Dear Constituents:
Solutions Meetings Have Started
On March 27th and April 17th I met with interested parents, teachers, and others for the first two "Solutions Meetings", focusing on solutions for the problems facing our Des Moines schools and defining short-term action priorities -- such as pushing for Parent Involvement Coordinators -- and strategies to drive their implementation. We also outlined key areas where we can eliminate waste and increase efficiency within our District -- without cutting vital staff, as the School Board choose to do in the FY 2010 budget.
After 18 Months
I have served on the Des Moines School Board for 18 months, and I am more excited than I've ever been. Last year, I sent out a list of ways to improve our District that included calls for a new code of conduct, improved security measures, changes in our social promotion practices, renewed emphasis on vocational/technical education, and increased spending at the building level.
I am pleased to announce, despite the public objections voiced by other board members and the administration and public perceptions, several of our previous proposed solutions have either been implemented or are being implemented —such as the new code of conduct our District is working on and the enhanced security measures. We've also seen other adjustments. For example, when I was elected to the board it seemed reasonable to the Board and Central administration for Weeks Middle School to have two co-principals. Beginning this fall they will have only one. This is a prime example of how the pressure we applied and the awareness we created contributed to this reform.
We stopped the sale of 1800 Grand Avenue. The intention was to give it away for less than $3 million, although it is insured for just under $60 million by our District. After we exposed this plan, the sale was stopped, and a major district asset was preserved for our children.
In all nearly a dozen and a half major or minor reforms have taken place as a direct result of our advocacy and persistence.
Challenges Await Us
Despite the progress, we have a load of work to do. Our District is still too violent as evidenced by this week's knife fight in the Lincoln South hallway and the capture of a deadly weapon from a middle school student a week ago.
Worsening dropout and graduation rates continue to plague our District. Figures released within this last month by the Iowa Department of Education named Des Moines as Iowa's worst district in graduating students. The official rate of 65% is nine points worse than Waterloo, the state's second worst district.
It is also important to understand that our District is an anomoly. Despite approximately 60% of our students being on free and reduced lunch, the majority of our official dropouts are not. They are middle class or affluent white kids with both parents present in the home. While our dropout prevention model primarily targets poor kids and kids of color it ignores the group that now has emerged as our most at-risk student population - middle class and affluent white children.
Fortunately, the solutions we propose below benefit all our students.
I am also pleased to announce next Tuesday's Des Moines School Board meeting will focus on dropout and graduation concerns. Finally, the Board is taking a serious look at these issues thanks to the pressure we've kept on them. Last year, despite the double digit decline in graduation rate, the Board swept over the crisis stressing we should "stay the course."
This year the Board has become much more serious about addressing key academic concerns for the first time in years. For example earlier in the year the board rejected Dr. Sebring's academic report and ordered her to do it over. I couldn't believe it, but it was a very positive step and, another clear victory for us!
Promises Kept
Prior to getting elected I didn't guarantee results. All I guaranteed is I would keep the public informed and provide information to parents, teachers and taxpayers previously denied them. I also pledged to tell the truth, no matter how unpleasant.
I have kept those promises. And, as a result, I am again, more encouraged than I've ever been in my years of education advocacy!
First, more members of the public are engaging in the conversation than ever before. Just this past Friday I spoke to a group of businessmen at the Des Moines Golf and Country Club. While the initial reception from some of the members was a bit cool they not only embraced the proposed solutions but a significant number remained for up to an hour after my presentation discussing how we can improve our District. They genuinely care and serve as an example of how, with patience, we can build bridges of understanding leading to a better District for all our children.
Second, the media climate has changed drastically. When I was elected most of Des Moines' media protected the District. The past several months, however, we have seen The Des Moines Register step up to the plate big time. They are now reporting on the pertinent issues they too long neglected. We've seen Cityview step up their education coverage, also. Kudos to them!
WHO Radio has been active on the local education front for years but we now see WHO TV and MyABC5 doing much better jobs covering the District. Only one station has yet to get into the essentials of what's going on in our District. We hope they soon will join our other local media in providing more complete information to the public about the condition and challenges facing our District.
Third, some of our most vocal and outspoken critics are now taking the solutions they rejected just months ago and claiming ownership of them.
Fantastic!
Who cares who gets credit. Earlier this spring, for example, Deb McMahon, a strong District loyalist, sent out an ABCs of improving Des Moines Schools. She has had a number of letters published in The Register attacking our ideas yet 90% of the items on her list, items she attacked in September, looked like we had written them for her.
Still Work To Be Done
The 2009-2010 budget has been completed but now is the time for us to begin pushing for a meaningful, solution-oriented budget in 2010-2011. Let's not wait until next year when it is too late. For example we need to push for common sense budget solutions; not taking away space heaters and coffee pots from our teachers who put in long, hard hours. The trade-off of their in-kind time and supplies in exchange for tools to help them do their job better is well worth it. Nor do we need to eliminate teacher or building worker positions.
No, we need common sense budget solutions:
1. Reduce the excess administration we have in our District. This has started thanks to our advocacy. For example, instead of two principals at Weeks there is now only one. But we need to cut much deeper into administrative fat.
2. Reduce our District's massive bureacracy. The Des Moines School District employs more than 2,800 staff classified as teachers yet hundreds of these employees do not staff classrooms or have student loads. They are, in reality bureacrats and psuedo administrators. Reducing this level of bureaucracy would free up more than $30 million dollars in vital resources allowing us to hire additional classroom staff, increase teacher compensation and reduce class sizes.
Another example of excess bureaucracy in our District is the continued operation of the failed Central Kitchen experiment. While we maintain full-time kitchen staff at in our individual school buildings, many working in newly renovated kitchens, we supply our schools with food from the Central Kitchen. As a result we are spending huge amounts of money duplicate staff functions. At the same time the poor quality of the Central Kitchen food has resulted in a decline in food purchases at the building level. Closing Central Kitchen would not only save this District millions of dollars annually but food prepared at the building level would also result in additional sales and revenue for our District.
3. Restore operational integrity to our District's governance. Our district really needs a forensice audit. For example, the Critelli Report, which the Board will not allow to be presented to the public at a meeting, encouraged the District to sue our project manager for hundreds of thousands of dollars and to possibly fire Taylor Ohde Kitchell. That single report presented our District a way to recoup and save millions of dollars. Imagine what a real fraud audit would uncover and the millions it would allow our District to recoup/save!
While the current Board will never support a forensic audit it should not have supported the administration's call to cut in half our Internal Audit Department staff. A sfaff that unearthed significant fiscal improprieties. So one of our top priorities as taxpayers must be to have this department fully staffed.
Another example of restoring operational integrity to our District is ceasing to practice of renting hundreds of thousands of dollars in space while we spend hundreds of thousands to maintain empty and underutilized properties our District owns.
Ten Steps To Improve Our District
Finally, I would like to share ten additional steps we can take to continue making our District better. Some of them can be implemented very soon with the proper ground work being laid such as deployment of Parent Involvement Coordinators. Others may take years like the creation of a School of Fine and Performing Arts.
1. Create ELL (English Language Learner) Learning Centers emersing non-English speaking students in intense English language instruction until they can demonstrate mastery of basic reading, writing and computing skills. Then, and only then would they be integrated into the general student population.
2. Create and enforce a meaningful code of conduct requiring parents to sign off at the beginning of the year on the schools standards and expectations. This code must be fairly and consistently applied. Consistently disruptive students would be either assigned to discipline academies or expelled.
3. Upgrade security in our schools to at least the level of our Central Administration building.
4. De-centalize instruction shifting the power, authority and the resources to the classroom from our current wasteful, ineffective, bloated and corrupt bureaucracy. This includes spending a minimum of 90% of our general fund dollars directly at the building level.
5. Professionalize key administrative functions. No factor contributes more to poor management of public school districts than the employment of persons lacking task specific expertise in technical areas just because they were former educators.
6. Get away from the teaching the test curriculum currently utilized by our administration and return to a more classic education, especially traditional basic skill foundation building.
7. Transform the Des Moines School District into a renaissance district including re-opening a full-time vocational/technical high school, adding a school of fine and performing arts, an elite academic academy including an advanced science program, an entreprenurial/capitalism school, a military school and a disciplinary academy. As part of this we would end the tuition in option and require students to open enroll into our District. This would generate millions in additional revenue for our District.
8. End social promotion and age-grade progression and move to skill based progression.
9. End forced busing and return to neighborhood/community schools. The time has come to put an end to the failed social experiment of busing returning instead to neighborhood and community schools. By doing so we will also improve parent and community participation, cultivate stronger communities, kids walking to school will be less obese and less rowdy while in class. This would also save our District millions of dollars that could then be re-invested at the building level. Two key staff that would be employed at each school would be a Parent Involvement Coordinator and a Building Based Grant Writer.
10. Return 6th graders to elementary school and 9th graders to junior high school.
Summary
After the latest graduation numbers came out, I was asked by reporters if I felt vindicated. The answer is no. Our struggle isn't about being right or politics but about the children. No personal attack ever graduated a child. No petty political attack ever helped a child realize his or her potential. This isn't about winning in politics but about giving the children in our District, all the children, the best possible education. It isn't about improving test scores but about empowering our children through a quality public education.
That is my focus. I invite you to join in this endeavor.
FYI
For more information contact me at 515-770-1218 or email me here or at jon_narcisse@yahoo.com.
