For the past month, I’ve been discussing opting out of the final STAR Enterprise assessment of the year with both my daughter’s principal and later with Dr. Cathy McNeal, whose title is Director of Research and Development but who is really is the new director of testing in the district. It hasn’t been a fun, or even a particularly polite (on the part of Dr. McNeal) discussion, but it has been eye-opening to see the level of disdain that our district has for parents who dare to ask questions about district practices.

It isn’t just the superintendent who refuses to have discussions with parents; he’s passed this practice on down to his district staff as well. In the end, thanks to a principal caring more about the students than a “policy,” we were able to get things resolved.

Here’s the story so far.

On March 30th, I wrote a post about the cheating scandals in Atlanta and pointed out how we’re ripe for just a scandal here.

WAFF contacted me on Tuesday of that week wanting to do a story about potential cheating here in Huntsville. I was told that the district was refusing to discuss the possibility, and that they wanted to run a story about it anyway.

I agreed to be interviewed about the possibility of cheating, and the end result of the interview was that the district made Lee Simmons a “curriculum specialist” with ties to Westlawn and the “phenomenal” growth there available to be interviewed. She claimed that cheating on the STAR test was “virtually impossible,” as there would be 30 different screens with 30 different questions all at the same time.

Except, of course, that doesn’t make cheating “virtually impossible” at all. All a teacher needs to do to improve STAR test scores in her classroom is assist the weakest student with the test, or, as has been documented, give the student the same test, every week, until they begin to improve.

Ms. Simmons seems to be a dedicated teacher, but she’s incorrect when she claims that cheating or modifying scores is “virtually impossible.” There are dozens of ways it could be done.

This is one of the reasons why I decided it was time for my child to opt out.

Opt Out: Start With The Principal

I like and appreciate Dr. Summerville. Overall, I believe that she has done a good job in an impossible situation, and it would seem that the Alabama PTA agrees as she was just named Principal of the Year.

As I know that teachers have absolutely no input or control on what assessments occur in their rooms any more (and this is just the beginning of the issue, isn’t it?), I went to Dr. Summerville to discuss my daughter opting out of the fourth time she’s taken the STAR Enterprise tests this year. That’s right, my girl, just like every other child in this district, has taken the STAR test three times already. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-15% of the students in the district take the STAR test every single week until they begin to show improvement on the test.

And that’s another issue that I have with this test. Rather than spending more time reading and working harder on understanding mathematical concepts, the district’s solution to a student who doesn’t show enough “growth” on the STAR test is to give that student the STAR test again.

And again.

And again.

We’ve been in school for about 28 weeks so far. Some of our students, the students who need the most help and assistance with the reading and math, have taken at least part of the STAR test each week during those 28 weeks.

We test until the results are where the superintendent wants them to be because that’s his understanding of what education is all about.

I’m sorry, but how, exactly, does this benefit the child who is struggling? How does it benefit the child who isn’t struggling when the teacher’s attention is entirely focused on administering a test to a group of students for the 15th time?

And so I asked that my daughter be allowed to opt out of the final STAR Enterprise assessment of the year because it is not improving her educational experience.

I was informed by Dr. Summerville, in a generous and caring way I might add, that she had been informed that this was not a possibility.

As our principals now have nearly as little influence on the direction of their schools as our teachers do on the direction of their classrooms, I thanked Dr. Summerville for her time and took my case to the person who said no: Dr. Cathy McNeal.

Opt Out: The District “Responds”

After informing Dr. Summerville that I would pursue this discussion with the district, I emailed Dr. McNeal to ask her to allow my daughter to opt out of the final STAR Enterprise test.

On April 9th, I wrote Dr. McNeal expressing my concerns with my daughter taking the STAR Enterprise test:

Dr. McNeal,

I’m Russell Winn. As I suspect you are aware, I have recently met with Dr. Summerville, my daughter’s principal at Mt. Gap, to request that she be allowed to opt out of the final STAR Enterprises test of the year. I have been told that this is not possible, but I have not received any justification for this position which disregards parental concerns over the education of a child.

I am requesting that my daughter be allowed to opt out for the following reasons:

As far as I have been able to determine, there is zero educational benefit to [my daughter] in taking this test again as she has taken it at least three times already this year (not counting the time that has been spent preparing her for this exam). I still hold this view despite speaking with Dr. Summerville for over an hour on Monday about this. In fact, I am now even more convinced that my daughter is not benefiting educationally from taking this test.

Thus, I am again asking that my daughter not waste her time taking the STAR Enterprise test any further this year, and I am requesting an explanation of your decision to exclude parental wishes from the educational process.

I would appreciate receiving this information in writing from you, but I am also willing to meet with you if you so desire.

My daughter is currently scheduled to take the STAR test during the week of April 29 – May 3 [The test has been moved up to April 24-25 due to a test scheduling issue. Yes, we test so often at the end of the school year that we have difficulty scheduling everything]. I would appreciate reaching some resolution on this matter before that time.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Russell Winn
256-457-2887

On April 10th, which was a fairly rapid response for someone working in the central office, Dr. McNeal responded:

The Alabama State Department of Education prescribed that a formative assessment be administered in all schools and school districts during the 2012-13 school year. The formative assessment is relevant in assessing students and preparing them for Alabama’s College- and Career-Ready Standards in Kindergarten through Grade 12. The STAR Enterprise formative assessment platform is a valid measurement of the curriculum and provides a pacing guide for each individual student’s learning progression. Opting out of the mandated curriculum is not a choice.

Cathy C. McNeal, Ed.D.
Director, Research and Development
Huntsville City Schools
256 428 6966
mary.mcneal@hsv-k12.org

Notice, the district’s first response to my request for my daughter to opt out was to blame the Alabama State Department of Education, and to imply that ALSDE required that students take the STAR test as the formative assessment that the teacher and district uses to determine where a student is as the school year progresses.

Formative/Summative Assessment

There are two basic types of assessment that teachers use. Both are useful and important to determining a student’s mastery of the material. The kind that most of us are familiar with is known as Summative Assessment. This is the test that is given once instruction has ended to determine mastery of the material. Formative Assessments are given before instruction on the material has ended to see if the student is mastering the material.

Think of the two like this:

Summative assessment is the spelling test that is given on the spelling words at the end of the week. The teacher gives out words at the beginning of the week for the student to learn to spell. The test on Friday where the teacher calls out a word, and the student writes the word (spelling it correctly) on a sheet a paper is a summative assessment. If the student spells the word correctly, they pass.

Formative assessment in this scenario would be the homework that a teacher gives to the student to assist learning the words before the summative assessment on Friday. Let’s say that the teacher assigns the students sentences to write with the spelling words for homework. When the student turns in that homework the next day, the teacher can assess formatively how well the student understands the word and whether or not the student is learning to spell the word correctly. The homework may, or may not, be graded. The purpose of a formative assessment is to inform the teacher how well the student is mastering the material. If a student is struggling on a formative assessment, ideally, the teacher will notice and adjust her or his instruction to assist that child in mastering the material before the summative assessment is given on Friday.

I say ideally for one reason: in a classroom with 27 third graders, one teacher has a difficult time individualizing instruction to keep both the student who is mastering the words and the student who is not engaged.

Nothing can be individualized 27 times.

And a standardized test, like the STAR Enterprise test, is the exact opposite of individualized instruction.

Sure it shows that the student is reading on a 9th grade or 2nd grade level, but when one teacher has a class of 27 students all reading at different levels as varied as seven separate grades, where is most of the attention going to go?

It’s going to go to the student reading below grade level because that’s how the teacher is being evaluated: by the weakest student in the class.

And will the teacher be allowed to use her training and expertise to help that struggling student? No. There just isn’t time because the student has to take the STAR test again at the end of the week.

Passing the Buck

You’re starting to notice a pattern here, aren’t you? No one wants to take responsibility for telling a parent, especially a parent who is such a trouble-maker like me, no. So, let’s blame the other guy.

Dr. McNeal, following Dr. Wardynski’s lead on April 4th decided to call the STAR Enterprise test a “state mandated test.” She, like Dr. Wardynski before her, has absolutely no evidence to support this claim.

Here’ s what the superintendent had to say about me and the STAR test on the 4th:

First, there’s what I would call idol debate. Um, there’s a “watchdog” apparently who thinks we shouldn’t do STAR testing. We don’t have a choice. Formative testing is part of the state now. You’re either going to do GlobalScholar or some other formative assessment. And we do STAR. We like it best. But if we weren’t doing STAR, we’d be doing GlobalScholar or something else. A debate about formative assessment’s not even a debate.

You may watch his comments below:

The superintendent likes to make claims that sound good, but for which he offers no evidence, and which, as it turns out, simply aren’t true.

Yes, the state does what districts to perform formative assessment. That’s completely true. Guess what, that’s been completely true since long before the superintendent even knew that he wanted to be a superintendent.

As I explained above, formative assessment can be as specific as a homework assignment.

What the state does not require, despite Wardynski’s claims to the contrary, is standardized formative testing. Neither does the state require the use of STAR Enterprise’s tests.

The state might require this at some point in the future, but it is not required now. Either our superintendent doesn’t know what he’s talking about (which is highly possible), or he was exaggerating what is currently required by the state.

Here’s a copy of a memo that was posted to the ALSDE site in September 10, 2010 that lists the requirements that a local district (LEA) should follow if, and only if the local districts chooses to administer formative testing like the STAR Enterprise test. At the writing of this memo, the state does not require formative testing such as the STAR test.

Since much changes in two and a half years, is there anything more current than this on the ALSDE site? Why yes, there is. On July 31, 2012, Dr. Sherill Parris issued another memo about formative, interim, and benchmark assessment. It is, in fact, the only official mention of formative, interim and benchmark assessment on the site that is in a directive format. The memo is entitled: Statewide Formative Assessment, and the opening paragraph reads:

Most, if not all, of you have heard that the Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE) will be providing a statewide option for formative, interim, and benchmark assessments beginning August 2012. Through a rigorous, competitive application process, GlobalScholar, Inc, was determined to best fit the needs of what our state is attempting to accomplish.

You’ll note the use of the word “option” in this paragraph. And you’ll notice the complete absence of any indication that formative assessment is now a state requirement. Guess what, if you bother to read the totality of the memo, not once will you find any indication that the state currently requires local districts to perform formative assessments.

(Oh, and this is a thought for another time, but can someone explain to me why we’re paying nearly half a million dollars a year to Resnaissance Learning for something that the state would give us for free?)

Finally, if you read your 2012-2013 Student-Parent Handbook, you’ll find on page 21 that the STAR test is listed as a “District mandated” test. It is specifically not listed as a “State mandated” test. The handbook also states:

The HCS Mandated Assessment Program for the school year 2012-13 will include:

Grades: 1-12 STAR Enterprise Math and Reading (3 to 4 benchmarks during the school year) STAR Enterprise Math and Reading Growth percentile will be included as a percentage of the student’s grade each 9 weeks for those students who show growth.

The handbook claims that this is a district mandated test that will be required “3 to 4 benchmarks during the school year.”

The state doesn’t currently require local districts to do formative assessment via a standardized tool such as the STAR Enterprise test. The superintendent and Dr. McNeal are mistaken if and when they claim that the state requires this type of formative assessment.

It’s Time To Opt Out

After all this round about, this “idol debate” as the superintendent likes to claim, I finally  arrived at a few conclusions:

1. The District is not using the STAR Enterprise test to actually perform formative assessment on my daughter. My daughter has show growth in all three of the assessments she took this year, and yet despite the district’s claims in the 2012-2013 Student-Parent Handbook quoted above that the growth percentile “will be included as a percentage of the student’s grade each 9 weeks for those students who show growth,” my daughter’s “growth” has not be included as a percentage of her 9 weeks grade. (In fact, when I asked about this, no one in the district seemed to know this was included in the handbook. Perhaps we should make the district sign the handbook showing that they’ve read it next year.) In other words, there is no evidence that the STAR test is impacting my daughter’s grades.
2. The STAR Enterprise test has not been used to modify my daughter’s education this year. My daughter is in a classroom with 27 other third graders and one teacher. This class was specifically designed to include both higher and lower performing students in the same room so that neither (yep, there are only two 3rd grade classrooms at Mt. Gap despite there having been three 2nd grade classrooms a year ago) third grade teacher has a class of just higher or lower performing students. Even if the district were pushing teachers to actually use the data found in this assessment in any way other than to cut and paste the information onto another report they’re required to fill out, (yes, that is exactly what happens with the report showing what your child “knows”), there would be no physical way a single teacher could individualize instruction for 27 3rd graders in a single class. It is not possible.
3. The STAR Enterprise test’s only purpose is to evaluate teachers, principals, and schools. The test doesn’t exist to help your child. It exists to abuse your child’s teacher. That’s all.

As such, I decided, after talking with my daughter and wife, that our girl should choose to opt out of the fourth and hopefully final STAR Enterprise test of the year.

The District Has Rights Because We Say So

When I informed Dr. McNeal of my decision she wrote (on April 11, 2013) the following:

The Huntsville City School System through its superintendent has the right to mandate tests.

That’s right, Dr. McNeal was convinced that despite my telling her that I do not want my daughter to waste her time taking another test that offers her zero educational benefit, that she would assert the rights of the district and the superintendent to overrule my wishes as my daughter’s parent.

In response to this assertion of district rights, I wrote the following:

I find it interesting that you choose to close by asserting the rights of the district and the superintendent, Dr. McNeal. You may be correct when you claim that “The Huntsville City School System through its superintendent has the right to mandate tests.” You haven’t actually provided any evidence of this, but you may be correct.

However, the rights of the parent to be an active participant or “partner” (as the student-parent handbook calls us), in my child’s educational process, are not subsumed to the rights of the superintendent or the district.

Parental rights take precedence over the superintendent’s rights when it comes to the education of my daughter. He does not have the right to force my daughter do to something that I will not allow her to do, including testing.

Dr. McNeal, I have attempted to address this in a respectful way that acknowledges that you (as a representative of the district) and I are partners in my daughter’s education. I have asked that my daughter be allowed to opt-out of the final STAR benchmark of the year. I have provided with you my reasons and justifications for requesting this. I have followed up by asking for evidence that supports your claims that this is a state mandated test.

You have responded by asserting that the rights of the district outweigh my rights as a parent when it comes to my child’s education.

Are you certain that you do not wish to reconsider this position?

I remain interested in discussing this with you further. If you can offer me a convincing justification that my daughter’s education will benefit from taking this assessment, I will reconsider my position. So far your response has amounted to “because we say so,” and frankly, that response is inadequate.

At the present time, my daughter, XXXXXXXX, does not have permission to participate in the STAR Enterprise reading and math benchmark assessments for the remainder of the 2012-2013 school year.

Sincerely and respectfully,

Russell

Russell Winn
256-457-2887

As I would imagine it is needless to say, Dr. McNeal offered no convincing justification that my daughter’s education would benefit. She would once again simply offer the reasoning that we could not opt-out of the test simply because the district “says so.”

Cutting and Pasting Responses

A week later, I wrote Dr. McNeal back again to see if there had been any change in her opinion concerning my request that my daughter be allowed to opt out of the STAR test that she’s already taken three times.

Rather than engage me in an honest discussion, Dr. McNeal chose to basically cut and paste her response to me from an earlier email assuming, I suppose, that I had not responded to this email once already. So much for being partners with our schools in education.

She wrote, for a second time:

As stated in the original April 10, 2013 e-mail response to this request:

The Alabama State Department of Education prescribed  that a formative assessment be administered in all schools and school districts during the 2012-13 school year.  The formative assessment is relevant in assessing students and preparing them for Alabama’s College- and Career-Ready Standards in Kindergarten through Grade 12.  The STAR Enterprise formative assessment platform is a valid measurement of  the curriculum and provides a pacing guide for each individual student’s learning progression.   Opting out of the mandated curriculum is not a choice.

As stated in the Huntsville City Schools Student Handbook 2012-13 pg. 21 and referred to in your e-mail dated April 11, 2103:

STATE MANDATED ASSESSMENT PROGRAM 2012-2013

The State Mandated Assessment Program for the school year 2012-2013 will include:

Grade(s) Assessment

• 3-8 Alabama Reading and Mathematics Test + (ARMT+)
• 5 & 7 Alabama Science Assessment Grade 5 and Grade 7
• 3-8 & 11 Alabama Alternate Assessment
• 3-12 ACCESS for Limited English Proficient (LEP)
• 8 EXPLORE
• 10 PLAN
• 9-12 Alabama High School Graduation Exam (Fall, Mid Year, Spring, Summer)
  • *No student takes all the tests listed above, nor is all day devoted to testing on the specified number of days.

 The possession of a digital device (including but not limited to cell phones, MP3 players, cameras, or

• other telecommunication devices capable of capturing or relaying information) is strictly prohibited during

the administration of a secure test. If a student is observed in possession of a digital device during the

administration of a secure test, the device will be confiscated.

 If a student is observed using a digital device during the administration of a secure test, testing for the

student will cease, the device will be confiscated and is subject to search, the student will be dismissed

from testing, and the student’s test will be invalidated.

HCS MANDATED ASSESSMENT PROGRAM 2012-13

The HCS Mandated Assessment Program for the school year 2012-13 will include:

Grade(s) Assessment

• 1 – 12 STAR Enterprise Math and Reading (3 to 4 benchmarks during the school year)
  • STAR Enterprise Math and Reading Growth percentile will be included as a percentage of the student’s

grade each 9 weeks for those students that show growth.

• P – 1 STAR Early Literacy (4 benchmarks during the school year)
• 9 – 12 ACT QualityCore End-of-Course Assessment for the following classes:
  • English 9 English 10 English 11 English 12
  • Algebra I Algebra II Geometry PreCalculus
  • Biology Chemistry Physics U.S. History.
  • The QualityCore grade will be included as a percentage of the student’s final grade for the course for

those students that show growth

Cathy C. McNeal, Ed.D.

Director, Research and Development

Huntsville City Schools

256 428 6966

mary.mcneal@hsv-k12.org

Honestly, why would someone even bother cutting a pasting a previous response that had already been debated? But since she did, I wrote her and my daughter’s principal on final time asking them to allow my daughter to opt out of the fourth and hopefully final STAR Enterprise test of the year.

The district is nothing if not repetitive.

It seemed that the question would be decided on the day of testing, which had been scheduled for the week of April 29th.

The School Changes Its Mind About Trumping Parental Rights

When my daughter told me on Friday, April 19th that the school had moved the STAR Enterprise test dates up a week, and that they would happen tomorrow and Thursday rather than next week, I again wrote to my daughter’s principal to confirm.

She chose to respond by calling me back that evening. During our brief and friendly conversation, Dr. Summerville told me that my daughter would be allowed to opt out of the final STAR Enterprise test this year. She didn’t want to “make a big deal about this” and that she didn’t want me to check my girl out of school.

It is decisions like this one that help to explain why she is the PTA Principal of the Year this year. It’s a shame that we don’t have more educators like or (or more educators in general) at the district level. They could learn a lot from watching Dr. Summerville.

So after a month of passing the buck, after a month of the district leadership–including Dr. Wardynski as you saw above–claiming that they don’t have any control over what tests our kids are forced to take by the state, after a month of the district claiming that their rights supersede a parent’s rights to determine what is best for their own child, the school decided to do the right thing.

For this I am grateful. I only wish it hadn’t take so long.

The first STAR test is scheduled to be administered tomorrow with the second to follow on Thursday. I am hopeful that the school will keep its word and not attempt to test my daughter.

The TakeAway

So what does all of this mean for you and your student?

First: I am not suggesting that you opt your child out of any test based solely on my experiences. If you believe that your child is benefitting from taking a test multiple times, then you shouldn’t do a thing. Allow the district to administer the test to your child.

I am not attempting to tell you what is right for your child. I am simply relaying to you the processes that I have followed with this district.

Second: Should you decide that your child should opt out, you cannot take “no” for an answer. They will tell you no. They will tell you that if you keep your child home on testing day, that the test will simply be administered upon their return. They will tell you that the state mandates the test. They will tell you that the district mandates the test. They will tell you that the district’s rights to test your child out weigh your rights and responsibilities as the child’s parent.

Simply put, unless you have been ruled unfit to be the legal guardian of a child, no one has the right to force your child to do anything that you do not wish for your child to do.

Please remember, I am a teacher. I am not a lawyer. If you want or need legal advice, please hire a lawyer. All I am relaying here are what I believe to be true. Now, I am, of course, convinced I’m right on this matter, and I believe that the school has finally agreed to not test my daughter supports that idea. But you should make up your on mind on the matter.

Tomorrow will mark our first step to taking back our schools. The superintendent, the board of education and the district leadership like to believe that this is their school system. Every time Dr. Wardynski makes an executive decision, as he is doing with the rezoning issue, he demonstrates once again that the public doesn’t matter in public schools in his mind.

This is our district, not his. And opting out of this abusive, waste of time test, is a good way to show him this.

The post Parents May Opt Out of Testing appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Since posting the Children Evaluating Teachers post Sunday night, there have been several details to come to light that need your attention.

Despite a district representative’s claims to the contrary, I have been told that these evaluations from eight-year olds have indeed been used during the evaluation process of non-tenured teachers at the end of the year last year. In other words, the results from a non-scientific survey of eight-year olds has been used by the district to decide if a non-tenured teacher should be allowed to continue teaching another year.

The District “Exaggerates” the Truth

When the district representative wrote, “This information is not used to evaluate teachers,” this person was either completely misinformed or attempting to spin the truth of the situation to appease an upset parent. These surveys of children are absolutely used to evaluate teachers.

Furthermore, I’ve heard from several other concerned citizens and teachers since posting. The consensus is that the district is absolutely using the opinion of children to evaluate teachers. They are even using these opinions when, as this teacher shared, the students are clearly using the evaluation to work out their frustrations with the teacher:

Evaluating the Huntsville City Board

In response to the completely reasonable and accurate survey that the district had our eight-year olds filling out for their teachers, a friend of mine has created a similar survey asking for your opinion of the superintendent and the Huntsville City Schools Board of Education. This is your opportunity to share your opinions about the board’s and the superintendent’s responsiveness to the students, teachers and public.

The survey will be open from now until April 28, 2013, so please take a moment to go and offer your assessment of the board and the superintendent. There are a total of 28 questions, and your participation is completely anonymous. (On this matter, I give you my word. If you share honest opinions, no one will ever know that you were the one to share them.)

If you have a connection to Huntsville City Schools, please take a few minutes out of your time over the next two weeks to share with us your opinion of the board of education and the superintendent. When the survey is closed, I will share the results of the survey here.

You may access the survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HCSBOESURVEY2013. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to complete. Please share the survey with everyone you know as well.

Thanks y’all. Together we can turn this ship around before it sinks. I’m convinced of this.

The post Evaluating the Huntsville BOE and Superintendent appeared first on Geek Palaver.

If you are having issues downloading the documents from the district’s site (I’ve heard that some are), you may download them directly from this website as well. These are Word Documents, and there are three separate files. The first is “code of student conduct FEB FINAL“. This file contains all of the student conduct information found in the 2012-2013 Student-Parent Handbook plus the new additions of the discipline procedures for technology infractions.

The second document is “technology infractions final“. This contains just the three additional pages that have been added to the Code of Student Conduct. I have also posted the entire contents of this file below.

The final document is “Homeroom Signature Form – technology“. This is the roll sheet that students are being told that they must sign.

These files were downloaded from the district’s website just before noon on February 26, 2013.

Starting at least as early as Thursday, February 21, 2013, the district distributed to the schools a new computer use policy, and they began asking teachers to read this policy to students in their classes. Students as young as five-years old were then asked to sign a roll sheet that states:

Students: (Have students read)

By signing below, I acknowledge I have received, read, and discussed the Huntsville City Schools Technology Discipline Procedures for the 2012/2013 school year.

Students are then told that they must write their name and sign their name stating that they have “received, read, and discussed” the new technology discipline procedures.

New Tech Discipline Procedures

By itself, this is a bit disturbing. As I wrote last week, they are once again changing the ground rules that the students and parents are expected to play by. The problem here is that the district is implementing this new policy, and requiring students to sign it without parental notification or consent.

That’s right, students at least as young as five years old are being asked to sign a notice that they have “received, read, and discussed” these new discipline procedures without getting parents involved. In fact, they are planning to do a robocall about this new policy in the near future, but they are specifically waiting until after the students have “received, read, and discussed” this policy before calling parents.

If a student refuses to sign this roll sheet, they will not be allowed to take his or her computer home with them in the future.

And guess what? By having your child sign a document as a roll sheet, they’ve made it impossible for you as a single parent to ask to see the document, as it contains the names and signatures of up to 30 other students as well. Wardynski has read his Kafka, I presume.

Updated Code of Conduct

The updated code of conduct is 27 pages long. It is basically the Official Student-Parent Handbook that was sent home at the beginning of school with students with three additional pages. You may download just the updated Discipline Procedures for Technology Infractions if you prefer. These pages read:

Huntsville City Schools

Discipline Procedures for Technology Infractions

This is a companion document for Huntsville City Schools Code of Student Conduct.  Refer to the Board Policy and the Code of Student Conduct for additional information.

Technology offenses will be handled as set forth below.  Technology discipline offenses will also result in the restricted use of personal mobile computing devices while on school grounds.

Class I – Minor Offenses 1.19 Technology Infraction (a – e)

a)Unauthorized or inappropriate written/oral communication, use of E-mail, websites, apps, games, messaging services, chat rooms, or other non-school related activity.

School personnel may authorize educational use of the above applications during school hours or otherwise when school is not in session.

b)Use of non-directed profane, inflammatory, or abusive language.

c)Downloading, loading, storing, creating, unauthorized files, images, video, music, apps, data, or programs that do not result in damages to person or property.

d)Unauthorized transmission of personal information over the internet.

e)Activity that may be disruptive to the school environment

Consequences

•Classroom warning

•Possible loss of device access

•Temporary loss of device access

•Parent contact

•Referral to administrator

•Before or after school detention

•In-school suspension not to exceed three (3) days.

Class II – Intermediate Offenses 2.36 Technology Infraction (a – l)

a)Negligent care of or vandalism such as malicious attempt to harm or destroy any HCS device resulting in damage less than $200.

b)Changing software/hardware configurations.

c)Downloading, loading, storing, or creating unauthorized files, images, video, music, apps, data, programs, or viruses resulting in damages to any HCS device.

d)Taking pictures, audio, and/or video without subject’s or school’s permission.

e)Use of unauthorized anonymous and/or false communications such as, but not limited to Google Chat, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger.

f)Unauthorized change of program settings or any behavior or activity that damages or disrupts network performance on school devices.

g)Sending, transmitting, accessing, uploading, downloading, or distributing inappropriate, obscene, offensive, profane, threatening, harassing, pornographic, or sexually explicit materials intended to harm or demean staff or students.

h)Deletion, examination, copying, or modifying of files/data/device settings belonging to other users including staff, students, and district to include sharing, using, or modifying usernames and/or passwords.

i)By-passing the HCS Web filter through a Web Proxy.

j)Cheating (refer to HCS Code of Student Conduct, Section II, 2.33)

k)Subsequent offenses that may be disruptive to the school environment.

l)Action violating existing board policy

Consequences

•Temporary loss of device access

•Parent contact

•Referral to administrator

•Before or after school detention

•In-school suspension

•Out of school suspension not to exceed five (5) days

•Possible referral to law enforcement

•Restitution in vandalism instances for actual loss, damage, or repair

•Indemnification – HCS may be indemnified for any losses, costs, or damages including reasonable attorney fees incurred by the district relating to any breach of the Acceptable Use Policy

Class III – Major Offenses 3.25 Technology Infraction (a – h)

a)Any activity that voids the device, service agreement, software license or warranty such as, but not limited to jailbreaking or rooting (process of hacking a device to bypass digital rights management software).

b)Unauthorized entry to program files/hacking.

c)Harassment (refer to HCS Code of Student Conduct, Section III, 3.24)

d)Vandalism such as any malicious attempt to harm or destroy a HCS owned device resulting in damages in excess of $200.

e)Sending, transmitting, accessing, uploading, downloading, distributing, or publishing obscene, offensive, profane, threatening, harassing, pornographic, or sexually explicit materials that result in personal injury to staff or students.

f)Use of school/district’s Internet or email accounts for financial gain or personal gain, or any illegal activity.

g)Offenses on multiple occasions that may be disruptive to the school environment.

h)Any use that violates local, state and/or federal laws or regulations

Consequences

•Loss of device access

•Parent contact

•Referral to administrator

•Before or after school detention

•In-school suspension

•Out of school suspension not to exceed ten (10) days

•Suspension and/or recommendation for Superintendent Level Probation or expulsion and forfeiture of device.

•Restitution in vandalism instances for actual loss, damage, or repair

•Indemnification – HCS may be indemnified for any losses, costs, or damages including reasonable attorney fees incurred by the district relating to any breach of the Acceptable Use Policy

How many five-year olds do you think understand a single word of that change? How many seventeen-year olds? Honestly, how many parents, even?

But wait, there’s more.

$750.00 Fines

In addition to these changes, there’s also the new statement on the splash screen that I wrote about last week.

Thanks to a close reader for pointing out that my interpretation of this splash screen wasn’t actually correct. When I first read this, I believed that they were raising the fee to repair/replace a device from either $250 for the netbooks or $600 for the laptops to $750.00.

However, what this screen actually states is that:

“Intentional misuse of this device (including destruction, defacement, installation of unauthorized software, or download of unauthorized programs) may result in disciplinary action including expulsion and a fine of up to $750.00)” (sic)

What I believe (I could be wrong) that this means is that if a student misuses the laptop, in addition to the “Consequences” listed above there may be a fine of up to $750.00.

If the computer is damaged and “misused” then the district could send you a bill of up to $1,350.00. ($600.00 replacement fee for the laptop and a $750.00 fine.)

This fine is covered under the Consequences for Class II and Class III offenses which state:

Indemnification — HCS may be indemnified for any losses, costs, or damages including reasonable attorney fees incurred by the district relating to any breach of the Acceptable Use Policy.

That’s right. Your five year old has been forced by Huntsville City Schools to sign a document that states that she has “received, read, and discussed” the steps by which she could be expelled from school and charged up to $1,350.00 without your knowledge or consent.

Not Legally Binding Without Consent

Now, clearly this isn’t legally binding. A minor cannot enter into a binding contract of this sort without parental consent. They would be laughed out of any court that they tried to take this to.

So why are they doing it, and why are they doing it without getting parental consent first?

The only reasons that make sense to me are:

1. They’re trying to intimidate the kids.
2. They’re trying to intimidate the parents who don’t know better.
3. They’re hoping to lessen the blowback from the community about these changes by keeping them quiet until the students have already signed off on them in the hopes that they can then say, “Look, your child has already agreed to this, so there’s no need to complain.”
4. They’re just that convinced that they can do whatever they want in our schools.

Honestly, does anyone in their right mind think that these laptops are a good idea now? It’s time to return these netbooks and laptops to the schools and leave them there.

Just make sure that you ask for a receipt when you do.

The post Students Sign New Tech Discipline Procedures Without Consent 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.

I often find myself at a loss for words after the board of education does something incredibly stupid like extending Dr. Wardynski’s contract by two years after he has had exactly one evaluation. When last they met, they were still spreading the completely illogical notion that extending his contract–a contract that is binding not on Dr. Wardynski (he can quit at anytime for any reason, even without notice) but rather is binding on the district–shows that he is “committed to the district.”

I pointed out to the board just how illogical this “reasoning” was back in November, and I asked them for an explanation, some, any justification that actually makes sense.

Of course, as is their practice (if not their officially stated policy), they ignored my question entirely and voted to extend his contract by two more years.

So, once again, we see that the rules that apply to teachers, aides, and other district employees, just do not apply to Dr. Wardynski and his friends. Teachers are evaluated for a minimum of three years before they receive any form of security. Most aides never receive any form of security at all.

But for Wardynski our board created an individualized evaluation tool, evaluated him exactly one time, and extended his contract by 67%.

In what industry does this happen? It seems that the only one where it happens is in football.

And so when I am at a loss for words, I spend time thinking about the situation, evaluating it, attempting to make sense out of the senselessness that is the Huntsville Board of Education. Want an example? Right before he voted to extend the contract, Mr. Blair had the following to say:

Blair: “This is really more of a one way contract, right. So, then you talk about good faith and all that, so, even with the current contract, Dr. Wardynski could leave tomorrow. There is no penalty for him leaving tomorrow. There’s only a penalty if we fire him tomorrow. So then we would have some type of buy out. So I think that’s really the good will nature that you’re talking about that you’re willing to sign a contract for a longer term even though you could opt out of it along the way. But I think that’s really kind of the point because everybody’s saying well, this is to keep him here. That’s not really . . . you could go anytime you want.”

Wardynski: “It’s really about the folks I work with everyday, knowing that I’m going to be here. The community, business leaders, firms that are looking to come into this city do they . . . they’re looking for consistency in execution and consistency in direction.”

Blair: “I’ve thought long and hard about it. And I’m a football, I like football, and we see this often with a head coach and assistant coaches, and the assistant coaches have contracts in place, and they want to know that their system is going to be in place because otherwise if the head coach leaves then they don’t have stability. So, I’ve thought about it, I’ve thought long and hard about this whole thing.”

So, the reason for the contract extension isn’t to ensure that Wardynski will be around cause this is “really more of a one way contract.” The reason is instead to make all of Wardynski’s friends feel secure and stable.

So, on the same night when the board approved the resignation of eight more people and the immediate retirement of four people with three more leaving at the end of the school year, Blair wants us to know that he’s really not concerned about Wardynski. No, he’s concerned about those “assistant coaches” who work under Wardynski.

From September 4th through December 20th (assuming that Dr. Wardynski’s summary of the HR report was correct) 134 teachers, aids, and other district employees have either resigned, retired, or announced their intention to retire at the end of the year.

134.

Yeah, Mr. Blair, we get that you’re really concerned about all those “assistant coaches” out there who are so deeply worried about Dr. Wardynski leaving town.

We’re so glad that you’ve thought “long and hard about this whole thing.”

I wonder how many more of our “assistant coaches” are planning to offer their resignations and retirements because the board extended Wardynski’s contract?

The post Wardynski’s Contract “For The Assistant Coaches” appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Ms. McCaulley, Mr. Birney, Mr. Blair, Dr. Robinson, and Mr. Culbreath:

In extending Dr. Wardynski’s contract tonight, the five of you, unanimously, voted to support the following:

• Teachers (and everyone else) should be run off in droves.
• Special education should fund the recovery from the debt that four of you created.
• Special education should receive more staffing cuts than any other group during a time of reduction in force.
• Testing should be should be used to evaluate teachers rather than students.
• Passing a standardized test is the ultimate and only goal of education.
• The superintendent should not be required to communicate with the public.
• That 81 arrests in a mere 53 days is a “sign of high standards.”
• Education should be privatized even when it costs more, and reduces the influence that the public has over it.
• The superintendent should be allowed to offer plum jobs to his friends and that some “teachers” should be treated differently because he likes them.
• Anyone with five weeks of training and no experience can teach better than someone who costs less and has four years (at least) of training.
• Computers are better teachers than people, and that anyone who disagrees should be called names by the superintendent.
• Schools should be merged and closed for no reason other than that the superintendent thinks it a good idea.
• The superintendent should blame the victim when one child (or group of children) abuses another.

These are just some of the things that you voted to continue tonight. These are the things that you were applauding. These are the things that you were patting yourselves on the back for.

You should be ashamed.

Just one simple fact clearly illustrates just how far off track the five of you actually are.

Seven days after 26 people were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary school you spent four minutes talking about the safety of our children. (And 90 seconds of that was spent with Dr. Robinson telling Dr. Wardynski just how amazing he is.)

By comparison, you spent 28 minutes talking about property management.

You should be ashamed.

Oh, and don’t worry about responding to me. I’ve learned that the board doesn’t actually “study any concerns” brought to it. Feel free to ignore any issue I’ve raised here. Four of you have been doing so for the past 18 months anyway.

I just wanted it to be clear that these are the things that you voted to support tonight.

I know it. You know it. The public knows it.

You should be ashamed.

Sincerely,

Russell Winn
Parent

The post Open Letter: BOE Extends Wardynski’s Contract to 2016 appeared first on Geek Palaver.

So tomorrow night the board of education, at the request of the superintendent, will be voting on extending Dr. Wardynski’s current three year contract for an additional three years. Yep, five days before Christmas, the board is voting on giving the Superintendent a great Christmas present simply because he wants to show the district and the city just how committed he is to staying in the district as our superintendent.

Nope, that reason doesn’t make any more sense today than it did a month ago, does it?

Two weeks ago, I stood and asked the board to please provide the community with some reasonable justification for extending the superintendent’s contract half way through the first one, but, of course, they offered no response.

Big surprise, right?

Well, since they’re silent on the question, I thought I would go ahead and offer you 13 reasons why Wardynski’s contract should be extended for 2013. Someone please let the Board of Education know that I’ve done their homework for them. I’m sure they will appreciate it.

So, here’s the list:

1. You think that teachers (and everyone else) should be run off in droves.
2. You agree that special education children should fund the district’s recovery.
3. You think it’s a great thing for special education to receive more staffing cuts than any other group.
4. You believe that testing should be used to evaluate teachers rather than students.
5. You think that passing a standardized test is the ultimate goal of education.
6. You think it’s a good thing for the superintendent to threaten to quit rather than communicate.
7. You think 81 arrests in a mere 53 days is a “sign of high standards.”
8. You think that all of education should be privatized because it costs more,  it allows us to have so much more influence over the education of our children (as we have now with The Pinnacle Schools.
9. You believe that the superintendent should be allowed to offer plum jobs to his friends and that some should be treated differently because he likes them.
10. You believe that anyone, even someone who costs more, with five weeks of training and no experience, can teach better than someone who costs less and has four years (at least) of training.
11. You think a computer is a better teacher than a person and that anyone who disagrees should be called names.
12. You think that schools should be merged and closed for no reason other than that the superintendent thinks it a good idea.
13. You believe that the victims should be blamed when someone abuses them.

There you go. Thirteen reasons why Dr. Wardynski should have three more years to ruin (just in case you were wondering, no, I didn’t mean to type “run” there) our schools. If his contract is extended, 2013 will be a very unlucky year indeed.

If you wish to let your board member know that you think they should vote no on extending his contract, you need to contact them via email or phone before the meeting begins at 5:30pm tomorrow night.

I know it’s Christmas. I know you’ve got a billion other things you’d rather do. But guess what? The superintendent and the board know that too. This is why they’re voting on this right before the Christmas break.

They’re counting on you being too busy to voice your opinion about this decision. (By the way, that’s also why they’re pushing so hard to make the decision to move Grissom from its present location right now as well.)

If you think the extension is a bad idea, please contact the board member at the information below.

• District 1: Laurie McCaulley: lamccaulley@gmail.com
• District 2: David Blair: david.blair.hcsboard@gmail.com
• District 3: Jennie Robinson: personalbest@knology.net (256) 527-1425 (W) (256) 882-0925 (H)
• District 4: Topper Birney: topperb@knology.net (256) 883-2982
• District 5: Mike Culbreath: mwculbreath@gmail.com

If you think it’s not worth the trouble, remember those thirteen reasons are things that you voted to continue in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017.

The post Thirteen Reasons To Extend Wardynski’s Contract Tomorrow Night appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Remember last year when the Alabama State Legislature decided that giving a gift to a teacher was just the worst possible thing that any one could ever do?

Suddenly giving a teacher a small Christmas gift was on par with lobbyists attempting to purchase influence with our legislature. It was suddenly a Class B Felony for teachers to accept a gift that could possibly be resold from a five-year old. Any gift must have a “de minimis” value.

It was, just one more way for legislators to abuse our teachers.

De Minimis Undefined

And of course the legislature refused to define what “de minimis” might mean. The Ethics Commission stepped in and told us that de minimis meant that the gift could have no value at resell. So gift cards were out.

In response, Dr. Wardynski release a memo on December 7, 2011 that stated clearly that “gift cards with a specific monetary value are NOT permissible.”

So the district followed along, having no choice, and complaining about it loudly. Finally our board and superintendent had some bad news that they could blame on someone else.

The board and superintendent encouraged everyone to contact their representative and let them know that this law over reached and should be changed.

Guess what? The district (and it seems all the others across the state) listened, and did just that.

Legislature Response With A Clear Definition

In August 2012, the legislature passed an amendment (Act No. 2012-433) to the Ethics and Campaign Finance Law that finally offered a definition of de minims:

(11) DE MINIMIS: A value twenty-five dollars ($25) or less per occasion and an aggregate of fifty dollars ($50) or less in a calendar year from any single provider, or such other amounts as may be prescribed by the Ethics Commission from time to time by rule pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act or adjusted each four years from the date of the enactment of this amendatory act to reflect any increase in the cost of living as indicated by the United States Department of Labor Consumer Price Index or any succeeding equivalent index.

So it is finally crystal clear from the legislature what the meaning of “de minims” is: a single gift of $25 or less and a total of $50 or less in a calendar year. AL.com reported on this story back on December 5th.

It would seem that the legislature finally realized that giving a teacher a small gift card of $25 or less would not result in pandemonium.

Wardynski and the Board Ignore State Law: Bah Humbug

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Christmas Tree.

Suddenly our district leadership decided that the memo they released eight months before the passage of this Act took precedence over the legislature.

When the holiday season rolled around again this year, the district begin redistributing the superintendent’s memo from last year proclaiming that “gift cards with a specific monetary value are NOT permissible.”

Calls to the central office from parents, PTA members, and principals (in response to parental questions) have received verification that the memo stands.

Appeals to the board members have not been responded to (big surprise).

And so despite their complaints about the actions of the legislature a year ago, despite their encouragement of the public to have the law changed, despite the fact that the law was changed, Dr. Wardynski has not updated his memo from a year earlier.

Perhaps he prefers it this way? Perhaps taking away one of the few ways that a family can say thank you to a teacher serves his purposes of running off ever more teachers during his tenure as superintendent.

Or maybe he’s just being lazy. (I wouldn’t want to be accused of being a conspiracy theorist or anything.)

Either way, this year it is his turn to play the role of Scrooge in our ongoing game of abuse the teacher. He, along with the full support of the board of education, are the ones telling teachers that they cannot be trusted if they receive a small gift from a child wishing to say thanks this holiday.

Dr. Wardynski and the Huntsville City Schools Board of Education are the ones to blame for this abusive policy. And we need to hold them accountable.

Voting To Extend Wardynski’s Abuse of Teachers

The last board meeting of the year will be held Thursday, December 20th, at 5:30pm. The issue of gifts to teachers is not currently on the agenda, but guess what is?

Yep, the board will be voting on extending Dr. Wardynski three-year contract (which is half up) for another three years. They’ve offered no reasonable justification for this even being voted on at this time, but they will be voting on it anyway. If you, like I, think this is a bad idea given the fact that our district cannot afford to lose yet another 984 teachers over the next four and a half years (we’ve lost 246 in the first 18 months of Wardynski’s administration), then call or write your board member before Thursday night and ask them to vote against this ridiculous request for a 6 year contract from Dr. Wardynski.

Our schools will not survive if you don’t.

The post Huntsville City Schools to Teachers: Bah Humbug, Again appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Yes, I’m still alive.

No, I haven’t been bought off by Huntsville City Schools

Sorry for the long layoff, y’all. As Sting wrote once, “Everybody’s got to leave the darkness sometime.” Huntsville City Schools and the mess that our board and the superintendent have gotten us into is quite dark.

As Dr. Wardynski rather matter-of-factly stated last Tuesday, 246 teachers have retired or resigned since he arrived in July of 2011.

246.

Some context for those numbers: In 2012 we had 1,303.44 Teachers Foundation Program Units, and in 2013 that has been reduced to 1,289.34 for an average of 1,296.39.

In other words in a year and a half we’ve had just shy of 20% of our teachers either retire or resign.

I’m so happy I can’t stop crying, indeed.

According to Dr. Wardynski’s summary (which are notoriously inaccurate when the final report is actually made available) of the HR report from last Tuesday 3 more teachers have retired and 2 more have resigned.

And The Board Played On

And the board plays on, never asking why our teachers are leaving, pushing such urgent business as celebrating Dr. Wardynski MAJOR AWARD from Tech & Learning Magazine (yeah, I’ve never heard of them either) as a 2012 “Tech & Learning Leader of the Year.” (By the way, if you want to know more about who decides who wins the “Tech & Learning Leaders of the Year” all you need to do is look at the Partner Sites Link on their site. You’ll see a link to Digital Learning Environments sponsored by, drumroll please, HP. You know, the same company that we just signed a three-year, $10,624,000.00 contract with. It’s AMAZING how important you become when you sign contracts of that size, isn’t it?)

It seems that Tech & Learning Magazine received a press release from the district’s PR department citing, incorrectly, again the Superintendent’s claims that, “Teacher reports and school records show students more engaged and interested in learning, and suspensions are down 56% from last year.”

This is, of course, not an entirely accurate statement as we’ve discussed.

But that MAJOR AWARD is far more important than the 246 teachers our district has lost in the past year and a half. (Those don’t include the RIF or those teachers whose contracts are non-renewed at the end of the year, either. If you factor in those numbers that number easily doubles.)

246 since July 2011.

Non-Stop Testing is Bad Educational Policy

This goes a long way toward explaining the District’s “Continuous Improvement Framework” during which Dr. Cooper, the deputy superintendent and Debbie Miser called for the district to move away from a focus on “teaching,” and on to a focus on “student learning.”

Teaching is no longer important in education in Huntsville City Schools.

The focus instead is now on student learning with an emphasis on, you guessed it, testing. Ms. Miser said that the only way to implement the Continuous Improvement Framework is to have “testing several times during the class period.”

That’s right. Testing on yearly, or quarterly basis isn’t cutting it. Testing on a weekly basis isn’t working either.

Hell, testing on a daily basis, just isn’t enough.

Now we need testing “several times during the class period.”

In other words, if less frequent testing isn’t producing the results we want, clearly the answer then is to test constantly.

I guess Finland didn’t get that message.

Finland Ignores American “Experts” And Succeeds

In case you didn’t know, America isn’t doing so well when compared with other nations around the world. Finland, in particular, has been doing astonishingly well since 2000 on the Program for International Student Assessment. They’ve managed to move to the top of most international rankings by, you’ll never guess, doing the exact opposite of what America has done since 2000.

Where we have increased testing, they have decreased it.

Whereas the past 12 years have shown that the American method of No Child Left Behind does precisely that, Finland’s method has steadily moved it to the envy of the world.

Yet, our approach here in Huntsville, driven by people who have no educational background whatsoever, is to do the exact opposite of what is working well in other nations.

And now we’re institutionalizing this bad policy so that even if Dr. Wardynski should land one of those jobs he claims he’s not interviewing for, we’re going to be stuck with inexperienced teachers implementing bad policy of constant, insistent testing.

Because education isn’t about exposing young minds to new ideas, new technologies, new frontiers in Huntsville anymore.

It’s about testing every minute of every day.

And for that, teachers just aren’t necessary.

246 is just the beginning.

The post Institutionalizing Bad Educational Policy appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Last night the board announced that they’ve been holding discussions with the superintendent about extending his contract which is due to expire on June 20, 2014, to June 30, 2017. He has requested to receive a three-year extension to his contract, an increase in his car allowance of $200 per month (from $600 to $800), and in return he is willing to give up his incentive bonus of up to $10,000 per year. Last year his incentive bonus was $9,920.

Contract Extension to Quell Rumors

Wardynski claims that he needs to receive this contract extension to put to rest “rumors about the superintendent interviewing for jobs in other districts.”

I often hear rumors about things occurring in the district. I heard about Spinelli’s resignation about 4 months before it occurred. I heard rumors about his harassment complaints before the superintendent discussed them at a board meeting in February.

I’ve heard rumors about Dr. Wardynski as well.

I don’t publish rumors. However, last night Mrs. McCaulley and Dr. Wardynski acknowledged the existence of rumors of his interviewing with other districts. So, one collection of rumors I had heard was that he was traveling for interviews in New York, Florida, and Maryland.

Illogical Reasoning . . . As Usual

Let’s look at the logic here:

• There have been rumors about Dr. Wardynski traveling for interviews in other districts in at least three separate states. Mrs. McCaulley and Dr. Wardynski confirmed the existence of the rumors last night. There was no discussion of whether or not the rumors were true or not.
• So instead of confirming or denying the rumors, Dr. Wardynski’s response was to request a three year contract extension from the board.
• He and the board concluded that such an extension would confirm his commitment to Huntsville.

There seems to be a problem here doesn’t there?

If Dr. Wardynski wishes to confirm his commitment to Huntsville, why is he asking for Huntsville to confirm our commitment to him?

Wouldn’t it make more sense, wouldn’t it be more logical for Dr. Wardynski to simply:

1. State that he isn’t interviewing with other districts?
2. State that he has interviewed with other districts, but that he has decided that Huntsville is far and away the best place for him?
3. Stop accepting interviews with other districts?
4. State that he isn’t interested in leaving?

Asking for a contract extension to prove your desire to stay is kinda like asking your wife for permission to cheat, so you can prove to her how committed you are to the marriage.

It just doesn’t work that way.

He wants us to tell him and the rest of the nation that we really  want him to stay. This will make a great bargaining tool when he’s negotiating and interviewing with other districts. Just as many companies will not hire someone who is unemployed, Wardynski looks better to other districts when his contract isn’t about to expire.

Extending his contract says absolutely nothing about his desire to stay here as the board claimed last night.

As Clause 13 of the contract states, the contract isn’t binding on him. It requests a three month notice, but if he doesn’t give one, all that will mean is that he won’t be paid the $43,749.99 for that time. In other words, all of the burden rests on the district. None rests on Wardynski. He can still interview with other districts. He can still accept another job. Giving him a three year extension doesn’t prove commitment to the district. The three year commitment proves the district’s commitment to him.

He can, despite the extension, leave at any time.

So if he actually wants to prove, as McCaulley claimed, that “he’s committed to Huntsville,” here are a few things he can do:

1. Say, “I am not interviewing with any other job.”
2. Refuse to accept the bonus he is receiving until teachers STEP raises are restored.
3. Refuse to discuss a contract extension.

If he’s really committed to Huntsville, he should be willing to work out his existing contract without requiring additional promises from the district. If anything, asking for an extension proves that he is not committed to our district.

There is no logical reason for the board of education to extend his contract at this point.

So, they will likely do just that.

If you believe that they should politely tell the superintendent where he can put his “suggestion” of a contract extension, please contact your board member and let them know what you think. You may reach them at the email/phone numbers below:

• District 1: Laurie McCaulley: lamccaulley@gmail.com
• District 2: David Blair: david.blair.hcsboard@gmail.com
• District 3: Jennie Robinson: personalbest@knology.net (256) 527-1425 (W) (256) 882-0925 (H)
• District 4: Topper Birney: topperb@knology.net (256) 883-2982
• District 5: Mike Culbreath: mwculbreath@gmail.com

Please contact them immediately and let them know what you think of their logic. It’s possible, just possible, that they might actually listen.

The post Wardynski Requests a Three Year Contract Extension 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.

So last night’s meeting brought many wonderful insights. Perhaps the most interesting took place after the meeting when Dr. Wardynski was being interviewed by WAFF about the 81 arrests being made in Huntsville City Schools during the first nine weeks of the school year. According to Dr. Wardynski, having numbers that are twice as high as Birmingham is actually a good thing that the city should be grateful for as other cities “have a whole different approach to capturing statistics.”

Um, yeah. Birmingham and Mobile Police Departments and schools systems don’t track the number of arrests that occur in their schools. That’s why they’ve only tracked 39 of them in Birmingham this year. Because, you know, they’re not tracking them.

Uh, I didn’t do it.

Once again we see the Bart Simpson defense being employed: “Uh, I didn’t do it.”

No poorly planned change in the pedagogy of the system, no ethics violation, no statistic, no pleas from parents, no amount of money being returned to the federal government, no abuse of children is so egregious that our superintendent cannot spin it so he comes out smelling rosy: at least to himself and to the board of education. Just don’t catch him off guard. If you do, well, he just doesn’t have time to respond to ankle-biters.

Clearly the reason that there have been 81 arrests made in the district is because other cities don’t love their kids as much as we do.

Honestly, you couldn’t make this up if you tried.

Pay No Attention . . .

And once again the wizard implores us to forget what he said and claimed before about principals not having discipline problems anymore. When it suits his purposes to claim that there are no discipline issues as a result of the digital initiative, he’ll claim there are no discipline issues. When you show him statistics that he cannot change at will, well those statistics “prove” that Huntsville City has higher standards than anyone else.

Yes, logic and honesty have left the building and the district.

So what do these 81 Arrests show?

1. The superintendent’s claim that we’re not having discipline issues in the district anymore because of the digital initiative is not true. We are having discipline issues in the district. According to the Huntsville Police Department, these issues are happening at about the same level as they did last year.
2. The superintendent is manipulating the district’s student incident report statistics by changing the way student incidents are reported. Huh, where have I heard about that before? Oh yeah, Dr. Wardynski accused Birmingham and Mobile of changing the way they report incidents in his defense of our own numbers being twice as high.
3. The superintendent is ready and willing to blame anyone so that he doesn’t have to take responsibility for the results of his own actions.
4. They show that we have a problem in our school system that our superintendent and school board (who made no mention of these arrests last night during the board meeting, just as they’ve made no mention of the Pinnacle abuse stories since those broke) are completely unwilling to address.

This is what we see in this report. That’s what these numbers show. That we have a superintendent and a board that is willing to claim anything, no matter how illogical or hurtful, just as long as the blame doesn’t fall on him.

Another Arrest Added To The Mix

On Halloween, Huntsville Police Department arrested Julian Lorenzo Boykin for “torture and willful abuse of a child” in connection with the abuse of a thirteen year old child at the Pinnacle Schools on October 10th. Since that time, at least three families have filed complaints about this incident.

Neither the Superintendent nor the Board of Education has made any mention in the board meetings about the abuse taking place at The Pinnacle Schools over the past month. Not one single mention.

I guess they haven’t figured out a way to spin an adult torturing and abusing a child that they placed in his care yet.

Ultimately, the board and the superintendent are responsible for this torture and abuse. I’m sure that they will find a way to shirk their responsibility again.

The post 81 Arrests in 53 Days “A Sign of High Standards” appeared first on Geek Palaver.

A Huntsville City Schools spokesman said they didn’t have time in their schedule to comment about the disciplinary report numbers and arrest numbers.

In the past 51 days of school, Huntsville Police Department School Resource Officers have made a total of 81 arrests according to a report yesterday, and updated today, on WAFF. While HPD Sgt. Bates states that this number is “pretty consistent with the first few months of school,” this number is twice as high as the reported arrests in the Birmingham district over the same period of time. (Birmingham has about 2,000 more students than Huntsville and has had a total of 39 arrests of students in school over the same period. Perhaps we should have begged the state to take over our schools, too. They seem to be doing a better job in Birmingham than our board is here.)

Propagandizing Student Discipline Problems

On September 20, 2012, Dr. Wardynski had Judy Rushton, the director of Pupil Services offer a report in support of the new digital initiative claiming that principals were saying to him, “Dr. Wardynski, we don’t have any discipline problems, anymore.”

Ms. Rushton went on to claim that for the first 20 days of school that the district’s in school suspension and out of school suspension rate had been cut by approximately 56% when compared to last year. She made no mention of the number of arrests made during that time.

Dr. Wardynski then went on to explain:

And I asked the principals why that would be. Three of them volunteered, right off the bat, the students are engaged. They are now engaged, and uh, we don’t have discipline problems anymore. That’s what we expected to see. What drove us in this direction was Project RED study which was done nationally, 2,000 observations across schools, school systems. And the key findings are when you take this [digital conversion] approach, not just one to one technology, but content, professional development, leadership, uh, the key pieces have to be in place, uh, the things you’re going to see, uh, dramatic decrease in student discipline problems, dramatic increases in student achievement.

In other words, he was specifically using the “dramatic decrease in student discipline problems” to support his unplanned and poorly implemented digital initiative that even has the Secretary of Education talking.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

As I pointed out about a month ago, it’s fairly easy to show a dramatic decrease in student discipline problems when you control the reporting of incidents.

And that is exactly what Dr. Wardynski and the district have done.

• He has hired consultants (despite falsely claiming that he hadn’t), who train teachers on the importance of reducing discipline referrals.
• He has engaged in a systematic attempt to blame the victim when someone is attacked and bullied while at school.
• He denies any responsibility, and the board ignores physical abuse of at least 5 Huntsville City School middle school students whom he placed at The Pinnacle Schools.
• And he has, as has been reported here and now on WAFF, ”told all principals and teachers to change the way they report incidents to the district to manipulate  discipline numbers.”

Putting Children At Risk

This man is systematically putting our children, your children, at risk so that he can brag that his digital conversion has resulted in a “dramatic decrease in student discipline problems.”

While he may control the teachers and principals in his schools through fear and intimidation, he does not control the Huntsville Police Department. He does not control their data and actions.

And their data unequivocally shows that there has not be a reduction in the number of student discipline problems as a result of the digital initiative. As Sargent Bates told WAFF, the 81 arrests is average:

“It’s pretty consistent with the first few months of school,” he said.  ”They haven’t spiked, they haven’t dropped. It’s right where we expected it to be.”

Arrests have not gone up. Arrests have not gone down. And they certainly haven’t been reduced by “nearly 60%” as Wardynski likes to claim.

So now we know that Dr. Wardynski has been manipulating the data to serve two purposes: to make himself look good and to make teachers jobs even harder so that record numbers of them quit or retire.

And The Board Ignores The Issues . . . Again

And still the board of education does nothing to address this problem. They do nothing, absolutely nothing (there has been no mention of the abuse at Pinnacle by the board at all), to hold Dr. Wardynski accountable. (Funny, over a year ago, I wrote a post asking for the same board to hold Dr. Moore accountable for her illegal plan to segregate special education children across our district. They didn’t hold her accountable for her actions. They’re not holding Wardynski accountable for his actions. I think we’ve found the problem.)

A Paucity of Leadership

Dr. Wardynski likes to call himself a strong leader.

Strong leaders don’t blame the victim.

Strong leaders don’t use fear and intimidation to run off amazing teachers.

Strong leaders don’t manipulate data to make themselves look better.

What a shame that he has no idea what leadership actually is.

Maybe then we would have someone who wouldn’t run from the press and parents who ask questions by claiming we don’t “have time in [our] schedule to comment.”

Strong leaders don’t run and hide like a frightened bully when those he has been abusing stand up to him and say, “Enough.” 

__________

If you want to be a part of a group that is working hard to stand up to bullying in our schools, please go like S.O.S. – Support Our Students and volunteer to help get the word out. When we work together, we can change the world. Changing this school system is easy by comparison. Especially when it’s being led by someone who is scared to answer questions. But then I guess tonight is Halloween.

Hey, Dr. Wardynski?

Boo.

The post District “Doesn’t Have Time” To Discuss Student Discipline appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from my good friend David S. Imagine what it would be like to have a school system that actually listened.

Imagine Huntsville:

I was recently browsing AL.com and ran across an article discussing Huntsville’s plans for renovation of John Hunt park.   Many of the ideas the city proposed were fabulous and would create new opportunities for visitors to the John Hunt park area.    Naturally, the $100MM cost is something that would have to be carefully considered and managed, but I appreciate the mayor in particular for being up front about the idea.   I’m even more impressed with the mayor’s consideration for the input of the citizens he means to represent through a website called Imagine Huntsville.

When you hear from the city government, you hear things like:

We’re continuing to look for more ways to highlight what your local government does and promoting access, information and transparency.

In Huntsville, we’re looking for your input…

We want to make it a park that all residents can buy into.

We’ve talked to the stakeholders…Now it’s time to get the community’s input.

“transparency”, “your input”, “buy into”, “stakeholders”. . . all words and phrases that connote cooperation with the community.

The city seeks input from its citizens helping them be better stewards of our resources.  In planning for John Hunt park, the city has already collected a growing list of citizen comments for changes and improvements.   The city has made use of a blog for citizens to provide their comments and has promised that these suggestions will help shape the eventual renovation of the park.  This allows “the best ideas bubble up to the top.”

I’ve noticed more than once that the city has made use of modern media to engage the citizens of Huntsville in the planning and shaping of community events, venues, park and spaces.   In 2011, a city-led survey polled citizens to see what retail establishments and restaurants they wanted to see brought to our community.  When making plans for improvements to the downtown area of Huntsville, the city used a similar approach to seek ideas from citizens.

You see, when an organization, be it a city government or a local school system, endeavors to make changes to things that their constituents care about, it behooves the leaders of these organizations to seek buy-in from their constituents.   This makes the results of their efforts more of a blessing than a curse.   The City of Huntsville has gotten this message.

I really appreciate the efforts of the city and the mayor in this regard.   Modern tools like Facebook, email, blogs, and YouTube can serve a city immensely when properly used.   The city’s examples reminded me just how poor of a job Huntsville City Schools has done engaging the community in similar activities relating to school operation.  Our mayor has used technology to engage the community in important decision-making and our school leaders should learn from this.

Imagine Huntsville City Schools:

After seeing the great efforts our city government has made to engage the community in planning, it is very disappointing to see how the city school system has in many ways rejected the idea of engaging the community.   It has been reported that after receiving pushback from the school superintendent, the board removed a “communication” element from the superintendent’s review criteria.  This is surprising when you consider that one item under the section of “duties” in the contract between the school board and the superintendent states:

(x) Visiting the schools and other interaction and communication with the public to promote the well-being and educational goals and objectives of the system within the community;

“…communication with the public…”

Most people will tell you that communication is an exchange between two people or groups.   The inclusion of the word “with” further emphasizes this.   The superintendent isn’t to communicate to the public, but is to communicate with the public.  Nevertheless, when communication is de-emphasized by our superintendent and our board during performance evaluation, you will have to hold your breath for a very, very long time before community engagement techniques like those employed by the city are used by the school system.

If you’re trying to determine the best course of action, it would serve you well to first realize that you may not have all the best ideas.   A leader solicits good ideas from all stakeholders and based on that information leads us down the best path.  Choose not to solicit ideas?  If that’s your approach, then something as simple as picking the name for a new school becomes a problem.

From a community perspective, there have been too many communication missteps by this school system to count, including:

• The segregation of special education students
• The merging of elementary and middle schools
• The funding cuts for special education personnel
• The digital 1:1 initiative

Recently, the school system facilitated a private meeting between a senior adviser to the US Department of Education and PTA presidents to discuss the digital 1:1 initiative, leaving many to wonder why such a high-profile and contentious issue would be discussed behind closed doors.   Parents, teachers, and students across the school system have offered much criticism of the digital 1:1 initiative which has largely fallen on deaf ears and gone unanswered.  Communication on this issue and many others has been woefully inadequate and buy-in from stakeholders certainly hasn’t been obtained, or sought.  The current status quo results in:

• Students who aren’t listened to
• Teachers afraid to speak
• Parents who are ignored

Really “communication” should be a primary goal of everyone in the school system, not removed altogether.  The City of Huntsville got that message years ago.  It’s way past time for the Huntsville City Schools to do the same.

Editor’s Note: One reader in particular has taken it upon herself to write to Mr. Robbins to express concerns over the digital initiative. He has responded that he would like to set up a conference call to discuss these matters with our community. As more details come to light, I will be sharing them here.

The post Imagine Huntsville…Imagine Huntsville City Schools appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Update: So you know those visits to the classrooms that Mr. Robbins took today? He visited Columbia, Weatherly, and Davis Hills to see the digital curriculum in action. Well in case you were wondering, I’m hearing from parents that those visits were planned for and staged. Parents were told to make sure the laptops were charged and ready to use. The laptops that were relegated to occasional usage in favor of [shudder] textbooks were trotted out for the visiting dignitary. I’m sure that will come as no surprise. The rooms that Mr. Robbins visited today were all informed of his visit, and like nearly every other classroom in this district, those classrooms haven’t made active and regular use of the computers for the past two weeks.

Again, if Mr. Robbins wanted a realistic assessment of the digital initiative, he should have been willing to open tonight’s closed meeting. He should have asked someone other than the Huntsville Council of PTAs to organize his visit.

Tonight, Mr. Michael Robbins “a senior advisor for the U.S. Department of Education” is meeting with a group of “parents” to hear real, honest, and heartfelt opinions about the digital transition. Didn’t hear about this? Of course not. The Huntsville Council of PTAs decided that the only way to get these real, honest, and heartfelt opinions about the digital transition is to have the meeting behind closed doors, out of the sight of the public and that the only parents who are deemed worthy of having a real, honest, and heartfelt opinion about the computers in this town are PTA Presidents. So tonight from 6-8pm at Grissom High, Mr. Robbins will meet with the PTA Presidents and whomever else the Huntsville Council of PTAs deems worthy of attending so that he can hear from people who are not likely to rock the boat by telling him the truth.

PTA Presidents who have spoken their minds about the reality of the digital initiative have been told that if they want their schools to remain open that they had better get on board and stop making waves.

Care to take any bets about how many PTA Presidents will be speaking the truth to power tonight?

The only reason that the digital transition is “working” at this point is because the computers have been replaced with textbooks in the classroom.

But that goes against the sound bite that the Secretary of Education wants to hear. Arne Duncan has long since decided that whatever the education “reformers” like Eli Broad wants is good for American students. Regardless of what research shows. Regardless of what parents have to say.

In fact, they are so afraid of what parents might tell them that they believe that they will hear the truth by meeting with only those parents who are not allowed, either by propriety or under threat of closure of schools, to actually speak the truth.

Mr. Robbins is a native of Huntsville. He was educated at Grissom High, but now he is afraid to hear from parents–who have no agenda other than the health of their children’s education–concerning the intentional ineptitude of transitioning an entire district to computers even though they knew that the network couldn’t handle the load.

The only reason that this year hasn’t been a complete waste of time for our students is because our teachers, despite being beaten down by this administration, have refused to allow the digital transition to destroy their kids’ education. They have stopped using the computers and returned to reliable pedagogical methods.

But that doesn’t fit Mr. Robbins’ plans. And so the meeting remains closed to the people who pay his salary, who paid for his trip, who paid for the very school they are meeting in.

And once again the Huntsville Council of PTAs is doing their best to silence any voice that might point out that the latest pot of gold at the end of the “reform” rainbow is a myth. Unless of course you’re Pearson, HP, Microsoft, or Eli Broad.

For a century we have bounced from one miracle cure to another. And not once have we stopped to ask parents and teacher what they think we should be doing.

As Diane Ravitch said in The Death and Life of the Great American School System:

We will continue to chase rainbows unless we recognize that they are rainbows and there is no pot of gold at the end of them. We certainly cannot address our problems unless we are willing to examine the evidence about proposed solutions, without fear, favor, or preconceptions.

The district, the Department of Education, doesn’t care if there is nothing at the end of the rainbow for students. All they care about is themselves. And that’s wrong.

And the Huntsville Council of PTAs is once again demonstrating that their motto, “Every Child . . . One Voice,” is meant to be taken literally. And that one voice will be used to silence even the very people that the P(arents) T(eachers) Association are supposed to represent.

One voice indeed. All the other voices are not invited.

The post Updated: Huntsville Council of PTAs Restricts Parents’ Voices appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Update: If you want to read much, much more about Pinnacle and Planking as a form of restraint (many states have outlawed its use), go read the Merts Center Monitor’s “The Pinnacle Schools: What Are We Waiting For?” Redeye has also written about the use of this school on several occasions.

When a school system closes public schools and replaces them by funding private organizations like The Pinnacle Schools, the people, the community, and especially the students, lose. The district, the people, lose their ability to oversee and question even extreme examples of child abuse as seen in these pictures.

Last night, WAFF reported that a 13 year old student at The Pinnacle Schools has been abused by security personnel of the “school.”

On January 19th, upon the recommendation of the Superintendent, the Huntsville Board of Education voted to approve a $1,596,000, 19 month contract with The Pinnacle Schools to replace the much maligned Seldon Center to provide alternative school services to students who commit an expulsion worthy offense in Huntsville City Schools.

This contract has an auto-renewal clause that will kick into effect unless the superintendent provides The Pinnacle Schools written notification at least 60 days prior to the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year. They accept students from Huntsville City as young as 12 years old.

Child Abuse

On Wednesday, October 10, 2012, while attending The Pinnacle Schools, a 13-year-old boy was ordered by a security officer at the school to leave class for talking. This child was then taken into a separate room and ordered to lie down on the floor, face down in a “planking” position.

Take a moment right now, and go lie face down on the floor with your nose pressed into the floor. I suspect that you will find that position is a difficult one to maintain for an extended period. If for no other reason, breathing becomes difficult without turning your head.

Now, imagine that every time you do turn your head, an adult security guard strikes you on your sides with enough force to cause the marks, broken skin and bruising that you see evidenced in the photographs seen above.

All this for talking in class.

Now, instead of imagining this is being done to you, imagine instead that it is happening to your 13 year old grandson. This is the hell that Harold Wesley has been living through for the past week as he attempts to get answers from The Pinnacle Schools and the district about this incident.

This is child abuse. Thankfully, the Huntsville Police Department is investigating this as such.

HCS: No Corporal Punishment

One of the first things that Dr. Wardynski did upon arriving, well, after hiring his friends Frank Spinelli, Aaron King, and several other aides for himself, was to eliminate the use of corporal punishment in Huntsville City Schools. This was one of the few things that Dr. Wardynski has done since arriving at Huntsville City Schools that I completely support.

Teachers and administrators should not be placed in a position of meting out physical punishment to students. There are too many risks involved for both the student and the teacher. It’s not effective and the risks are not worth the potential benefits.

But when a district gives over control of its schools and student population to a private company, the rules that are established for public schools may or may not apply for the private organization.

The contract alone determines what policies that the private contractor will follow.

Pinnacle Schools Makes No Promise Concerning Corporal Punishment

In this instance, the Pinnacle Schools contract is far less than clear. At no point does the contract ensure that The Pinnacle Schools will follow Huntsville City School policies such as the elimination of corporal punishment.

It does say, under a section entitled, “Staff and Security”:

TPS RAISE Program will provide security personnel who are trained in SAMA (Satori Alternatives to Manage Aggression) techniques which include the assisting process for de-escalating possible aggression. Additional security measures which include a closed circuit video monitoring system and identification system for student and visitor check ins and outs.

I find it difficult to believe that anyone would consider the above abuse a de-escalation from the simple mistake of talking in class.

Huntsville City Schools Promotes The Pinnacle Schools’ Child Abuse Therapy Programs

On May 17th, Mr. Aaron King offered a report concerning the number and amount of private contractors the district has hired. In this report he claimed that The Pinnacle Schools will provide a “70% Return on Investment in FY 2013.” I’d imagine with the legal issues that TPS is causing the district that Mr. King would need to reduce that estimate downwards these days.

But most interesting, Mr. King claimed that TPS offered both drug and “abused child therapy programs.”

Like much of the rest of that report that night (which substantially underestimated the number of contractors and their costs), this “benefit” has simply not panned out.

After the increased costs of this contract, the shameless hypocrisy surrounding this contract, and now the actual abuse of children, there is simply no justification for keeping this contract active.

But here’s the two-fold problem: since closing the Seldon Center, the district no longer has an alternative, and this contract has a one-sided breach of contract clause that allows them to defer any resolution for nearly an indefinite period.

The clause reads:

In the event of a serious breach of an obligation or covenant under this Agreement, the non-breaching party may give the breaching party written notice of the specifics of the breach, and the breaching party shall have 60 days in which to cure the breach. Only if the breach is not cured within such period shall the non-breaching party be entitled to pursue any remedies it may have by reason of the breach, including termination of this Agreement. In the event any provision contained in this Agreement shall be breached by either party and thereafter waived by either party, such waiver shall be limited to the particular breach so waived and shall not be deemed to waive any other breach.

This allows TPS to delay the cancellation of the contract, for all practical purposes, until the end of the contract on July 31, 2013.

In other words, our children are going to likely be at risk for an additional nine months.

This is a travesty. Perhaps our newest, but as yet unseated, board member Mr. Culbreath would like to take this issue on next now that’s he has finished dealing with the Spinelli contract. Our children can’t wait until next year.

__________

Tomorrow night will be yet another board meeting. They will be discussing several programs on bullying that they have “borrowed” from my good friend Mr. James Robinson of the GLBT Advocacy and Youth Services. I suspect that there will be a significant number of parents and other concerned citizens present to make their concerns known to the board.

If you care about making sure that things like this abuse of a child are brought to an end, please come out to the board meeting at the Merts Center, 200 White Street, N. at 5:30pm tonight.

If you can’t make the meeting, at least log onto Facebook and “like” S.O.S – SupportOurStudents. All the latest news and information on safety issues in our schools can be found there.

Finally, if you can’t make it, 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.

Our students need your help and protection. It’s time to stop the violence and end the silence.

Come speak.

The post Updated: Privatizing Alleged Child Abuse At The Pinnacle Schools appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Our new Community News Director at the Huntsville Times, Anthony Cook, has great news for criminals everywhere. Suddenly if you claim that you’re being “efficient,” breaking the law does not matter.

And he’s not alone in sharing this opinion. It seems that WAFF’s new reporter (who prefers offering his opinion to simply reporting) Charles Molineaux also agrees with Mr. Cook.

Let’s see if we can follow their logic.

Cook argues that “Washington is going after Huntsville City Schools for $2.6 million as punishment for the school system’s effort to be fiscally responsible.” So, Cook admits that “too many special ed aides were laid off, according to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.” In other words, he acknowledges that the district has broken the law. Of course while talking about it, he never refers to IDEA as a “law,” but rather as just an “act.”

Unfounded Claims From the Times

He claims that “in the years preceding 2011, the system was bloated, employing hundreds more support personnel than necessary.”

Of course, he offers absolutely no support for this opinion whatsoever. He then asks, “Flabbergasted yet?”

On one point, he’s correct: the federal law does not allow a district to cut Special Education funding on the basis of availability of funding. Why might that be? Any special education parent (if he had cared to ask any of us) can tell you, the first place where a district looks to cut when funding dips is special education. As I pointed out to the board 16 months ago, the district placed 41% of the cuts on 12% of the population. Under no circumstance is this fair.

It’s amazing what lengths he will go to justify the system breaking the law.

And it is a law.

Evidence That The Cuts Have Hurt Students

Mr. Cook attempts to temper his extremism by claiming:

And, if any evidence showed that special ed students suffered or were neglected under the smaller staff, that would certainly be a case for enforcing the penalty.

I guess he was too busy to do a google search or, you know, actually ask even one special eduction parent about this wildly inaccurate claim. Here’s some evidence that the reduction in staff has hurt students. Here’s some more. And more. Since Mr. Cook doesn’t watch local news, here’s at least one example where a special education child was injured perhaps as a result of there not being enough aides to supervise him.

Is it too much to ask someone who writes for a newspaper to actually do some investigation before spouting off his uninformed opinions? Evidently under the new, intensive three-days a week publishing schedule, the Community News Director is just too busy.

Breaking The Law For Efficiency

But for now, let’s assume that Mr. Cook’s central argument is correct: The law can be broken, even should be broken, when it results in efficiencies.

I wonder if Mr. Cook would be willing to apply this new standard to other areas. It’s certainly more efficient for me to exceed the speed limit when I’m late, so it must therefore be okay for me to do so, right?

It’s certainly more efficient for me to take 10 copies of the Huntsville Times out of the paper box and sell them for myself than it is for me to pay for all 10 copies. It’s good to know that Mr. Cook would be flabbergasted if I didn’t do just that.

Wanting To Have It Both Ways

Mr. Cook, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim that “there’s no arguing with the intent of the law” and in the same breath argue that following the law is “not the logical thing to do.”

I hope this pathetic level of “critical thinking” isn’t what we should expect from now on from our community news director.

If it is, honestly, wouldn’t it be more efficient if this community news director were working elsewhere?

Yes sir, I am flabbergasted.

The post Times Director: Efficiency Justifies Breaking The Law appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Sixteen months ago, I wrote an open letter to Mr. David Blair explaining to him in great detail that he and the board of education had placed too heavy of a burden on Special Education in their efforts to cut our system’s budget. I told him, “We are placing at a minimum 41% of the budget cuts on just over 12% of the student population. These cuts have not been applied fairly and equitably.”

On July 16th, two weeks after Dr. Wardynski had been hired, I wrote him and the board of education to inform them that the RIF cuts had been unfairly applied to Special Education personnel. I again explained how SPED was responsible for 41% of the cuts.

Neither Dr. Wardynski, nor the board chose to respond to the data I shared with them.

SPED Unfairly Cut

But it seems now that the state is forcing the board to face up to the decisions that they approved without consideration. The state is also forcing Dr. Wardynski to face up to the decisions that he continued from the moment he arrived in July 2011 of balancing the budget on the backs of the neediest children in our district.

I made these facts clear to Dr. Wardynski and the board repeatedly. The only response he ever offered, aside from having district security threaten me, was to say, “The short and sweet answer is free, appropriate education in the least restrictive environment as I’ve explained to you before. We are not required to meet any specific funding level. We are only required to meet the requirements of the IEPs.”

When I pointed out to him that IEPs were not being met, Dr. Wardynski responded:

“Then su . . . then you have recourse.”

This callous approach toward Special Education children continued and worsened during his tenure.

Wardynski Deepens The Cuts

The first budget for 2012 called for a seven million dollar cut in the special education budget. In other words, SPED was being asked to shoulder 61% of the projected savings for the year.

Only after extensive complaints from me and others did Dr. Wardynski return the seven million that he cut from special education back to the budget. But not until the end of the fourth quarter of the 2012 fiscal year, did he actually attempt to spend those funds. Up until that point he was on a pace to spend just $20 million of the $27 million budgeted.

Then, miraculously, at the close of the second budget hearing in September he announced that the district would spend the total special education budget. At the end of the third quarter, the district had spent $16,135,493.12 of a budgeted $27,376,209.04. In other words, they had $11,240,715.92 left to spend in the fourth quarter of 2012. Here is the Special Education expenditures for three quarters of 2012. It shows that they had 41% of their budget left unspent at the conclusion of the third quarter.

This was why on Saturday, September 29, 2012, (or two days before the end of FY2012) my son’s special education resource room looked like this:

It was filled with all brand new furniture, teaching tools and supplies. While I certainly appreciate this material, it should have been purchased before school started so that its arrival wouldn’t interfere with instruction time (as it did on Friday, September 28th).

This was why on September 20th, the board voted to give Mrs. Amy Sledge, the Director of Special Education a substantial raise from Grade 3/Step 14 to Grade 2/Step 12.

The district had an extra $6 million that it was holding back until they had been forced–at the last minute, and upon threat from the state and the federal government–to meet the needs of our kids.

Breaking the Law is Neither “Efficient” Nor “Effective”

In response to the Times‘ report today, Dr. Wardynski typically stated:

“This is why the United States is going bankrupt. There is no room for being efficient and effective.”

It is neither efficient nor effective to balance your budget on the backs of the most needy children in our schools. The board’s decisions before Dr. Wardynski arrived led us to this place. Dr. Wardynski’s decisions since arriving will lead to the state applying additional penalties for the FY2012 SPED budget cuts. Stephens’ report hints at exactly this when he writes, “Huntsville may also owe about $1 million for reduced spending in 2012.”

This is not an oversight. This is not the result of being “efficient and effective.” This is the intentional result, despite a year and a half of warning from me and others, of a superintendent and a board that are more concerned about their own aides, their own salaries, and their own well being, than they are about the well-being of our children.

This has been evident since nearly the day Dr. Wardynski was hired. This is evident in his name-calling of parents who ask questions. This is evident in his disregard of wrong-doing at The Pinnacle Schools. This is evident in his disregard of student safety so that he can brag about how awesome his decisions are. This is evident in his blaming of the victim, the family of the victim, and even the entire community for problems and issues that his decisions and un-written policies have created.

Board Ignores Wake-Up Calls

This $2.6 million dollars wake-up call to the board should draw their attention to the fundamentally unfair and illegal approach that the superintendent has taken in the leadership of our schools. But I’m sure it won’t.

The Huntsville City Schools Board of Education will, I am certain, continue to claim that they didn’t know they were breaking the law. They will pretend that they don’t hear the disdain with which he speaks to them, to our teachers, to our parents, and most importantly to our students.

TECHNOLOGY CANNOT REPLACE TEACHERS AND AIDES

They will, I am sure, go right on believing his ridiculous claims that it’s far better for our students to receive “new technology and equipment” rather than personnel.

My son is autistic. He’s one of the reasons that I’ve been fighting so hard for the past two years to shed light on the actions of this superintendent and board. He LOVES his iPad.

But here’s the thing: My son doesn’t need another iPad. What he needs are teachers and aides who love him, who are fairly paid for their work, and who pound away at the fog of autism despite the total lack of concern and support they receive from Dr. Wardynski and the board of education.

Despite the joy his technology brings him, nothing but great teachers have ever brought out the joy and happiness seen below:

Dr. Wardynski wants to continue to run off great teachers and aides and replace them with computers because he believes them to be cheaper.

His destruction of our school system must be brought to an end, immediately.

The post Wardynski and Board Knew SPED Was Unfairly Targeted in RIF Cuts appeared first on Geek Palaver.

On September 20, 2012, Dr. Wardynski announced that with the board’s unanimous approval of the Human Resources report, Mr. Frank Spinelli had resigned as the CSFO for the district. He would be leaving the district immediately due to family situations in New York City. There was some speculation, much of it started by Dr. Wardynski himself, about why Mr. Spinelli would resign after just 13 months on the job. Now we know.

Spinelli Receives a 180% Hourly Raise for Four Years

Mr. Spinelli resigned on September 20th, at least in part so that his company, Cadre Consulting, Inc., could be hired on September 21, 2012. Assuming that Mr. Spinelli is the one offering the consulting to the system, he could earn up to $175.00 per hour offering advice to Mr. Jason Taylor, the district’s Finance Director and acting CSFO upon Mr. Spinelli’s departure on the 20th. That hourly rate represents a 180% raise over his hourly rate of $62.5 while he was the district’s number three employee in terms of salary.

Here’s a copy of page two of the Temporary Agreements that were unanimously approved on September 20th, by the board without discussion.

As you can see, line 13 shows that a consulting service, here spelled, Cadri Consultant would “provide consulting services to the Chief School Financial Officer beginning on September 21st and running for the next four years. These services would be paid for out of the General Fund at a rate of up to $175.00 per hour, and this company would report to the Superintendent.

At first, this seems innocuous enough. Just one more consultant group hired by the Superintendent to do the work of district employees. It seemed fairly typical until I reviewed what Dr. Wardynski had to say about Mr. Spinelli when he was praising his incredibly short tenure as CSFO.

Here is a transcript of what Dr. Wardynski had to say:

When I arrived in this school system, we were 19 million dollars in deficit. And uh, today we are 9 million dollars in surplus. The majority of that distance that has been covered is due to our chief financial officer Mr. Frank Spinelli. Uh, tonight the board as accepted his resignation. Uh, in June, Mr. Spinelli notified me that he would need to be spending a considerable amount of time away from Huntsville City Schools due to situations involving family members in situations in New York. And I asked him to help us get through the remainder of the summer. And to bring on a new leader, which is here before me, Jason Taylor, whose run finances, uh chief of finances since June. Frank, uh, spent several days each month back here helping us. Burned up a lot of leave and came back and helped us, uh, get the folks trained, to do the budget, and get ready for end of year. And so Frank will be missed as well. He’ll be at Mr. Taylor’s disposal going forward. So as of yesterday we announced the position of Chief Financial Officer. And in the interim, Mr. Taylor will be our chief of finance. Of course if he seeks to stay in that position he’ll be chief of finance if he seeks to compete for chief financial officer, uh, he’s welcome to do that as well. So two losses to our district. Two people who made us stronger, but two people who importantly laid a foundation. And when you’re a leader, you see yourself as a transitory person. And your job is to prepare the way for the next set of leaders. And both of these individuals have done that. So they’ve laid a foundation so that we don’t go back. We build on that, and we go forward.

Two points caught my attention in Dr. Wardynski’s comments: first, he claimed that Mr. Spinelli “burned up” a lot of leave from June until September traveling back and forth between Huntsville and New York City.

Burning Through A Lot of Leave

Assuming that his leave package is similar to other education administrators in the state, at the most he would have earned approximately one day a month of sick leave and up to five days per year of personal leave. Thus he shouldn’t have had more than 13-18 days of sick leave (5 days of personal leave would have converted to sick leave on his anniversary, and an additional 5 days of personal leave. Being out regularly from June to September would have burnt through a lot of leave considering he would have likely accumulated just 23 days in the 13 months he was employed. But the second point was more interesting.

Spinelli to be at Taylor’s “Disposal Going Forward”

Wait a second. If Spinelli has resigned, how exactly is he supposed to be “at Mr. Taylor’s disposal going forward?” That seemed, at the time, an extremely strange comment to have made. Surely if Mr. Spinelli is leaving due to family concerns as Dr. Wardynski claimed, he wouldn’t want to be at Mr. Taylor’s beck and call “going forward.”

But when I saw the Temporary Agreements report from that night, and noticed the four-year contract offered for Consulting Services for the CSFO, I began to wonder.

Spinelli Currently Consultant with Cadre Consulting

Here’s a screen capture of Mr. Spinelli’s LinkedIn Wall from October 2nd. As you can see, he’s recently updated his employment information to show that he was previously employed by Huntsville City Schools, and that he is currently employed by Cadre Consulting, and (interestingly enough) United Cerebral Palsy of Huntsville & Tennessee Valley, Inc.

UPDATE: For the record, he is listed as a Board Member for UCP of Huntsville rather than an employee as it is listed on his LinkedIn page.

UPDATE: I have received the following information Tracy Cleniewicz, the Development Director of UCP who writes: 

Mr. Frank Spinelli was an unpaid, volunteer member of the Board of Directors for United Cerebral Palsy (UCP) of Huntsville & Tennessee Valley, Inc. Mr. Spinelli requested a temporary hiatus from his board duties in June for personal reasons and, as a result, became a non-voting member and was not required to attend bi-monthly board meetings. Mr. Spinelli submitted his official resignation from the board in early September, which was reviewed and approved by the UCP Board of Directors at the Sept. 24 meeting.

I wish to clearly state that it was my intention to neither be critical of UCP or Mr. Spinelli for his involvement in UCP. I was merely pointing out that according to his LinkedIn page he was still affiliated with this local organization. As that has been shown to be incorrect, I will remove any reference to his being currently affiliated with UCP of Huntsville from the post. I believe that Dr. Wardynski’s statement that he would be available to the future CSFO is sufficient to demonstrate that he is the representative of Cadre Consulting for the district at a rate ranging from $85-$175/hour in either case.

[By the way, one of the better definitions of Cadre is: "a cell of indoctrinated leaders active in promoting the interests of a revolutionary party." So, Spinelli is moving from one Cadre, to another, and then back again. Apt, isn't it?]

That’s strange. Mr. Spinelli, who needed to “burn through his leave time” traveling to New York City over the summer to handle a “family situation” was evidently going to have enough time to continue his work as a board member with the HCP of Huntsville & Tennessee Valley.

And then I noticed it.

Cadri Consultant/Cadre Consulting: Separated At Birth?

Mr. Spinelli is a “Consultant” with Cadre Consulting, and for some unusual reason he has been since 2009 – Present (3 years).

Really, you’ve got to wait a second. I thought that Mr. Spinelli was an employee of Huntsville City Schools for at least 13 months of those three years? Was he moonlighting? Did he have the Superintendent’s permission to continue his employment with an outside consulting firm while working for the district?

And what about that name? Cadre Consulting is remarkably similar to Cadri Consultant, isn’t it? And since Dr. Wardynski clearly stated during his remarks on the 20th that Mr. Spinelli would be at Mr. Taylor’s “disposal going forward,” and since Mr. Spinelli is still on a board of directors here in Huntsville, well then it seems reasonable to assume that the spelling issue on the Temporary Agreements for September 20th is just a typo, right?

An Honest Mistake

Surely that wasn’t an attempt to hide the fact that Mr. Spinelli is still being paid by the district despite his resignation, and not only still being paid, but at a minimum he (or someone in his company) is receiving a 36% increase in hourly salary. At the most, that hourly salary increase jumps to 180%.

And it would further seem that the “going forward” part of that deal is expected to last for four years.

Oh yeah, Mr. Spinelli’s original contract with the district was for three years. In other words, not only is he receiving a raise, but he’s also receiving a two-year contract extension.

So now our district, which supposedly cannot afford to even consider reinstating our teachers’ STEP raises that have been frozen since 2011, can suddenly afford not one but two CSFOs.

Friends Of Casey

It truly is good to be friends with Dr. Wardynski, isn’t it. He’s quite generous with taxpayer monies where his friends and supporters are concerned.

It’s a shame that he doesn’t consider teachers and students who are struggling in ever increasing class sizes because “we just cannot afford to pay for teachers” to be his friends.

Please keep this in mind the next time someone tells you that we just simply cannot afford to give our teachers even a 1% raise every four years. Our district can certainly afford to give raises; they’re just picky about who they give them to.

And teachers don’t count.

I wonder if Spinelli went ahead and factored his new raise into the district’s 2013 budget that the board approved on September 4th? I wouldn’t bet against it.

The post Spinelli Resigns Receives up to 180% Raise appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Today, in response to our rally in the rain, Dr. Wardynski granted the Huntsville Times an interview concerning the Butler incident on September 17th. In this interview, Dr. Wardynski once again, “told The Times . . . that the girl has been granted a transfer to Xxxxxx High while the school investigates the allegations . . . .”

He has again, again, announced to the city where this child was being transferred to. In the words of Joseph N. Welch, “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you no sense of decency?”

Clearly, this man, whom three of the five current board members voted to hire last July, has none.

None, whatsoever.

Wardynski Shamelessly Reveals the Placement of the Victim Again

Some have claimed both here and on other news media outlets and blogs across the city that the mother of the victim was the first to reveal the name of the school to which her daughter was being transferred.

This could not be further from the truth.

I have met the mom. She is suffering attempting to know what to do for her daughter at this point, as any mother–or parent–would be. She has not revealed to the community where her daughter was transferred to.

No, Dr. Wardynski alone and through a “district spokesperson” has been the one responsible for revealing to the entire city.

While it is possible that he is within the letter of the law to reveal this information on such a consistent and regular basis, he certainly is not within the bounds of human decency for doing so.

Once again, he is going out of his way to blame the victim and to victimize her yet again for being involved in, as he described it to The Times, “horseplay.”

He is, in other words, taking his standard approach to problems and issues raised by parents about the district of blaming and accusing the parents for these problems. He is, as he said once to a close friend, telling all of us, “Don’t tell me how to do my job.”

Well, sir, it seems that someone needs to.

It would be nice to have a superintendent who didn’t accuse the victim of being involved in “horseplay.”

It would be nice to have a superintendent who didn’t implicitly blame the mother for not “disenrolling” her daughter Thursday night after he granted her a temporary transfer once the central office had closed.

It would be nice, in other words, to have a superintendent who could actually empathize with a young girl who was beaten, stripped and embarrassed in front of her classmates.

But no.

The Superintendent We Deserve

Instead we have one who believes that he knows more about education than those who have dedicated their entire lives to the calling.

Instead we have one who believes that he knows more about meeting the needs of special education students than either trained professionals, experienced aides or their parents.

Instead we have one who has the gall to believe that he knows more about parenting your children than you do, and he certainly believes he knows more about it than the victim’s mother.

What Not to Say to a Parent

Twice in my short life as a parent I’ve had other adults say to me, “We love your children almost as much as you . . . .”

Most parents cannot even begin to imagine saying that to another parent because we know, absolutely know, that no matter how much we care for the children of our friends, there’s simply no way that we can love them anywhere near as much as their parents do. It’s simply not possible.

And yet, twice now I’ve been told this by two people.

Strangely enough, both of these people are currently in the upper echelons of the senior administration for Huntsville City Schools. One is a fairly new employee to the district who said a couple of years ago before starting work with the district.

The other, I’m sure will come as no surprise, was Dr. Casey Wardynski via an email on April 11, 2012.

The man truly believes that he, and he alone, knows how to raise your children.

It’s a shame he’s incapable of showing it during the aftermath of his actions and decisions at Butler High.

__________

Just so there’s no misunderstanding: despite the fact that the district has chosen to regularly and consistently reveal the schools that they have temporarily transferred this young girl to, and despite the fact that other media outlets continue to report the location openly, I will not do so here out of respect for this young girl and her family.

I will also ask any of my commenters on the blog to also refrain from using the name of the school. I will edit any comment that specifically refers to the name of the student or where she is or is not transferred in the future. I’m not doing this to silence anyone’s opinion or comments; I’m doing this out of respect for the family.

I call on all the major media outlets in Huntsville to do the same. I don’t care if it’s legal (I don’t believe it is); it isn’t right.

The post Wardynski Has No Decency appeared first on Geek Palaver.

There will be a peaceful demonstration tomorrow (Monday, October 1, 2012) from 11:00am – 1:00pm outside of the Merts building at 200 White Street, N. to end the superintendent’s and the board of education’s disregard of student safety issues in our schools. On Thursday, September 20th, three days after a 15 year old girl was assaulted in a bathroom at Butler High School, Dr. Wardynski claimed that principals were telling him that they “don’t have any discipline problems” as a result of his decision to incorporate laptops into the classrooms. As I pointed out on Friday, it’s amazingly easy to reduce both in school and out of school suspensions when you refuse to allow incidents to be reported.

Teachers’ Reports on Student Safety Aren’t Being Submitted

Just today I had a conversation with a former employee of the district who reported to the office nearly 200 separate Class I, II, and III to his principal’s office last year. At the end of the year when he checked on the status of those reports basically 10% of the referrals had actually been reported to the central office.

This year they’re reporting even less.

Please don’t misunderstand: there are times when things get reported because the teacher and the administration are following the letter of the law. Most of us find the suspension of a six-year old for sexual harassment for singing “Sexy and I Know It,” (which occurred in Wardynski’s (and Cooper’s and Spinelli’s) old stomping ground of Aurora, Colorado) to be an extreme example of a school following the letter of the law unnecessarily.

But when a teacher is punched in the mouth by a student, and nothing happens to that student, then we know we have a problem.

Following The Broad Academy Playbook

In this area, Dr. Wardynski seems to be following standard Broad Academy procedures of creating a hostile working environment for teachers. Another Broad Academy Superintendent was accused of creating an atmosphere that lacked discipline. “Administrators were reluctant to suspend or expel disruptive students.”

It would be extremely interesting to compare incidents reported by teachers to those actually submitted to the district’s Pupil Services office, wouldn’t it?

I’d bet, however, that like times when I’ve asked for a report on how many TFAers were being hired this year and where they were being placed that a report showing incidents reported by teachers and those passed on by principals would be somewhere around the 10% average. Anyone want to take that bet?

Didn’t think so.

And this year they’re reporting about 50% less.

Putting Kids At Risk For PR

It makes for nice propaganda for the corporate (Pearson) handlers to put on their website, and for “research” like Project RED to report in their non-peer reviewed “studies” that show how computers are the new cure-all.

The superintendent is regularly putting all of our students at risk in order to promote his political/corporate agenda.

Think it won’t happen to your child? I certainly hope it won’t but if it happens to one child, it can happen to any child. He put Special Education children at risk a year ago, and then again this year.

Now he’s doing it to every child.

Breaking Alabama Administrative Code

Because safety doesn’t matter to him. If it did, he would have granted the transfer of the student from Butler immediately. If it did, once he did grant the transfer he wouldn’t have revealed which school she was being moved to in violation of Alabama Administrative Code 290-3-1-.02 (1) (e) 2 which reads:

A student who becomes a victim of a violent criminal offense committed on school property during school hours or at school-sponsored activities shall be given an opportunity to transfer to a safe public school within the LEA. The LEA shall notify the student’s parent/guardian of the right to transfer as soon as practicable, not to exceed ten (10) calendar days from the date of a final determination by the school board or its designee that a violent criminal offense has occurred.

The incident at Butler occurred on September 17th. The transfer was held up until September 28th or two days past the requirement of this code.

Again, if you think this can’t happen to your child at your school, take a look at the Student Incident Report from 2011-2012. This questionable report shows that incidents occurred at every school in the district except four.

In an environment where teachers are demoralized, overworked and exhausted; in an environment where principals are facing constant changes in staff and responsibilities; in an environment where the Superintendent is willing to put children at risk simply to make a public relations point:

EVERY CHILD IS AT RISK.

Peaceful Demonstrations

Tomorrow and Thursday are your opportunities to let the superintendent and the school board that you’re watching and that you’re not going to take it anymore.

Tomorrow a group of concerned parents and citizens are meeting at the Merts Building 200 White Street, N., Huntsville, AL. from 11:00am to 1:00pm come rain or shine.

Then on Thursday, October 4th at 5:30pm, we will be joined by students as we attend the school board meeting and speaking to the board directly.

If you would like to be placed on the list to speak, you must sign up to speak before the meeting starts. You may do so in two ways either by contacting the office of the Superintendent at 256-428-6810 and being asked to be placed on the Citizens’ Comments list. (Has anyone else noticed just how hard it is to get any actual contact information off the district’s website lately? Guess they don’t want you to call.) You will be asked your Name, the Group you represent, and the Purpose of your comments.

Alternately, you may simply show up for the meeting early (the doors typically open around 5:00pm), and sign in on the Citizens’ Comments sheet. That sheet is usually available in the hallway until about 5:15pm.

If there is any way you can join us tomorrow or Thursday, I would love to see you there as we stand up for our kids.

The post Student Safety Demonstration Tomorrow and Thursday at Merts appeared first on Geek Palaver.

There will be a planning meeting for a protest of Huntsville City Schools’ refusal to make our schools safe today at 3:00 pm in the gazebo at Big Spring park. This meeting is open to anyone who is concerned about the Superintendent’s approach to using our children’s safety as a propaganda device to support his anti-school agenda.

For all those who believe that our children’s safety in school should not be put at risk for the superintendent’s political gain, this is one opportunity to let your voice be heard.

For all those who believe that our school board is more concerned about building projects and their own political futures than they are about education and our kids, this is one opportunity to let your voice be heard.

For all those who believe that the role of the district is to support our teachers and not threaten them, this is one opportunity to let your voice be heard.

For all those who are tired of parents being ignored and marginalized in the education of our kids, this is one opportunity to let your voice be heard.

You may find out more about the meeting and the planned protest of the central office on Facebook at an event sponsored by Terri Rector Michal. Please come to the planning meeting today to find out more about the protest of the abuse that Dr. Wardynski is heaping on our teachers and now even our students.

It’s past time to turn this ship around.

The post Student Safety Protest Meeting Today at 3:00pm Big Spring appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Since Dr. Wardynski arrived, the district has operated under two sets of rules and according to two standards. Hypocrisy had been normalized here.

• We’ve seen it in response to the rules applied to The Pinnacle Schools with regards to their staff.
• We’ve seen this double standard when we see that the superintendent’s evaluation is written specifically for him while everyone else has to take a standardized test.
• We’ve seen double standards about sexual harassment complaints that are brought against former CSFOs. (Maybe that’s why he resigned? Who knows.)
• We’ve seen double standards concerning filing a grievance against the Superintendent and the Board; they’ll happily receive and address complaints raised about teachers, but complaints raised about the superintendent are summarily dismissed.
• We’ve seen double standards in the hiring policies of senior administrators and teachers where teachers are hired for the state minimum, while superintendents, deputy superintendents and former CSFOs are allowed to set their own salaries.

Double Standards/Hypocrisy Continues

Last Thursday, the double standards continued with the revelation from Ms. Alta Morrison that the Teach for America recruits (TFAers), of which there are approximately forty currently working in the district, received the benefit of a “wonderful reception” at some undisclosed location last Wednesday, September 19th. It seems that Ms. Morrison, Dr. Robinson, and Mr. Blair at least were in attendance. Mr. Birney was not present at the board meeting on the 20th, so we do not know if he attended the reception, and Mrs. McCaulley made no mention of the reception in her comments.

Maybe these receptions are the reason that TFA is so busy asking for your dimes in JC Penney’s?

So what was said about this “reception?”

Ms. Morrison began her comments by telling the community how she was expecting a room full of old, tired teachers, and what she instead saw were “fresh, young teachers who were excited about teaching.”

Honestly, when the one board member who voted against bringing in TFAers is saying how impressed she is with how “young” and “fresh” they are, all hope for our current teachers really is lost.

To her credit, later in the citizens’ comments time, Ms. Morrison revised her comments to say that she didn’t mean to imply that our current teachers weren’t “fresh,” but the damage was long since done.

Dr. Robinson next picked up the TFA banner and ran with it claiming that the TFAers are doing “great things with this new technology!” Implying of course that anyone who claims that there are problems with the system that are completely beyond their control are just “ankle-biters” who don’t really understand teaching.

Once she finished her beatification of the “young, fresh TFAers,” Mr. Blair decided it was time for him to continue the praise of the reception and the TFAers as well.

Seems all you need to do to win a majority of the board’s support is to feed them at a reception.

Shoulda thought of that years ago.

Normalizing The Extreme

Later, Dr. Wardynski added his two cents by claiming that the TFAers aren’t really TFAers anymore. Now, they’re just “our teachers.”

This is an intentional attempt to normalize the use of “teachers” who are not actually trained to be teachers. It’s an attempt to show the district that anyone can teach.

It’s not a gift; it’s not an art; it’s not even a skill that needs to be taught.

In Wardynski’s world, all that’s required to be a teacher is a warm body that doesn’t cost much to keep in the classroom. Teaching can be done by machine; all that’s needed in his system is someone to tell students to push play on their computers screens.

Wardynski Repeats Himself

Dr. Wardynski does not, no matter what he says in emails or editorials, does not appreciate the work of teachers. He doesn’t understand teaching. He doesn’t believe teaching matters. And that’s simple to see when you listen to his goals for the district. He claims that:

Schools are long overdue for that transformation. The American education system, for the most part, is still run the way it was more than 100 years ago, before mankind even flew in an airplane much less in space.

You know, Dr. Wardynski, since you’re sitting at a computer, creating your editorials and emailing them to the paper to publish without comment, don’t you think you could take a minute to google the Wright Brothers first flight? If you did, you would see that “mankind” (nice sexist language there supes) first flew on December 17, 1903, or just shy of 109 years ago.

American Educational Reforms: Full of Sound and Fury

His estimate that education still happens the same way it did 100 years ago is even more inaccurate. If he would bother himself (you know, since he cares so much about education) and take just a few minutes to read any history of education in America, he would find that the only constant in American education over the last century is a maddening race after the Next Big Thing.

But again, Dr. Wardynski’s only real concern is power and control, not education or even being historically accurate.

One final question, Dr. Wardynski: If the TFAers are just “teachers” now, if there isn’t a difference between TFAers and actual teachers, then it should be easy to tell me the last time the district hosted or participated in a formal reception for all of our actual teachers.

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Dr. Wardynski concluded his evidence-free editorial with the statement: “The countdown has begun.” Funny how a launch and a time bomb both have countdowns, isn’t it?

The post Double Standards Continue For Teach For America appeared first on Geek Palaver.

A reader of this blog (Concerned Parent) has posted a series of good questions that I thought worth of a separate post as we seek a way to move forward.

Please read the questions and respond to them if you wish. You may, of course, respond anonymously.

Here are the questions:

1. How many Huntsville residents who have a vested interest in student(s) attending HCS have written letters to the HT in the last four weeks concerning issues they have with HCS 1:1 initiative?
2. Of those answering #1 who have, how many had their letters published?
3. How many Huntsville residents with a vested interest in student(s) attending HCS have corresponded with their HCS Board member(s) during the last three to four weeks have been told “I have been staying in contact with Principals in the district as well as the Superintendent. As a Board member, my role is to not be involved in day-to-day operations…that is the job of the Superintendent and his staff (which includes all employees of the system). Because I want to stay abreast of what is going on, I do talk with the leaders in the various areas to be aware of any brewing issues?”
4. How many who have corresponded with their HCS School Board member(s) and received a similar response to that in question #3 are satisfied with Board member(s) response?
5. How many Huntsville City residents with a vested interest in a student attending HCS have communicated same concerns to their State School Board representative in the last 4 weeks?
6. Of those who have expressed their concerns to their State School Board representative, how many have received a response to date?
7. How many of those who have received a response from their State School Board representative are satisfied with response?
8. How many Huntsville City residents with a vested interest in student(s) are willing to privately gather and devise a strategy (vetting process TBD)?

Thanks for reading and for your responses.

Russell

The post Who’s Out There: Move Forward appeared first on Geek Palaver.

So the Citizens’ Comments tonight were dominated by two dads from Goldsmith Schiffman, a retired Huntsville High Principal from the 70s, and an executive from Cisco who claimed not to know that the district was using Cisco products. Parents wanting to stand up for our teachers were sent up first while the Superintendent’s supporters were saved till the end allowing the meeting to end on a glorified note.

There was a teacher, along with a few parents and grandparents who came to ask questions tonight, but Mr. Blair, who is in charge of calling citizens up, made sure that all of the potentially negative comments were dealt with first, saving the glowing praise for the end. (I was, when I signed in at 5:12pm, the last person on the list of people wishing to speak; however, I was the fourth out of twelve people called to speak tonight.)

First up was Pam Hill a teacher in the district who passionately told the disinterested board and superintendent that teachers are losing hope.

Next came two grandparents of a special education child who is new to the district and is having, from what I could gather from their comments, difficulties obtaining services. Their pain and suffering was palatable, and the board’s refusal to show any human decency and compassion was, sadly, typical. I wish them well with their journey. It doesn’t sound as if it is beginning well for them.

Then I was called up to speak.

A Call for the Superintendent to Resign

If you’re interested, here were my comments. They were, atypically, brief, but to the point:

There has been a lot said tonight and over the past month about the digital transition, but I’ve noticed one thing that hasn’t really been pointed out.

Because of the actions of this superintendent and this board of education, our teachers are afraid to speak up, both privately and publicly, when something is interfering with the educational environment of their classrooms.

They are afraid to ask questions. They are afraid to point out deficiencies. They are afraid to say anything other than “Everything is great in Huntsville City Schools.”

Those who are both parents of school aged children and teachers are afraid to even ask questions of their board members for fear of being harassed for not being a team player.

In other words, the climate of fear and intimidation that the superintendent has created over the past 14 months has succeeded in silencing legitimate questions and concerns about the quality of education occurring in our schools. Education is a process of asking questions and seeking answers. If teachers are afraid to do those things, education is no longer possible.

In light of this, Dr. Wardynski, I am here tonight to respectfully ask you to tender your resignation as superintendent of Huntsville City Schools. It is time for you to move on. We wish you well.

A Smirking Response

When I finished my comments, Dr. Wardynski smirked at me, knowingly. I should have known that he had an ace up his sleeve at that point.

I was followed by Laura Lively who also passionately spoke on behalf of our teachers reminding the board that technology cannot teach kids. While they were slightly more sympathetic to her than they were to the grandparents, Wardynski made a point of discounting her main point in his concluding comments when he claimed that artificial intelligence would free teachers up from evaluating student’s work.

The Glorification of Wardynski

Next up were two dads from Goldsmith Schiffman who pointedly shared with the board and superintendent just how much they love the computers. One of them, Mr. Ron Jones, made a point to share with the board that his child’s teacher was doing amazing work with the computers, and perhaps some of the other teachers who weren’t doing as well merely needed more training.

They were followed by Reggie Hill, one of the candidates for the district 1 school board seat this past month. He wanted the district to promote human interaction rather than working through computers.

Then in fairly quick succession, all covering the same basic territory were Bill Smith praising the Kahn Academy, technology, and flipping classrooms; Joe Anglin former principal of Huntsville High School who said that the district is “on the way back” as he praised Wardynski and the board claiming that students will have an “edge” when they leave school; another dad who read from his daughter’s Facebook page where she complained about being given a textbook, and finally, Mr. Scott Kirby of Cisco.

Mr. Kirby claimed that he didn’t actually know until tonight that the district was using Cisco equipment, and he sung the praises of the Kahn Academy and Bill Gates. He says that the schools “are always going to have problems” and that it would be better if the press didn’t always try to make such a big deal about them.

By the way, if Mr. Kirby would use some of his technology occasionally, he would see that the press has been praising the digital conversion basically nonstop since it was announced in June. There has been, in the Huntsville Times, exactly two articles asking questions about problems that the district was having.

Problems that, according to Wardynski, have now been resolved and improved up to “105%.”

Which is, of course, impossible.

Command and Control of Citizens’ Comments

So my thought that citizens’ comments might be our one chance to ask un-vetted questions was wildly optimistic on my part it seems.

Dr. Wardynski has gotten better at controlling the school board meetings to suit his own purposes. With a little help from Mr. Blair in shuffling the speakers around, he’s even attempting to control the message coming out of the citizens’ comments section of the board meeting. I suppose having on average two hours to say and push any message that he wants isn’t enough. He needs those few three minute blocks at the end as well.

So it was easy to smirk at my suggestion that it was time for him to resign for what he’s done to our teachers. First, he doesn’t care about them or about parents. This isn’t about education; it’s about control.

And second, he knew he had stacked the deck tonight. And it’s a lot easier to win when you’re playing footsie with the dealer.

Perhaps I didn’t go far enough tonight in my call for his resignation. I should have called for all six of them to step down.

The post Stacking the Citizens’ Comments Deck appeared first on Geek Palaver.

The Huntsville City school board meeting will be tonight at 5:30pm at the Merts Center, 200 White Street, Huntsville. They will allow citizens’ comments.

Citizens’ comments are nearly the only time that a citizen can address the board and the superintendent on matters that concern them without interruption and without being censored, so long as you keep it under three minutes, don’t become repetitive, and don’t call into question the good name and character of anyone. (That rule doesn’t apply to the superintendent or the employees of the district by the way. Some employees think it their duty to call into question the good name and character of those who dare to question the Superintendent and his policies.)

But don’t let that dissuade you. It doesn’t hurt at all to be called names when you’re standing up for your children and their teachers. In fact, it’s kinda nice. It’s confirmation that they actually heard you.

While they will let you speak, they will typically not offer any response to your questions or comments.

Yes, I know that Mr. Blair’s “Preamble to Citizens’ Comments” claims that they will “study any issue raised” and get back to you, but they don’t really mean it. Not once have they ever gotten back to me on any issue I’ve raised during Citizens’ Comments.

However, there is no better way to make the board hear you. At least then the board members won’t be able to claim (as at least one was still doing yesterday) that they haven’t heard of any problems.

Astonishing, aren’t they?

If you would like to be placed on the list to speak, you must sign up to speak before the meeting starts. You may do so in two ways either by contacting the office of the Superintendent at 256-428-6810 and being asked to be placed on the Citizens’ Comments list. (Has anyone else noticed just how hard it is to get any actual contact information off the district’s website lately? Guess they don’t want you to call.) You will be asked your Name, the Group you represent, and the Purpose of your comments.

Alternately, you may simply show up for the meeting early (the doors typically open around 5:00pm), and sign in on the Citizens’ Comments sheet. That sheet is usually available in the hallway until about 5:15pm.

Oh, it is certainly possible that the superintendent will break out the metal detectors again. They brought them to the meetings back in May and June for a little while, and then decided that they weren’t necessary after all.

Just remember that the board and the district really appreciates hearing from you when you’re emptying your pockets for them.

It would be great to see a huge crowd there tomorrow night. If you see me (and yeah, I’ll be there barring an emergency), come up and say hi. I’ll be the guy sitting quietly, doing his best to intimidate no one, but tweeting away a record of the meeting. You may follow me on Twitter @russwinn or on the Geek Palaver Facebook Page.

If you can’t make it, you may watch on ETV on channels 17 (Comcast) or 99 (Knology) beginning at 5:30pm. The district often also streams the meeting on the web at on the district web site.

Come out and have fun with us as we listen to just how smashingly the digital initiative is clicking along now. I bet that by tomorrow night the network is operating at 150%.

The post School Board Meeting Thursday, 9/20 at 5:30pm appeared first on Geek Palaver.

So it’s been a busy weekend for the Superintendent and his cheerleaders. Having that many phone calls to ignore from the “ankle biters” must have made the weekend difficult for the poor guy.

It seems that he didn’t actually ignore the Huntsville Times, but his emailed response were not received by the Times ”possibly due to a technical problem.”

God does love irony. Bet Wardynski doesn’t.

So after a busy weekend, you’d think their response might be something like that of Dr. David Copeland, Madison County Superintendent who is holding a series of meetings “seeking parental feedback” on their school system, its finances and plans. He’s so interested in hearing from parents that he’s actually scheduling multiple meetings from September 2012 through April 2013. The county’s superintendent actually wants to hear from parents.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a superintendent that actually gives a damn what parents think? Nah, Dr. Wardynski just doesn’t operate that way.

Instead, he schedules meetings at schools, like one that had been scheduled at Blossomwood Elementary for tomorrow night, and then with barely 24 hours notice, he cancels them and moves them to Huntsville High instead.

We’re Going To Meet, eh, Sometime

The district has been talking about having meetings with parents since they voted to start the digital conversion on June 21st, but for whatever reason, they just couldn’t manage to get them scheduled until tonight.

So here’s the schedule. All meetings will begin at 6:30pm.:

• Tuesday, September 18th — Huntsville High School (and feeders)
• Wednesday, September 19th — Grissom High School (and feeders)
• Monday, September 24th — Columbia High School (and feeders)
• Tuesday, September 25th — Lee/New Century High Schools (and feeders)
• Wednesday, September 26th — Butler High School (and feeders)
• Wednesday, October 3rd — Johnson High School (and feeders)

That’s right. Six meetings and out. And they finally managed to schedule them on Monday, September 17th.

The superintendent really understands planning, doesn’t he?

I suppose that all depends on what you think his actual goal for these meetings really is.

If you think that the superintendent wishes to help parents understand this digital transition, well then, you’d be right to assume that this lack of planning on the part of the district was unfortunate.

But if you believe that our superintendent actually cares what parents think, well honestly, you’re just not paying attention.

If the district actually wanted parents to attend, they would have planned these meetings long ago.

But they didn’t.

They failed to plan. They failed to organize. They changed the meeting times and locations at the last minute. The superintendent insulted parents who actually do bother to show up with questions and concerns, and then Mr. Ward and the district cheerleaders had the temerity to actually act surprised when the meetings “had scant attendance?”

Unmitigated gail.

Parental Input Into The Process? Nope. But Groups Making $30 Million Off Transition? You Betcha.

I read somewhere today from someone not directly associated with the district believes that parents should please stop saying that they “did not have any input.” He suggested that parents should contact the district by email, phone and at board meetings.

Here’s the thing: I have emailed, phoned, met with and spoken at nearly every public meeting of the district officials since June 21st, and I know for a fact that neither parents nor teachers had any input into this digital transition at all. So, respectfully, no I won’t stop saying that parents did not have any input. They didn’t. And they still haven’t.

The only people who had any input into this decision are people who directly benefit from the transition happening:

• Pearson making $21,902,845 over six years.
• HP making an as yet still unofficial amount of $6.9 million. (This is unofficial because as you can see the published contract does not contain any hard numbers. I have asked about this, but of course I’ve received no answer.)
• PPT Solutions (the IT Consultants headed by Laquita Nelson in charge of the updated network) making from November 2011 thru July 2012 $438,216.00

The rest of the list includes Dr. Wardynski, about five people in the inner circle, and the board by proxy.

That’s it.

So, three paid groups making nearly $30,000,000 and the Superintendent’s inner circle.

There were no active classroom teachers involved in the decision.

There were no parents who were not employees of the district involved in the decision.

This decision was forced upon us all.

Real Purpose of the Parents’ Workshops

The purpose of these Parents’ Workshops isn’t to actually involve and help parents. The purpose is to tell them, once again, how great this is going to be for their kids. As Keith Ward said, “There are really two components to it, first to show a bit about what the curriculum and resources are like. They’re also to help with problems the parents might have.”

So the meetings will begin with more propaganda from the district, more district produced films of a teacher and a student working together from a tightly controlled script, showing how wonderful the change is.

If there are any parents who can’t figure out the computers, well, we’ll help them out a bit on the side. If they ask nicely.

Oh, and if past public meetings with the Superintendent are any indication, be ready for the superintendent to openly mock and/or insult any parent who dares to ask a substantive question. Don’t believe me? Just as Carol Claflin whose daughter attends Hampton Cove Elementary. She had this to say in the Times on Sunday:

Carol Claflin, parent of a third-grader at Hampton Cove Elementary, said she found Wardynski argumentative at the meeting held at that school on Aug. 12 and that few of her questions were answered effectively. She added that a “false dilemma” is being created by the district.

“Parents are either supportive of this initiative or we are anti-technology, anti-progress, anti-anything good for our kids,” Claflin said. “This is ridiculous and I am tired of being vilified so that the district office and Wardynski can distract everyone from the fact this digital initiative has been a negligent disaster at best.”

These meetings aren’t designed to help parents. They’re designed to put us (along with teachers) in our places. They’re designed to shut us up.

Calling All Ankle Biters

So don’t let the superintendent succeed in silencing your voice.

Despite his best efforts to keep attendance low by scheduling the meetings with the two largest high schools with less than 24 hours notice, despite his attempts to bore parents into silent acquiescence by showing propaganda after propaganda, despite his rude dismissal of any idea, suggestion or question raised by a parent about how this is supposed to be helping our children learn, don’t let him win.

Show up at the meetings. Ask questions. Get your neighbors to do so, too. Yes, you’ll likely be insulted by the superintendent. So what? HE WORKS FOR YOU.

It’s time for the ankle biters, as Wardynski calls those of us who dare to care more about children and education than his inept plans, to stand and let the superintendent know that he doesn’t control us. He doesn’t rule over us. And he won’t silence us with his insults.

We care about our schools, our teachers, and our children even if he doesn’t. And it’s past time he understood this.

The post Calling All Ankle Biters! appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Why is it when a public teacher does something wrong, everyone immediately calls for her (or his) head, but when a private company does the same thing, or usually something far worse, everyone rushes to defend it? This is indeed The Pinnacle of Hypocrisy.

The History

According to Karen Lee, CEO of The Pinnacle Schools, Dr. Wardynski and the Huntsville City Schools Board of Education knew that her sons had been arrested for drug trafficking in December. As reported by WAFF’s Nick Lough, Lee said, “When my sons were arrested I let them [Superintendent/BOE] know and that was before the board vote took place. I let them know immediately what was going on and that this was the situation.” The Board and Superintendent knew and yet yesterday they chose to defend The Pinnacle Schools’ actions.

If you’d like to read the background on how all of this information came to light, please read the excellent Merts Center Monitor blogs on the issue beginning on September 11, 2012: (“The Pinnacle of Hypocrisy,” ”Why Didn’t The Huntsville Times Report That 24 Pounds of Marijuana Were Confiscated December 9, 2011,” “The Pinnacle Debacle: Who Knew What When,” and “Thank You Crystal Bonvillian. Innocent Until Proven Guilty. Nepotism.” If not for this blogger’s work, none of this would have ever come to light, and Eric Lee would still be working as a counselor with Huntsville City Schools students staying at the Elk River facility. I would also recommend reading The Huntsville Times article published yesterday: “Huntsville school officials defend alternative school after owners’ sons face drug charges.”

The arrests occurred on December 9, 2012 a week after Karen Lee made her sales presentation to the board of education on December 1st. (The Times got the date wrong). According to her statement to WAFF, the board of education knew of the arrest “when my sons were arrested.” In other words, they had just under one month between being informed and their next discussion of The Pinnacle Schools agreement to think about the implications of contracting out the district’s students to a private organization. And they did it anyway.

This is a dereliction of duty.

During the board work session on January 5, 2012 concerning the contract with The Pinnacle Schools, the board spent about thirty minutes discussing at length how HCS students would be better served, for less money (even though it actually costs twice as much), by The Pinnacle Schools as opposed to The Seldon Center.

Anyone care to guess what not one person in the board room discussed during the January 5th meeting? That’s right. There was not one mention of the arrests of Lee’s sons, despite the fact that during her presentation she used her son’s troubled youth to sell her services.

The Board and Superintendent’s Response

Mr. Blair is right: It’s often unfair to judge a parent for the actions of her children; however, when the parent sells the district a $1.2 million dollar contract by referring to her sons, well, it seems to me that she is pointedly upholding their actions as a model to follow.

But no one in the boardroom mentioned it.

As Merts Center Monitor points out, either they believed this information “unimportant,” or they “banked on the public not finding out or not caring.” Neither option is good for our schools or our students, is it?

On January 19th, the board met to vote on the contract and spent about another 10 minutes discussing it. Evidently the district added language to the contract that required The Pinnacle Schools to hire “a diverse staff and will be purposeful in recruiting and retaining staff from diverse backgrounds.” I doubt that addition was made to include those with a recent, and as yet unsettled, arrest for drug trafficking, but I could be wrong.

It’s clear that the board and superintendent knew things that I didn’t.

The contract was unanimously approved.

This is the same contract that Blair said was, “carefully” examined by the board. It seems that careful examination doesn’t include the public’s right to know, does it?

The Board And Superintendent Defend Pinnacle

During the months that followed, Eric Lee served as a counselor at the Elk River facility until Thursday afternoon, yes Thursday afternoon. An individual with an unresolved drug trafficking and weapons possessions case was serving as a counselor at a facility designed as the last stop to help students who might themselves have drug abuse, trafficking, or weapons possessions issues (as detailed in Class III – MAJOR OFFENSES in the 2012-2013 Official Student-Parent Handbook).

Perhaps the board thought no one could be better suited to work with “those” kids than someone with an open arrest case?

While I do not know that the board knew that Eric Lee was a counselor working at Elk River, we do now know that they knew he was an employee with The Pinnacle Schools.

They knew, they did nothing to stop it, and they defended it.

This. Is. Wrong.

Why It Matters

So why would any of this matter? The contract is signed. Why should anyone care at this point? Haven’t all of our children done things to embarrass us? Surely, Mr. Blair was right when he said that parents shouldn’t be judged by their kids, right? (And my all time favorite:) This is old news.

Here are a few reasons why this matters, today:

Corporatized Education means that the public, and in particular parents, no longer have any voice in our schools.

From February until Thursday, September 13th, a person with an unresolved felony arrest was actively working as a counselor with Huntsville City Schools students. As Lee told the Times on the 13th, “her son would remain an employee, just as any employee would if they were charged with a crime but had not been convicted.” Perhaps she should have made it a bit clearer by saying, “but had not yet been convicted,” but either way this represents a radical departure from the standards applied to all of our other teachers and counselors in Huntsville City Schools. And that’s the problem.

As I was told on a Facebook discussion yesterday, “Outside groups cannot tell any business how to handle internal issues.” Exactly. Once we subcontract our public education funds to a private business, we no longer have any say over the quality of the education that occurs there. We no longer have any say over the hiring practices/employment policies that occur there. We no longer have any say over what happens in those schools.

And that’s the problem.

These are our children that we’re subjecting to the whims and fancies of a private corporation that seemingly has two concerns: 1. To make a profit, and 2. To make sure her own children have a job.

This matters because the public no longer has a voice in public education.

Eric Lee was actively dealing with his own drug/criminal activity while attempting to “counsel” children.

While it is true that an effective counselor is one who can identify with those whom he/she is counseling, no one is capable of counseling others out of a situation they are in themselves. That’s like trying to tell your neighbor living in a hole how to climb out while you’re stuck yourself.

The Pinnacle Schools claims under their values, “We will never violate the trust placed in us.”

Public School Teachers are held to a higher standard.  

Do you remember Coach Keith Henderson? Coach Henderson was arrested for DUI on August 14, 2011. According to Coach Henderson, he made repeated requests to meet with Dr. Wardynski, and all of those requests were refused. Coach Henderson was fired four days later by the superintendent.

I apologize to Coach Henderson for bringing up this painful time in his life; I’m pleased that he is currently employed by Arab City Schools.

For the record, Coach Henderson was never convicted of the DUI charge.

Why is it okay for our students to be counseled in a private setting by someone with an outstanding drug trafficking charges against him, but if a Huntsville City School employee were facing the same charges, they would be fired nearly immediately?

Why is the Huntsville City Schools Board of Education, which voted unanimously to fire Coach Henderson, now defending The Pinnacle Schools’ decision to keep Eric Lee in the classroom?

This is what having money and connections will buy you in this town: more money and an active and vocal defense when you or your employees do something wrong.

Corporatized education can evidently do no wrong in this town. And it seems from the point of view of our board and superintendent that public teachers can do no right.

What Coach Henderson did was wrong. But if the board and superintendent can defend Eric Lee and The Pinnacle Schools, then they owe Coach Henderson and his family an apology.

Mr. Blair, and the rest of the board of education for whom he spoke on Thursday, should be ashamed.

I don’t believe that Dr. Wardynski has it in him.

And finally, the main reason that this matters:

Because ALL of our students, even those who make mistakes, MATTER.

Dr. Wardynski likes to claim that every student in our district deserves a high-quality education. This incident proves that neither he nor the board actually believe that.

It’s far past time to rid our public schools of those who hate public education. We need to start with the Superintendent and the Board of Education.

The post Why The Pinnacle of Hypocrisy Matters appeared first on Geek Palaver.

During an interview last night on WHNT, the Superintendent finally let teachers teach, temporarily at least. Yep, WHNT, the first mainstream news outlet to address the issues with computer usage in the district, got Dr. Wardynski on the record saying that teachers were allowed to use the resources available to them to meet the needs of their students. I’d be excited if we weren’t a month into the school year already.

Here’s the story if you haven’t seen it already.

Paper Allowed In Classrooms Again

When asked about teachers being told that they cannot use paper in the classroom, Dr. Wardynski responded:

First of all, I’m telling you that never happened. But even if it did, they’re not obeying cause I see plenty of worksheets. And I see plenty of printing and when I see it, I don’t say a word, so wouldn’t you think if I’d given an order like that and I see it going out I’d say something about it? My main comment is, do what it takes to navigate the distance from where we were to where we need to be. Use the resources you need to do and if that involves using something from last year, do it.

Before we move on, lets pause and consider the superintendent’s terminology here for a moment. “They’re not obeying . . . .” That’s an interesting choice of words, isn’t it? Sounds an awful lot like a parent whining about a disobedient child, doesn’t it. (And this from the man who made a point of calling out teachers for whining back in February.)

I’m sorry, sir, but we’re not in the Army, and neither are you, anymore. Please learn how to speak and address adults. When you do, then we can talk.

Setting that aside for a moment, this interview was broadcast at 10:00pm last night (2200 for the Superintendent). If you look closely at the window in Dr. Wardynski’s office, you can see that it appears to still be daylight outside when the interview was being recorded.

Betcha can’t guess what happened around 1200 yesterday afternoon?

Teachers Get Permission To Use Books Hours Before Interview Airs

If you guessed, “Teachers were told for the first time that they could use actual, real textbooks in their classrooms to teach their students and meet their educational needs,” well, congrats. You’ve won the prize.

For the first time since the start of school three and a half weeks earlier, the district is officially allowing teachers to distribute and use textbooks (which have only recently arrived in many schools) in their classrooms to meet the needs of our students.

So much for making every day count and making sure that students progress at their own pace. It’s kinda difficult to do that when the network goes down every 15 minutes and there are no books allowed in the classroom. And it doesn’t help that the superintendent is still watching which classrooms are logged on and which aren’t.

Is Big Brother Watching?

In reference to the “heat mapping” of classrooms Jerry Hayes ask with a I-know-this-is-a-stupid-question-but-I’ve-got-to-ask-anyway smile if this was “Big Brother watching?” Dr. Wardynski had this to say:

Well, this a world of technology. In order to manage a system like that, you’ve got to be able to respond to who needs help and this is our work place, and if you’re in the work place and you’re trying to use the technology, it would be pretty hard for us to help you what antennae, what classroom and that sort of information so this is part of your work place. This is part of the work place at the Arsenal. This is part of the workplace at Cisco, any big firm that’s got a wireless system, this is the way it’s managed.

So the answer to the question that he was asked is yes. Despite the jocular approach Mr. Hayes chose to take in asking, the answer is yes, Big Brother is watching. Big Brother was watching before. Big Brother is watching still.

But teachers should feel free to use those old-fashioned, ineffective, irrelevant, absurd, ludicrous, stone-aged textbooks if they want. Of course there will be no repercussions from the superintendent whose orders are always followed . . .

Risking It All To Teach

He’s right about being “disobeyed.” Thankfully many of our adaptable teachers had gone ahead and found ways to make the first month of school productive.

They were willing to risk reprimand (which many received during the first few weeks for not being “on-line” enough). They were willing to risk their jobs and their families’ well-being to ensure that the first month of school wasn’t lost.

If you want to see a true hero today, go visit your child’s classroom. The people you see in there are underpaid, over worked, stressed, worried, fearful, beaten down, disappointed, and discouraged. Many of their peers and friends have quit. Many more are looking for ways that they can. And yet despite that, despite being called “ankle-biters” by their boss, they teach on.

And do you know why they teach? It isn’t for the money: they haven’t had a raise in years, and the Superintendent definitively stated on September 4th that he would not support reinstating the cost of living raise (despite the fact that he received a bonus of $9,220.00 last year and is eligible for another $10,000 bonus this year). It isn’t for the time off: their summer vacations were constantly interrupted this year so that they could improve their teaching skills and for the Pearson “training” fiasco.

They teach because they love kids. They teach because they believe that education improves everyone’s lives. They teach because they can.

For this, every parent in the district should stand up and cheer for our teachers. It’s past time we did that for them anyway. We should let teachers teach.

Persistent Questions: Why Are Teachers Afraid?

I am, by the way, grateful to WHNT for being the first of our local media to pick up on the story that everything might not be perfect in the “New Frontier” as the district’s cheerleaders like to call this shift. However, one central question kept flashing in my mind’s eye during the interview with the superintendent in which Mr. Hayes had to hold up a single, anonymous letter from one teacher brave enough to raise issues and questions.

Why is it okay that the superintendent has created an environment in our schools where teachers are afraid to raise questions about the pedagogical methods being forced upon their classrooms?

Why, in other words, were teachers scared to speak on the record about the educational environment of our schools? Could it be that Dr. Wardynski doesn’t actually care that much about technology in the classrooms? Could it be that the primary goal of all the inept changes being forced on our teachers this year is actually intended to simply get teachers to quit?

When you consider that a plan that even the superintendent claims should take twice as long, “We’re doing the work of six months in three,” it’s difficult to come up a good justification for making such a shift in such a hurry, isn’t it?

That story, frankly, is far more worrisome than nearly anything else discussed in this news story.

But that question wasn’t asked.

The post Let Teachers Teach appeared first on Geek Palaver.

By going so far as to produce talking points, it seems that the district really wants the public to support the idea of their one to one technology plan. They’re going so far to even distribute these  to teachers. Honestly it has much more of a political campaign feel than it does an educational decision made in the best interests of the children.

A Political Campaign

Compare this political campaign, for example, to their nearly silent support for the 6.5 mil ad valorem tax renewal, which actually was a political campaign. They held one joint press conference with the Mayor and City Council that lasted about 10 minutes, and then the superintendent mentioned it a few times at the end of a couple of board meetings.

They didn’t develop a FAQ.

They didn’t develop a thirty-minute video about it. (I wonder if they actually had parental permission to use the kids faces in that video from last Tuesday?)

They didn’t take children out of school on a “brief” bus ride on the third day of school as a testimony to how badly the tax renewal would be needed. (I’m hearing, regularly and often, that the superintendent did not get parental permission to take the kids out of school and off the Chapman campus for this bus ride photo-op. If any parents would like to provide some information about this, I would appreciate it.)

Talking Points Campaign

And they didn’t, absolutely didn’t, develop two pages of talking points that would later be shared with teachers so they would know what they could, and could not, say about the ad valorem tax.

Called “Key facts/discussion points regarding the Digital 1:1 Initiative,” the document contains 21 district approved talking points about the digital conversion.

In case the document is taken down soon, I thought it might be helpful to browse through the highlights of the talking points to see just how accurate they are. Surely, a document so important that teachers are being told it contains all the information that they need to share with parents about the conversion will be completely accurate, fair and balanced. Right?

The Agreement with Pearson 1:1 Learning will cover work at all 40 schools.

And right off the bat, we have a problem. There are actually 42 schools in the district according to the district’s own web site. And this list doesn’t include The Pinnacle Schools (thank goodness). An inattention to detail is one of the biggest problems that we’re facing in this digital conversion. I wonder which of the two schools are being left out? Is it possible to move my kids to those schools?

Perhaps the second talking point will provide more substance.

The date of school board approval of this initiative happens to also be the eighth anniversary of the day the first civilian spacecraft was piloted into space. It was on June 21, 2004 that SpaceShipOne, financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, flew to space with Mike Melvill as the pilot. Now, on June 21, 2012, the Huntsville City Schools will launch to a new frontier for learning for our students.

Okay, even I’m speechless here.

Someone, some cheerleader, in our district believes that a crucial point to understand the need to convert our district over to the Pearson way of doing education is to mention that the board approved the decision on the eighth anniversary of the first successful private journey into space. (Just curious, how many of my readers knew that the first private pilot was Mike Melvill? Okay, how many knew the first American in space on the public’s dime was Alan Shepard? Or that the first man on the moon was the late, and amazingly great, Neil Armstrong? Seems that the public venture was a bit more, um, historic?)

I wonder what else this foolish decision by our board commemorates? Just a few of the more relevant events might include:

• In 1527, Niccolo Machiavelli, author of The Prince, and hero to dictators everywhere, died.
• In 1964, Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner were murdered in Mississippi fighting for civil rights.
• In 1970, Penn Central declares bankruptcy, the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history up until that time.

Clearly these events are just as important to commemorate, right?

On to the third:

The Wi-Fi will be operational but the district will not have all of the bandwidth in place at the start of school to provide the full access to the digital resources in every school. This is the transition year for the program.

Well, this is news isn’t it? When Wardynski was presenting the transition to the board in June, he told them that the bandwidth would actually be available at the start of the school year. On June 21st, Wardynski said:

So inside our schools we’ll have gigabit rate bandwidth to transfer data between kids and the data sources, this is the curriculum sources and so forth. Uh, the key question is will we have do we have the bandwidth coming into our schools. And so, LaQuita has been working that very hard with our consultants from PPT and we’re going to be moving from I think it was, correct me if I’m wrong, I think about 10 Megabits per elementary? . . . And now we’re up to 50 for the elementary and a 130 for the high schools? So we think that will be adequate. And if it’s not, we’ll adjust. And a good bit of that is coming from Alabama SuperComputer. And is under their e-rate provisions. Uh, a portion of it is under our e-rate provisions. And that should all be online as well now, in time for school’s start.

It wasn’t. It still isn’t. When the board made their propaganda presentation last week, they made no mention of the bandwidth issues. They were trying to cover it up. During the presentation, the only problem they would admit to knowing was that Huntsville Center for Technology was still having bandwidth issues.

Quick question: if the district knew it wouldn’t have the bandwidth available, why are they still insisting that every classroom be online the entire day?

Let’s leave that and move on to the next few questions.

Pearson is imbedding a team on the ground in Huntsville for two years, with other support rotating in and out. Pearson’s goal is to help HCS develop the capacity internally to support the initiative.

This partnership will move Huntsville’s entire curriculum to digital. Pearson will provide Huntsville schools hardback textbooks for the classrooms to make sure each room has a hard-copy of the digital curriculum while the district is transitioning to digital. This will help make sure that every student learns every day during the transition. This is important because this shift to digital is being phased in during the 2012-13 school year, and not every student will have access to all the digital resources at the start of the year.

Again, this is the first time they’ve admitted this little issue. Oh, and the imbedded Pearson teams are less helpful than they’ve claimed.

Just as the superintendent underestimated the cost of going digital, just as he overestimated the bandwidth, he has underestimated the impact this transition has had on student learning particularly since teachers are being threatened for not using the computers in the classrooms enough.

Moving on to point number six:

This effort gives Huntsville schools a common standard across the district, and educators will be able to make sure that students are progressing at their own pace.

The simple fact is that the transition was not necessary to bring standards across the district. Neither is it necessary to enable educators to allow students to progress at their own pace.

In fact, the laptops are actually taking time away from instruction as they are implemented now. Imagine that you want your students to read a certain passage before you discuss it in class. If you have a classroom of textbooks, you have your students take out a book, turn to a page and begin reading. The entire process takes less than a minute.

With the laptops, they have to boot, log-in, connect to the Pearson web site (making sure you’re going to the right one–there are multiple sites for every class), log-in to the Pearson site, find the reading, slowly advance the text to the right section, and then begin reading.

Suddenly, what once took about 60 seconds is now taking 10-15 minutes before reading can even begin depending on the technical skills for the students, the availability of the network, and the speed of the computers.

Talking point number six claims that computers will allow for individualized instruction. What it actually does is limit the amount of time available for individualization.

Point seven is perhaps the most honest of all the points made in the document:

This is part of the effort to bring a business-like approach to education.

I realize that people differ on their opinions here, but the simple fact is that Education is not a Business. A business has one goal: to improve the financial standing of the organization. Education has one goal: to prepare students for life. Those two goals are not the same, nor should they be. Those who wish to make them the same are simply demonstrating their complete lack of understanding of either paradigm.

This isn’t an attempt to excuse educators or schools from working hard; I would argue that few careers work harder than teachers. This isn’t an attempt to free educators from accountability. This is the realization that education’s purpose is not simply to allow students to get a job. Education’s purpose is to enhance the width and breadth of the human experience. It is designed to open us to new experiences, new ideas, new worlds in a safe environment where children, youth, young adults and adults can explore. As Dr. Gutting explained in the New York Times:

In our capitalist society, education must not be primarily for training workers or consumers (both tools of capitalism as Marxist might say). Rather, schools should aim to produce self-determining agents who can see through the blandishments of the market and insist that the market provide what they themselves have decided they need to lead fulfilling lives. Capitalism, with its devotion to profit, is not in itself evil. But it becomes evil when it controls  our choices for the sake of profit.

This move to convert schools into businesses is a move by businesses to control the American consumer. Those who are uneducated are far more likely to be swayed by advertisements and propaganda than those who are. The ideal American consumer is one who is therefore un-educated at best and under-educated at least.

Undoing education is the ultimate goal of those who wish for education to take on a “business-like approach.”

This partnership will give teachers and staff the resources and the training to make this adjustment to a digital learning environment to more effectively teach children.

The partnership with Pearson hasn’t accomplished this yet, and they’ve been working in the district for the past five weeks dropping in on classrooms for a few moments at a time to address emergency situations. They are not helping teachers teach more effectively. Often teachers are being told that Pearson cannot help, or that they will have to email them about a problem. On one occasion a teacher was told by Pearson, “I can’t help you. You’re special education.”

The Pearson assistance certainly isn’t worth the millions we’re paying for it.

One-to-One learning has been around a long time. A number of school districts around the country have made the shift to digital. The Huntsville district will be one of the largest to make the shift to digital district wide. In the past, traditional school structures and tools have forced teachers to teach to the middle. This will let teachers personalize the instruction much more.

You know, the cheerleaders are right on this point. One-to-one learning has been around a long time. It basically began the first time that one human attempted to teach another human how to do something. One-to-one is the best method of teaching as it allows for education to be perfectly suited to the student and the student’s needs.

The digital conversion is not one-to-one instruction. One-to-one instruction is one teacher and one student, not one student one computer.

In other words, this is an attempt by a district that has dramatically increased class sizes over the past two years to cover up that simple fact. They are lying to us.

How individualized can a computer make the educational experience of a student who doesn’t need assistance working with a computer, but rather needs assistance interacting with other human beings? This new, “personalized” instruction doesn’t meet that person’s needs at all.

Computers aren’t teachers. They are tools, and they can be effective tools of teachers, but they are tools. Plain and simple.

And All Semblance of Reason Leaves the Building

Huntsville led the way in the rocket age with the Redstone Rocket. Huntsville led the way to space with Wernher von Braun and the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. Huntsville helped put Sky Lab, the Space Shuttle, and the International Space Station into orbit. Huntsville has been the world leader in science, and now the children of Huntsville will fly into the digital age in the classrooms of schools across the city.

There is no better place in America than Huntsville, Alabama to launch this new digital learning environment in schools.

How dare they compare this fiasco to the work that took us to the moon.

There was no greater example of human initiative, human planning, and human organization than our space program. Comparing the district’s ineptitude of simply distributing computers to students to the Moon program is offensive.

This effort is about preparing our students for success in college and the workforce.

The purpose of education is not to prepare our students for success in college or the workforce. It’s to prepare our students for life. Those are two completely different goals. It’s a shame that our district’s leadership cannot see that.

This effort is about creating a learning environment that is relevant to today’s students.

Computers don’t make a learning environment relevant. Teachers do. And a teacher with no technology other than his or her mind is capable of making the student’s environment relevant. Adding computers to that mix doesn’t do it. Adding good teachers does.

The American education system, for the most part, is run the way it was over a hundred years ago, before mankind even flew in an airplane, much less flew in space.

So?

As new technology becomes available, teachers should and do adopt it for the classroom. But they should adopt it if and only if it improves the educational experience.

Forcing teachers to throw away pedagogical methods that have been successful for hundreds of years simply because HP is kinda-sorta giving us a deal is risky, foolish and stupid.

The decision to adopt new technology in a classroom should be made by the teacher as she seeks to meet the educational needs of her students.

The district exists to support the teacher. It doesn’t exist to rule over her.

Today, our kids live in a digital environment at home and out in the community, but when they come to school they are expected to unplug and logoff, and then study and learn the same old way their grandparents did.

Our students are, in fact, too wired in, plugged up, and logged on for their own good. As Claudia Wallis wrote for Time in 2006:

Generation M has a lot to teach parents and teachers about what new technology can do. But it’s up to grownups to show them what it can’t do, and that there’s life beyond the screen.

Our students need a variety of learning environments, both “plugged” and “unplugged.” One would hope that the top educators in a district already knew this. It seems they don’t since they are forcing teachers and students alike to adjust to the single method that they’re prescribing for everyone.

And that’s the real problem here. Their rhetoric sounds good, but once you scratch beneath the surface, you see that this has much more to do with Dr. Wardynski’s desires and needs than it does with meeting student’s needs.

He seems to want to push this through so he can add it to his resumé.

Dr. Wardynski isn’t involved with students on a daily basis. He doesn’t understand, for example, when he walks into a kindergarten class and sees children playing together that they are actually developing much needed social skills, or that they are developing their hand/eye coordination.

By forcing one single teaching method on the district as a whole, he is making a mockery of the very reasons why he claims he’s doing this transition in the first place.

The cheerleading continues with the following talking points:

This shift to digital learning in Huntsville schools is nothing less than a journey to a new frontier in education.

The students of Huntsville deserve to have the most relevant learning environment and be the most college-ready students there are anywhere.

This new digital frontier means students and teachers will use a high-quality digital curriculum that is aligned to the standards.

Will someone please cue Alexander Courage and William Shatner? We really need a sound track accompanying these points.

Of course the students of Huntsville deserve to have a “relevant learning environment.” They also deserve to be “college-ready students.” Where, oh where is the actual, peer-reviewed evidence that forcing computers into a classroom will accomplish this?

Oh, that’s right, there isn’t any.

The new digital learning environment will allow Huntsville schools to provide 24/7 access for students and teachers, at last doing away with the traditional boundaries of time and space that hamper old-style schools.

We should let Einstein know that the cheerleaders have re-written his theories. Do we really need 24/7 access for students and teachers? Doesn’t there need to be at least a few moments of sleep? Recreation? Play? Exploration? Reading an actual book? Going to a party? Talking to other actual human beings, face to face?

And again, where’s the evidence?

And My Head Explodes

The next to the last talking point wins the prize:

The difference in learning will be enormous. For example, students will be able to learn more about writing and effective communication because the new digital curriculum will allow teachers to assess 20,000 written compositions in the time it would have taken them to assess one composition. So teachers will be able to actually get back to teaching children how to write and effectively communicate.

What the cheerleaders are talking about here is Automatic Writing Evaluation, and frankly there is so much wrong with this talking point, it’s a wonder they saved it for next to last. First, the new digital curriculum doesn’t “allow teachers to assess 20,000 written composition in the time it would have taken them to assess one composition.” The new digital curriculum has a feature known as automatic writing evaluation (Pearson calls it, Knowledge Technologies or KT) that evaluates student writing via computer.

These compositions are not evaluated by teachers. They are evaluated by a computer program. It seems to be a fairly sophisticated computer program, but it is still a computer program. This technology has been in development since the 1960s, and to this day, the best that can be said about it by anyone other than the companies developing it is that we’re just now beginning to understand how best to evaluate it. 

In other words, would you like your child’s writing ability evaluated by an untested computer program, or your child’s teacher?

I write on a computer every day, nearly all day. It’s how I write. But no computer ever inspired me to write. That was done by a small group of writing teachers at Georgia Southern University and at Statesboro High School. There names are Dr. Curtis Ricker, Mrs. Sandra Rabitsch, Dr. Patricia Gillis, Dr. Fred Richter, Mrs. Elizabeth Brannen, and Ms. Shirley Hemsley.

Each one of them helped me to develop a love of writing. Dr. Ricker was the first teacher to push me to learn to create on the computer. But the reason they helped me learn to love to write was simple: they read my work. Dr. Wardynski and his cheerleaders are stripping away the best part of writing: being read.

Stupid.

And finally:

2012-13 will be the year of conversion to digital the digital learning environment. This is not an event, it’s a process. It will take time before every student can fully access all of the digital assets.

Should it take time for every student to be able to access their textbooks? How much time? A few weeks? A few months? A few years? How exactly is this benefiting our students and promoting student learning?

And those are the district’s talking points in support of the digital transition. Can someone please remind me of why the district felt it was necessary to publish these points? Could it be that they know they’re promoting snake oil?

Let Your Voice Be Heard

Tonight Dr. Wardynski was interviewed on WHNT by Jerry Hayes in a story called, “Taking Action Special Report: Tech Trouble.”

I wonder why Mr. Hayes never thought to ask the superintendent why not one teacher was willing to speak on the record about these issues. It seems that people are afraid to ask the superintendent questions, particularly if they work for him. Intimidation indeed.

The Huntsville Times is asking for comments on the question of “How is the Huntsville schools district’s digital transition working for you?”

Please contact Ms. Bonvillian and let her know your thoughts and opinions.

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