from FY2011-FY2012 as evidence.

I have emailed signed copies of these documents to Dr. Wardynski and the Board, and I have dropped off copies of the same at the Merts Building.

According to the 102-7 Procedure Dr. Wardynski and the board now have seven (7) working days to respond to my grievance in writing. As such I am expecting a written response from them on or before Monday, December 12, 2011.

I have no issue with jumping through hoops to protect my son’s education. I only wish that my board member had bothered to inform me of the existence of these hoops earlier in this process. I hope that this information is helpful to others who are also facing road blocks to receiving answers from our elected officials.

The post Filing a Grievance with Huntsville City Schools appeared first on Geek Palaver.

At the last board meeting on Thursday, November 3rd, Dr. Robinson defended her support of the superintendent’s recommendation to sign what was at the time a $1.7 million dollar contract with Teach for America by claiming that she had spent the week reviewing studies on TFA and the effectiveness of the teachers placed in a system by TFA.

She claimed that there were both “good” and “poor” studies concerning the effectiveness of the teachers that TFA hires. In short, she was convinced that TFA’ers were more effective than traditionally certified teachers. In an email from Dr. Wardynski that Dr. Robinson shared with me, he claimed, “We are making this investment because evidence has shown that the achievement gains provided by TFA exceed the gains afforded by a similar investment in alternative strategies” (November 9, 2011).

Thus, the extra $10,000 spent training a TFA’er will be money well spent because TFA’ers will provide a “very large gain in school culture and student achievement” (November 9, 2011).

He offers no explanation of how the gains in “school culture” are to be evaluated, but the “student achievement” standard is fairly clear.

To evaluate that, we’ll need to look at the studies available to us.

“Good” and “Poor” Studies

Assuming that the Heilig and Jez study that I shared with her on November 1, 2011, was one of the “poor” studies, I approached Dr. Robinson after the meeting to ask for her thoughts about this study.

In summary, while she didn’t call Heilig and Jez’s study “poor,” she did claim that this study did not take into account significant changes that TFA made to their training program in 2009. As the study was published in June of 2010, she is correct that it does not take into consideration data after 2009. She did not offer an explanation of why TFA needed to make significant changes to their training program in 2009, nor did she offer any details concerning what changes were made to their training program in 2009.

She also claimed that the Heilig and Jez study was “supported” by NEA. On this “criticism” she is correct. The National Education Association is a supporter of the National Educational Policy Center. They are also funded by private donations to the University of Colorado Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

While it is important to know that the NEA has provided some funding for the NEPC, that does not mean that the NEA influenced the Heilig and Jez study to produce a negative report on TFA any more than The Ford Foundation influenced them to produce a positive one. (The Ford Foundation has made countless donations to Teach For America.)

Finally she claimed that the TFAers hired under this contract would be placed at secondary schools rather than at elementary schools. As such, she claimed that what we really needed to consider were TFAs performance at the secondary level.

When I asked for copies of the “good” studies that proved that TFA was putting teachers into schools who were just as effective as traditionally trained and certified teachers, she offered me two studies. In her defense, Dr. Robinson, unlike Dr. Wardynski, did proffer the links to the studies that she considered to be “good.”

Dr. Wardynski merely claims that there is “evidence [that] has shown” TFA’s achievement. For this, I thank Dr. Robinson.

“The Effect of Teach for American on Students: Findings from a National Evaluation”

The first was a 2004 study sponsored by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. entitled, “The Effect of Teach for America on Students: Findings from a National Evaluation” by Decker, Mayer, and Glazerman. This study offered an evaluation of TFA for teachers teaching at the elementary level.

Dr. Robinson did not offer a reason why this study evaluating elementary schools in 2004 was a “good” study while the Heilig and Jez study of elementary schools in 2010 was not.

The Decker, Mayer, and Glazerman study claims that TFA’ers “produce higher student test scores than the other teachers in their schools” (16). Figure 2 (xiv) supports this claim concerning Math scores, but it does not support this claim concerning Reading scores.

In short, while TFA’ers out performed the control teachers by “10 percent of a grade equivalent” (xiv) in Math, the effect on the reading scores was negligible. In other words, the math students were almost one month ahead of their peers with control teachers.

But who exactly were these control teachers with whom the TFA’ers were competing in this “good” study? They are described as including, “traditionally certified, alternatively certified, and uncertified teachers” (xii).

So, Dr. Robinson’s first “good” study proving that TFA’ers are better teachers than traditionally certified teachers compares TFA’ers to both “alternatively certified” and even “uncertified teachers.”

So some of the best evidence available showing that TFA’ers are better show only that they are marginally better (in math) than uncertified teachers.

As Hibpshman’s State Board review of the Decker, Mayer, and Glazerman report states, “it is conceivable that the effect size [TFA's superior performance] would altogether disappear or be reversed if they were compared to better teachers” (5).

In February and April of 2011, the Huntsville City School board of education’s reduction in force plan laid off 154 certified teachers. When Mrs. Morrison asked Mrs. Belinda Williams, HR Director, for evidence that these 154 teachers were being re-hired, Mrs. Williams replied during the November 3rd meeting that she did not have data to support that claim at that time.

“Making a Difference?: The Effects of Teach for America in High School”

The second “good” study that Dr. Robinson shared with me was by Xu, Hannaway and Taylor of the CALDER Urban Institute entitled, “Making a Difference?: The Effects of Teach for America in High School.”

This “Working Paper” from April of 2007 argues that, “The findings show that TFA teachers are more effective, as measured by student exam performance, than traditional teachers” (3). This is referred to as a “working paper” by CALDER because it has not been peer-reviewed unlike the “poor” Heilig and Jez study that I had shared with her on November 1st. CALDER themselves state that “CALDER Working Papers have not gone through final formal review and should be cited as working papers. They are intended to encourage discussion and suggestions for revision before final publication.”

While discussion is a hallmark of the educational process, it’s troubling when nearly $2 million dollar decisions, when decisions that will effect at least a third of a child’s primary and secondary education are being based on studies that have not even been reviewed.

In addition, one of the report’s primary authors, Jane Hannaway, discloses on the title page of the report that her “daughter is employed by Teach for America” (1). She does not report in what capacity her daughter is employed. Also, she does not reveal that she is “engaged in a major conceptual effort for the Gates Foundation on the design of human resource management strategies in education.”

The Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation have extensive ties dating back for at least a decade. Both foundations actively support Teach for America.

Despite the lack of peer review, I was able to find one independent assessment of this study by the Department of Education who provide CALDER with their primary funding. The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) offer the following assessment of this study:

What did the study authors report? TFA improved student performance on standardized end-of-course tests in math and science–by about one-tenth of a standard deviation. This is equivalent to moving a student from the 50th to the 54th percentile. (1)

So again we find that the best evidence supporting spending an additional $5,000 per teacher, per year is that it increases student performance in math and science (but not in the humanities subjects) by one-tenth of a standard deviation. The best that can be said is that math students are about a month ahead of their peers.

IES went on to offer the following assessment of the “Making a Difference?” report:

Students may be placed in a course taught by a TFA teacher because of their ability in that subject – and not solely because of their general math and science ability. If so, differences in performance in TFA and non-TFA classes may be influenced by differences in student ability in specific subjects. As a result, the study may not accurately measure the effect of having a TFA teacher. In addition, the data did not link students directly to the teacher who taught their course. Instead,  the study matches students to teachers based on test proctor and classroom demographics. This method is  somewhat imprecise, and matching errors could lead to misleading results. (1)

So again, the best studies that those who support hiring TFA’ers at, at least, a $1.7 million dollar premium can offer are studies that “may not accurately measure the effect of having a TFA teacher.”

This is what passes for evidence with the school board. But, in their defense, this is more evidence than they usually require before they rubber stamp the superintendent’s recommendations.

Dr. Wardynski often claims that our children only get one shot at their education. If he really believes this, why is he so willing to take a $1.7 million dollar chance on unqualified teachers? At best, TFA represents a huge investment for minimal gains in math. At worst, it represents a huge investment for significant losses in student achievement.

It represents a corporate experiment where TFA’ers learn to teach on other people’s kids.

We should cancel this contract immediately.

The post “Good” vs. “Poor” Studies of Teach For America appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Once again, I underestimated Dr. Wardynski’s brazen commitment to giving public funds back to The Broad Foundation.

On Thursday night, the Superintendent recommended that the board approve the contract with Teach for America. The board, in turn, approved this recommendation. Dr. Robinson, Mr. Blair, and Mr. Birney all voted in favor of the recommendation to hire Teach for America teachers. Mrs. Morrison voted against the recommendation. Although the Board President does not typically vote unless there is a tie, I believe that Mrs. McCaulley also said, “Nay” (although she said this somewhat under her breath).

So what exactly did the board vote to approve on Thursday night? The details of the contract have changed dramatically since the original Teach for America presentation on October 11th. That night, Mr. J. W. Carpenter of TFA presented a plan for the system to hire 110 TFA teachers over a period of three years. I reported, as did the Huntsville Times, that this contract would cost Huntsville City Schools $550,000 for three years, or $5,000 per TFAer.

The Plan Changes

Carpenter said in his presentation that in 2012-2013, the system would hire 30 TFAs, 40 in 2013-2014, and 50 in 2014-2015. I reported that the total cost of hiring these teachers was going to be $5,000 per teacher. The Huntsville Times has also reported this. We were mistaken on two counts.

For some reason, when the contract was presented to the board on November 3rd for the board approval, the superintendent didn’t recommend hiring TFA for just three years, but rather four. The hiring plan presented in the contract was as follows:

• In 2012-2013, TFA will hire “30 or more” TFA teachers.
• In 2013-2014, TFA will hire “40 or more” TFA teachers.
• In 2014-2015, TFA will hire “50 or more” TFA teachers.
• In 2015-2016, TFA will hire “50 or more” TFA teachers.

No one, not Dr. Wardynski nor any of the board members, bothered to mention that the contract had been altered from three years to four. So while I reported on October 18th that we were hiring 110 TFA teachers, we are in fact hiring 170 TFA teachers.

I asked Dr. Robinson for a reason for the change from a three to a four year contract, and I was told, “The contract was expanded to another year because we need the services for an additional year.”

Dr. Robinson offered no justification for why she believed that the services were needed for even a single year, much less four. There has also been no discussion or justification for the “or more” modification either. It would seem that what our board actually approved on Thursday was to hire a minimum of 170 TFAers for the next four years. I wonder if we’ll ever actually hear an actual total number after the preliminary hiring is completed before the 2012-2013 school year begins? Somehow, I doubt they’ll volunteer the information.

The Big Mistake

So that was one mistake that I made in underestimating Dr. Wardynski’s commitment to Broad Foundation funded programs. The second is actually much larger.

You see, the contract doesn’t actually say that Huntsville City Schools will pay TFA $5,000 per teacher. What the contract actually says is on page 9 is:

With respect to each Teacher whose employment by School District is to commence in the 2012-2013 academic year, School District shall pay Teach For America an annual amount of $5,000.00 for each year in which such Teacher is employed by School District, up to two years from the date such employment is to commence

In other words, we’re not paying Teach for America $5,000 per TFAer. We’re actually paying them them $5,000 per TFAer per year for up to two years.

The cost of this contract just doubled without anyone noticing. The cost of this contract just doubled without anyone on the board or in the central office drawing attention to this.

The Huntsville Times first reported the total cost on October 18th, as being $5,000 per TFAer for–at that time–a total of $550,000 for 110 teachers. They again reported the total cost on November 3rd as being 5,000 per TFAer for a total of $850,000 for 170 teachers.

The actual cost of the Teach for America contract is $1,700,000 for four years, not $850,000 for four years.

And no one in the Superintendent’s office, nor on the board has done anything to correct this misconception in 19 days. Perhaps they didn’t notice it themselves?

Or perhaps they were glad that the total cost was being underestimated by the press and by me.

Dr. Wardynski, Mr. King, Dr. Robinson, Mr. Blair, Mr. Birney, I have just one question for you: If you believe that hiring TFAers is the best possible action for the system to follow to improve student achievement, why are you hiding behind a misconception concerning the costs of the program?

For those keeping track of such things: Dr. Wardynski has now offered The Broad Foundation a $2,110,000 return on the investment made in Dr. Wardynski’s training in five months. No wonder the Foundation is doing so well.

The post Teach For America Costs Twice the Reported Amount appeared first on Geek Palaver.

It’s late, and I have miles to go before I can sleep tonight, but this is too important to wait.

Thank you, Topper Birney, for taking a stand for our teachers (our real teachers). It’s about time that someone on the board did.

In case you missed it, tonight the board had yet another discussion about how to evaluate Dr. Wardynski. The board has proposed five goals by which Dr. Wardynski will be evaluated. These are:

1. Accelerate Learning at All Levels
2. Increase Flexibility in the General Fund Budget While Preserving Educational Programs
3. Build Bench Strength Though Strategic Staffing
4. Improve Capital Infrastructure
5. Meet Department of Justice Requirements to Deserve Unitary Status

There was extensive discussion about the benchmarks associated with these goals, and the likelihood of being able to evaluate the Superintendent according to these goals by May 31st. But as soon as that was over, the board embarked on a discussion of just how much of a bonus Dr. Wardynski should receive for his work this year.

Mr. Blair opened the bidding with $10,000. He claimed that this was “on-par” with other incentive-based bonuses of the surrounding systems. As usual, he offered no specific evidence of this claim. Robinson supported this opening bid by claiming that Wardynski has “In the three months he’s been here according to all reports, we’ve saved $3,000,000 in personnel costs.” She didn’t offer any evidence supporting these claims.

Yes, Dr. Jennie Robinson believes that Dr. Casey Wardynski deserves a bonus because he’s refusing to hire teachers, aides, and other support personnel.

[Honest to god, I could not make this up.]

Dr. Robinson then suggested that we should be more generous with Dr. Wardynski’s bonus and make it $20,000. She later suggested that $25,000 would be completely reasonable. (Such a bonus would make Wardynski the highest paid superintendent in the state. Didn’t we just fire a superintendent making the highest salary in the state?)

Mrs. Morrison responded that the smaller systems are not in debt the way we are, and that it’s difficult to pay anyone what they’re worth.

Dr. Wardynski stated that a person should be “worth what they pay you.” To this, Dr. Robinson said, “that’s absolutely right. And you are.” (Sounds like at least one member for the board has already made up her mind concerning her evaluation of the Superintendent’s performance. Again in case you couldn’t pick up on that from other comments.)

Dr. Wardynski, to his partial credit, stated that, “I think the first number would be plenty.” He could, if he wished, request that the board put his bonus back into the system, but at least he’s not holding out for the highest number.

Morrison then suggested $5,000 to $10,000 would be a good start, since “we’ve never done this before.” Mrs. McCaulley later stated that these amounts might be a good place to start.

Mrs. McCaulley then asked Mr. Birney for his opinion concerning the bonus situation.

This is what he said:

We’ve got some teachers that have suffered a lot this year. Dr. Wardynski knows I think the world of him, but I don’t know if we should start out with that big a jump.

Mr. Birney was the only board member who even mentioned the fact that teachers are suffering. (Mr. Blair later said that he shared Mr. Birney’s concern.)

And they are suffering.

Our teachers are being asked to do much more work than before by teaching significantly larger classes. Our teachers are all receiving a pay cut in the form of higher insurance/retirement contribution requirements. Our teachers are not getting even a STEP raise this year. Our new teachers are being hired at the state minimum salary.

Our teachers are being ordered to do more work for less money, with no hope for a bonus regardless of how well they perform.

The board decided to complete this discussion about the bonus at a later date.

Here’s a suggestion: No Bonuses for Administrators Before Teachers,

As I have written before, if Dr. Wardynski accepts a bonus, if teachers’ salaries are frozen, this should indicate to the board that the Superintendent is not doing everything in his power to raise student achievement, fix the budget crisis, and address staffing issues. In other words, accepting any bonus while our teachers are suffering should disqualify him from receiving that bonus.

Of course that will never happen. The board, after all, must be able to claim that Dr. Wardynski is such a huge success that he deserves a huge bonus. Otherwise, they won’t be able to claim that they’ve fixed the mess that they created.

If you believe that teachers deserve to be rewarded for their hard work, if you believe that being the highest paid person in the system is sufficient reward to Wardynski for just doing his job, then write and call your board member, and let them know that there should be no bonuses for administrators before teachers.

Put our students, and those who work directly with them, first. And thank Mr. Birney for being the only one on the board willing to even think about our teachers.

The post Birney Takes Stand for Teachers appeared first on Geek Palaver.

On Thursday, I had the opportunity to speak with my board member, Dr. Jennesse Robinson, concerning the data that I had shared with her and the board a week before that shows that the system has cut seven million dollars from the Special Education Budget from FY2011 to FY2012.

One of the best reasons for attending the board meetings is to gain access to the board. It’s easy for the members to ignore emails and phone calls; it’s much harder for them to do so when you’re standing face to face.

Dr. Robinson shared with me that Dr. Wardynski and Mr. Spinelli are planning to make a presentation concerning “special education costs at the November work session.” She stated that, “They will not have the budget actuals back from the state until then.” She claimed that the discrepancy between the FY 2011 figures and the FY 2012 budget is a difference between “budgeted numbers and actual expenses.”

This is an interesting claim, isn’t it?

First, the focus of the November work session will be on “special education costs” rather than differences between the budgets for FY 2011 and FY 2012. They will, in other words, be attempting to re-direct attention away from their own actions.

Also of great interest in her response is the following statement: “They will not have the budget actuals back from the state until then.” This is interesting as it implies that we receive our education budget from the state. This is not the case. We send our budget to the state. So, frankly, they have these numbers already. They just don’t want to deal with the numbers until they’ve had yet another two months to construct a response that they can spin to their advantage.

Finally, she told me that the seven million dollar difference is the result of a “difference between budgeted numbers and actual expenses.”

If we spent seven million more in FY 2011 than we have budgeted in FY 2012, then we are expecting to save seven million dollars from last year to this year. As we are expecting to save a total of 11.6 million dollars from FY 2011 to FY 2012, then special education is responsible for 61% of the cuts from FY 2011 to FY 2012, even if the discrepancy is the result of the “difference between budgeted numbers and actual expenses.”

I suppose we’ll have to wait until November before the board addresses questions about the budget that they unanimously approved on September 8th after spending all of about an hour and a half discussing it. (They held two meetings of about 45 minutes each. These meetings offered time for basically one public question each night. They rushed this budget to press so that people would not have the opportunity to ask questions about it before passage.)

So it will take two months to get a comparison the previous year’s budget to the coming year’s budget. This is information that should have been included in Mr. Spinelli’s initial report, but wasn’t. It was information that has in the past been included in the report that the CSFO offered to the board. (Of course, that report was developed by Dr. Wheeler who recently accepted a buyout of $61,000 because the board doesn’t want to fight to prove that they had cause for laying him off.)

Perhaps the reason that Dr. Robinson isn’t concerned about it taking two months to get a comparison between the FY 2011 and FY 2012 budgets is that she’s convinced that the system is meeting the requirements of the IEPs. In a brief conversation that I had with her after Thursday’s board meeting, she said that she knew that the system was meeting the requirements of the IEPs because the system isn’t being sued.

Let’s let that settle in for a moment.

Our board knows that our children are being educated because they’re not currently being sued for failing to do so. (I am aware of a number of lawsuit that are currently in process. The legal process takes time, as Dr. Robinson should know.)

But really don’t you think our standards need to be a little bit higher there? Shouldn’t we expect our board members to hold the system that they are charged with managing and overseeing to a higher standard than, “we’re not being sued?”

For the record, no, the system is not meeting IEPs, but the only standard that matters to the board and others in the central office (like Amy Sledge who explicitly told me that if parents didn’t like the consolidation plan that they could pursue mediation and due process) is are we currently being sued?

They’re not concerned if the cuts are fair, equal or just. (They’re not.)

They’re not concerned if our students are receiving an education. (They’re not receiving the same level as they were a year ago when class sizes were smaller and we had enough aides and therapists to actually educate our children rather than simply babysit them.)

They’re not concerned if our students are in classrooms sufficiently staffed to even keep them safe.

They’re only concerned when they’re being sued.

So the board of the most sued school system in the state is basically encouraging parents to sue them more.

But here’s the main issue: As I have written before, Alabama State Code Section 16-39-3 states:

Each school board shall provide not less than 12 consecutive years of appropriate instruction and special services for exceptional children, beginning with those six years of age, in accordance with the provisions of this chapter. Such public school instruction and special services shall be made available at public expense for each school year to exceptional children as provided herein. The funds for such instruction and special services shall be derived from state, county, municipal, district, federal or other sources or combinations of sources. Each school board shall set aside from its revenues from all such sources such amounts as are needed to carry out the provisions of this chapter, if such funds are available without impairment of regular classes and services provided for nonexceptional children. If sufficient funds are not available to a school board to provide fully for all the provisions of this chapter as well as the educational needs of nonexceptional children, such board must prorate all funds on a per capita basis between exceptional and nonexceptional children. No matriculation or tuition fees or other fees or charges shall be required or asked of exceptional children or their parents or guardians, except such fees or charges as may be charged uniformly of all public school pupils.

In short, this code explicitly states that when faced with proration, the school board must enact such proration on a “per capita basis,” which means, an equal share is given to each. Since their own numbers show that the majority of the cuts have been made to special education, they are in violation of the law. By bringing this to their attention, again and again, I am attempting to get them to address the problem before they have to pay Mr. Brooks more money to defend their illegal actions. They are refusing to do so.

As Dr. Robinson should be well aware, there are thousands of reasons to avoid filing a law suit. One of the main reasons is simply the cost of doing so. A law suit takes our much needed and extremely limited resources away from our children and their education. In a very real sense, as tax payers, when we sue a public organization, we are actually suing ourselves.

Parents do not want to sue our school system. It would be nice if our board members and central office staff would stop daring them to do so.

The post New Standard for Evaluation in HCS: We’re Not Being Sued appeared first on Geek Palaver.

According to the Alabama State Code Section 16-11-2 the purpose of the Huntsville City Board of Education is to administer and supervise the public schools and educational interests of the city.

The code reads, “The general administration and supervision of the public schools and educational interest of each city shall be vested in a city board of education.” These five residents, who are “chosen solely because of their character and fitness” are charged with looking out for the educational interest of the city.

That’s why we elected them: our representatives.

You see, I really shouldn’t have to go to every board meeting. I shouldn’t have to play the role of watchdog, attempting to uncover the reasons, motivations, and goals of the central office.

I shouldn’t have had to ask the Superintendent if the school system would be prepared to meet IEPs on the first day of school. (And Dr. Wardynski certainly shouldn’t have responded to me, “I don’t know. That’s why I’m listening to you.”)

I shouldn’t have to ask Dr. Wardynski how he can justify having five aides (he has two secretaries, not just one according to the Huntsville Times) at a cost of at least $286,000 a year (and probably closer to $373,000).

I shouldn’t have to stand at the meetings and remind the superintendent and the board that they should put students first.

All of these are questions the Board of Education should be asking.

They should be the ones asking why the Reduction in Force cuts overwhelmingly targeted special education personnel.

They should be the ones asking where are the central office cuts.

They should be the ones asking why classrooms are understaffed, and overcrowded. They should be the ones asking why teachers’ salaries are frozen and new teachers’ salaries are set at the state minimum when administrative salaries are “competitive.”

In short, they should be the ones doing what I and many others like me are doing.

But they aren’t.

The purpose of the board is to administer and supervise the public schools and educational interests of the city. And yet our school board seems completely content with being a rubber stamp for whomever is leading them. Review the minutes of the board meetings for yourself.

Dr. Moore’s Support

When Dr. Moore was the acting superintendent at the beginning of this year from January until about March, the board approved a total of 34 decisions in 9 meetings. All but two of these decisions were unanimous. This includes the initial Reduction in Force plan, the contract for Ed Richardson, the cancellation of the ONIN Temporary Services (53% of which were Special Education Personnel), and the re-writing of the former Superintendent’s contract to ensure that she would be paid until December 31, 2011 for sitting at home.

All of those decisions were unanimously supported by the rubber stamp of Birney, Blair, Robinson, McCaulley, and Morrison.

The only decisions that weren’t unanimous (but which still passed), were the approval of the new Superintendent search firm’s contract (McCaulley voted no), and the Notice of the Superintendent vacancy (McCaulley and Morrison voted no).

Despite being ushered out the door, all but two of Dr. Moore’s recommendations were unanimously approved, and all 34 of them carried. It’s good to be the king.

Dr. Richardson’s Turn

Dr. Ed Richardson took over the primary duties of superintendent as a consultant beginning in March (at a rate of $600.00/day).

During his tenure (from March till June), he brought a total of 65 recommendations to the board including such gems as the Supplemental Reduction In Force (Dr. Moore’s RIF in February didn’t go far enough, evidently), the freezing of teachers’ salaries, and the reduction of new teachers’ salaries to the state minimum.

During this time the board approved the hiring of Dr. Steve Salmon to waste $70,000 on a PowerPoint of borrowed material, and the hiring of his assistant, Dr. James Wilson, to present this borrowed material to the public.

Perhaps most telling of the rubber-stamp nature of the board was that the board approved the firing of Principals Livingston, Waters, and Wyse on March 10th, only to unanimously approve their re-hiring on June 16th.

All 63 of these decisions the board unanimously approved.

The only two that weren’t unanimous (but again, both still passed) were the selection of the new Superintendent Dr. Casey Wardynski (McCaulley and Morrison voted against his hiring), and the appointment of Mr. Terry as the interim CSFO. For some reason, Mrs. McCaulley voted against this decision.

But again, all 65 recommendations brought to the board were passed by the board.

Now the Old King is Dead; Long Live the King: Dr. Wardynski begins his reign.

Dr. Wardynski came into office in July, and he’s been a busy guy. Half of all the decisions made so far this year have been made in the last two months. He has brought 48 recommendations to the board in two months, and all but one have been unanimously supported. Mrs. McCaulley (she better be careful; she’s going to get a reputation) voted against the new bylaws because she didn’t like that they did away with committees on the school board.

48 recommendations; 47 supported unanimously and all of them carried.

I’m pleased to say that not all of the recommendations have been terrible. I’m quite grateful for the end to the corporal punishment policy. I think that the seven new principals are working out fairly well. (I had an extended conversation with Mr. Chad LaQua, Butler High School, after a board meeting on evening. His passion for education was refreshing.)

However, the board has also rubber-stamped Wardynski’s decisions to hire a new CSFO while the former one is still on the books, the hiring of the director of transition at $60k a year, the hiring of a Director of Community Engagement and Partnership Development, the hiring of an Assistant Superintendent, the reduction of work days for nurses, and the eventual re-hiring of less than half of the Instructional Assistants that the board laid off in February and April.

And this doesn’t count the board approving the closing of Providence Middle School.

So you see the leadership of the system doesn’t matter. Regardless of how often they’ve claimed in private emails and conversations that they are dissatisfied with many of the decisions being made, our school board seems to go out of its way to approve the recommendations of whomever is in charge. Here’s a novel idea: If you disagree with something, don’t vote to approve it.

They seem incapable of actually asking questions of power. They have an unthinking respect for authority. And that’s the enemy of the truth.

Setting McCaulley and Morrison aside, Blair and Robinson (in particular) seem to trip over one another in their rush to say, “so moved,” and “seconded.”

One-hundred and forty-seven recommendations in eight months and all but five are unanimously supported.

The Huntsville City Schools Board of Education is not doing its legally required job of administering and supervising the public schools and educational interests of our city.

___________

On Thursday, September 1st at 4:00pm, the central office will hold the first of two Budget Hearings for the 2011-2012 school year (followed by their regular school board meeting).

Anyone want to take bets that the new budget is rubber-stamped as well?

Anyone?

The post Administer and Supervise Educational Interests appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Editor’s Note: These were the comments that I made to the Huntsville City School’s Board of Education at the board meeting tonight. Dr. Wardynski’s response to my comments was, “I did not state that we were hiring people at a nationally competitive rate, but rather that the salaries were competitive on the state level.” I have decided to accept his word on this point. Yet the question remains, why are we competitive on a state level in administrative positions but paying our teachers the state minimum? I have altered the statement below to reflect this change.

It’s interesting that that was the only thing he chose to respond to.

Dr. Wardynski, I’m here to remind you to put students first.

There are soon going to be at least four salaried positions whose primary jobs are to assist you in doing your job. Right now, my son has access to two-fifths of one aide to assist him.  These positions include your Administrative Assistant, The Director of Transition, and you’re planning to hire a Director of Community Engagement and Partnership Development at a rate of $58,000 to $95,000. Finally, you’re planning to hire a Deputy Superintendent at a rate of $84,000 to $134,000 a year.

The superintendent continues to hire people at, as he said about the new CSFO, nationally competitive rates state competitive rates. These new contracts include incentive based raises. In short, the superintendent has at least $252,000 in aides while my son has $4,000 in aides.

I would like to know how you can justify this?

How can you justify these positions when students are still waiting for teachers to be hired?

How can you justify these positions when students are still waiting for instructional assistants to help them in their transitions?

How can you justify offering raises to administrators when teachers’ step raises have been frozen for an indeterminate amount of time?

How can you justify offering nationally competitive state competitive salaries to your administration when new teacher salaries are set at the state minimum?

How can you justify adding these central office positions to the system’s budget when we don’t have money for teachers to buy basic supplies like ink or paper?

How can you justify spending 63 times more money on yourself as you have my son?

How can you justify putting your needs in front of the needs of the students?

Please, Dr. Wardynski, Mr. Blair, Dr. Robinson, Mr. Birney, Ms. Morrison, Ms. McCaulley, put students first.

The post How Do You Justify Aides for Administration? appeared first on Geek Palaver.

So how many kids are in your child’s resource room?

For anyone who doesn’t have a special needs child, the resource room is the primary classroom for children whose disabilities require additional assistance. It’s a place that provides instruction in appropriate grade-level skills, life skills, and social skills. Typically the classrooms are clustered around a particular disability.

Resource rooms need to be spacious. Children with disabilities often have difficulty navigating cramped or crowded rooms. They need to have areas where children can find a quiet spot to sit. They need to have sensory areas, were kids can bounce, spin, climb and even swing.

And they need access to teachers and instructional assistants. Otherwise, it’s just a room.

This past year, the special education department of Huntsville City Schools decided to consolidate many children who spend the majority of their school day in resource rooms into basically three schools: the Academy for Academics and Arts, Challenger Elementary and Middle and Hampton Cove Elementary Middle. (For my regular readers, this was “the plan” that was never shared with parents in writing despite numerous assurances and promises from Amy Sledge, Ann Roy Moore, David Blair, Jennie Robinson and others that they would.)

This consolidation has now been implemented. That fight is over.

On May 5th, Amy Sledge, Dr. Moore and the board discussed this plan and stated that this consolidation would allow students to have access to more resources such as therapy, material, supplies and staff.

On April 6th, Amy Sledge told parents that elementary resource rooms would have between 6 and 8 students in them. You can watch the video below. While she does say that they will have no more than 10, this she throws in as an extreme afterthought.

My son’s resource room at Challenger Elementary has 10 students right now with one teacher and three aides. The class is so large that it has to be split in two so that they are able to accomplish at least some of the learning goals of the IEPs. Since there is but one teacher, this means that every student is effectively receiving half of the instructional time that he or she received last year.

This is unacceptable.

But this isn’t just about my son. This is about 2,900 other students with IEPs in this system who are also getting half the instructional time that they did before.

And the only way we can address these problems is to talk to each other and compare notes.

So I’m asking you to share what you know about your child’s resource room in the comments section below. This will help us all to gain a better understanding of how Huntsville City Schools is planning to meet IEPs with less than half the Instructional Assistants that the system used last year.

Particularly since the number of special needs children has actually increased since last year.

So as you are able, please share the following information below or with me privately via email at staff@geekpalaver.com:

• The school your child attends.
• Your child’s grade.
• Does your child have an IEP?
• Does your child spend the majority of his or her school day in a resource room?
• How many children are in the room?
• How many teachers are in the room?
• How many instructional assistants are typically in the room?

There is certain information that you should not share with me. For example, do not share:

• Your child’s name. (At least not in a public forum such as the comments section below. If anyone does this accidentally, I will edit that information out of the posting.)
• Any other child’s name. (Again, I will edit this information out of the post if necessary.)

The purpose here is to make information available to all the parents with children in Huntsville City Schools that the system is, at times, hesitant to share with us. The purpose is to make the system aware that we know what is going on.

We have a right to know if the system is serving our children and meeting their needs. Perhaps this will help us all understand where most significant needs exist so that we may work together with the school system in addressing these needs.

If you do not want to share this information with me, I completely understand. In that situation, I would ask that you do the following: Contact your child’s teachers and principal. Ask them for specific numbers concerning the number of children in your child’s classrooms/resource rooms. Ask them for specific numbers of teachers and Instructional Assistants that will be in the classroom working with the kids on a daily basis.

You have a right to know this information about your child’s class, but you will often have to ask to get it.

Finally, I would encourage everyone to visit your child’s school as often as possible. See for your self the conditions of your child’s classroom and the situations under which your child’s teacher is working.

Our teachers are overworked, and they need our help to rectify this problem. The central office has a vested interest in keeping teacher salaries at the state minimum (even when their own salaries are “nationally competitive.” [Editor’s Note: Dr. Wardynski stated on August 18th that he claimed the administrative positions were “state competitive.” I have decided to take him at his word on this.) The only defense that our teachers and therefore our kids have against these conditions are parents.

I know how difficult it is to find time to visit schools and advocate for your child’s education. Especially for special needs parents. But if you don’t no one else will.

Ask questions, and hold the system accountable for the answers they offer.

It’s our kids’ only hope.

The post A Call To Action: Resource Room/Classroom Overcrowding appeared first on Geek Palaver.

At the Huntsville City School board meeting this past Thursday, August 4, Dr. Wardynski offered a report on special education and the system’s ability to meet the requirements of the children’s IEPs beginning on August 8th. He stated that he wasn’t able to answer my question on July 25th because he needed to review all 2,900 IEPs across the system. (So the number reported by the Huntsville Times is actually a little low. Rather than a decrease in Special Needs enrollment from last year, we have about a 3% increase. And yet, the instructional assists supporting this increase have been cut in half.)

Wardynski claimed that it took a long time to review all 2,900 of these IEPs, but that he had completed that review and offered the assessment that yes the system would be ready to meet the requirements of the IEPs on August 8th.

As I have documented, I disagree. By my assessment, my son’s classroom is still, as of August 10th, not capable of meeting his IEP due to insufficient staffing. Hopefully, Mrs. Costello’s assurance to correct this issue by Monday will prove to be true.

However at the end of this presentation, Dr. Robinson asked Dr. Wardynski a fairly direct question. She asked, if now that the special needs consolidation has been completed (and yes, the system made these changes without a board vote and without even putting these plans in writing for parents), will we stop moving special needs students for the foreseeable future. Here’s her exact question:

Special education children are particularly sensitive to change. My sister was a special ed student and change is still very hard for her. So I’m very sensitive to that. We have made changes to these children and their locations and their schools and their teachers every couple of years now. And every time we do it we say that it’s in their best interest. So we’re making this change. Are we pretty confident the way this is constructed now is going to be the change for a little while?

Wardynski provided a two minute response that started (strangely enough) with a discussion about moving Providence Middle School children. Here’s the text of his response:

Well, I think it goes back to the point that we began with, with Providence School. When we looked at that situation, we had the choice about do nothing, and let something not great get much worse. We could move the whole middle school, lock, stock and barrel. And in thinking about that what we put foremost were the needs of the children. When you’re in middle school you begin building relationships that are pretty important. You are on teams. You’re in activities. So what we do was moved that school grade by grade over the next three years. Sixth grade will begin at Williams so they will have a complete middle school experience. That kind of change you’re addressing was important to those general education kids. It’s important to the special education kids. So we hope our actions speak loudly. The interests of the kids will always come first. I do have resource constraints. Having teachers, and experts, and therapists and so forth spend less time with windshields and more with kids is something I think is important. We’ve attempted here to make sure we have a plan that we can live with. That they won’t be perturbed by change. But, I don’t control the economy. Our country is facing very difficult times. These are not norm . . . these are not what we thought of as normal times, but they appear to be normal times now. But our objective is to provide the learning environment which the children need that supports their growth. You can see that we’ve provided objectives across the board in our goals for learning from general population to special education children. I value those goals every bit as much as the general education population. Moving children between schools is not conducive to achieving those goals. So what I’m telling you in short is, creating a learning environment that those children need is foremost in my mind.

So what wasn’t included in this statement? Any assurance that the system won’t move special needs students again at any time they deem it to be in the system’s best interest.

Dr. Wardynski claims that he hopes “our actions speak loudly.” Well, on that count they do. The actions of the board to move students without discussing their plans with parents, without input from parents, and without consideration to the impact this constant change has upon the learning environment of these children who are indeed, perturbed by change.

My boy is one of the lucky few this time around. We got to stay at Challenger with the same teacher, albeit with a significantly larger class and a significantly larger student to teacher ratio.

And as a result, he’s had a great first week with tons of language and no meltdowns requiring intervention.

Last year, this was not the case. When we put the boy in the public pre-school classroom, he was placed at Farley. We were directly told that even though it was not officially our home school (which is Mt. Gap), that Farley would become his home school from that point forward. As we were even then deeply concerned about the impact that moving him around a lot would have, the decision to make Farley his permanent home was a welcomed one.

But it was not to be.

Just before our end of the year IEP meeting, we were informed that my boy would not be attending Farley, but that he would instead be moved to Challenger.

We were given no reason or justification for this move. We were just told that he would be moved.

Believe it or not, there was a time not too long ago when I thought that fighting the central office decisions concerning my son’s education was not terribly wise. I was concerned about retaliation and becoming known as Dr. Moore put it once, one of those “confrontational” parents.

I’ve since learned that acquiescence is exactly what they’re hoping for and that fighting for my son makes me a good parent, not a confrontational one.

As a direct result of being moved last year, the boy basically lost at least two months. As I look back over the reports that we got from Mrs. Bowling from last year, we spent the first two months celebrating the days when he only had a single meltdown as he adjusted to the change. It wasn’t until nearly Christmas that the boy was comfortable enough to say, “Yea School” last year.

But back to this year. The boy wasn’t moved this year, and even from our first visit to the school on the Friday before school started, his entire attitude about the place was different. He’s acting like a sophomore who knows that he just “gets” it. Yesterday as he was leaving school, he waved and unprompted said, “Bye!” to his teachers and friends.

He was, he is excited about school. And it’s all because, unlike countless others, the superintendent, the board, and the central office left my boy alone.

And yet, when asked a direct question about plans to leave special needs children alone in the future, Dr. Wardynski makes no promises and offers no assurances. He claims that his actions “speak,” and he’s right.

His actions show us that financial concerns will trump educational ones with this administration.

With his accepting a salary $55,000 over the minimum, with his hiring of a $60,000/year aide for himself, with his hiring of a CFO at a “nationally competitive rate,” ["state competitive rate"] with his plans to hire the organization that “trained” him to be a superintendent as a consultant at another $60k, his actions show us that financial concerns still haven’t impacted hiring in the central office.

But they have in the classroom. With a growing special needs population of about 2,900, Dr. Wardynski, and the board have decided that it’s a good idea to cut the number of Instructional Assistants in half from last year.

He is not doing this because it’s good for the educational environment.

He is not doing this to save money.

He’s doing this so that he can spend the money on other positions that for him have a higher priority than education.

While this doesn’t represent a change, I am still perturbed by it.

The post Perturbed by Change appeared first on Geek Palaver.

[Update: I have been informed that my interpretation of the numbers above is flawed. For this, I apologize. As I have stated numerous times, I'm really new at this. My son just turned 6, and we've been in the school system for less than two years, so I do often get it wrong. I apologize and accept full responsibility for the error.

I am not correct that every Special Education teacher is in need of an aide. Many work with students who do not require the additional assistance of an Instructional Assistant and who spend the majority of their day in a regular classroom. Therefore, my statement that we have less than one aide per classroom is not true.

It seems that we in fact have at least two aides (and occasionally three) for every special education classroom. Again, as I said, I take full responsibility for getting this wrong. I appreciate those from whom I've heard for helping me get the facts straight. As I stated below, had we been given more than just a table with frankly suspicious numbers, perhaps I would have understood this before I published the blog, but as I said, the fault for getting this wrong is entirely my own. I apologize, and I have struck out the incorrect information below. Any new information that I've added, I have placed in italics for emphasis.]

After six months of requesting this information, Huntsville City Schools finally released staffing data for Special Needs Classrooms yesterday about 3:00pm.

I had heard that there would be one Instructional Assistant per classroom earlier in the week. The actual numbers are much worse than that.

While Dr. Wardynski claims that the system will meet the requirements of the IEPs on Monday, he offered no clear justification for his conclusion. And look at those numbers. Anything surprise you about them? They’re perfect. The central office has hired exactly the right amount of staff. Not one too many. Not one too few. Perfect. Does this strike you as unusual? It does me.

In short, the finance guy didn’t show his work. How did he determine that the IEPs required 126 Instructional Assistants, for example? We have 126 aides to 2,700 students. That’s a 21:1 ratio. [Since I don't know how many of the students' IEPs require an aide, I do not know what the actual ratio is. It would be nice if Dr. Wardynski would share this information with us. I have asked for a breakdown of the teacher/aide to student ratio numerous times over the past two weeks. I've been ignored.] How exactly does one determine that IEPs only require a 21:1 ratio? Show your work, Dr. Wardynski. Show us how that will work.

Here’s what we know.

There are approximately 2,700 special needs students expecting to start school on Monday, August 8th.

According to the data that Dr. Wardynski shared Thursday night, the system currently employees 171 Special Needs teachers. These are the special needs personnel who are assigned to specific classrooms with students in the classrooms. It includes, as you can see in the picture above, Hearing Impaired Teachers, Visually Impaired Teachers, and the Pre-K Teachers as well (who typically have a class that is only 50% special needs).

We have 171 teachers to 2,700 students: a 15:1 ratio.

We have 126 aides to 2,700 students: a 21:1 ratio. [Again, since I don't know how many of those 2,700 students' IEPs require an aide, it is impossible to say what the actual ratio is.]

Assuming that the Hearing Impaired and Visually Impaired teachers do not have their own classrooms, there should be 167 Special Education teacher who do. 167 classrooms and 126 aides. This means that we potentially have 41 special needs classrooms in our system with only one adult in the room. One.

This is a dangerous situation, and we have no more time to resolve it before Monday. [Despite my misunderstanding of the data, I remain convinced that our classrooms are understaffed.]

Perhaps this is why I keep hearing that special needs parents are pulling their kids out of the system.

As I mentioned to the three outsiders who wasted our summer defending an idiotic plan to close schools, the problem isn’t that people aren’t moving into Huntsville. The problem is that we’ve lost faith in the leadership of Huntsville City Schools.

And when the superintendent and the board of education present numbers like this with the expectation that we will cheer for them, honestly the only reasonable response is to throw you hands up and walk away.

That will not be my response at least not this year. My son has greatly benefited from being in a classroom setting. It has helped him come out of his shell, so no, I will not deprive him of something that he loves. So what’s a parent to do?

• Read and completely know your child’s IEP. You can’t insist that the system follow the IEP, if you don’t know what’s in it.
• If you find that your child’s IEP isn’t sufficient, request another meeting to address the deficiencies.
• Do whatever you can to support your child’s teachers, aides, therapists and schools. The lack of staff is not their fault.

On Monday, unless I’m certain that my son’s classroom is sufficiently staffed to be safe and meet the requirements of his IEP, I’m planning to stay at my son’s school all day. While staying in his classroom would be disruptive to his education (and he wouldn’t want me to do so, anyway), I plan to be on campus trying to assist the school in other ways.

This safety issue was one of the Board’s own creation. We warned them. We warned Dr. Wardynski as well, but they decided to wait.  They are responsible for this situation.

It would cost $41,000 to allow one aide for every special education teacher. That’s less than half of what we’re paying Dr. Moore to sit at home. So you see the argument that “we don’t have the money” is bullshit.

Our system has the money; they’re just not choosing to spend it on our kids.

The post Unsafe: Less than One Aide Per Classroom–UPDATED appeared first on Geek Palaver.