A simple tick of the clock that humans assign such importance. Would that life actually cared about things like a new second; we would surely be more attentive to each moment, each action, each decision that we make that makes life harder for those around us.

But we’re not. Life isn’t like that. Life doesn’t care that the new year is coming. It doesn’t care if our neighbor is hungry or thirsty. Life is selfish. It’s concerned only for its continuation. The only ticks of the clocks that actually matter to life are the first and the last.

But being human means that our lives are more than mere existence. Being human means that we develop our essence over those ticks of the clock. We develop whom we are. We hope for whom we will become.

And so we assign importance to ticks of the clock: birthdays, holidays, and the beginning of a new year.

There is hope that we will be more than we were before. Here are a few of mine.

I hope that I will love more than I have been loved. There’s little doubt in my mind that I am loved. Every smile from my boy, every hug from my girl, every kiss from my wife proves this to me every day. What I’m not so certain about is that I’ve loved others more. Without being too Schindler, I’m certain that I could have done more. I could have done more to speak for the voiceless. I could have; I will do so.

I hope that the areas where our community comes together, like in our schools, that we will find a way to work together to help all of our kids. All kids are our kids. They are all our responsibility, our duty. And we must fight for them all. We must say to those who are behaving in such a way that some children matter less than others that they are wrong. We could do more; we will do so.

I hope that our teachers, aides, principals, therapists, and volunteers will know how much we value and appreciate the work, the damn near impossible mission that they have taken upon themselves. We must fight for them as they fight for all of our kids. We must value them as they value all of our kids. We must support them as they support all of our kids. We must respect them. We must make certain that they know that they are indeed the most important people in our system. We could do more; we will do so.

I hope that those who have entered our community only seeking what they can take from our community, and particularly from our children, will accept our invitation to leave. Your selfishness is not welcome here. I could do more to make this clear; I will do so.

Finally, I hope that my children will learn to value questions, to ask them boldly, to speak for themselves and others, to scream against injustice, to love selflessly — especially those whom others ignore, abuse, hate and dismiss. I could do more to show them this in my life; I will do so.

These are my hopes for the new year. I will work to make them come true.

May your new year hopes also come true with the tick of the clock.

__________

(Oh, and PS. I hope that Alabama rolls over LSU on the 9th. Just sayin . . . Roll Tide.)

The post Hopes for the New Year appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Last night, by an unanimous vote, the board approved the 2012 budget. The budget had to be presented to the state by September 15th, so they moved the called board meeting to after the budget hearing, added the approval of the budget to the agenda, and then approved it after taking just a single question from the public which was, “Could I get a copy of the final budget?”

The copied one that had been shared was missing a few of the slides. Mr. Spinelli promptly and generously gave the member of the public his copy. (As an aside, I had a pleasant conversation with Mr. Spinelli after the board meeting. Generous is an appropriate adjective; he was quite generous with his time with me after the meeting. Welcome to Huntsville, Mr. Spinelli, and excellent work preparing this budget in such a short amount of time. It was an impressive feat.)

The budget hearing was quite interesting. It seemed to me that much of the discussion and presentation was a direct response to my blog that I published about 30 minutes before the meeting began. (I know that seems conceited of me, but bear with me for a moment.) When Mr. Spinelli was taking the board through the budget for the second time and he got to the revenue section, he pointed out that part of the special education funding was coming from the federal government and that the actual budgeted amount for special education was nearly $20 million rather than the $14 million that I wrote about yesterday.

So yesterday at 4:30pm, I wrote that the 2011 budget called for $19.8 million for special education. Then at about 5:15pm during the budget hearing, Dr. Wardynski and Mr. Spinelli make a point of saying that this year our special education budget is $20 million. The actual numbers are as follows:

• $14,163,983 in instructional expenditures for special education in 2012
• $4,927,081 in federal funding from IDEA-B funds for 2012
• Thus, the total expenditures for special education for 2012 is $19,091,064. Let’s just call it $20 million.

So, everything that I wrote yesterday is pointless, right? We’re actually spending almost the exact same amount as last year. Right? What was I complaining about?

Well it’s completely true that the IDEA-B law is providing almost $5 million in funding for special education. But the thing that neither Dr. Wardynski nor Mr. Spinelli shared with us or the board last night was that the federal funding for special education in 2011 was almost exactly the same.

In 2011, as you can see in the chart below, the federal government sent $4,923,331 to Huntsville City Schools for special education funding.

So, yesterday, I asked about our priorities based on the reduction in funding for instruction and the reduction in funding for special education in particular. Dr. Wardynski implied that there wasn’t a reduction in funding by claiming that the 2012 budget calls for $20 million in federal and local spending.

But, as you can see, the reduction in funding is still there, because the 2011 budget included $5 million in federal funding as well. The 2012 budget, that the board approved last night, still shows a reduction in funding of at least $3.5 million dollars from 2011 (assuming that I should include the gifted eduction funding so that I’m comparing apples to apples).

So did they structure the discussion in the budget hearing in response to my post? Who knows, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is that they have approved a budget that cuts instruction by $6 million. What matters is that they have approved a budget that cuts special education by $3.5 million.

The superintendent and the board have recommended and approved a budget that calls on special education to be responsible for 30% of the total savings in 2012. The superintendent and the board have begun to balance the budget on the backs of special needs kids.

The post Balancing the Budget on the Backs of Kids appeared first on Geek Palaver.

On Thursday, September 1, Dr. Casey Wardynski and the board held the first of two Budget Hearings for the Huntsville City Schools proposed 2012 budget. (The second and final one will be tonight at 5:30 after a brief called board meeting.)

During this meeting, he stated to the public and the board that “the budget, again, is a statement of our priorities. It is the alignment of finances of the district with the activities of the district.”

Concerning this, he is absolutely right. Our budget shows our priorities. The question is, what priorities does it actually show?

Consider this slide which is slide 13, “Expenditures by Program – Instruction” from the 2012 Budget Hearing presentation offer by Mr. Spinelli on Thursday:

This is an impressive figure when viewed without context. It’s amazing what a difference context makes.

You’ll notice that there isn’t any data from 2011 or 2010 on this slide. If you want to know where the system’s priorities are, you have to be able to see how the money is being moved around. Especially when there is a limit to the funds available to be moved around. So where are the 2011 numbers.

Luckily enough, I had downloaded them from the Huntsville City Schools website. You can download it here: Budget_Hearing_FY11_9-10-10.pdf. In 2011, Dr. Wheeler’s presentation included the numbers from the previous year. Here’s the matching slide from the 2011 presentation. This was the 2011 proposed expenditures budget for Instruction. (You know, the only reason the system exists.)

So what do you notice there?

For starters, you should notice a sharp downward trend in funds being expended on instruction. From 2010 to 2011, the system cut almost $5 million. In 2012, the budget calls for a cut of $6,222,921. In two years, the instructional budget, again the only reason the system exists, has been cut by just under $11 million dollars.

Let’s look a little closer at these numbers. The total general fund expenditures from 2010 to 2012 has been reduced from $191,014,710 to $176,799,180. In other words, we’ve seen a cut in the general fund of $14,215,530. Of that cut, Instructional Expenditures represented 77% of all the cuts made.

It would seem that one of our priorities in Huntsville City Schools is no longer instruction.

New teachers’ salaries have been cut to the state minimum. Teachers’ raises have been frozen. Teachers are being hired to work part-time temporary positions, and we’re celebrating it.

Mr. Spinelli and Dr. Wardynski were praised for reducing the deficit by $12,169,715 this year. Half, 51%, of those savings are from instructional cuts which total $6,222,921.

We no longer have instruction as a priority in this system.

Just for clarity, let’s look and see if those cuts to instruction have been made equally and fairly. Surely they have, right? Right?

Special Education had a proposed budget of $19,849,256 in 2011. I suspect, but do not know, that this amount includes funds for Gifted Education as well. The proposed budget for 2012 is $14,163,983. This number does not include Gifted Education, so when we include the $2 million budgeted for that, we get $16,351,280.

From 2011 to 2012, Special Education has received a $3.5 million dollar cut. Special Education has received 56% of the cuts made to instruction this year.

No other single group comes close to that. The next largest cut is to Career Technical at 35% which is quite interesting since a significant portion of our 3,000 students with an IEP are often seeking a career technical degree as well.

So, by itself, Special Education is covering 29% of the deficit reduction planned for the year. When you throw in Career Technical, that percentage grows to 46%.

Special Education and Career Technical students are the ones being asked to pay for the mismanagement of our system.

How’s that for a statement of priorities?

One last point.

In 2011, Dr. Wheeler published a breakdown of the General Administrative budget that showed the budgeted amount for the Board, Superintendent, and various other central office positions. Here’s the slide:

In 2012, Mr. Spinelli did not publish a separate slide detailing this information, but he did publish the total administrative costs:

As you can plainly see, the Administrative costs have increased each year over the past three years. Over that period the central office budget has grown by 5%. While Dr. Wardynksi made a point of saying that this budget includes the salaries for positions that have not been filled yet, I bet it doesn’t include the $100,000 were paying Dr. Moore, nor the $114,000 we’re paying Dr. Wheeler, to sit at home.

Instruction has been cut by 10%

A budget is a statement of priorities, Dr. Wardynski. I think we can clearly see where your priorities are. You believe in expanding administrative salaries while balancing the budget on the backs of those who cannot speak for themselves.

As I have asked before, how can you justify this?

The post “A Statement of Priorities” The Wardynski Budget appeared first on Geek Palaver.

It’s strange what having a relaxing weekend away will do to you. Suddenly you start seeing things in a different light. I love my job. Truly love it. But it’s a far and away distant second when it comes to my family. Everyday, my boy, my girl, and Laurel remind me of just how lucky I am. And getting to spend a weekend at the lake with them just reinforces it for me.

I’m honored to be a part of a group called the Rocket City Bloggers. These are a collection of some really amazing writers who give away their ideas, suggestions, hints and art to anyone who wants to take a look. (Which is, by the way, just another thing that I love about the Rocket City: its diversity and art.)

Every month someone in the group hosts a Rocket City Blogging Carnival that displays the work of the collective group all in one easy location for browsing. It’s a great way to meet new writers and to hear new ideas. This month’s carnival follows the theme of “Huntsville Favorites.”

So I’ve been in positive frame of mind. What of it?

Just kidding. I’m just thankful to have a weekend away from work to unpack some of the ideas that have been floating around like the first yellow and red leaves on the lake.

So this weekend, the PTA has been on my mind, and I realized that I had been negligent in writing about things that make a difference in education by not having mentioned the PTAs by name yet. This is a shame since Huntsville PTAs (in particular the ones at Farley, Challenger and Mt. Gap Elementary) are some of my Huntsville Favorites.

Sometimes PTAs get a bad rap. Occasionally PTAs seem like you’ve stepped back in time and are in grade school all over again. Many of the same battles that you faced in school get rehashed later in life. Jeannie C. Riley had a wonderful tongue-in-cheek hit with it in the late sixties about the Harper Valley PTA which made excellent hay pointing out hypocrisy for humor.

On a more serious note, PTAs are often accused of being an exclusive playground designed to garner special consideration for their own children keeping others locked out.

This is not true of the PTAs here in the Huntsville PTAs. As a member of two PTAs (Challenger Elementary and Mt. Gap Elementary), I can readily say that I’ve never know a group of parents who are more wiling to give up their time, energy, and money trying to make sure of just a few things:

• That our schools are as well supplied, maintained, and safe as possible for all kids;
• That our teachers are supported and appreciated so that they may actually focus on teaching rather than fundraising, maintenance and security;
• That the administration of our schools are constantly aware that the parents in this town are involved, inquisitive, informed, and that we are watching.

This is the role that a PTA plays. When it works, as it does here in Huntsville, it works because people are putting aside their differences and working together toward a common goal.

Our PTAs aren’t Conservative verses Liberal. They aren’t Rich verses Poor. They aren’t the “in crowd” verses “the outcasts.” Despite occasionally ribbing over in state rivalries, (football season did begin on Saturday after all), our PTAs aren’t even divided by cries of War Eagle and Roll Tide.

Our PTAs are places where everyone, everyone can participate.

Everyone can work together for our common goals of putting students first. That’s the beauty of the PTA; it is a democracy at its finest. It doesn’t matter if you’re young or old, rich or poor, handicapped or able to run freely. It doesn’t matter if you were a cheerleader, the football captain, or the nerd sitting in the library (like me), if you care about putting students first, you’ll be welcomed.

The PTA gives everyone, even those who do not speak often like my son, a voice in the development and direction of our schools.

By holding the car line still just a little longer in the morning, by bringing gluten-free cupcakes to parties, by hosting awareness raising celebrations, by giving a child an extra hand with the hula-hoop until he gets the idea, our PTAs  go out of their way to be inclusive and supportive of those students who have special needs. For this, I say thank you, and the boy offers his high five.

All that having a voice requires is participation at whatever level you’re capable. My experience has been that even those who work full-time can find a way to help out after schools have closed. In short, there is something here for everyone. That is, if (and yes, it’s a big if) we’re willing to set aside our differences, our isolationism, our selfishness to work together for a common goal.

Our PTAs are wonderfully diverse, accepting, and welcoming. Yes, occasionally they have flaws and weaknesses, but they’re made up of humans. It comes with the territory.

But if you believe in making your child’s school a better place, if you believe in putting students first, join your PTA, and share your voice.

You know, for the kids. All of them.

The post The PTA: For All of Our Kids appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Thursday night, I made some comments to the Huntsville City School Board of Education and Dr. Wardynski asking about the number of aides that Dr. Wardynski has as compared to the aides that my son has.

I stated at one point, “The superintendent continues to hire people at, as he said about the new CSFO, nationally competitive rates.”

Despite repeatedly asking for a justification for the hiring of four aides to assist Dr. Wardynski, the only response that Dr. Wardynski offered to me was to say:

“These are state competitive salaries, Mr. Winn. Thank you.”

When I stated that he said that they were nationally competitive, Dr. Wardynski responded:

“No I did not, I said that they were competitive at the state level.”

Again, this was his only response to my requests for justification for his four aides when my son has access to only two-fifths (or 40%) of one. You can watch the exchange at about the 58 minute mark below.

In order to clarify this issue, I have reviewed the recording from the August 2nd meeting where Dr. Wardynski recommended to the board Mr. Frank Spinelli as the new CSFO. You may listen to the relevant portion of the meeting here:

Here is my transcript of what Dr. Wardynski said at that meeting concerning the salary of Mr. Spinelli, the new CSFO.

McCaulley: Are you going to discuss the salary?

Wardynski: Am I going to discuss the salary? The salary is competitive with the larger districts in our state.

McCaulley: I know that, but

Wardynski: Oh

[Laughter]

Wardynski: Ah salary will be $130,000 dollars per year. And this is commensurate with salaries with the larger districts in our state. Um, this is uh competitive with what it would take to bring in an individual from out of state as well. So we’re competitive . . . District seeks to be competitive at the national level. Part of that is staffing, obviously to be competitive at that level. And uh, so, we think this is competitive compensation.  Mr. Spinelli agreed. And uh he’s willing to accept this compensation.

So, yes, Dr. Wardynski did say that the $130,000 dollars per year salary was “state competitive.” He said, “The salary is competitive with the larger districts in our state.” He also said, “And this is commensurate with salaries with the larger districts in our state.”

Thus, Dr. Wardynski was correct Thursday night when he stated that, “These are state competitive salaries, Mr. Winn. Thank You.”

So where did I get the idea that Mr. Spinelli’s salary was also nationally competitive? Did I make it up? Was I lying?

Perhaps it was from this statement:

“Um, this is uh competitive with what it would take to bring in an individual from out of state as well.”

If we’re competitive on a level to bring in an individual from out of state, I think it’s reasonable to think that such a salary could be, “nationally competitive.” But that still isn’t quite the same thing as saying that the administrative salaries are nationally competitive, is it?

Maybe I got the idea from this statement:

“So we’re competitive . . . District seeks to be competitive at the national level. Part of that is staffing, obviously to be competitive at that level. And uh, so, we think this is competitive compensation.”

If the district “seeks to be” competitive at the national level, and if the salary we have offered Mr. Spinelli was sufficient “to bring in an individual from out of state as well” then I believe it’s again reasonable to think that Mr. Spinelli’s salary is competitive on a national level. It is, after all, only $8,400 less than the salary that Dr. Wardynski was making as the CFO of Aurora Public Schools before he came to Huntsville. The Cobb County, GA, CFO earns, $127,665 per year. The former CSFO of Huntsville City Schools, AL, earned $114,290 a year.

The $130,000 per year salary is at least competitive in three states.

Yet Dr. Wardynski stated on Thursday that these salaries are competitive on a state level. Out of respect for his position as the leader of our school system and particularly out of respect for his thirty years of service in our military, I accept his statement that these salaries are state competitive.

Therefore, I offer Dr. Wardynski my apology. I was mistaken in my interpretation of his comments on August 2, 2011.

As such, I have made an attempt to alter my statements from last night and from earlier postings on the blog concerning my mistaken interpretation. I believe that I have corrected all of my mistakes in interpretation, but if I haven’t captured them all, I welcome people to point out the statements that I missed.

Having corrected my mistake, I have one additional question for Dr. Wardynski: “How do you justify offering even state competitive administrative salaries while our new teachers salaries are set at the state minimum?”

Dr. Wardynski, again, I apologize for my mis-interpretation of your comments on August 2nd. I was confused by your discussion of the need for building a nationally competitive district by making staffing competitive at that level. Thank you for your patience with me in helping me understand what you meant when you said that our system should be competitive on a national level.

I look forward to hearing from you concerning my questions.

The post “Nationally Competitive” or “State Competitive” Salaries appeared first on Geek Palaver.

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

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

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

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

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

I would like to know how you can justify this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It seems that I underestimated the superintendent’s need for aides.

On a day when the system still needs to fill 15% of their teaching positions. On a day when classrooms are still overcrowded. On a day when special needs students and their parents are still being told that their child cannot have the support that their IEP requires, the Superintendent with the consent of the board has posted not one, but two new central office positions specifically designed to support the office of the superintendent.

The first one we knew about. It’s the Director of Community Engagement and Partnership Development. What we didn’t know about this position was the salary range. Now we do. It seems that this position is going to command a salary in the range of $58,791.59 to $95,175.12 per year. (How much do you want to bet the final amount will be closer to the higher of those two numbers?)

The second position has not been discussed at any of the school board meetings since Dr. Wardynski began in July. This is the Deputy Superintendent, Instruction position, and the salary range for this position will be $84,217.06 to $134,545.26 per year.

You know, Dr. Moore was accused of a great many things. Frankly, she was far less than responsive to special needs parents, but she did not employ a deputy superintendent for a year. She did not employ a Director of Community Engagement and Partnership Development. She did not employ a Transition, Director.

How can the board and the superintendent justify these positions in the face of not one but two Reductions in Force just four and seven months ago? How can they justify these expenditures in the face of frozen teachers salaries? How can they justify these positions when classrooms have 45 children in them?

Our teachers don’t have money to buy ink. But that really doesn’t matter because they also don’t have money to buy paper. They have to beg parents to provide basic supplies. Everyone in the system is being forced to work harder for less money and to do more with few resources except Dr. Wardynski.

How can Dr. Wardynski justify ten times more aides and support than he’s offering to my son?

How can they sleep at night?

Tomorrow night at 5:30pm there will be another board meeting. At least one topic on the agenda will be Special Education. I suspect that this will include yet another report claiming that the system is meeting the IEPs of special needs students despite evidence that they are not.

No matter what he claims, please remember that our special needs classrooms are all nearly three times larger as they were a year ago. And yet the central office continues to grow.

The meeting will be broadcast on ETV (Comcast 17, Knology 99-it has recently moved from 71), and at the Huntsville City Schools website. I will also be live-tweeting the meeting @russwinn. You can follow on Twitter or on the Geek Palaver Facebook Page.

Once again, they have refused to put students first.

The post Superintendent Continues to Hire Aides for Himself appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Ah one. Ah two. Ah three.

Please continue to ask questions of your schools about the staffing of your kids’ classrooms (and if you can, share the information you get with us here). When you ask about your child, keep this in mind:

• The number of Instructional Assistants system wide has been cut in half from last year, but the number of students with an IEP has increased.
• The ratio of Instructional Assistants to student in Resource Rooms system wide are running 3 aides to every 10 students in a resource room. This is a 3.33:1 Students to Aide ratio. In many classrooms this jumps to 4.5:1. For students who are in inclusion classrooms the ratio jumps to something like 20:1.
• The typical Instructional Assistant costs the system $10,000.00.

In light of this, it might prove an interesting to ask, how many “aides” does Dr. Wardynski have? If he were a student in my son’s classroom, he would have approximation one-third of an aide to assist him at a cost of $3,300.00.

If he were in another class, he would have a quarter of an aide to assist him at a cost of $2,500.00.

If he were capable enough to be included in a regular classroom, he would have 5% of an aide at a cost of $500.00.

But our superintendent evidently needs much more support than our special needs students.

Dr. Wardynski currently has not 5% of an aide. He doesn’t have a quarter of an aide. He doesn’t have a third of an aide. Nope not even close.

Currently Dr. Wardynski has least three “aides” assisting him in meeting his educational goals. Somehow all three of these aides were hired before the first day of school.

First he has Ms. Sarah Savage helping him to learn and connect with the community. Ms. Savage is “on loan” from Leadership Huntsville and her tenure is likely ending soon. Her services were provided to the superintendent for free. In other words, she was a volunteer sub working to help the superintendent adjust to his new surroundings.

But don’t feel to bad for Dr. Wardynski with Ms. Savage’s tenure coming to a close. He’s already got the job description in place to replace her. This full-time position is called the Director of Community Engagement and Partnership Development. This position will report to the Director of Research and Development Cathy McNeal, but Dr. Wardynski said repeatedly on Thursday that this person will basically be performing many of the same duties as Ms. Savage has performed since Dr. Wardynski came on board July 5, 2011. In other words, this person will be helping him direct community engagement.

The Job Goal for the new Director of Community Engagement and Partnership Development will be:

To foster community engagement and development of partnerships with business and enterprises, governmental agencies, and institutions of high education to further student education and career readiness.

The salary for this new position will be announced later upon recommended by the superintendent and approved by the board, but the position requires at least a Master’s degree. Assuming that this new director will have a salary on par with the other directors who were employed by the central office on June 9, 2011, this person will likely have a salary around $90,000 a year. Ironically enough, the lowest paid Director in the central office on June 9th was the Director of Pupil Services at $84,566.95.

Second, since the superintendent clearly needs assistance writing his letters and such, he has acquired the assistance of an Administrative Assistant to the Superintendent, Ms. Debby Jennings. While I do not have Ms. Jennings salary, again on June 9, 2011 the Administrative Assistant to the Superintendent made $48,450.50 a year.

Finally, as no commander ever operates without an aide-de-camp, Dr. Wardynski has the services of Mr. Aaron King, Director of Transition to assist him in his transition to a new environment. According to the Huntsville Times article on July 11, Mr. King receives $59,211 per year for his assistance to Dr. Wardynski.

So again, Dr. Wardynski has not a third of an aide, as my son does, that costs the system $3,300 per year, but rather three aides that cost the system just shy of $200,000 a year.

Dr. Wardynski holds a PhD in Policy Analysis from Rand Graduate School and a Master’s Degree from Harvard University, and he requires three aide to assist him in his transition from Colorado to Huntsville.

My son has autism, difficulty communicating his needs, and holds a Kindergarten Certificate as well as a Pre-school Certificate from Huntsville City Schools, but right now my son has ten times less support than our superintendent. Right now my son’s support costs 60 times less than our superintendent’s.

Dr. Wardynski clearly understands the value of transitional support. He clearly understands how important it is to have help when adjusting to new surroundings. He clearly plans to keep that support for himself.

Our schools, sir, are still understaffed. Our teachers, sir, are still underpaid and overworked. Our students, sir, do not have the resources they need to achieve excellence. Our IEPs, sir, are still not being met.

Parents, keep this in mind when you ask about the support your child is receiving. If you have the opportunity, please share your answers below or on the Call To Action post from yesterday.

[Thanks runwolf13!]

The post How Many Aides Does It Take To Educate A Superintendent? appeared first on Geek Palaver.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is unacceptable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have a right to know if the system is serving our children and meeting their needs. Perhaps this will help us all understand where most significant needs exist so that we may work together with the school system in addressing these needs.

If you do not want to share this information with me, I completely understand. In that situation, I would ask that you do the following: Contact your child’s teachers and principal. Ask them for specific numbers concerning the number of children in your child’s classrooms/resource rooms. Ask them for specific numbers of teachers and Instructional Assistants that will be in the classroom working with the kids on a daily basis.

You have a right to know this information about your child’s class, but you will often have to ask to get it.

Finally, I would encourage everyone to visit your child’s school as often as possible. See for your self the conditions of your child’s classroom and the situations under which your child’s teacher is working.

Our teachers are overworked, and they need our help to rectify this problem. The central office has a vested interest in keeping teacher salaries at the state minimum (even when their own salaries are “nationally competitive.” [Editor’s Note: Dr. Wardynski stated on August 18th that he claimed the administrative positions were “state competitive.” I have decided to take him at his word on this.) The only defense that our teachers and therefore our kids have against these conditions are parents.

I know how difficult it is to find time to visit schools and advocate for your child’s education. Especially for special needs parents. But if you don’t no one else will.

Ask questions, and hold the system accountable for the answers they offer.

It’s our kids’ only hope.

The post A Call To Action: Resource Room/Classroom Overcrowding appeared first on Geek Palaver.

My son’s class had sufficient staff to ensure his safety, but probably not enough to ensure compliance with his IEP. At least not yet. After an extended conversation with Mrs. Costello, Challenger’s principal, I believe that within the week she will have had time to work out the staffing details to meet the requirements of my son’s IEP.

My boy is on the Autism Spectrum. He benefits, greatly, from being around children who are not on the spectrum (as they do from him, too), so we have written into his IEP the requirement that he spend an increasing amount of time in a regular Kindergarten class. Right now I do not believe there is sufficient staff to allow him to do this without stripping staff from the resource room to dangerous levels.

My son’s room is packed. Literally packed. It would be difficult to imagine that the room could physically hold even one more child. A resource room requires space to move around; kids on the spectrum just move. A lot. They need space to spin, to bounce, to stretch, and to stem. And they need people who can help them do this as they learn.

Only a truly gifted teacher with ample support is capable of reaching through the fog of autism to teach our kids. Mrs. Niki Bowling is such a teacher. But she needs others who can sit with, hold, guide, redirect, and make eye-contact with the kids to help her. She cannot be in ten places at once, and yet she must.

With the IEPs, Niki Bowling is teaching ten classes of one rather than one class of ten.

Mrs. Costello has assured me that she will be managing the placement of the aides across the various classrooms at Challenger, and she will make sure that Mrs. Niki has the support she needs. As the boy likely wouldn’t be going to Mrs. McCord’s classroom this week anyway, asking for a week to review and adjust the aide assignments is not unreasonable. After all, a mere three days ago, half the employees in my son’s room did not know they had a job.

Developing an educational plan for a group where every individual requires radically different approaches takes a lot of time and work. Imagine trying to paint a house with a hundred toddlers and finger paint. It’s possible. Maybe. It will certainly be colorful and beautiful, but it will take a lot of planning to reach the ultimate goal

This level of planning is why it is crucial that the superintendent and the board make hiring decisions significantly earlier in the summer. As amazing as our principals and teachers are, they cannot plan for and manage staffing that the administration has not provided them. If we expect excellence from our teachers, we must provide them with the resources they need to perform at world-class levels.

Staffing questions must be resolved early, after all it takes a teacher to turn a room into a classroom. (Yeah, I know. It’s simplistic on purpose.)

The board’s decision to fire 154 teachers, 99 instructional assistants, and to cancel the ONIN contract costing $2,170,660 for instructional assistants which provided somewhere around 200 instructional assistants to the system caused the staffing shortages we’re facing right now. The special education student population has dropped by about 5% from last year. Assuming that Dr. Wardynski’s numbers from Thursday are still correct, we current have less than 50% of the instructional assistants that we had a year ago.

The board’s decisions, under direction from Dr. Ed Richardson, have caused this situation.

So was the boy’s school ready? The best I can offer is a qualified yes. They were as ready as was humanly possible with the time and resources they had.

Yet because of the phenomenal work of Niki Bowling my boy’s special education teacher, Principal Carol Costello, the dedicated Special Education staff from the central office, Nancy Barnes and Amy Varnon, who spent the day at Challenger, AAA, and Hampton Cove covering holes and putting out fires, and three fantastic aides who were running like crazy to keep up with a huge class, Deborah Chavers, Kim Collins, and Jennifer Lewis, the first day went off without incident.

This is nothing short of miraculous.

If you spend any time at all in any of the system’s resource rooms, you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about. Niki, Deborah, Kim and Jennifer did not have the luxury to blink today. And yet within minutes they knew every child’s name, history, allergies, stemming signals, calming techniques, and “I have to go potty” signs.

They were incredible. Absolutely incredible.

If Dr. Wardynski wants to celebrate efficiency, excellence, dedication and devotion to a calling, he should do everything he can to replicate these special educators who have dedicated their lives to the service of others.

And because of the excellent planning on the part of Mrs. Costello in pulling in other subs and volunteers, these four were able to actually take a bathroom break during the day. These others subs and volunteers included: Terry Klinkhammer, Ann Myer, Belinda Plemmons, and the boy’s fantastic OT, Kelly Smith.

This is what it took to make it work today. Miraculous planning and a singleminded passion to guide kids out of the fog.

And the stunning thing is that is just one parent’s story. This same story was repeated thousands of times over this morning.

And it will start all over again tomorrow morning and for the next 179 days.

Imagine what this fantastic team could accomplish if they had the full support of the system’s administration rather than having to carry the burden of the cuts from this past year.

If you want to witness a miracle, watch a teacher teach. And you will believe.

The post The Miracle of Education appeared first on Geek Palaver.

I really don’t know how to say it any clearer.

I woke up this morning actually hopeful. I was looking at the Huntsville City Schools website last night (yes, I’m that boring), and I noticed two things:

1. They’ve posted a few additional special education positions on the Employment Link.
2. The Board is having a special meeting on Tuesday, August 2nd at 4:00 pm to address personnel matters.

I was hopeful that Dr. Wardynski and the board might actually be working to making certain that our classrooms are adequately staffed.

Then I woke to the Headline in The Huntsville Times entitled, “System Hustling To Fill Jobs.”

I thought, “They are moving in the right direction for a change.”

That hope didn’t live long once I saw The Huntsville Times article, “New Huntsville schools’ CFO, program directors could be hired next week.”

According to Bonvillian, the meeting on Tuesday appears to have nothing to do with staffing in the classroom, but rather adds more staff to the central office.

Concerning Wardynski, Bonvillian writes:

“With the start of school in just over a week, Wardynski is under pressure to fill several top spots in the central office.”

Really? Who is pushing for this? I haven’t met anyone who thinks that the central office staffing needs are more important than the classroom staffing needs. Except that is perhaps Wardynski (who has his aide).

There’s a story that needs to be followed. Who has enough influence on Wardynski to get him to fill positions? It clearly isn’t parents, or students, or even the threat of potential legal action.

So I wonder, who does have the ability to put pressure on Wardynski? That’s the person I need to meet with.

Look, I recognize that there are central office positions that need to be filled. I’m sure the system does need a CFO. (Although, I would like to see the former CFO salary taken off the books before we add yet another one at $114,000 a year.) But the classroom staffing needs should be a much higher priority.

If not for the classroom, the central office is pointless. You would think Wardynski and the Board would know this by now.

Put the Students First!

The post PUT STUDENTS FIRST! appeared first on Geek Palaver.

On Monday, August 8, 2011, the children of Huntsville will report to school for the beginning of a new year. Last year, I had tears in my eyes as my daughter started First Grade and the boy began Kindergarten. It was a rough day emotionally; all those transitions are. But it isn’t going to hold a candle to what we’re facing five days from now.

On Monday, July 25th, Dr. Wardynski told me and others that he didn’t know if the system would be ready on August 8th to educate my son.

Because of decisions made by the former Superintendent, the Board, the Consultants, and yes even our current Superintendent (who has shown us that he knows how to quickly hire someone when he wants to–just not teachers, aides, or therapists), our schools are likely understaffed and unable to meet the requirements of the IEPs.

An understaffed classroom is an unsafe classroom.

__________

Insufficient staffing is the only logical reason why Wardynski could not or would not confirm for me that our schools would be ready to educate my son.

In many ways my son’s IEP is fairly typical. It doesn’t require a specialized setting (other than the resource room that is already available). It doesn’t require specialized technology. It doesn’t require that the school build him a pool even though his language dramatically increases while in one.

His individualized education program requires people to help teach him and the other children in the classroom with him.

For some reason, the superintendent has no problem hiring aides for himself (at $59,211 a year), but hiring aides for the classroom is just too expensive. Hiring a specialist to work with all of our children to improve their ability to communicate is just exorbitant.

All that my son’s IEP requires is two teachers (a special education teacher and a regular education teacher), an aide to help him transition and work, and access to Speech and Occupational therapy.

In other words, the obstacle that Huntsville City Schools is facing in meeting the requirements of my son’s IEP is basically one single aide to assist him when he is in the regular classroom.

You may find this to be exorbitant. (I, unlike Huntsville City Schools, believe that $10,000 is a lot of money.) But honestly, I don’t care. It’s the law.

Ten grand. My son’s education and safety are being put into question because of ten grand.

__________

So how did we get to the precipice we’re facing on August 8th?

As with all roads to hell, I hope that this one began with many good intentions. But I’m doubtful.

Cutting Special Education

This road started on February 10th when the board approved laying off 65 Instructional Assistants. Nearly half of the layoffs that day were cuts to special education.

We traveled further down this road on February 17th when the board cancelled the ONIN Contract. 53% of the staff provided by ONIN were, you guessed it, Instructional Assistants working in special education settings.

Hiring Consultants: Not Teachers/Aides/OTs/STs

But the board was just getting warmed up. Immediately after the firing of aides to work with our children, the board approved the contract for Dr. Ed Richardson at $600.00 a day. The average aide costs the system $53.00 per day. If they were paid Dr. Richardson’s salary, we would be paying them an average of $112,200 a year. We don’t pay them that much. We pay them right around $10,000 a year. Was Dr. Richardson’s advice worth 12 times the committed dedication and love my son received from just one aide last year?

I don’t think so.

But it seems the cuts to special education just weren’t happening fast enough, and the board needed that money to hire a consultant to do their jobs for them. (And provide political cover for unpopular decisions, of course.)

Funny. The board and the superintendents always seem to find money to hire people to help themselves. Helping children seems to be a much lower priority. At least twelve times lower in the case of Dr. Richardson.

After his hiring, things really started taking off.

The Special Needs Consolidation Plan

At some point in March when Ms. Sledge and Dr. Pruitt of the Special Education department in the central office decided (under orders, I’d bet) that it would be a good idea to move all the kids who spend a majority of their time in a resource room (as my son did last year) to the Academy for Academics and Arts.

I’m willing to assume that this plan was conceived with good intentions. I am hopeful that it was made with the best interests of the students in mind, but due to their refusal to actually discuss there plans and intentions, I have no reason to trust them now. If the plan were a good one, they would be thrilled to share it with the parents.

When this plan leaked out in March, special needs parents went to the board meeting on March 16th to find out more about it.

We were told that the plan was just a rumor. (Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.) But then immediately after the plan leaked, many parents were told that their child would be moved out of their home school or their child would not receive services.

Then Ms. Sledge and Dr. Pruitt called for a meeting with special needs parents on April 6th to discuss the consolidation plan. That night, Ms. Sledge claimed that students who lived south of Governors’ Drive would be consolidated at Challenger. Students north of Governors’ Drive would go to AAA.

Special Needs parents are not unreasonable. All we asked was to see a detailed description of the plan and the motivations behind it.

We were told we would have it that week. And I was foolish enough to believe it. To this date, the central office, Dr. Moore, Dr. Robinson, Mr. Birney, Mr. Blair, Mrs. McCaulley, Mrs. Morrison, and finally, Dr. Wardynski have all refused to discuss this plan with parents. I suppose that Dr. Wardynski’s promise to operate in a transparent manner, as he claimed he would on Monday, July 25th, doesn’t apply to consolidating special needs kids.

The simple truth is that they never intended to put the plan in writing. As Sledge said on April 6th, “I don’t want to put it in writing because then you’ll take it to Montgomery to complain about it.”

You see, even then, she was more worried about getting into trouble than serving students. And this is why five days before school starts we still don’t know if IEPs can be met: the leadership of our system, including it seems Dr. Wardynski, is more concerned about getting sued than doing their jobs the right way to begin with.

I suppose they fail to see the irony that if they simply did their jobs, the likelihood that they will be sued is dramatically decreased.

Cutting Special Education Again

On April 21st, the consultant recommended and the board approved firing an additional 36 Special Education personnel. 36 of the 45 Probationary Support Personnel fired that night were special education personnel.

When I asked Dr Richardson about this on June 9th at the School Closing meeting at Grissom High, he stated that “many of those support personnel will be re-hired.”

Somehow he managed to say this with a straight face.

Delayed Hiring for 2011-2012

The first job postings for teachers and aides were posted on the Huntsville City School website on July 14th. Seventeen working days before the first day of school.

They waited so long to start the process of getting ready for the new year that many Special Education Teachers, Aides, Occupational Therapists, Speech Therapists, and Physical Therapists who had worked in the system for years decided it was time to move on.

The postings, at that time, included exactly one instructional assistant position.

Step by step, the system, the board, the consultants, and the two superintendents have decimated an excellent special needs program to the point where we cannot even know five days before the start of school if the system is in a position to meet our IEPs.

__________

It was completely predictable that we were going to be understaffed and would therefore have safety issues at the start of school.  Every decision made by the central office, the board of education, the consultants they hired, and both of the superintendents who are currently working for Huntsville City Schools has lead us straight to this point.

I’ve asked Dr. Wardynski, via email as I suspect it will be a long time before he agrees to meet with me in person, about this three times since my meeting with him on Monday.

I have written to ask the following:

Dr. Wardynski,

Thank you again for meeting with me on Monday. Have you been able to determine yet if the system will be in a position to meet the IEPs starting on August 8th?

Also, if you are still uncertain about this, what specific and detailed assurances can you offer me as a parent, in an effort to demonstrate your commitment to transparency, that my son’s classroom will be sufficiently staffed to ensure a safe learning environment for him on August 8th?

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Russell

Russell Winn

2501 Glen Echo Circle, SE
Huntsville, AL 35803

On Wednesday, July 27th, at 7:01pm, just seven days before the start of school, I received the following response from Dr. Wardynski:

The post Parents Should Not Be Afraid To Send Their Kids To School appeared first on Geek Palaver.

At a stop on his “listening tour” (a part of his 60 Day Entry Plan) yesterday at 10:00am, I was able to ask Dr. Wardynski one direct question. I asked, “Dr. Wardynski, is the school system going to be in a place to meet the requirements of IEPs on August 8th?”

To this question Dr. Wardynski responded, “I don’t know.”

After a pregnant and awkward pause, he added, “That’s why I’m listening to you.”

Rather than coming prepared to discuss the Special Needs Consolidation plan, rather than coming prepared to discuss the Special Needs staffing issues, rather than coming with even basic remarks prepared as he did for the South Huntsville Civic Association’s “Town Hall” meeting, Dr. Wardynski came to a meeting with special needs parents to hear from them if his system will be prepared to teach their kids in 8 days.

So now it’s the parents’ responsibility to let the superintendent know if the people he is paid $175,000 a year to supervise are doing their jobs. It’s the parents’ job to know if the school system has the proper staffing to ensure the safety of their kids.

As I have asked often before, what exactly are we paying these people for?

Meeting the requirements of the Individualized Education Program, from the first day of school, is the law. There are no exceptions. There are no maybes. There are no “I hope so’s.” Imagine showing up for school on the first day knowing that your child’s teacher does not have the resources she needs to educate your child? Would you allow your child to stay in that classroom?

If the system is not prepared to meet the IEPs, the system is not prepared for school.

If the system is understaffed and cannot meet the IEPs, the system and our schools are not safe for our kids.

__________

I was hopeful that this meeting would be different. Maybe it would be similar to the South Huntsville Civic Association “Town Hall” meeting on July 11th where Dr. Wardynski came prepared to offer an assessment of the school closings. Maybe we would finally get some answers. In fact, I was specifically told that Dr. Wardynski would finally discuss the Special Needs Consolidation during this meeting. You know, “the plan.”

It would seem that parents of special needs children don’t have the same political clout as the South Huntsville Civic Association.

After introductions, Dr. Wardynski, his aide Aaron King, and Edith Pickins, sat, took notes, cracked a few jokes, and listened.

And that was all.

His only response to a direct question was, “I don’t know.”

While I appreciate that Dr. Robinson went to the trouble of getting me invited to this meeting, and I do certainly support the concept of listening on the part of Dr. Wardynski, the time for listening has long since passed. We have specific questions concerning staffing decisions. We have specific questions concerning the safety of our children. We have specific questions concerning “the plan” that need to be answered.

We’ve been attempting to get answers to these questions since March, and Dr. Wardynski knows this. I’ve emailed these concerns to him and the board on July 16th and received no response. I shared my concerns with the board and Dr. Wardynski in person on July 21st and received no response.

In an attempt to keep this from happening, again, on Sunday, I sent Dr. Wardynski a list of questions that I was looking forward to discussing with him.

Dr. Wardynski:

Thank you for your willingness to meet with me and other parents tomorrow morning at 10:00am. I appreciate it, and I am looking forward to it.

As I have not received an agenda of any kind, I thought that I would share with you a few items that I would like to discuss tomorrow. This is only my list. It has not been discussed with the S.P.E.A.K. group as a whole nor am I speaking for them by sharing this with you. They will bring their own concerns.

1. I am concerned that the special needs classrooms for the 2011-2012 year are going to be dangerously understaffed. As such, I would like to know what the teacher to student ratio for the resource rooms is going to be. I would also like to know exactly how many instructional assistants (IAs) are assigned to the resource rooms for the coming year. As the number of students assigned to the resource rooms is, I have heard, dramatically increasing from last year, the number of IAs should also be increased from last year. Is this the case? Finally, I would like to know how many IAs are going to be available at each school to assist students in participating in regular education classrooms. The “Least Restrictive Environment” requirements of part B of IDEA states that the system must “to the maximum extent appropriate children with disabilities, including children in public or private institutions or other care facilities, are educated with children who are not disabled, and that special classes, separate schooling, or other removal of children with disabilities from the regular educational environment occurs only when the nature or severity of the disability is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily.” In order to facilitate LRE, the system must hire a sufficient number of IAs to support the children from the first day of school. Have you done so?
2. I would like you to respond to the troubling ratio of Special Needs layoffs that I shared with you via Email last Saturday (July 16th) and in person on Thursday Night (July 21st) at the Board Meeting. Why have Special Needs staff been cut at such an unfair ratio and what are you doing to address these cuts? Alabama State Code 16-39-3 states that, “If sufficient funds are not available to a school board to provide fully for all the provisions of this chapter as well as the educational needs of nonexceptional children, such board must prorate all funds on a per capita basis between exceptional and nonexceptional children.” So far the cuts made have not been made on a per capita basis.
3. I would like to finally receive a written copy of the special needs consolidation plan with a clear justification for why these changes have been made. I was first told that I could expect this written plan “soon” on April 6, 2011. I’ve been promised a written plan by Ms. Sledge, Dr. Pruitt, Dr. Robinson, Dr. Richardson, and indirectly by Dr. Moore. To date, this plan still has not been provided to me or any other special needs parent that I am aware of. Frankly, Dr. Wardynski, this is an excellent example of why Huntsville City Schools is the most sued school system in the state. You may review a listing of these suits here.
4. To avoid issues like the consolidation of special needs students in the future and to reduce the number of lawsuits the system must endure, I would like to hear your thoughts on how you plan to involve the stakeholders of your decisions in your decision making process.
5. I would like to hear how you intend to improve the transparency of the operation of your office, the board and the system as a whole. If you want people to trust you, you can earn that trust by showing us what you’re doing and why.

Thank you for your time and for taking the time to meet with me and other parents tomorrow. Doing so is the first step towards earning my trust. I appreciate your willingness to go this far.

Sincerely,

Russell

He, again, summarily ignored these questions. (He’s learned how to not answer a question from the best of them, I suppose.)

In fact the only issue he did address was to offer his assurances that he would operate in a transparent manner. Unfortunately, he wasn’t transparent enough to offer us any details about how he was planning to improve transparency. I suppose we should just trust him that he’s been trained to use the right buzz-words.

When I was invited to this meeting, I was specifically told, “Dr. Wardynski has met with our special ed staff and assessed the plan.” (Please note the use of past tense in that sentence, and yes, this sentence refers to “the plan.”) He has met with the staff and assessed the plan. When he met with us yesterday, his constant refrain was, “I’ve only been here three weeks; I haven’t assessed anything yet.”

Instead, Dr. Wardynski sat quietly, taking notes, offering no comment on his assessment of the plan. And the one time he was asked a direct question in the meeting, his response was, “I don’t know.”

Yesterday we were nine days from the start of school, and the superintendent doesn’t know if his schools are ready to teach our students.

We were nine days from the start of school, and the superintendent cannot or will not answer basic questions about the staffing of special needs classrooms.

We were nine days from the start of school, and the superintendent cannot or will not address basic questions about the security and safety of students.

Today we’re eight days from the start of school, and still we’re asked to wait.

The post Wardynski “Doesn’t Know” If Huntsville City Schools Will Meet IEPs appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Occasionally I’m told that my expectations of the school system are unreasonable. I often feel that the school board believes that. Heck, Dr. Moore all but told me that I was being so once. But occasionally I hear this from someone who doesn’t have something to gain by telling me I’m being unreasonable.

So are they right?

The only way I know to evaluate that question is to examine my motivations and goals.

What do I want? What am I looking for the school system to do? What are my expectations?

It seems to me that I have both short-term and long-term goals. I thought it might be helpful for me to list them here. (Pssst. Huntsville City School Board of Education: If you’re listening, here’s how to make me go away.)

Short-term Goals:

• “The Plan”: I would like to see the Special Needs consolidation/segregation plan (the one that is forcing students who spend the majority of their day in a resource room to either attend Challenger or AAA) in writing. This should contain a justification of the decision to move students from their home school (or another school) into either AAA or Challenger. Why do you believe doing this is necessary? Educators should be used to answering the question “why.” That’s really the only question I’ve been asking since March and it’s really the only one that matters.
• The Special Needs RIF: I would like to know the exact numbers of special education teachers, instructional assistants, Adaptive PE teachers, occupational therapists, speech therapists, physical therapists, and other special needs personnel that you have dismissed en masse as a result of the Reduction in Force that happened in February and in April.
• The Human Resource Plan: I would like to know the exact number of special needs personnel you intend to rehire before the beginning of school in 10 days. (We’re ten days out. It is gross incompetence not to know exactly what your staffing needs will be by now.) I’ve heard that right now there is exactly one aide per classroom. One. And the average number of students in the classroom is doubling from last year.

That’s it. That’s all that I’m asking for. Three simple things: Why are you consolidating special needs students, why have special needs personnel received the deepest cuts (and how deep were they), and what are you planning to do about it in the next ten days?

Three simple items. I first started asking publicly and privately for “the plan” in April, but still haven’t received it. I began publicly and privately asking for an explanation of the unfair Special Needs cuts in May, but again I still have not received any response.

Is this unreasonable? I don’t think so, but let’s check my long-term goals just to be sure.

Long-term Goals:

• Put Students First: Is this going to be good for students and offer them the highest educational experience? Is the special needs segregation decision in the best interests of the education of special needs students? If so, show us. If not, stop it.
• Put Teachers and Support Personnel Second: Teachers and their aides are on the front lines. We must support them. We must make our system known as the best place to work in the state if not the nation. We’re nowhere near there now. Madison City and County are widely known as better systems to work in. Was your decision to wait until July 14th to post even one job showing support of teachers? Was your decision to fire every aide that you could showing support for either aides or, more importantly, teachers? Putting just a single aide in a classroom is going to quickly drive the great teachers we currently have away.
• Stakeholder Involvement: Involve the stakeholders in your decisions. If you’re making a decision about where special needs student are going to school, involve special needs parents, teachers, principals and when possible students in the decision. If you make a decision to close a school, discuss it with the people impacted before you do so. This will not substantially impact the speed with which decisions are made, and you might actually manage to avoid spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each year on consultants. The stakeholders in this system are among the best educated people in the state and the nation. Involve us. Use us. We fill out extensive contact information every August with e-mail, cell phones, business phones, and mailing addresses. You have a website. You have a television station. Use the resources available to you.
• Transparency: Every decision you make, excluding some of the personnel decisions that involve the dismissal of an employee, is public information. We live in an age when it costs nearly nothing to publish information (look at this blog for example). The public shouldn’t have to beg and plead with the board and the system to know what the board and the system are doing. You work for us. It’s your job to show us what you’re doing. It’s your job to allow the public to be involved in public meetings. Operate in the open and we’ll trust you. Operate, in even open meetings, in code, and we won’t.
• Do Your Job Competently: I don’t expect or require perfection. Everyone makes mistakes. All I ask is that you work to minimize your mistakes, and own and correct them whenever possible. Has the board publicly taken responsibility for allowing $175,000 worth of food spoil?

Again, that’s it. That’s all I’m looking for or expecting. Honestly, if you even make an attempt at most of these, I’ll probably sing your praises.

It would thrill me to never write another blog post about Huntsville City Schools except in praise.

I would love to have my Thursday nights back.

But so far I’ve had little to no indication that the board or Dr. Wardynski intends to do any of these things. The approach they’ve taken since July 5th is to limit transparency and limit stakeholder involvement. And it’s just insane to expect a written copy of a plan.

Am I being unreasonable? Are my expectations too high? Feel free to let me know if you think so below. Unlike our elected officials who are paid to listen to us, I am thrilled to receive feedback from the public.

The post How the School Board Can Shut Me Up appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Last night, the Huntsville City School Board and Dr. Wardynski told me, by ignoring me, that I need to be patient. By not including the special needs segregation plan on the agenda, they told me, again, that I would have to wait.

On March 17th, I was told by this board and Dr. Moore that the “rumor” that Special Needs kids were going to be moved from their home schools to either AAA or Challenger was just a rumor. They told me that I would have to wait to have it confirmed, but not to worry because David Blair assured us that “no decision could be made without the issue coming before the board.”

“You’ll have to wait.”

Beginning the week of March 21st, parents of Special Needs children were being told in IEP meetings that if they wanted services for their child, that their child would have to be moved from their current school (which was occasionally their home school) to either AAA or Challenger.

When Amy Sledge and Dr. Janice Pruitt met with Special Needs parents on April 6, 2011, they promised us that they would return to their offices the next day, put the plan to segregate kids in writing and send it to parents.

She didn’t come to the meeting with the plan in hand.

Instead she told us, “You’ll have to wait.”

When I contacted Ms. Sledge two weeks later in a phone conversation on April 21, 2011, she informed me that the “plan” was sitting on Dr. Moore’s desk, and that it would need her approval before it could be sent out. She was certain that it would be sent out in the next week or so.

“You’ll have to wait.”

On May 5th, just hours after the power was restored to most of the city, Ms. Sledge and Dr. Moore made a presentation to the board about the special needs segregation plan that they were already implementing. This was an oral presentation that offered no reasons for the plan to segregate children.

When I contacted Dr. Jennie Robinson to ask for a copy of the plan in writing, I was told on May 7th:

I wish that there was a report to share. I was disappointed that it was only a verbal report without any accompanying documentation. It really didn’t tell us much. We are continuing to ask for a solid plan and Dr. Moore said it would be forth coming at the next meeting.

“You’ll have to wait.”

When I asked Dr. Robinson on May 16th to confirm that Dr. Moore would present a plan on the meeting on the 17th, I was told that the board meeting had been postponed until May 24th. Dr. Robinson went on to say, “I asked Dr. Moore to prepare a report for that meeting and she told me Amy presented the report and that it is the final report.”

In other words, there would be no more discussion of the plan by Dr. Moore or Ms. Sledge and Dr. Pruitt.

This time, instead of being told I would have to wait, I was told, “we’re not talking about this anymore.”

I contacted Dr. Robinson to discuss this, and while she was sympathetic and concerned about the end of the school year approaching, she said that she didn’t wish to disrupt the Superintendent interviews that were fast approaching by creating a controversy between the board and Dr. Moore. In other words, she was more concerned about hiring a new superintendent than protecting the education of our children.

In short, she asked me to wait until a new superintendent was hired before making a issue of the segregation of our children.

“You’ll have to wait.”

On July 6th, I contacted Dr. Robinson to again ask when the board was planning to address the special needs consolidation. Dr. Robinson responded:

Dr. W is looking at the consolidation plan (or lack thereof) today. He should have a report for the board by the next board meeting. I’ve told him it is extremely urgent and he agrees.

The next board meeting was, at that time, scheduled for July 21, 2011. (No one knew about the special Saturday Board meeting on the 16th at that time.) I believed that this time, given how quickly Dr. Wardynski responded to the transportation issues on July 7th, that I might get some answers.

“You’ll have to wait, but maybe not much longer.”

When the agenda was published for the July 21st meeting, there was no mention of any reports connected to Special Needs.

I again contacted Dr. Robinson, who does an excellent job of responding to emails–even when her response is “You’ll have to wait” to ask about this.

When I contacted Dr. Robinson yesterday about the lack of an agenda item concerning special needs, I was told that I should wait to discuss this with Dr. Wardynski on Monday as a part of his listening tour.

“You’ll have to wait.”

There will be, after the meeting on Monday, exactly 9 working days before the beginning of the school year.

We still don’t have a “plan” for the segregation of our children. We still don’t have the Special Education teachers, aides, occupational therapists, speech therapists, or physical therapists, that our children need to receive an education. We’re still being asked to wait.

[And for those of you concerned about costs: Aides run about $10,000 a year. OTs, STs and PTs are typically part time. This system threw away $175,000 worth of food they let spoil in April because of a lack of a plan. This system is building a $40 million dollar high school that they anticipate will be running at one-third its capacity in 10 years.]

Everyday that my son’s education is delayed by “waiting until school starts to complete our hiring” as Ms. Williams reported to the board last night, everyday that my son’s education is delayed because the board doesn’t want to upset the superintendent, everyday that my son’s education is delayed because of the incompetence of the system’s leadership, the chances of his education helping him find his way out of the fog of autism and being able to live an independent life are diminished.

I will not wait any longer.

The post “You’ll Have to Wait” appeared first on Geek Palaver.

[Ed. Note: This is an email that I sent to Dr. Wardynski and the Board on Saturday, July 16, 2011 at 11:17:17 PM CDT. I have received no response concerning any of the issues I have raised. I shared many of these same concerns at the board meeting on July 21, 2011. I, again, received no response to any of these concerns.]

From: Russell Winn <russ@geekpalaver.com>

Subject: RIF Cuts Applied Unfairly to Special Needs Students

Date: July 16, 2011 11:17:17 PM CDT

To: Laurie McCaulley <lamccaulley@gmail.com>, David Blair <david.blair.hcsboard@gmail.com>, Sarah Savage <ssavage@leadershiphsv.org>, Jennesse Robinson <personalbest@knology.net>, Alta Morrison <amorrison_hcs@comcast.net>, Topper Birney <topperb@knology.net>, E. Casey Wardynski <drw@hsv.k12.al.us>

Dr. Wardynski and the Board of Education:

I’m writing to draw your attention to the unfair, and although I’m not a lawyer I believe illegal, burden that has been placed on Special Needs students with the reduction in force that took place on February 10, 2011 and April 21, 2011. I have taken these numbers from the publicly available school board minutes.

According to these minutes, these two RIFs resulted in 259 Support Personnel (Probationary and non-Probationary combined) losing their jobs. Of these 259 support personnel who were cut, 41% (106) were Special Education personnel. This number includes the following positions:  ”Instructional Assistants” (99), “Interpreter/Tutor Hearing Impaired” (2), “Social Workers” (4), and the “Testing Specialist” (1).

If this were all of the cuts made to special education, they would be difficult enough to recover from. Unfortunately, these numbers don’t include the Instructional Assistants who were ONIN employees that were laid off when the that contract was cancelled on February 17, 2011. While the board did not publish exact numbers of personnel, it did publish the dollar value assigned to the savings realized from canceling that contract. $2,170,660 (or 53% of the total) were identified as “Special Education and Even Start personnel. Additional neither of these numbers identifies the Special Needs teachers and Adaptive PE personnel who were laid off as a part of the 154 Non-tenured Certified Teachers who also lost their job.

So at least 41% of the Support Personnel laid off were those who worked directly with Special Needs children, and yet, the special needs population of Huntsville City Schools is about 12%.

These cuts have not been made “across the board” as Dr. Moore claimed during the April 21, 2011 board meeting.

There were four times as many Instructional Assistants who work directly with special needs kids laid off as Clerical Assistants.

There were five times as many Instructional Assistants laid off as Custodians.

No other single group has been asked to sacrifice more from these cuts than Special Education.

The only response that I’ve received to these numbers so far are the job postings that took place on July 14, 2011. These postings included exactly one Instructional Assistant who will be tasked with serving two schools: Ridgecrest and Rolling Hills.

As I have mention, I believe this imbalance maybe illegal.

Alabama State Code 16-39-3 states that, “If sufficient funds are not available to a school board to provide fully for all the provisions of this chapter as well as the educational needs of nonexceptional children, such board must prorate all funds on a per capita basis between exceptional and nonexceptional children.”

The board has placed at a minimum 41% of the budget cuts on just over 12% of the student population.

Dr. Wardynski, our children cannot wait any longer for this discrepancy to be addressed. I will be happy to work with you in any way I can to address this problem. If the Special Needs consolidation plan (placing special needs students at both AAA and Challenger) could be shared with parents (as we were promised by Ms. Amy Sledge and Dr. Janice Pruitt in a meeting with parents on Wednesday, April 6, 2011), I am aware of numerous parents who would be happy to work with you and the system in addressing the needs of our children. Special needs parents are used to being hyper-involved in the education of their children. Please take advantage of this by including us in your decisions concerning our children.

I will close with just one illustration. This year, my son was at Challenger Elementary after having been moved from Farley Elementary pre-school program the year before. We were not happy with the transfer, but we did not fight it. As it worked out, we ended up being quite happy with the quality of education that he received during the first half of the year at Challenger. Mrs. Niki Bowling, Mrs. Terry Klinkhammer, and Mrs. Kim Collins (his teacher and the two aides who worked most closely with my son), did incredible work with assisting him in transitioning from Farley to Challenger. (Change is extremely difficult for kids on the autism spectrum.)

Immediately after the Christmas break, Mrs. Bowling was ordered on extended medical leave due to a complicated pregnancy. She was replaced by a substitute teacher, Mrs. Susan Cooley. Because of the superb work of Mrs. Terry Klinkhammer and Mrs. Kim Collins in providing continuity in my son’s education, Mrs. Cooley was able to step into Mrs. Bowling’s role and aid my son in taking huge leaps in his language and social interaction. Honestly we were concerned if he would ever be capable of these leaps. In fact, thanks to the work their work and his Occupational Therapist, Mrs. Kelly Smith, Matthew was included into Mrs. Patti McCord’s Kindergarten Classroom by the end of the year.

The day after my son’s first inclusion, Mrs. Kelly Smith wrote me to say: “The kids at his table cheered when Mrs. McCord announced that he would sit with them. They like him. They ask some questions but are accepting of his singing and talking.”

This is the kind of excellence that we need to celebrate in our system, and Mrs. Cooley, Mrs. Klinkhammer, and Mrs. Kim Smith were crucial to making this happen. Unfortunately because of the reduction in force made to the system neither Mrs. Cooley, Mrs. Klinkhammer, nor Mrs. Kim Collins have positions in the coming year. And since there has been only a single Instructional Assistant position opened up for next year, it is highly unlikely that any of these excellent teachers will be working in our schools next year.

This is a tragedy.

Most Instructional Assistants make approximately $10,000 a year. I’m certain that our substitute teachers make no more than that.

Please make rehiring Instructional Assistants a priority. Our students can succeed if we give them even a minimum of resources. I challenge you sir, to consider this with every hiring, salary and financial decision you make. Ask yourself this question: how many instructional assistants is this position or decision going to cost our students who cannot speak up for themselves? If you do this, one day my son and hundreds like him will sing in your honor.

Thank you,

Russell Winn

The post Email: RIF Cuts Applied Unfairly to Special Needs Students appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Despite reports that the regular board meeting would not happen this week, the Huntsville City School Board will hold its regularly scheduled board meeting tomorrow night Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 5:30 pm at the Merts Boardroom, 200 White Street.

The agenda 7-21-11.AJD.pdf, posted just moments ago on the HCS website, includes the following items: Salary policies for classified and certified employees, “Temporary Personnel Staffing,” an agreement between HCS and Barbara Johnson (Ms. Johnson is listed as the Parental Involvement Education Specialist for the Federal Programs’ Parental Involvement Network), Human Resources Report (which the public never sees), and “Certification of Expenditures” which consists of 38 pages of data which again, hasn’t been made publicly available.

Work Session

1. Salary Policy for Classified Employees. (Superintendent’s Item)
2. Salary Policy for Certified Employees Covered by Alabama State Minimum Salary Schedule. (Superintendent’s Item)
3. Adoption of Student First Act and Recission of Conflicting Policies (Superintendent’s Item)

Special Session

Moment of Silent Reflection

Pledge of Allegiance

1. Minutes–June 16, 2011 – pp. 1-5
2. Board and Superintendent Comments
3. Action Items
   1. Consent Agenda – p.6
      1. Gifts to Schools – p.7
      2. Temporary Contracts/Agreements – p.8-11
      3. Bid Tabs
         1. Recission of the Approval of Bid 11-72, Annual Fire Extinguisher, Semi-Annual Kitchen Hood and Dry Chemical Paint Systems Inspection, Certification and Maintenance awarded to Raney Fire Protection Systems, Madison, AL as approved by the Board of Education March 17, 2011. – p. 12
         2. Annual fire extinguisher, semi-annual kitchen hood and dry chemical paint systems inspection, certification and maintenance for the Maintenance Dept. – pp.13-14
         3. Key and lock hardware for the Maintenance Department – pp.15-16
         4. Fire alarm controls and instruments for the Maintenances Department – pp. 17-18
         5. Maintenance and construction of exterior lighting for the Maintenance Department – pp.19-20
         6. Network cable installation for various cost centers – pp. 21-22
         7. Anti-virus software and maintenance for Huntsville City Schools – p. 23
         8. Custodial supplies for all cost centers – pp. 24-25
         9. Cut glass for the Maintenance Department – pp. 26-27
         10. Bread for the Child Nutrition Program – pp. 28-29
         11. Dairy products for the Child Nutrition Program – pp. 30-31
         12. Temporary Personnel Staffing for Huntsville City Schools – pp. 32-33
         13. Produce for the Child Nutrition Program – pp. 34-35
   2. New Business
      1. Human Resources Report – pp. 36-46
      2. Agreement Between Huntsville City Board of Education and Barbara Johnson – p. 47
      3. Bus Rules – pp.48-50
      4. Use of Digital Devices During the Administration of a Secure Test – pp. 51-52
      5. Issue and Use of Huntsville City Board of Education Provided Communication Devices – pp.53-55
      6. Salary Policy for Classified Employees – pp. 56-57
      7. Salary Policy for Certified Employees Covered by Alabama State Minimum Salary Schedule – pp. 58-59
      8. Change Order Number 1 – Columbia High School Concessions Building and Football/Wrestling Facility Project – pp. 60-61
      9. Certification of Expenditures – pp. 62-100

Citizen Comments

Agenda developed by the Superintendent in collaboration with the Board President and Vice President

It will be interesting to see if the board actually posts the new bylaws before the meeting so that Citizens can understand what the rules are concerning citizen comments. Hopefully they will allow comments on the closing of Providence Middle School, but I’m not holding my breath. They still haven’t posted the May 25th minutes that were approved on June 16th even though they posted an incomplete set of minutes from the June 2, 2011 meeting, so I doubt that they will post the new bylaws.

It’s ironic that education administrators seem to prefer an uneducated populace.

The minutes posted from June 2nd do not include any reference to the Demographer’s Report that was offered that even by Dr. Steve Salmon of GUDE Management Group.

Also absent from the agenda is any discussion of the unfair cuts to special need staffing or the special needs consolidation plan that was first discussed in March.

While I appreciate that the board and the superintendent have been busy this month, it is not the fault of our special needs students that they decided to postpone discussing these issues.

I’ll see you at 5:30pm tomorrow, and I’ll be live-tweeting the meeting as usual. (You can follow me @russwinn if you tweet or on Facebook at the GeekPalaver page if you don’t.) The meeting will also be broadcast on ETV (Knology 71, Comcast 17).

The post HCS Board Meeting Thursday, July 21, at 5:30 appeared first on Geek Palaver.

The board has gotten remarkable efficient at closing schools. No public hearings. No public comments. No public discussion to slow things down. No public questions that might prove difficult to answer.

It would seem that Dr. Wardynski has learned well from the public hearing meetings that happened in June. And the board is so excited to close schools that they “moved to approve” the recommendation with a second (thanks Dr. Robinson and Mr. Blair) without even hearing the recommendation first.

Just call your first ever Saturday board meeting at the last minute, fill the board room with new principals and their friends and families who will support whatever decision you make (they are after all just happy to have a job), make sure the meeting is a “Special Called” meeting (because for whatever reason, special called meetings don’t allow citizen comments), then suddenly you free to do whatever you would like to do without fear that someone might take three minutes (or is it four again) to make you face your actions.

Is our new superintendent so afraid of negative feedback that he intentionally hides from it by orchestrating meetings specifically designed to shield him from even public questions? While I certainly hope this isn’t the case, I have little reason to believe otherwise.

Let’s get something clear: the school board, the employees of the central office, the employees at the schools in our system and, yes, the superintendent all work for us, the public, the citizens. They are our employees, and they have a responsibility to listen to us.

Funny, I remember writing exactly the same thing to Dr. Richardson and Dr. Moore just a few of months ago.

The more things change . . .

__________

I don’t know if the plan to move Providence 6th graders to Williams Middle in a couple of weeks is a good one or a bad one. It may, actually, be the best possible solution. I would like to hear from the parents and teachers of those students affected before making an evaluation, and so should Dr. Wardynski. Overcrowding at Providence is an old problem. There has been ample time to seek out their input.

What I do know is this: making the decision to do this at the board’s first ever Saturday meeting and refusing to allow any public input into this plan is a bad idea.

Even though I did not support Dr. Wardynski for the superintendent position, even though I do not support him making $55,000 above the minimum salary, I still earnestly hope that he is the savior of our schools that Dr. Robinson and many others have painted him to be.

My children are just starting out in the system, and I fully expect them to graduate from Grissom High with honors in 11-13 years. I do not want spend every second Thursday (with the odd Saturday thrown in whenever they want to discuss something difficult) attending Board meetings and then writing about it. I much prefer writing about my kids and dreams.

I would love to never write another posting about the school board ever again.

But the reasons that I started writing about them back in April (wow, it’s only been four months) are still exactly the same.

• The School Board under the direction of the Superintendent is still making decisions without public input.
• The School Board under the direction of the Superintendent is still approving the expansion of the Central Office while cutting out teachers and aides.
• The School Board under the direction of the Superintendent is now actually closing schools rather than merely talking about it.
• The School Board under the direction of the seemingly unaccountable Superintendent is still refusing to put their plans in writing for public review.
• When I told Dr. Richardson, Dr. Moore, Dr. Wilson, and the board members who were present at the second school closing meeting at Grissom High on June 9th that I had lost faith in their leadership, all of the reasons that I listed for why are still unaddressed.

I’m aware that Dr. Wardynski hasn’t been here two weeks yet. I’m not asking for a miracle. But it doesn’t take a miracle to listen to the stakeholders before you make a decision of this magnitude.

I sincerely hope that the approach that Dr. Wardynski and the board took in voting to close Providence Middle School on Saturday, July 17th at 4:00pm, is not going to be their standard operating procedure, but I would be foolish to believe otherwise until they take action to demonstrate that they are now operating differently from the previous ten years.

Please, Dr. Wardynski, Mr. Birney, Mrs. McCaulley, Mr. Blair, Dr. Robinson, and Mrs. Morrison, prove me wrong. I, just like everyone else in this town, want to be able to trust the leadership of our schools.

Only those who have something to hide, hide from the public response to their actions.

The post Providence Middle School to be Closed in Three Years appeared first on Geek Palaver.

[I'm reposting this from the end of May. None of these issues have been addressed yet.

On Thursday, July 14th, the system posted its job openings for the new year. 14 positions are available with a special education connections for "certified" (read teachers) personnel. One (yes, one) Instructional Assistant position was opened up.

I suppose that this one additional position was what Dr. Richardson was talking about when he told me at the Second School Closing Meeting at Grissom that "aides would be re-hired." Perhaps the "s" was just misspeaking on his part.]

The actual numbers are disturbing.

After two Reduction in Force plans have been implemented in Huntsville City Schools, a total of two-hundred and fifty-nine (259) people who are classified as Support Personnel (Probationary and non-Probationary combined) have been fired by the Superintendent, the Board and the Consultant Ed Richardson. These numbers are based on the minutes from the HCS Board Meeting on February 10, 2011 and April 21, 2011. (You may verify these numbers for yourself by clicking on the links.)

259 people. This is a horrifying testament to mismanagement. 259. Yet, sadly, this number doesn’t include the Teachers (154) who have lost their jobs or any of the personnel provided by the ONIN Staffing Service when their contract was cancelled on February 17, 2011.

So considering only the HCS Support Personnel who have been fired (259), how many of them were Special Education Personnel? 41 percent. 41% (106) of all of the support personnel cuts came from Special Education personnel. Maybe a couple of pictures will help clarify that number.

Additionally, remember that the Special Education population represents less than 12% of the student population:

Dr. Richardson claimed during his report on April 21st that he had not considered making any cuts to Special Education. The only conclusion I can draw from that statement is that he was unaware that cutting “Instructional Assistants” (99) or the “Interpreter/Tutor Hearing Impaired” (2), or the “Social Workers” (4), or the “Testing Specialist” (1) might have anything to do with Special Education. Surely he wouldn’t have made the claim that his cuts did not consider Special Education otherwise.

Dr. Moore claimed that the cuts would be made “across the board.” I suppose what she meant was that 59% of the cuts would be made across the board and that special education would make up the difference. Surely she couldn’t have known that 41 percent were coming from only one group. Right?

Let’s consider one final chart. This is a break down of the cuts by type. Wherever possible I’ve combined categories together by title. For example there were 7 “Clerical Assistants” fired in the first round of layoffs in February, and there were 17 “Clerical Assistants” fired in the second round in April. Combining these two numbers results in a total of 24 “Clerical Assistants” who were fired in both rounds. The chart below shows a combination of both sets of numbers.

Do you see that giant purple chunk? That represents the ninety-nine (99) Instructional Assistants (38%) who have been laid off. The next largest slice is the darker brown on the right rear, which represents the twenty-four (24) Clerical Assistants (9%) who lost their jobs. Moving on over we find a tan one on the right which represents the nineteen (19) Custodial Staff (7%) that were laid off.

There were four times as many Instructional Assistants who work directly with special needs kids laid off as Clerical Assistants.

There were five times as many Instructional Assistants laid off as Custodians.

If we combine this number with the 53% of ONIN Staff who were also Special Education aides along with the unknown number of Special Education teachers and Adapted PE Teachers who are hidden in the 154 non-tenured teachers that were laid off, we see that Special Education instruction was clearly targeted in these two rounds of layoffs.

No other single group has been asked to sacrifice more from these cuts than Special Education.

This is an abomination that the new Superintendent who will be named Thursday afternoon must address within his first month in office.

[Update: The only response that I've received to these numbers so far are the job postings. Additionally, since the posting have occurred so late this year, many of the excellent teachers who were employed last year have already accepted new jobs elsewhere. Since we don't have an accurate count on how many of the 154 teachers who lost their jobs were special needs personnel, it's impossible to evaluate how effectively 14 (out of a total of 30) will be able to respond to this problem.

The other response that parents have been given is to be told that "we cannot write Instructional Assistants into IEPs" because the system doesn't want to be legally bound to offer the support our children require.

This imbalance in the cuts being made is, in my non-professional opinion, illegal.

Alabama State Code 16-39-3 states that, “If sufficient funds are not available to a school board to provide fully for all the provisions of this chapter as well as the educational needs of nonexceptional children, such board must prorate all funds on a per capita basis between exceptional and nonexceptional children.”

The board has placed at a minimum 41% of the budget cuts on just over 12% of the student population.

Dr. Wardynski, special needs parents were told that we would have to wait for you to come aboard before we could get an answer to these numbers. I've personally had two board members confirm for me that this is a problem in need of a solution. I await your response, but as we've already lost many great teachers and hundreds of superb aides to help our children integrate into regular classrooms, you may have already missed your opportunity. The board and Drs. Moore and Richardson should have addressed this before you were hired. But as they did not, it now falls to you.

You must address this immediately. Our children cannot wait any longer.]

The post Huntsville City Schools RIF Plan Targets Special Education (Updated) appeared first on Geek Palaver.

For the first time ever, the school board will be meeting on a Saturday. The meeting will take place today, July 16th, at 4:00pm, at the Merts Center Boardroom.

[Sorry for the late notice. According to the Agenda/Meetings site, this was announced on July 13th. I did not notice this on the 13th or 14th.]

The agenda will include the following items:

• Overcrowding at Providence Middle School
• CSFO Job Description
• Selection of the Principals
• Other Personnel Issues
• Number of Work Days for Nurses
• Board Bylaws and Standing Rules
• Suspension of Job Description

According to WAFF, Dr. Wardynski is planning to propose to the board moving some of the Providence students to Williams Middle at 155-A Barren Fork Blvd. He stated, “So what I’m going to be proposing to the board is a different approach which will be to look at Williams School, which is about 50% of capacity right now, new facility, great school and how we could leverage that to reduce the crowding at Providence.”

He went on to offer details about how these students would be moved under his new plan: “We’ve designed these alternatives in a way that’s not going to change the situation for how a parent would get a child to school. The parents won’t have to go somewhere else. The child will arrive at Providence, and we’ll take it from there.”

In other words, it would appear that Dr. Wardynski is planning to bus students from Providence to Williams after they have arrived at Providence.

His statement that this would not “change the situation for how a parent would get a child to school” is somewhat disingenuous, however. The two schools are, according to MapQuest 12.5 miles apart. In morning traffic, this distance would require at least 25 minutes to cover. Are the students being moved going to start school 30 minutes later than others?

Also, while Williams Middle is on the list of schools that would be impacted by Dr. Wardynski’s July 7th transportation plan, Providence Middle was not. I have requested a copy of that plan, but I have not received it yet.

The will be a change in the situation for the parents. It will be interesting to see how they decide which students will be moved.

I certainly do appreciate that the board offered so much advanced notice concerning such an important meeting. I’ll see you at 4:00pm today, and I’ll be live-tweeting the meeting as usual. (You can follow me @russwinn if you tweet or on Facebook at the GeekPalaver page if you don’t.) The meeting will also, I assume, be broadcast on ETV (Knology 71, Comcast 17).

The post Huntsville City School Board Meeting Today July 16th at 4:00pm appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Sometimes the fates, chance, or god align things just right. It doesn’t happen often. Usually autism, or stress, or just a general funk gets in the way.

But sometimes the planets line up for us.

This morning was such a time. Today was a good day.

So there’s a new Pooh movie out today. And it’s exactly what you expect it to be. Well, maybe even a little better. I loved it, but that’s not the important thing.

The boy loves it. And that’s all that matters.

You see, he and I don’t get to go to movies on our own very often. Autism gets in the way. Most of the time he has difficulty with the movies. Maybe they’re too loud. Maybe too dark. Maybe it’s just that what he’s watching makes him feel sad, or worried, or scared and he doesn’t have a good way of getting those emotions out to the rest of us so we can tell him that we feel sad, or worried, or scared too.

There’s power in community, but sometimes connecting with that community is hard for him.

So like Christopher Robin, he reaches out to a stuffed bear, or tiger, or piglet, or woody and buzz who can understand him. Who will play with him without fear. And they have many great adventures together in the hundred-acre wood.

And like Christopher Robin’s dad, I can watch, and sometimes play along as he goes, but usually I’m in the background, waiting for that moment when the boy turns around with a smile happy to know I’m there, or a tear in need of a big hug.

And I give it to him. Gladly. Trying to quietly wipe away the tears of my own so as not to hurt him or confuse him when I can’t explain how much I love him.

But today was a good day. There were no tears (well, on the boy’s side anyway). There were no meltdowns. There were no screaming fits requiring a quick exit from our time together.

There was laughter.

There was singing.

There was happiness and joy.

When Tigger pounces balloony, by god, there was bouncing.

And when Christopher Robin and Pooh Bear walk off into the sunset together holding hands, the boy takes mine and we find each other, for a moment, in the hundred-acre wood.

And I get to play with my boy and his bear.

The Ballad of Nessie short had it right: sometimes tears are exactly right. Sometimes they make a home.

“And that was only the beginning . . .”

The post Finding Each Other in the Hundred-Acre Wood appeared first on Geek Palaver.

On Thursday night, the board began it’s meeting by honoring the coaches and players of the Huntsville High Baseball team for their state championship. It was an honor well deserved. While doing this, Dr. Wardynski stated that honoring these achievements reminds us of excellence, and “excellence calls us to our better angels.”

He’s correct. Seeing excellence in our community does call us to our better angels, and it’s important to recognize it when we see it.

I saw excellence in the form of two dedicated teachers who took time out of their busy summer schedules to celebrate my son’s birthday on Saturday.

(To all those wonderful families who also joined us in celebration at Pump-It-Up on Saturday, thanks for loving our boy and accepting him for who he is. Even though I’m not singling you and your children out this time, each of you made the party wonderful for a kid who sometimes has difficultly playing with others. We love and appreciate each one of you.)

These two examples of excellence are Mrs. Susan Cooley and Mrs. Terri Klinkhammer.

Mrs. Susan Cooley was the boy’s substitute teacher for the second half of the year last year. She came into his classroom halfway through the year when Mrs. Bowling had to be out with a complicated pregnancy.

She was his sub.

But because she is a dedicated teacher, she went out of her way to learn and love each of the boys in her special needs classroom. Wanting to see her student, she re-worked her schedule at the last minute so that she could attend and cheer for the boy as he played with his friends.

Mrs. Terri Klinkhammer was one of the boy’s aides. Because of the disruption that my son’s class experienced this past year, the much of the burden of his education fell to his the aides working in his classroom. Mrs. Klinkhammer was one of those who helped to shoulder that burden. She, along with Mrs. Kim Collins, brought my boy out of his shell, taught him to interact with his friends and learn to operate independently in a new setting. Without their dedication and excellence, my son’s kindergarten year would have been wasted.

She was his aide.

Their presence made my son’s day. He sought them both out, made eye contact, flirted, gave high-fives and big hugs to his two teachers who made time to celebrate his big day.

This is why I love teachers: they aren’t teachers when or because they get paid to teach. They aren’t teachers because they get paid a huge salary. They are teachers because they love students and education. And they need our support.

Miss Susan, Miss Terri, and Miss Kim are all are currently without positions for next year.

And yet each of them remain committed to caring for and loving my son.

To Miss Susan, Miss Terri, and Miss Kim: Thank you for being excellent teachers and for all your hard work with my boy. He loves you all. And so does his family. Y’all are truly special.

_____________

These three teachers are among the 420 employees laid off by Dr. Richardson when he was collecting $41,687 for his four months of work with the system. While I don’t know exactly how much they made, Richardson’s four month salary would have easily covered their salaries for another year.

If we’re going to honor excellence, Dr. Wardynski, we need to start by keeping the excellent teachers and aides who were unceremoniously fired last year. We need to start by putting an end to the hiring of consultants to produce shoddy work at exorbitant prices as we did with Dr. Salmon and Dr. Wilson. We need to start by following the system’s hiring policies in hiring assistants to the Superintendent, like Mr. Aaron King from Mississippi, at a rate of $59,211 a year. We need to start by not paying Dr. Moore $99,000 to stay at home for the rest of the year.

Mr. King is costing us six dedicated and excellent aides. Dr. Moore is costing us three dedicated and excellent teachers. Your salary, itself $55,000 above the minimum, is costing us at least five aides or two teachers.

You claim to support excellence. It’s time to back up that claim with actions. So far, with the addition of Mr. King and the continued employment of Dr. Moore, your misguided actions are screaming much louder than your words.

Dr. Wardynski, you were sold to the community as a leader who would bring a difference perspective to the table. So far it seems that you’re following the same patterns as before. We won’t be fooled again.

The post “Excellence Calls Us To Our Better Angels” appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Six years ago tomorrow, everything changed, as I got to hold my little boy for the first time ever.

For the longest time, I was completely convinced that I could never love anyone as much as I loved his big sister. It’s true what they say about little girls and their daddies: Dads are lost forever when their daughters are born.

And I was.

And I still am.

But there’s not a day gone by since in the last six years when I haven’t fallen in love all over again with this little guy.

I am amazed by the simple joy he finds in life: sliding, bouncing, holding extended conversations with the pine straw bunny rabbit, or seeing the blue sky as if for the first time.

I am in awe of his strength when he tears off the fridge door and bounces among the spilled milk and pickle juice, or when he squeezes my mouth into an O to get me to help him say, “O-Pen.”

I am broken by his grace when he walks among the eggs on the couch without a single misstep or crack.

I am in love with the boy when through his tears and stimming he manages to find a way through the noise, the confusion, and the fog to reach out and take my hand asking for big hugs to help soothe the raging within.

And when he looks me in the eye . . . everything changes–again.

Happy Birthday little guy. I love/hate that you’re growing up, but I can’t wait to see the man you become. I know you’re gonna change everything.

The post The Day Everything Changed–Again appeared first on Geek Palaver.

So last night, Dr. Casey Wardynski became both the Secretary for the Board of Education (evidently Ms. Gail Kiker is no longer working as the board’s secretary), and was approved as a signer of official documents. As one of his first official actions, Dr. Wardynski offered the board his opinion on the school closing issues. If you wish to hear for yourself, you may watch it here. The meeting begins at the 32:37 mark, and Dr. Wardynski’s comments concerning the school closings start at 1:05:36 mark.

After a brief introduction from Dr. Robinson in which she asked him, “What’s next” in the process, Dr. Wardynski emphasized that it was important to him to “obtain the maximum value for the dollar spent.” He then goes on to state that “maximum value” is based on the following criteria:

• Student achievement
• Graduation rates
• Attendance, and
• Discipline issues

As I have pointed out before, the demographer’s report does not incorporate any of these criteria, nor does it consider the academic impact closing schools and redistricting will have.

He stated that the demographics study will not be the only factor involved in his decision. “The most important factor in my mind,” Wardynski said, “is which schools are providing the best value for the dollar invested.”

He claims that he doesn’t know what the answer to that question is yet, but he intends to receive input from both within the district and without.

This is interesting as he doesn’t identify who these people from “outside the district” are. Is he talking about the state advisers, or is he talking about others? This needs to be addressed in a clearer way.

We’ve heard that part of the value that Dr. Wardynski brings to the table are a range of advisers to help him. Who exactly are these advisers? What are they advising him on? What advice are they offering? These are all questions that need to be addressed by Dr. Wardynski and the Board immediately.

As he didn’t provide a clear answer to her question, Dr. Robinson then asked him to explain again, “What’s next?”

Then he claimed that his ideal situation would be as follows:

1. “We” develop a set of criteria by which to evaluate the schools.
2. These criteria would then be vetted by the community.
3. Then once those criteria are established, then the analysis and demographics to arrive at a holistic picture of the schools in our system.

This was followed by a round of applause from many of the members of the public present.

So, where do we stand?

It seems that Dr. Wardynski is planning to slow the process down a little. I do not believe that he will be able to maintain Dr. Richardson’s deadline of having the board arrive at a decision and send that decision to the Department of Justice by September or October. If he follows his “ideal situation” of developing new criteria that incorporates questions of performance that Dr. Richardson was so quick to dismiss (“No one has said anything negative about Monte Sano,” or “Mt. Gap,” or “New Century.”), this should result in a more reliable picture of our school system.

Perhaps this new picture might even make a case that there are schools that should be closed.

This is an increasingly difficult case to make since the board, Mr. John Brown-Maintenance and Construction Director, and Dr. Steve Salmon are all recommending the building of a new middle school in the Providence Area. You can watch this for yourself at about the 52:38 mark in the video above.

Yes, Dr. Salmon, told Mr. Brown that, “you are going to have to build a new middle school on the west side of town.”

Do Westlawn Middle and Ed White Middle (or even Davis Hills for that matter) not count west side schools?

Since the laughter in the crowd at this statement was ignored, I suppose we’ll have to wait for an answer to that question. However, making certain that academic considerations are accounted for in the board’s decision (and that the community will have the opportunity to participate in the development of these criteria) is welcomed news.

The post Wardynski On Huntsville School Closings appeared first on Geek Palaver.

The GUDE Management Group, LLC, the employer of Dr. Steve Salmon during the development of the Demographer’s Report recommending closure of 9 schools in the Huntsville City system, was named in a May 2010 RICO indictment in DeKalb County, Georgia.

Dr. Crawford Lewis, superintendent of DeKalb County Schools, and Ms. Pat Pope, COO, and others were indicted on four counts of violating the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The indictment, claims that Ms. Pope and Dr. Lewis solicited the following bribes from Samuel Gude, the owner of GUDE Management Group, in exchange for a construction contract in the system:

• $3,391.25 in Atlanta Falcons Tickets
• $18,622.00 in Final Four Tickets
• $920.00 in Fox Theatre Tickets, and
• $5,000.00 in tickets to the 2008 Atlanta Mayor’s Ball

Mr. Gude knew Ms. Pope from working together with her at another construction company, and once Gude won the contract, Pope approached him for the tickets listed above to keep the construction contract. Mr. Gude provided these tickets to Ms. Pope and Dr. Lewis.

Finally, when Ms. Pope solicited a free vacation for Superintendent Crawford Lewis to New York City, Mr. Gude declined and suggested that Ms. Pope contact another company.

The details of these solicitations are taken from the indictment on pages 56 and 57, and they represent only a small part of the total indictment. You can read more about these events at DeKalb County School Watch.

____________

Dr. Steve Salmon, the original demographer hired by Huntsville City Schools, is a Senior Vice President, Director of Education of GUDE Management Group, LLC based in Atlanta, Georgia. In March 2011, Huntsville City Schools paid GUDE Management Group, LLC $37,669.76 via check number 150496 for “Other Prof Services.” In April 2011, the system paid GUDE Management Group, LLC $32,986.74 via check number 152236 again for “Other Prof Services.” In total during March and April Huntsville City Schools paid GUDE Management Group, LLC $70,656.50.

At the June 16th meeting, Dr. Richardson recommended and the board approved offering Dr. James Wilson, the founder of Education Planners, LLC a $500.00 per day contract to answer questions about the demographer’s report (which he did not, has he stated several times during the public hearings, actual create). The board offered no explanation for why the contract which had originally offered to GUDE Management Group, LLC, has now been switched to Dr. Wilson and Education Planners, LLC. I assume that the June Check Register will also show that Dr. Wilson has been paid for his services at the five public hearings. Neither GUDE nor Education Planners received a check in the month of May.

For the record, Dr. Steve Salmon is also listed as Senior Vice President, Director of Education at Education Planners, LLC. Much of the text describing Dr. Salmon’s role at Education Planners, LLC is exactly the same as the text describing Dr. Salmon’s role at GUDE Management Group, LLC.

As with much of the events surrounding the Demographer’s Recommendations, even the background of the players involved raises many questions. For example:

• Why was the contract for the demographer’s report moved from GUDE Management Group to Education Planners?
• Why did the board pay Dr. Salmon to produce the report, but have Dr. Wilson defend the report before the public?
• Exactly what level of involvement did Dr. Wilson have in the development of the report?
• How is Dr. Salmon able to perform as the Senior Vice President, Director of Education for both GUDE and Education Planners?

Hopefully when Dr. Robinson speaks tonight concerning the Schools Consolidations, she will put a halt to the discussion of closing schools until we receive answers to questions like these.

The post Dr. Salmon’s Employer Involved in School Bribery in Georgia appeared first on Geek Palaver.

There will be a school board meeting tomorrow night at 5:30pm in the boardroom at the Merts Center, 200 White Street. The agenda for the meeting has been published, and you may download it from the Board’s Web Site or 7-7-11.AJD.pdf.

I’ve noticed several interesting agenda items that I would like to call to your attention.

1. Dr. Wardynski will be offering a “Building Report.” Honestly, I’m not sure what this report will contain, but it’s certainly possible that it may have a connection to the demographer’s report concerning school closings. One would hope that it would contain, oh, I don’t know, actual data concerning the condition of our school buildings and hard numbers concerning the costs of renovations and repair. But, I wouldn’t hold my breath. This is not how the board operates.
2. There will also be a proposal for the hiring of a new CFO that Dr. Wardynski is evidently bringing with him from Colorado. This is an interesting move as it was my understanding that central office positions had to be posted and opened for applications. (At 120k a year, I’m sure that there will be a number of applicants.) I assume that this is an interim position, but we’ll see tonight.
3. Mr. Birney will be discussing a Special Needs Playground located at the Academy for Academics and Arts. This is an interesting addition as it implies that the board is planning to upgrade the playground area at AAA to accommodate the influx of special needs students who are being transferred without parental input or options to AAA in August. (Parents have been told that they will move their child or their child will not receive services.) It seems that despite numerous assurances that Special Needs students would not be segregated without clear justification and a board vote, the board is now studying the need to update the Special Needs playground to accommodate that segregation. [UPDATE: I've been informed that this item is no longer on the agenda for tomorrow night.]
4. Several System Policy changes will be discussed including Bus Rules, Using devices during testing, and Cell Phone policies.
5. Dr. Robinson will be discussing “School Consolidations.” I am assuming that she will be offering a recommendation concerning the demographer’s recommendations to close 21% of the schools in Huntsville. Hopefully, her recommendation will be to dismiss the demographer’s report and request a refund of the $75,000+ we have paid to Dr. Salmon of GUDE Management Group, LLC and Dr. Wilson of Education Planners, LLC.  There remain far too many unanswered questions concerning these recommendations to proceed.
6. Mr. Birney will be discussing the Transportation Plan – Staggered School Start recommendation that Dr. Richardson offered the board on June 16th. To refresh your memory, on June 16th, Dr. Richardson recommended to the board that they consider starting schools on a staggered schedule with Elementary Schools beginning at 7:30am rather than 8:00am in order to allow the system to run their school buses more often. During his recommendations, he repeatedly suggested that the board ignore “any complaints that you hear about my recommendations.” He suggested that the board receive input from the school principals concerning starting the day earlier, but stated that parents “would adjust.” It seems that Mr. Birney is moving ahead with Dr. Richardson’s recommendations. For my family these adjustments will require the following:
   1. An earlier bed time limiting the amount of time my family has in the evenings to interact, do homework, and just talk to each other.
   2. An earlier departure time. Even though we live about five minutes from Mt. Gap and seven from Challenger, in order for both kids to arrive to school on time we typically needed to leave home at 7:20am. With this change, my kids and I will be leaving home at 6:50am.
   3. If schools begin earlier, they will end earlier requiring addition funds for after school care.
7. Mr. Brooks (the Board’s attorney) will be discussing a reduction of School Nursing Working Days down from 187 to 182.

In other words, this meeting appears to be packed with agenda items that will have a direct impact upon every parent in this system.

In a continuing pattern of limiting public input, the board has not placed Citizens’ Comments on the agenda. I remain hopeful that this is an oversight on their part, but we’ll see tomorrow. At the last meeting on June 16th, Mr. Birney moved the citizen comments that were on the agenda to the end, and then promptly adjourned the meeting without addressing the public. Tomorrow night should be telling in this regard.

Despite this limiting of comments, I implore the public to make the boardroom at 200 White Street standing room only tomorrow night. Even if they refuse to allow the public a voice in the decisions that they are making, they need to at least see our silent faces as they do it.

If you cannot make it, I suggest that you watch it on ETV (17 Comcast, 71 Knology) or streamed live on the Huntsville City Schools website. Assuming that I can get a cell signal inside Merts (often an issue), I’ll be live tweeting @russwinn as well. If you don’t tweet, you can follow it on my GeekPalaver FB page as well.

I hope to see you there. If I’ve learned anything about local politics, it really is all about who shows up.

The post Parental Involvement Needed: HCS School Board Meeting 7-7-11, 5:30pm appeared first on Geek Palaver.

From the first presentation to the board on June 2, to the last public meeting on June 21, 2011 (the school board had a private meeting with Dr. Richardson, Dr. Pouncey, and one assumes Dr. Wilson on Thursday, June 23, 2011), the most commonly asked and most frequently ignored question was, “What are the actual projected savings for closing each school?”

To this question, Dr. Richardson famously answered Dr. Robinson, that offering those estimates would “just confuse it at this point.” His claim was that these firm numbers could not be made available until after the board had decided which schools to close. At one point at the third public meeting at Johnson, he actual claimed that “no one had asked for the [actual data] before.”

And yes, there was laughter at this statement.

The only numbers that Dr. Richardson was able to produce were general state averages that closing an Elementary school saves $300,000; closing a Middle school saves $500,000; and closing a High school saves $700,000. Offering the board or the public any additional information would only confuse us.

Strangely enough, Dr. Richardson shared with the public on Tuesday, June 21 that Dr. Pouncey would be meeting with the board on Thursday, June 23, 2011 when Dr. Richardson made his final presentation to the board concerning the public meetings, and that Dr. Pouncey would be bringing with him “additional state data to share with the board” concerning the savings associated with closing each of the schools on the list.

More than a week later, this public information that was shared with the board at their private meeting still has not been shared with the public on the Huntsville City Schools website.

In response to the Huntsville Times article that claims that previous school closings resulted in only $25,000 a year in utilities and maintenance savings across three schools: Stone, West Huntsville, and Terry Heights.

All of the personnel were, in accordance with Huntsville City Schools Consolidation policy (101-14), moved to other schools. In fact, the consolidation policy explicitly states that, “Nothing in this policy shall be interpreted to diminish the rights of tenured and non-probationary employees.” Furthermore, in addition to teachers being eligible to transfer to the new consolidated school, Principals, Administrators, and Support Staff may all request transfers to the consolidated school or to another school in the system.

In short, consolidating schools does not result in savings in personnel costs. Richardson regularly claimed that the school closings would result in at least the savings of the salaries of the principal, assistants, secretaries and custodial staff, but there is nothing in the policy nor in the experience of Huntsville City Schools that supports this claim.

Perhaps this is why Dr. Richardson chose not to discuss the School Consolidation Savings report received on June 15th even though he was asked repeatedly on the 16th about the actual savings the system experienced as a result of previous consolidations. Perhaps he knew that this report was about as reliable as the demographer’s report as it shows the majority of the savings from closing West Huntsville, Stone, Terry Heights, East Clinton, and Lincoln are from personnel savings that did not occur.

Not to worry, Dr. Richardson, when the facts don’t support your claims, you should feel free to ignore them. That’s certainly a lesson that our schools should be teaching our children. (Thankfully, they’re not.)

So, assuming that Dr. Richardson was telling the truth that Dr. Pouncey was bringing more specific numbers on the proposed closings to the private meeting with the board on June 23rd, why haven’t those numbers (and the rest of the details from that meeting) been published on the website yet?

According to the Huntsville Times, Dr. Richardson is expected to make another report to the School Board at their next meeting on July 7th. Perhaps then we will see some actual numbers that make sense. I’m planning to be there, live tweeting the meeting @russwinn, but I won’t be holding my breath for answers that actually make sense.

So, how much will closing schools actually save? We could tell you, but it would only confuse you.

The post How Much Will Closing Schools Save? appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Yesterday a reader wrote to ask, “How can we work to save all these wonderful schools?”

This was a fantastic question, and it reminded me that I had been meaning to write something like this for a few days now.

Now that the public meetings concerning the demographer’s report are over, what can now be done to work to save all these wonderful schools? After we commiserated a bit about the worry and grief these school closing rumors are bringing to the lives of our children (my daughter has cried over her school closing repeatedly during the past two weeks), I came up with some suggestions.

Now, these are not earth-shattering by any means, they are just a few logical suggestions that might help.

And yeah, they will take work.

So here are my suggestions for how we might find a way forward. If you have others you’d like to add, please do so in the comments below or on Facebook or Twitter. We need to work together to free all of our daughters and sons from worrying about the future of their schools.

1. Talk to everyone you know. Tell them your opinions about the report and the plan to close schools. Encourage them to read it for themselves. Get them to share their opinions with you and others. I’m certain that the hope (on the part of at least some of the board) is that as time passes and the summer progresses, people will lose interest. We have to keep that from happening.
2. Go to the board meetings. They are held on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays every month at 5:30, except when they change it. When you can’t go, watch it on ETV, but going is better. It lets the board see you and see that you’re serious.
3. Contact the board members. I’ve posted email addresses for every board member on the HCS Board Contact Info Page. I would recommend starting with your board member, but I would contact the others as well. With just a single exception, I’ve been impressed with the board’s responsiveness to email contacts. If you include your other contact information, they will often call you as well. This doesn’t mean that they will agree with you, but you are at least being heard.
4. Organize. Facebook pages are good (You can find a list of the ones I know of over on the right side under HCS Facebook Groups); face to face meetings are better. Get other people involved and call meetings to discuss the issues. Invite your board member to attend if she or he is able. (I have found Dr. Robinson, my board member, to be extremely approachable and interested in hearing what parents have to say. Again, she and I don’t agree regularly, but she does listen. For that I am grateful.)
5. Contact Dr. Casey Wardynski, the new superintendent, after July 5th and give him your opinion (and the opinion of as many people as you can speak for) directly. I don’t know Dr. Wardynski (and if it matters, no I didn’t support him in the selection process), but I am hopeful that he will at least be willing to listen.
6. Friend and Support your Teachers, Aides, Staff and Principals. They are the ones caught in the middle, and they often feel like no one is standing up and fighting for them. They have been asked to pay the price for a lack of leadership with their jobs and salaries (which have been frozen for everyone and lowered to the state minimum for all newly starting teachers).

Despite the flawed leadership of this system, Huntsville still has absolutely superb teachers. They need to hear from parents regularly about everything: good, bad, suggestions, encouragement, and even criticism (of the constructive nature) if it is needed. I have not encountered a single teacher in this system who doesn’t desperately crave parental involvement and support.

Whenever possible, speak publicly in support of our teachers. I’ve never met a teacher who was teaching for the money. As they are getting paid less and being asked to teach more (class sizes are going to be dramatically larger next year), they need our praise and support now more than ever.

If we can offer that as a community, we will continue to attract good teachers even though the leadership of the system isn’t paying them what they’re worth.

The one really great thing about this ridiculousness is that our community is becoming even stronger because of our shared desire to educate our kids. Hopefully Dr. Wardynski will recognize this and do everything he can to involve the community in the decision-making process he’s going to face full-force on Tuesday, July 5th.

_____________

With apologies to Stephen King, thank you, Constant Reader, for reading, writing, and standing up for our kids. Despite the circumstance of our meeting, I’m grateful to get to know each of you. Like you, I’m doing this for one reason and one reason only: to provide great schools for my kids. So long as we don’t give up, we will see our schools and more importantly our children achieve amazing things.

Technorati Tags: huntsville city schools, school closings

The post A Way Forward: Saving Our Schools appeared first on Geek Palaver.

For starters, keep in mind that whatever I post tonight is going to be inadequate; frankly nearly every question asked over the past two weeks has gone unanswered. These are just a few highlights as night turns into day.

1. Why has David Blair only attended one of the School Closing Meetings? (Huntsville High. He was at the board meeting at Columbia, but after the press returned to the closing meeting, I didn’t see Blair again. While we’re at it, why hasn’t Mr. Blair offered any response to those data questions I asked him two and a half weeks ago?) Really though, these are minor questions. I’m sure that Mr. Blair had some very important meetings to attend for the past two and a half weeks. Let’s move on to some real questions.
2. Why didn’t Dr. Steve Salmon manage to attend even one of the five community meetings to address questions that seemingly only he could answer? Again, while we’re at it, what was Dr. James Wilson’s actual involvement in the creation of the report before the community meetings. At the June 2nd meeting, he was presented as Dr. Salmon’s assistant. (Of course this was when were were paying Gude Management Group, LLC. to create the report. Now we’re paying Education Planners, LLC for Dr. Wilson’s services.) Come to find out, when you look at Education Planners website, you see that Dr. Salmon actually works for Dr. Wilson. Why do I feel like I’m watching at three card monte game on a street corner? Why am I convinced that the whole city is being scammed?
3. Why do the demographers consistently refuse to discuss their methodology and the guidelines they received in developing this report? Interestingly, in January of this year, Bonvillian of the Huntsville Times reported that 11 schools in Huntsville are operating below 60 percent capacity benchmark that the state placed on Huntsville City Schools earlier that month. This study by the Times was based on 2008 data, but didn’t cost the system $75,000. Notice some of the quotes form the board members in that article: Blair said, “Butler is one of the obvious schools for discussion.” Birney followed up by saying, “We’ve known about Butler for years. It just doesn’t look like anything we suggest to keep it going is taken seriously.” Morrison offered this comment concerning Butler: “I doubt that we’ll close the building. We may put another school in there with it, but I don’t think we’ll close it.” Birney and Blair both claimed that they were most surprised by Mt. Gap’s numbers. McCaulley, speaking about smaller schools like Monte Sano said, ”We have to factor in the size of the school. It may be that a smaller school is not effective for the whole system.” No, Dr. Richardson, there’s no evidence whatsoever that the board directed the demographer to produce any results in the report. For the record, this article was published on January 16, 2011. On January 19, 2011, Mayor Battle sent a letter to the Board offering to pay Dr. Salmon of Georgia the $75,000 fee.
4. Why was the new Lee High built if demographics “prove” that the old Lee High was operating well below capacity? In fact, if you take the extra 1,000 seats found at the old Lee High out of the equation, then suddenly, HCS is operating only 4,500 seats below capacity in 10 years. If you factor Butler into that equation, suddenly we’re down to just 3,500 seats below capacity in 10 years. Two schools and we’ve found 36% of the capacity problem. (Again, assuming that these “very real, exact data” is actually real or exact.)
5. If the demographer’s report is looking at capacity issues ten years out, why does the report only include data and capacity from Old Lee High and not New Lee High?
6. Why are we spending $40,000,000 to build the New Lee High when we’re $20 million (no, $18.5 million . . . er, $15.5 million . . . whatever, WE’RE IN DEBT) in debt? Well when we decided to build New Lee in 2009 we didn’t know we were in debt. Right? No one could have predicted this or seen this coming. Right?
7. Why does Richardson constantly claim that the Huntsville City School Board must decide which schools to close before we can consider any specific data concerning the impact of the closings on academic achievement, actual cost savings, realignment issues, transportation issues, or really anything other than questionable demographic data?
8. Why, if Richardson is correct that we will be a healthy financially in two years without closing schools, are we even considering closing schools? According to his latest numbers, Richardson believes Huntsville City Schools is $15.5 million in debt. If you talk into consideration other cost saving measures he introduced on Thursday, June 16th, you can knock that number down to an even $14 million. On April 21, 2011, Richardson recommended and the board approved personnel cuts in the amount of $23,089,027. In other words, with those personnel cuts and the other million or so Richardson keeps finding, we’re already looking at nearly a $10 million dollar surplus.
9. Why can’t we know what will happen to New Century once it is moved to Lee High before the board decides to move it to Lee High?
10. Why does Dr. Richardson continue to insult parents by stating that “all parents want high standards until their kid brings home a D?”

As I said, these are just a few of the unanswered questions that remain after the five public hearings. Please feel free to add more in the comments below.

The post Unanswered Questions: Huntsville City Schools Closing appeared first on Geek Palaver.

In a repeating pattern of evasive answers and direct refusal to actually offer the public any specific information on the implications of the School Closing recommendations, Drs. Wilson and Richardson, joined last Thursday by Dr. Moore continued to defend the integrity of a fundamentally flawed demographer’s recommendation at Columbia High School.

(For an excellent review of the specific flaws, please read the ongoing series entitled: “Huntsville City Schools Debacle” parts one through five at http://havealittletalk.wordpress.com . The board could learn a lesson or two about the $70,000 they wasted on the demographer’s report if they took a few minutes to read those articles.)

As a reader pointed out after reading the summary of the third meeting, the responses they offer are repetitive. Richardson is still regularly claiming that specific detail and data “will just confuse it [the decision] at this point.”

Richardson has not deviated from that talking point once. Wilson, on the other hand, has become increasingly defensive of the report, stating that, “this is well researched data” even before the questioning has begun. You would think that making $500.00 a day to defend someone else’s incompetence would be enough to make you happy. It seems that Dr. Wilson disagrees.

Q&A

• Q: Why are we closing schools?
• A: Richardson responded with his Stump speech: The school system is $18.5 million in debt, and closing these schools will save approximately $2 million a year.

Please note that the amount of debt has mysteriously jumped back up to $18.5 million despite Richardson telling the crowd in attendance at the Johnson Meeting on Tuesday, June 14th that the debt had actually been overestimated. The actual debt was only $15.5 million. When I asked him about this change after the meeting, he confirmed that the actual debt was less than $18.5 million. Again, we don’t even know how much money we owe, but we are moving ahead with firing teachers and aide, and according to Richardson, we must move ahead with closing schools this year.

• Q: Since we haven’t saved much in the past with school closings, what specifically can we expect to save by closing these schools?
• A: Richardson claimed that the report in the Huntsville Times analyzing the savings from previous closings is flawed. For evidence he again cites his state average savings for closing a school. He claimed that, “the savings will occur and the State Department of Education will monitor the situation.” Perhaps, he suggests, the previous closings didn’t result in as much savings as they might have because “there wasn’t a sense of urgency” surrounding the closings.

Can anyone please explain to me how it’s possible for HCS to create a annual budget without already knowing how much it costs to operate a school? This data, which Dr. Richardson claimed he would find and post on the web on June 14th, which he promised Dr. Robinson he would provide on June 2nd, cannot be that hard to come up with.

There is no justification for why this wasn’t included in the demographer’s report to begin with. There is further no justification for not having already provided it as it has been the single most requested piece of information at these meetings.

The only reason it hasn’t been provided yet is because Dr. Richardson either already knows or suspects that it would contradict his claim that closing schools will save $2 million a year.

They have finally provided specific numbers concerning the previous consolidations of Morris/West Huntsville, Westlawn/Stone, University Place/Terry Heights, Blossomwood/East Clinton, MLK/Lincoln on the HCS website. This document was faxed from KyleKoski on June 15, 2011 at 10:09am. Hopefully Richardson will take a moment to actually explain these numbers tonight. Since Richardson had these numbers before the last meeting, I wonder why he decided not to discuss them at the meeting?

• Q: Where is the actual financial analysis?
• A: Richardson evaded the question by responding that “in July the board will look at some revised data.” He again stressed that the financial problem is the reason we are having these discussions, but he refuses to provide specific data, and even his numbers continue to change.

To the most commonly asked question, Dr. Richardson, Dr. Wilson, and Dr. Moore have no response.

• Q: A New Century parent made a statement about the difficulty moving New Century from it’s current location to Lee High School would have upon the ROTC students attempting to complete their work.
• A: Dr. Richardson sings the praises of ROTC and claims he supports them, but states that as Columbia is “overcrowded” the move needs to happen. He concludes that “there’s never a good time to move a program.”

To this heartfelt response, the crowd erupted in disapproval. Richardson ignored complaints that Columbia was actually built for New Century, by saying, “we’re not here to debate.”

Really, Dr. Richardson, if we’re not here to debate the pros and overwhelming cons of this haphazard recommendation, then exactly why are we here?

• Q: Where will Butler students be moved?
• A: Wilson responded that, “we don’t know.” Richardson followed up by saying that the attendance zones will not be developed until after the board has made a decision concerning which schools to close.

The point that Richardson is unwilling or incapable of understanding is that when you’re recommending the closing of 21% of the existing schools in a community, you have to provide specific financial data and attendance zone plans along with the recommendation. There is no other way for the board to make an informed decision.

I hope the board recognizes this point.

• Q: A Monte Sano parent states that “we don’t trust your numbers, and asks for the following information: What is the demographer’s success rate? What is the academic impact of these closings? How many new staff will be needed at the combined schools once they have a significantly higher student population?
• A: Wilson responded by saying, “Dr. Salmon is extremely accurate.” He then proceeded to ignore the questions.
• A: Richardson asked Wilson for the number of reports Dr. Salmon has done. Wilson responded, that he had done over 50, mostly in the south, since 1975. He repeated that Salmon is “very, very accurate” and defended this by saying that it’s the reason he keeps being asked to do them.
• A: Richardson finishes the response by saying that Monte Sano is an excellent school, but it’s “too small.” He claims that Wilson will compile a list of clients that Salmon and he have worked for.

Once again, there is absolutely no hard data offered and no discussion of the academic impact the closings will have upon our students.

• Q: Where will the principals of the closed schools be placed?
• A: Dr. Moore perks up, “there are five or six principal positions open this year.”

• Q: Is there a way to draw the attendance zones and transfer students plans before schools are closed?
• A: Dr. Wilson claims this is a good question and that yes, it can be done. Dr. Richardson cuts him off by saying that those plans will not be made until after the decision has been made.

• Q: With the coming of the new superintendent, why not wait on the decision to close schools?
• A: Richardson responded that a two to three month time frame is a good time track for the decision. The impact of waiting longer is $2 million per year to keep the schools open. He claims that this decision should be made now and not delayed.

• Q: What impact will these closing have upon diversity and on the community?
• A: Richardson claims that the Department of Justice will look at the community as we move toward unitary status. Wilson helpful chimes in with his agreement that “communities are important.”

Please note that later in the night Richardson claims that having state involvement in the closing process would be terrible, but here he’s arguing that the DoJ will themselves do the work that our board and it’s consultants should have done. You can’t demonize state control and lionize federal control when it suits you to pass responsibility.

• Q: Since New Century was the original motivation for building Columbia High School, why not keep New Century at Columbia and move Columbia students out?
• A: Dr. Moore claims that Columbia was not built for New Century.

Please contact any New Century teacher or parent for an opposing, and documented, viewpoint. There was much discussion about this after the meeting ended where Dr. Richardson claimed that he was hearing the exact same report from numerous parents and teachers, speaking to him independently, that the Columbia building was indeed built for New Century.

• Q: Where are the central office cuts?
• A: Richardson claims that the central office is “strangely classified.” There have been some reductions in the central office, but claims that “they’re actually understaffed. As we needed to make changes fast, it was quicker to cut staff from other areas other than the central office. He then again defended the central office as actually needing more staff. Richardson concluded, “this is a tedious process because of the difficultly in obtaining accurate data.”

If that’s the case, and there’s reason to believe that accurate data is difficult to come by since he’s offered little to none, then shouldn’t his only priority since February have been to get accurate data?

• Q: Since transfers have been one of the main causes of the problems of causing schools to decline, shouldn’t we simply stop transfer students out of older schools to newer ones?
• A: Wilson states that this would not solve the problem. Moore argued that all transfers are strictly made by the choice of the parent.

I suppose that Dr. Moore forgot that she had just made the Special Education department under Ms. Sledge force transfers upon at least 28 special needs families. (Not counting the number of students who had already been forced to transfer from other schools previously.)

• Q: Instead of closing three middle schools, why not combine them by grades?
• A: There are many issues in combining grade levels.

• Q: What other criteria, besides demographics, will be considered before closing schools?
• A: Richardson stated that he has “no other recommendation for the board concerning what other data they should consider.”

• Q: Has there been any discussion of opening additional schools?
• A: Moore stated that we may need a new middle school in the Providence area.

• Q: Why not simply redraw attendance zones to move Providence students back to Ed White?
• A: The attendance zones question will have to wait until after the school closings have happened.

But evidently discussions of building new schools can happen anytime?

• Q: Why is it necessary to move so quickly without presenting data?
• A: Richardson states that a delay of a year will cause the system to lose $2 million. A delay will hurt education reform, but “it’s a community decision.”

I suspect that Richardson had fallen off message with that final comment about this being a community decision as it’s the first time in four meetings that he’s allowed for any community role in the decision making process at all (presumably other than the ballot box during school board elections).

• Q: Will New Century retain a separate identity if it is moved to Lee High School?
• A: Moore responded, “We don’t know.”

Again, as New Century’s separate identity is a question about the academic impact these closings will have, there has been no consideration given to it.

• Q: Ms. Jackie Reed then stood to speak. As she often speaks at school board meetings and at these school closing meetings, the panel actually leaned back in their seats during her two minutes. She stated that she had seen a report about potentially demolishing schools that she recommended against. Furthermore she suggested that rather than forcing New Century to move, she would rather like to see the 200 Butler students who were moved out of Butler, returned to Butler. (Thus avoiding both of the High School recommendations found in the demographer’s report.) She concluded her comments by stating that the school board must be responsive.
• A: The panel offered her suggestions and comments no response.

When did it become the policy of the board or it’s representatives to ignore the questions and statements of the public?

• Q: Do magnet schools get additional funding?
• A: Moore responded first by saying that when they were founded that they did get additional funding, but that over time that funding has returned to basically system levels. Richardson leapt to add, as he bears no responsibility for this whatsoever, that in his opinion a Magnet school, by definition, needs additional funding. Otherwise there’s no difference between a Magnet and non-Magnet school.

• Q: As New Century operates on the block schedule and Lee doesn’t, how will the plan to combine New Century and Lee accommodate this difference?
• A: Richardson quickly responds, “I can’t answer that.” Moore also claims that she cannot speak to that issue. No one has an answer.

Again, more evidence that none of these esteemed former superintendents, the top educators in their respective systems, have given any consideration at all about the educational impact of their recommendations.

• Q: As Whitesburg Middle is operating at or near capacity, why are you considering closing it?
• A: Wilson after consulting the report states that Whitesburg Middle has a capacity of 680. It has an enrollment of 608, thus, it is not operating “at or near capacity.” He further reminds the audience that there are other options offered to the board concerning Whitesburg Middle.

I suppose that Wilson’s definition of “at or near capacity” requires enrollment to be above 90%.

• Q: There are a number of internal inconsistencies in the report. (New Century data is inconsistent in the report. Transfer chart shows students transferring out of and back into Butler.) Why doesn’t the report consider private school enrollment? As several private schools in the area are actively building new buildings to accommodate new student, what do these schools know about our city that the demographer doesn’t?
• A: The questioner’s interpretation of the transfer data is flawed. It is possible for a student to both transfer into and out of the same school.

Every question concerning the accuracy of the demographer’s report receives the same response: the data is flawless. The problem is that the people interpreting the data (parents/community) are “mistaken in their interpretation.” After all, be certain to remember that Richardson, Wilson, Salmon, and Moore are all highly esteemed former superintendents. Of course, Richardson, Wilson, Salmon, and Moore are far too busy to offer any evidence that might support their claim of a flawed interpretation. You just need to trust them.

Honestly, if you wrote it in a book, no one would believe you.

• Q: Has the consolidation of Madison City Schools, Madison County Schools and Huntsville City Schools been considered?
• A: Moore responses, “That’s been thought of, but it’s not very popular.”

In other words, Madison City and County hurt themselves laughing at such a proposal.

• Q: Another parent stood to question the quality of the data. 800 students fled Butler because the system has been ignoring it for so long.
• A: Wilson claims that “the data is in the report” and it is correct.
• Q: The questioner asked again, “Where is that data?” After waiting for a response, she then stated, “I’ll accept your response as, ‘I don’t know.’”

• Q: What is the timeline on seeing financial improvements?
• A: Richardson responds that the deficit had to be addressed this spring.

• Q: After reprimanding the crowd for shouting questions from the floor, the floor microphone moderator Don Phelps stood to ask Richardson his own question. He asked, “What happens when the state comes in?”
• A: Richardson gladly responded to this hanging curveball by saying, “The state will offer no public input on the cuts, they will just happen. That’s not the best way to go.”

It’s always good to be able to have your own staff ask you questions that you really want to answer, isn’t it? So, the difference between what Richardson and Wilson are doing and what the state might do is that Richardson and Wilson, who are making a combined $1,100 per day for coming to these meetings, are willing to come to these meetings to hear the public out.

In other words, really, you little people who aren’t making $1,100 per day should be happy we’re showing up to listen to your “ideas” at all.

• Q: Since the Merts building is so expensive, why don’t you sell it and move the central office to an unused property like Stone or Lincoln Mill?
• A: Just as the Whitesburg Church buying Whitesburg Middle/Elementary is a “rumor,” that there are many buyers hoping to purchase the Merts building is also a rumor.

And so concluded the fourth school closure meeting at Columbia High School.

The fifth and final meeting will be held tonight at the Lee High School cafeteria at 6:30pm. I will again be there live-tweeting. Feel free to follow along on twitter @russwinn.

The post Q&A: Huntsville City School Closing Meeting #4 Summary appeared first on Geek Palaver.