Change versus more of the same

I’m a believer in meaningful democratic control of the public school system. I think it’s at the heart of generating good decisions about school policies and practices. At some level I think everyone knows that a big bureaucratic institution, left to run itself without democratic oversight, will not always act in the public interest—even if, like ours, it’s staffed by many good people. The primary role of the elected board is to ensure that the institution belongs to and answers to the public.

There is a real danger, though, of what they call in other contexts “regulatory capture.” Board members—who are unpaid part-time volunteers, after all—come to depend on the administrators who they’re charged with overseeing, and come to rely on them for most of the information they receive. Before long, it can start to seem like the board is working for the administration, rather than the other way around. It can be uncomfortable for a board to exercise real oversight over the people it works with all the time, just like supervising any employee can sometimes require hard conversations. But if board members back away from that responsibility, the public interest suffers.

What I want for this district is a board that’s willing to exercise that responsibility, even when it’s uncomfortable. I believe our current board has failed in that task. The clearest demonstration of that was the board’s decision last October to extend the superintendent’s contract out to three years and to give him the largest raise in the district and to commit to another large raise the following year—at a time when the district had experienced serious problems with legal non-compliance and also with its culture and climate. (See this post.) There should not be such a disconnect between the board’s oversight of the administration and the reality of the district’s performance.

So my main criteria for choosing candidates is whether I think they will change this pattern—whether they will withstand the subtle and overt pressures to take a hands-off approach to oversight. In my judgment, the candidates who are most likely to take administrative oversight seriously are Karen Woltman, Laura Westemeyer, JP Claussen, and, for the two-year seat, Charlie Eastham.

I’m not saying that the candidates have to be pitchfork-wielding revolutionaries. Karen Woltman, for example, is as judicious, considerate, and reasonable as anyone you’ll meet. But she knows how to think critically about a proposal and how to withstand the pressure to join a bandwagon, as she showed when she was sole dissenter on the state assessment task force’s recommendation to adopt the very expensive Smarter Balanced Assessments. (See this post.) Her ability to explain her point of view persuasively and stay focused on issues, rather than personalities, is her strength.

I know from Charlie Eastman’s longstanding involvement with equity issues in the district that he’s capable of pushing back against district decisions when he thinks they’re wrong. In my experience, he’s a straight shooter and is serious about engaging with people who raise questions about district practices and policies. Similarly, I’ve seen JP Claussen ask hard, challenging questions, both to his political opponents and his supporters, in situations where the easy thing would have been to remain silent. I believe that both of them are well suited to engaging in meaningful administrative oversight.

Of all the candidates, Laura Westemeyer has been the most openly critical of the district, and she’s the only candidate who has said she will vote against the bond. She’s been particularly critical of the district’s handling of special education—and why shouldn’t she be? If our district had been more open to what special education parents (and others) were telling it for years, there might never have been a Westemeyer candidacy. In any event, she’s more than demonstrated that she’s unlikely to be a rubber stamp.

In my view, those are the “change” candidates. The remaining candidates seem to be offering the same approach to board service that we’ve seen from the board majority over the last two years or more. Shawn Eyestone and Ruthina Malone have both been good soldiers for the district’s PTOs and committees for years, and that’s valuable work. But if the administration could choose its own candidates, they are the kind it would choose. Some of their statements—for example, Eyestone’s statement here and Malone’s statement here—make me wonder whether they have already begun to identify with the administration in a way that would make it less likely that they will engage in effective oversight. Janet Godwin, the chief operating officer of ACT, has conducted a stay-the-course campaign and (as I wrote here) seems very similar to our current board chair; if anyone seems like a “more of the same” candidate, it’s Godwin.

Any one of these candidates could end up surprising us if they’re elected. All you can do is try to make an educated guess about how they’d act as board members, and of course your guess, and your priorities, may be different from mine. I appreciate the fact that anyone is willing to run for these seats, since it’s a big, uncompensated time commitment and also means publicly taking a lot of heat (for example, in blog posts like this one!). Whoever wins, I hope the board will re-assess its recent approach and start to more actively exercise meaningful oversight of the district’s administration. In my view, the success of all the board’s initiatives depends on that threshold change.


Other posts about the school board candidates:

Some things you should know about Karen Woltman
Janet Godwin, ACT, and the ICCSD
Ruthina Malone on the superintendent evaluation

For links to candidate websites and other election information, click here.

Ruthina Malone on the superintendent evaluation

Last year, before she was a candidate for the school board, Ruthina Malone spoke at the community comment portion of one of our board meetings. Part of her comment was about equity issues in the district. But her first topic was about the board’s evaluation of the superintendent:

First, I would like to urge the board to finalize Superintendent Murley’s evaluation and share those results with the community. As we enter a new school year, this should be something addressed, since this has been an ongoing agenda item for the last few board meetings. I’m sure there are many facets to his evaluation, but I believe that the community has a right to be informed of his overall performance from the eyes of our elected board. The community is looking forward for all of you to share any concerns or praises that you may have. Additionally, the board may benefit from offering an opportunity for feedback from the school community related to his performance. If the directors are contemplating ending his contract, the board should take into account that a potential search for a new superintendent will cost the district several thousands of dollars, time, effort, that would take away from other pressing issues. I feel that he and the school community deserves to have a resolution to what appears to be a very lengthy evaluation period.

(Emphasis added. Full recording here.)

The superintendent evaluation process is ongoing throughout the year, and the board doesn’t make the evaluation itself public. But to the extent that Malone was urging the board to make a decision about whether to extend the superintendent’s contract (technically a separate process, voted on publicly), it was a perfectly defensible issue to raise.

So what are my concerns? In my experience, board candidates all talk about holding the administration accountable for the district’s performance, but once they’re on the board—working constantly with the administration and depending largely on the administration for its information—there’s not much follow-through. I was disappointed last year when, just two months after Malone’s comment, the board chose to extend the superintendent’s contract from two years to three and to give him not one but two large pay increases. To me, that doesn’t reflect meaningful oversight, especially given some of the problems we had with legal compliance in the preceding year. (See this post.) One of the rationales offered for that decision was the same point Malone raised here—that it would cost a lot of money to conduct a superintendent search.

In my view, the board’s failure to engage in meaningful oversight of the superintendent plays a big part in many of the problems in our district—including some of those that Malone raised in the rest of her comment. Of course the board can’t fire the superintendent every time it’s dissatisfied with something, but somehow the idea that a superintendent search would be expensive led to extending his contract out to three years and giving him the biggest raise in the district.

Maybe I’m reading too much into Malone’s comment; you should reach your own conclusion. Unfortunately, voters often have to rely on educated guesses about which candidates will actually follow through on holding the administration accountable for the district’s performance. That Malone would devote part of her only community comment to arguing that a superintendent search would be expensive—and this before she’s even on the board—just makes me concerned about how assertively she would exercise the board’s oversight responsibility if she’s elected.

Board refuses to revisit illegal policy

At tonight’s meeting, I moved to add an item to our next meeting agenda to consider repealing Board Governance Policy 3d(2)(c)—the district policy that prohibits board members from expressing “individual negative judgments” about the superintendent. For reasons I discuss more fully here, this policy is plainly an unconstitutional restriction on speech. Three board members (Chris Lynch, Brian Kirschling, and LaTasha DeLoach) of the six present were against even discussing the issue, so the motion to put it on the agenda failed.

The policy is an embarrassment to the district. It is also yet another legal compliance issue. It also serves to chill speech on legitimate subjects of public debate—the kind of speech that is a necessary ingredient of good decision-making. What is the objection to discussing its repeal?

School board agenda for Tuesday, June 13

I’m late posting this week because I was on the road. Some of the topics on the board’s agenda tonight:

We’ll meet in an exempt (non-public) session to discuss the renewal and extension of the superintendent’s contract, as well as any possible changes in the contract language. This meeting is one step in the annual cycle of reviewing the superintendent’s contract. (More information on that process here.)

At our board meeting, we’ll discuss the report of the task force considering the district’s use of seclusion enclosures. (See posts here and here.) Two weeks ago, the state Department of Education issued a decision on a complaint about the district’s use of those enclosures; the task force apparently completed its report before that decision was issued.  News coverage of the state’s decision is here. Additional information on the use of seclusion enclosures is here.

We’ll also vote on whether to reapprove (and possibly amend) some of the district’s policies, including policies on good conduct, corporal punishment, student records access, the responsibilities of the superintendent, and on community comment at board meetings. This review is part of a scheduled cycle of policy reviews.

At our work session, we’ll discuss setting the district’s legislative priorities for next year.

We’ll also review a report from the administration’s transportation committee about busing in the district. The committee makes recommendations that include (1) increasing “attendance support” transportation at the elementary level, and (2) adding morning and evening activities busing at Northwest and North Central junior highs. One controversial point is the lack of any activities busing recommendation at the high school level for students in the Kirkwood neighborhood, who are now assigned to Liberty High, which cannot be reached from that neighborhood by public transportation. Related information here.

We’ll discuss the possibility of supporting a Future Farmers of America chapter in the district.

As usual, our work session also includes agenda items for the district’s bond proposal and facilities master plan.

All that and more! The full agendas are here and here. Please chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.

School board members and free speech (part two)

In part one, I wrote about how the First Amendment protects the right of school board members to explain their votes, even on the issue of the superintendent’s contract. I also wrote about how there are no Iowa statutes that even attempt to prohibit them from doing so.

Our own school district, though, has the following section in its Board Governance policy:

Members shall not publicly make or express individual negative judgments about Superintendent or staff performance. Any such judgments of Superintendent performance will be made only by the Board, meeting in executive session as appropriate.

I should start by saying that nothing any board member said at Tuesday’s meeting violated this policy. But that doesn’t matter. This is a plainly illegal policy, and the school district should be embarrassed by it.

This policy prohibits public speech on a matter of public interest and concern, which is the kind of speech that the Supreme Court has repeatedly described as being “at the heart of the First Amendment.” Even worse, it discriminates based on the viewpoint of the speaker: Negative speech about the superintendent’s performance is banned, while positive speech is allowed. In First Amendment analysis, viewpoint-based prohibitions on political speech are pretty much as bad as it gets. Policies don’t get much more unconstitutional than this one.

It should go without saying why such a policy is so constitutionally offensive. If the government can prevent the public from hearing viewpoints on one side of an issue while allowing them to hear viewpoints on the other side, members of the public will be deprived of information they need to make informed decisions about policies and about candidates. Such a policy would enable government officials to manipulate public opinion in a way designed to entrench themselves in power.

Moreover, such a policy would make it impossible for board members to do their jobs properly. Any time board members raise a concern about what our district is doing, they can be interpreted as implicitly criticizing the district’s administration or staff. If speech like that were prohibited, discussions at board meetings would become one-sided advertisements for the administration’s point of view. One-sided discussions lead to groupthink, not good decisions. Free and open discussion of issues—including the airing of critical views—is a crucial ingredient of good policymaking.

This is not to say that board members should cavalierly comment on the superintendent’s performance without first thinking through the potential benefits and harms of doing so. But regardless of whether that kind of speech is wise or unwise, the government can’t legally ban it. Our school district—which is responsible for teaching our kids how to become “responsible, independent, lifelong learners capable of making informed decisions in a democratic society”—should know better.

School board members and free speech (part one)

After this week’s meeting, some people raised questions about whether board members could speak publicly about their reasons for voting for or against the proposed contract extension and pay raise for the superintendent. Are board members free to discuss such an issue publicly?

The succinct answer is: Yes.

Any discussion of limitations on speech has to start with the First Amendment. People do not waive their First Amendment rights by getting elected to public office. Speech about the decisions of a public institution is at the heart of the First Amendment. Not only do board members have a right to speak about their votes on board agenda items, but members of the public have a right to hear that speech. Voters need to be able to evaluate us, and their ability to do so would be impaired if we could not explain our reasons for voting as we do.

The First Amendment prevails over any statutes that are inconsistent with it. But there are no statutes in Iowa that prohibit board members from explaining their votes, even about the superintendent’s contract.

Nothing in the Open Meetings Act, for example, prohibits board members from discussing the superintendent’s contract in public. In fact, the Act specifically exempts discussion of the employment conditions of non-unionized employees (such as the superintendent) from its coverage, which means that the Act has no effect whatsoever on the discussion of that issue.

The Act distinguishes those discussions from the board’s formal evaluation of the superintendent’s performance. However, even the evaluation process is not required to take place in closed session. The Act permits, but does not require, the board to go into closed session for its evaluation of the superintendent:

A governmental body may hold a closed session only to the extent a closed session is necessary for any of the following reasons: . . .

i. To evaluate the professional competency of an individual whose appointment, hiring, performance, or discharge is being considered when necessary to prevent needless and irreparable injury to that individual’s reputation and that individual requests a closed session.

(Emphasis added.) The Act further states: “Nothing in this section requires a governmental body to hold a closed session to discuss or act upon any matter.” In sum, the only way a board can violate that section is to go into closed session when it’s not allowed to.

The Open Meetings Act does not even purport to limit the speech of individual board members; instead, it limits the right of the public to hear that speech in certain circumstances. It is designed to allow the board to choose to go into closed session to discuss an employee’s job performance candidly without having to worry about whether the discussion will needlessly injure the employee’s reputation, and to protect itself against possible claims for defamation. (This is why our board invariably does choose to do the superintendent evaluation in closed session when the superintendent so requests, a practice I support.)

Moreover, nothing any board member said during our discussion on Tuesday qualified as a personnel evaluation of the superintendent. The mere fact that a board member says something that could be interpreted as reflecting (positively or negatively) on the superintendent’s performance does not convert that speech into the kind of personnel evaluation covered by the Act. If so, the board could go into closed session for almost every discussion, since it is virtually impossible to discuss school issues in ways that don’t reflect in some way on the job performance of our administrators.

Finally, any such interpretation of the Open Meetings Act would violate its stated purpose, where the Act actually instructs people how to interpret it:

This chapter seeks to assure, through a requirement of open meetings of governmental bodies, that the basis and rationale of governmental decisions, as well as those decisions themselves, are easily accessible to the people. Ambiguity in the construction or application of this chapter should be resolved in favor of openness.

The only relevant limit on what individual board members can do in public is in the Open Records Act, which provides that certain records “shall be kept confidential, unless otherwise ordered by a court, by the lawful custodian of the records, or by another person duly authorized to release such information.” Specifically, that Act protects the confidentiality of “Personal information in confidential personnel records of government bodies relating to identified or identifiable individuals who are officials, officers, or employees of the government bodies,” subject to some exceptions.

Nothing any board member said at Tuesday’s meeting came even close to revealing any “personal information in confidential personnel records” of the superintendent. No board member discussed any information that wasn’t already in the public record. Again, it would be extraordinary (and unconstitutional) to interpret that statute to suggest that board members can never say anything that reflects in any way on the superintendent’s performance.

In sum, it would take a lot of chutzpah to read the Open Meetings Act and the Open Records Act as prohibiting board members from explaining their votes publicly.

What about the district’s own restrictions on what board members are allowed to say? I’ll take that question up in part two.

Why I voted against the proposed contract extension and pay raise for the superintendent

These are the comments I made at Tuesday’s board meeting about the contract extension and pay raise proposal for the superintendent. The proposal passed on a 4-3 vote, with Directors LaTasha DeLoach, Brian Kirschling, Chris Lynch, and Paul Roesler in favor, and Directors Phil Hemingway, Lori Roetlin, and me opposed.

The contract extension added a year to the length of the superintendent’s current contract, which will now extend through June 2019 instead of June 2018. The new contract increases the superintendent’s salary by 4.6% this year and commits to raising the salary again, by 5.1%, a year from now (though the new contract reduces the number of paid discretionary days by two this year and by two more next year). You can read the superintendent’s new contract here; additional information is here.

I am not in favor of the proposed contract extension and pay raise for the superintendent, for these reasons.

Under the proposal, the superintendent would receive the biggest raise by far of any employee in the district, both in percentage and absolute terms—much bigger than what we gave our teachers and other staff groups, and much more than simply a cost-of-living increase to keep pace with inflation.

As we have said to the public many times, general fund money is very scarce. We’ve said that to families whose busing we’ve cut, to parents who are unhappy with our class sizes, and to teachers and staff who would have liked larger pay increases. There is no reason we shouldn’t say the same thing to the superintendent.

The proposal not only gives the superintendent the biggest raise in the district, it commits to providing him another raise next year—which will very likely be the biggest raise anyone gets next year. This is particularly unwise, since we have no idea how much state funding we will receive next year. Again, we did not commit to future salary increases for our teachers or other staff groups; there is no reason we should treat the superintendent differently.

If we adopt this proposal, we will rightly be perceived as brushing off the very legitimate concerns that members of the public have about, for example, the district’s violations of special education laws and ongoing problems with the district culture. This decision will further undermine public trust in the district.

The superintendent still has a year and eight months remaining in his current contract. I think it’s reasonable to wait until we have more information about how the district is addressing its challenges before considering whether to tack another year onto that contract length.

I am not persuaded that this proposal is necessary in order to retain our superintendent and avoid a superintendent search; nor am I convinced that that goal outweighs the arguments against the extension and raise. Where I work, at the University, the usual practice is that an employee cannot get a retention-based raise unless he or she has a competing offer in hand. If our superintendent does receive a competing offer, we could always revisit his contract and salary at that time and make a more informed decision.

Related post here.

School board agenda for October 25

Some of the items on this week’s agenda:

We’ll discuss the proposed contract extension and pay raise for the superintendent. The superintendent’s current contract runs out at the end of June 2018. This proposal would extend that contract through June of 2019, and would provide sizable raises to the superintendent both this year and next year. Details here.

We’ll hear a report on several topics under the heading of “teaching and learning.” (See the attachments here.) Several of these reports deal with our students’ scores on the Iowa Assessments. Lots of data here, including data on the proficiency rates of the groups that are the particular focus of the district’s strategic plan: students receiving free and reduced-price lunch, students receiving special education services, and students who are English language learners. I’m still making my way through all the information.

We’ll also hear a report on the district’s science curriculum review. Details here. One issue that has generated some comment: Our current practice is to allow some high school freshmen to opt out of the introductory high school science course (Foundations of Science) and to take Biology instead. The science proposal would end that practice and require all ninth graders to take Foundations of Science (though they may be able to double up on science courses and simultaneously take Biology). Karen W. at the Education in Iowa blog critiques the proposal here.

We’ll also hear an update on special education.

At our work session, we’ll continue the process of thinking about how we’ll approach the September 2017 bond proposal and the long-term facilities master plan.

All that and more! The full agendas are here and here. Feel free to chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.

Superintendent evaluation, contract extension, and pay

This is just a quick post in response to questions I’ve gotten about the process for superintendent evaluation, contract extension, and pay.

The superintendent evaluation process is a personnel process that legally has to happen in closed session if the superintendent so requests (which, quite reasonably, he has). [Correction: The law permits, but does not require, the board to conduct the evaluation in closed session, but only if the superintendent so requests.]  It leads to an evaluation that the superintendent receives which is designed to identify both strengths and areas for improvement. The evaluation is not a public document. The board has had several closed session meetings as part of that annual process.

The contract extension process is a separate process. The previous board approved a three-year contract for our superintendent in July 2015. Ordinarily, when there are less than two years remaining in the contract, the board considers extending it back out to three years. The board can discuss that issue in an exempt (non-public) session, but any vote to extend the contract would have to occur in a public board meeting. The board has an exempt session for “superintendent contract” scheduled for this Tuesday.

As part of the contract approval process, the board must also determine the superintendent’s salary. That decision is separate from the salary approvals for other administrators and staff. The board can discuss that issue in an exempt session, though any salary decision would have to be approved at a public board meeting.

School board agenda for March 8

Some of the items on the agenda for Tuesday’s board meeting:

The board is about to order an updated enrollment report, which will give us enrollment projections for (I’m assuming) the next ten years. This week, we’ll discuss what information we’d like that report to include. Info here.

We’ll discuss the board’s decision to bring back the seventh-grade football program that the district cut two years ago during that year’s wave of budget cuts. This issue came up at the board’s Education Committee meeting last month, and there was a consensus for allowing the program to be brought back. But afterward enough questions were raised that I asked to have the topic put on the agenda for further discussion. (See this post.)

The board will discuss our annual evaluation of the superintendent. By law, because it involves a personnel evaluation, this part of our meeting has to occur in a closed session (not open to the public).

At its work session after the regular meeting, we will also be continuing to discuss redrawing attendance zones in preparation for the opening of Liberty High in 2017 and Grant and Hoover East Elementaries in 2019. One topic will be what kind of additional maps and data the board would like to see as it goes into that process. Info here.

One thing I’d like to see is a map that would show what the elementary attendance zones would look like if we sent every child to his or her closest school. We can’t do that, of course, and might not choose to do it even if we could. But I think that map would help us explain to people why we can’t always do that. For example, it would show very clearly when the number of people who live closest to a particular school exceeds the capacity of that school building. In those cases where we have to send people to a school that isn’t the one closest to home, it would help to be able to have a clear explanation of why it had to happen. (See this post.)

Also goats. Goats are on the agenda.

All that and more. The full agenda is here. Feel free to leave a comment below about anything that catches your attention.

Some thoughts on the superintendent’s visit to Hoover

Our superintendent visited Hoover School last week to talk with parents about the planned closure of the school. There wasn’t much new in terms of rationales for the closure, but he did make three interesting statements:

1. Hoover parents have repeatedly been told that the loss of Hoover won’t be so bad because there are other nearby schools that Hoover students will end up attending. Longfellow is frequently given as the example; it would be the closest alternative for a big chunk of Hoover’s attendance area. Some of Longfellow’s attendance area is an “island” out in the easternmost part of town, whose students would almost certainly be redistricted into the new East elementary school. The idea has always been that the departure of those students from Longfellow would create room for kids who are displaced from Hoover.

But the superintendent recently informed me that there are currently 79 Longfellow students who live in that “island” out by the new school. Longfellow’s enrollment, however, is currently 80 students over its capacity. So I asked the superintendent how there would be any room at Longfellow for Hoover students when the school closes. He said that it is unlikely that there would be many seats at Longfellow for Hoover kids.

That fact has big implications for current Hoover families, as well as for families at Lucas and Lemme (the two other likely destinations for Hoover kids). It means many Hoover kids would end up at schools much farther from their homes. The redistricting of Lucas and Lemme will also be that much more difficult if those two schools have to accommodate almost the entire population of Hoover.

2. One parent asked the superintendent what would be the worst consequences of leaving Hoover open, and how big a role City High’s needs play. The superintendent said that City High’s needs would not even be in his top three reasons for the closure. Instead, he emphasized the operational cost efficiencies that could be achieved by having one less elementary school to run.

I found that response to be significant for two reasons. First, it seemed to be an admission that the “City High needs the land” argument is not particularly persuasive, especially since the district is still unable (unwilling?) to tell the public what will actually appear on Hoover’s land.

Second, the operational cost efficiency argument is the argument that is most transferable to other schools, several of which (Lincoln, Hills, Horace Mann, Longfellow, and Shimek) are significantly smaller than Hoover. In my view, the argument that This One Additional School Is Breaking the Bank is simply inconsistent with saying But Schools That Are Smaller Than Hoover Have Nothing To Worry About. (It is also arguably inconsistent with the district’s simultaneous exploration of starting a magnet school, which would almost certainly be more costly than the average school to operate.)

3. One parent asked whether enrollment will still be over capacity when all the projects in the facilities plan are completed. One major goal of the facilities plan, after all, was to alleviate overcrowding. The superintendent said that under current projections we would be right at capacity, but that we’re a growing district and thus will probably have to start talking about building new schools as soon as the facilities plan is done. I don’t disagree with this statement, but it certainly drives home the point that destroying over 300 seats of elementary capacity has a serious price tag. What’s incredible is that over two years after the board voted to close the school, the district has still not put a number on the cost of replacing 300+ seats of elementary capacity and how much it will increase the district’s future bond request.

The Hoover closure is a big topic, and it’s impossible to discuss all aspects of it in one post. Right now, it’s clear that there are not four (out of seven) votes on the school board to reconsider the closure. The next logical moment to consider the issue will be when the board starts drawing the attendance zones that will apply to the east side when the new East elementary school opens. The board is planning to draw those zones this coming Spring (even though they will not go into effect until 2019). I anticipate that it will be harder than expected to draw workable attendance zones without using Hoover’s capacity, so that will be a good moment to stop and rethink whether the closure is worth the associated costs.

Agenda topics for November 24 meeting

Some of the topics we’ll be discussing at this Tuesday’s board meeting:

Superintendent discretionary leave. Info here. Our superintendent’s contract provides that he can take up to ten paid personal leave days each year for personal business, consulting, and other activities “that will contribute to the betterment of the district.” His use of these days must be mutually agreed upon between him and the board president. Do we need to change this practice going forward?

The Open Meetings Act. Info here. I believe we may have the board’s legal counsel present to take questions about it from the board.

The district’s facilities master plan. Info here.

ThoughtExchange. Info here. See this post for previous discussion.

“Administrator attrition.” We have recently had significant turnover in our central administrative positions, so I assume this topic is to discuss transition plans and the possibility of changes to our organizational structure that might be part of that process. Info here.

And more! The full agenda is here; chime in if anything attracts your attention.

On not leaping to conclusions

It’s no secret that I’ve had my disagreements with our superintendent. I hope that gives me particular standing to urge people to be fair—not to be quiet, not to be uncritical, but to be fair—in their reaction to the articles this week about the superintendent’s work outside the district. I don’t see any accusations of wrongdoing in those articles or any showing that the superintendent did anything that was not permitted by his contract or by law. Whether the board should have negotiated different contract terms, whether the superintendent should have made different judgments, whether more questions should be asked and more information made available, whether we should have different practices going forward—those all seem like very reasonable questions (many of which probably have two sides to them). But I hope people will recognize that working for a company where other people are later accused of wrongdoing is not the same as wrongdoing. Guilt by association is not only unfair, but also a logical fallacy.