September 2, 2008 Regional Meeting

I'm assuming that by the time anyone is reading this post, you will already have a sense of how this meeting went (based on the newspaper coverage) ... and for those who have already contacted me expressing support/encouragement, thanks much! Unfortunately this meeting was not videotaped by ACTV, and hence there will not be television coverage to watch, so I'll do my best to provide the "highlights."

First, the meeting started with the Chair, Michael Hussein, describing various policies for how School Committee meetings would run. This information focused largely on the need to sometimes cut debate/questions from the audience/School Committee members, given that there is a set agenda (determined by the School Committee chair and the Superintendent). I asked a number of questions about this information, which were as follows:

1. Would it be possible to distribute answers to questions from the audience at a later time? Understandably people sometimes ask questions that need to be investigated, and hence answers aren't always forthcoming at that exact meeting, but the policy thus far has been to respond to THAT PERSON only with the answer -- and I've found that often one person asks a question that many other people have. Thus, I'd like to see a policy by which answers are posted in a public way (perhaps in future School Committee Meeting minutes or on line). No one on the committee responded to this suggestion.

2. Would it be possible for us to create ways of eliciting feedback from the public about things we are discussing in another way, such as through a public forum? I often feel like I need more information from other parents/community members/teachers before making a decision, and our current system really doesn't provide much opportunity for this. Again, no one on the committee responded to this suggestion.

3. Are there topics that we welcome additional public comment on and others that we do not? I am very struck by the fact that this School Committee devoted much of three meetings (and portions of other meetings) to the debate about the cafeteria workers ... and yet topics on academics and curricula seem to be very limited in terms of public comment. This seems ironic and unfortunate. Again, no one on the committee responded to this suggestion.

4. Would it be possible for community members/parents/teachers to add topics to the School Committee agenda? I did receive an answer to this one -- I was told that board members CAN suggest topics, so if anyone has a topic they'd like me to bring up, please let me know and I'll try to add it to the agenda.

Second, two parents in the audience brought up questions. Steve Rivkin asked about the trimester report, and when that report would be available. He particularly noted that he hoped that report included information about learning outcomes, given that he has learned that some students go as long as 9 months without their world language (although my understanding is that the trimester evaluation included no information about learning outcomes). I believe that the Executive Summary is supposed to be posted soon, and I'll let everyone know when that happens. Alysa Braverman asked about middle school math placement, and the system that is being used to give parents information about the placement test. I believe that the superintendents are looking into answers about this, and we are hopeful that the new middle school principal is going to work to further clarify this system (which seems to have been very confusing to many parents for a long time).

Next, the Chair turned to a set of 9 School Committee guidelines that were created by the interim co-superintendents based on their past experience working with School Committees (these guidelines had been sent to School Committee members earlier in the week). I found these guidelines very helpful, and in particular, I liked the following two guidelines:

3. Establish ways to go deeper into governance or debatable issues and gather more information by 1) forming ad hoc or sub-committees; 2) holding public forums; and/or 3) reviewing before approving School Improvement Plans. The give and take needs a "brokering" strategy that clarifies without polarizing.

6. Ask for school committee majority vote/consensus on requests for producing new reports, data, initiatives, actions from administrators/teachers/staff. The Feds, State, DESE, and other agencies have us overloaded.

I noted that since my arrival on the School Committee (April 1, 2008), I had never seen either of these two approaches used by our School Committee, and that I would find this approach very helpful. In particular, I'd like to see us form ad hoc or sub-committees to study areas of concern, hold public forums to get parent/teacher/community feedback on certain topics, and vote on whether we want new reports/data. I would find each of these approaches very helpful, in part because I arrived on the School Committee with particular goals, but have found it very difficult to make progress on any of these. As many who have attended School Committee meetings (or watched them on TV) have noted to me, I often make suggestions, and these suggestions are completely ignored by the other members of the School Committee. At the last meeting, for example, I asked for a report on the trimester system (following the presentation by Mark Jackson), and another member of School Committee said, "That isn't what the School Committee wants, Catherine" -- as if she was able to determine on her own what the other members wanted (and that is was obviously only me who would want such a report). I certainly understand that my goals may not be shared by other School Committee members, but I think it would be appropriate for all members of the board to openly vote on whether they do or do not want a particular report or data, form a sub-committee, etc. I intend to ask for such votes in the future, because this does seem like the right approach.

At this point in the meeting, things became somewhat heated ... as you probably gathered from newspaper reports of the meeting. Given that this part really didn't focus on academics, I'm not going to go into detail about what occurred, other than to say it focused largely on how boards should work together, whether consensus should be the primary goal, and appropriate strategies for change. Let's just say that there were differences of opinion stated emotionally.

We also discussed whether we should attend a retreat to work on "how we operate as a board." I am not in favor of such a retreat, because I frankly think there is a limited amount of time/energy we all have to devote as volunteers to School Committed work, and I'd rather see us focus our time/energy on actually doing things (not talking about how we do things). So, if we are going to spend a morning together, I'd prefer for us to use that time creating a list of comparison districts we could evaluate ourselves against, creating an approach for evaluating our current curricula/policies, and/or reviewing what information we'd like on our district web page. I also think the public should have a right to see how we discuss any topics, including how we work together to make decisions, and the rule for a retreat is apparently that no press/public is allowed. So, a vote was taken, and I lost -- 1 to 8. A retreat will happen in private to discuss how we operate as a board.

Finally, we had a brief discussion about a new policy on "Evaluation of Instructional Programs." This policy will create a system by which all programs/curricula are evaluated on a regular basis, which should include measures of student achievement, comparison to other benchmark districts, and a public distribution of the results of the evaluation. This policy will be further discussed (and voted on) at a later meeting.