At our last work session, the board agreed that the administration should form a committee to determine best practices and consider potentially improving or eliminating the district’s use of seclusion enclosures. The committee will include parents, teachers, and interested community members. It will report back to the board within a month or two.
I think that was the best result we could have expected from the discussion at the work session on the topic. Speaking as just one board member, I don’t see the board as having delegated the decisionmaking on this issue to the committee. An administrative committee can be a great help in researching the issue and in doing the drafting of a potential policy, but it’s also true that, since committee members are appointed by the administration, a committee is not necessarily representative of the larger community. The board should review committee recommendations with an open mind but should not simply rubber-stamp them.
Meanwhile, a local lawyer has brought a complaint against the district at the State Department of Education, alleging that the district’s use of seclusion enclosures violates federal laws and regulations. You can read the complaint here.
When I posted about this topic in October, several commenters asked for a list of district schools that have seclusion enclosures. The complaint contains such a list as its Exhibit 1 on pages 7 and 8 of the PDF.
One more update: Yesterday, the federal government issued new, non-binding “significant guidance” on the use of restraint and seclusion in school, which I assume will be part of what informs the district’s discussion of “best practices.”
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Follow-up: Police in school
A few weeks back, at a meeting I had to miss because of illness, the school board discussed the district’s relationship with the local police department.
The police department had been running a program in which it sent a representative into elementary schools to eat lunch with the kids. The program’s stated goal was to “maintain a positive, visible presence in the community, establish and maintain relationships in the community and hopefully open up broader communications channels.” The district tried to formalize some aspects of that program through a written agreement with the police department, and the department took offense at the district’s proposal that the “outreach assistant” not wear a uniform. The police department then decided to suspend the program and to stop any “self-initiated” visits to the schools until it received an explicit invitation to continue from the school board. At the November 22 work session, the board agreed to invite the police department to continue its outreach program and to resume “business as usual” with self-initiated visits.
I can understand the appeal of enabling kids to have positive interactions with police, whom some kids might otherwise view fearfully or in a negative light. And I know, like, and respect Henri Harper, the outreach assistant under the program. But I do have concerns about the larger issue; anything the district does on this issue will set a precedent that will apply not just to Henri Harper and not even just to police departments.
First, it was not clear what police self-initiated “business as usual” in the schools entails. The board asked for a follow-up report summarizing the police department’s activities in the schools, but I would have wanted to know what “business as usual” meant before formally inviting its return. As to “self-initiated” police visits to the schools, I wrote about several concerns here.
Second, although the department has said that the outreach assistant is “not a sworn officer and does not have any enforcement capabilities,” it’s not clear exactly what that means. I assume he cannot arrest people? But what happens if a kid mentions, for example, that one of his parents was smoking a joint? I have to think that the outreach assistant has the power to notify his department of criminal activity, and, if necessary, to testify in court. The outreach assistant works for the police department, not for the school system; the school system would have no control over how the outreach assistant handles a situation like that one. I’d prefer to have that kind of decision made by school officials.
Third, there are many organizations that might be happy to send representatives into our schools to counsel and build relationships with students. The Chamber of Commerce? The American Civil Liberties Union? The U.S. Army? Planned Parenthood? Many of them could make persuasive arguments about why students would benefit from knowing more about their organizations and what they do. The district needs to have a consistent approach to handling such requests. At the very least it makes sense for the district to want to vet such interactions and reach agreements about the content. But at some point I wonder how much it should be the district’s job to provide audiences for the outreach efforts of outside organizations, no matter how worthy the cause.
Most of the schools in the police outreach program have a high proportion of black and African-American students, and the elephant in the room that went undiscussed at the board meeting is the troubled relationship between law enforcement and racial minorities in America. The police department is a law enforcement agency. It is the entry point to our very imperfect criminal justice system. That system currently incarcerates and disenfranchises black Americans at an unbelievably high rate. On the one hand, proponents of the outreach program may hope that it will help improve the way the justice system interacts with minorities. But, especially for minority parents, the question of what children should be taught to think about the police (and about the larger criminal justice system) is a very complicated one that does not have an objectively correct answer. Just consider some of these examples of “the Talk”—the advice that many black parents feel they have to give to their kids about interactions with the police.
I don’t know the “right” way to approach that topic, and I don’t particularly trust the school district to know either, especially if its only approach is to provide the perspective of a representative of the police department. (Again, no offense intended to the current outreach officer here; but we don’t know who the next representative, and the next one, and the next one will be.) For that reason, at the very least it would make sense to limit participation in the program to kids whose parents explicitly opt them into it.
Readers: What role do you think the district should take in teaching kids about race and our criminal justice system?
The police department had been running a program in which it sent a representative into elementary schools to eat lunch with the kids. The program’s stated goal was to “maintain a positive, visible presence in the community, establish and maintain relationships in the community and hopefully open up broader communications channels.” The district tried to formalize some aspects of that program through a written agreement with the police department, and the department took offense at the district’s proposal that the “outreach assistant” not wear a uniform. The police department then decided to suspend the program and to stop any “self-initiated” visits to the schools until it received an explicit invitation to continue from the school board. At the November 22 work session, the board agreed to invite the police department to continue its outreach program and to resume “business as usual” with self-initiated visits.
I can understand the appeal of enabling kids to have positive interactions with police, whom some kids might otherwise view fearfully or in a negative light. And I know, like, and respect Henri Harper, the outreach assistant under the program. But I do have concerns about the larger issue; anything the district does on this issue will set a precedent that will apply not just to Henri Harper and not even just to police departments.
First, it was not clear what police self-initiated “business as usual” in the schools entails. The board asked for a follow-up report summarizing the police department’s activities in the schools, but I would have wanted to know what “business as usual” meant before formally inviting its return. As to “self-initiated” police visits to the schools, I wrote about several concerns here.
Second, although the department has said that the outreach assistant is “not a sworn officer and does not have any enforcement capabilities,” it’s not clear exactly what that means. I assume he cannot arrest people? But what happens if a kid mentions, for example, that one of his parents was smoking a joint? I have to think that the outreach assistant has the power to notify his department of criminal activity, and, if necessary, to testify in court. The outreach assistant works for the police department, not for the school system; the school system would have no control over how the outreach assistant handles a situation like that one. I’d prefer to have that kind of decision made by school officials.
Third, there are many organizations that might be happy to send representatives into our schools to counsel and build relationships with students. The Chamber of Commerce? The American Civil Liberties Union? The U.S. Army? Planned Parenthood? Many of them could make persuasive arguments about why students would benefit from knowing more about their organizations and what they do. The district needs to have a consistent approach to handling such requests. At the very least it makes sense for the district to want to vet such interactions and reach agreements about the content. But at some point I wonder how much it should be the district’s job to provide audiences for the outreach efforts of outside organizations, no matter how worthy the cause.
Most of the schools in the police outreach program have a high proportion of black and African-American students, and the elephant in the room that went undiscussed at the board meeting is the troubled relationship between law enforcement and racial minorities in America. The police department is a law enforcement agency. It is the entry point to our very imperfect criminal justice system. That system currently incarcerates and disenfranchises black Americans at an unbelievably high rate. On the one hand, proponents of the outreach program may hope that it will help improve the way the justice system interacts with minorities. But, especially for minority parents, the question of what children should be taught to think about the police (and about the larger criminal justice system) is a very complicated one that does not have an objectively correct answer. Just consider some of these examples of “the Talk”—the advice that many black parents feel they have to give to their kids about interactions with the police.
I don’t know the “right” way to approach that topic, and I don’t particularly trust the school district to know either, especially if its only approach is to provide the perspective of a representative of the police department. (Again, no offense intended to the current outreach officer here; but we don’t know who the next representative, and the next one, and the next one will be.) For that reason, at the very least it would make sense to limit participation in the program to kids whose parents explicitly opt them into it.
Readers: What role do you think the district should take in teaching kids about race and our criminal justice system?
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
School board agenda for December 13
Sorry, I was knocked out for a few weeks by a seasonal illness and have been unable to keep up the usual posting here. I’m still catching up on the lost time, but I do hope to be able to post more as we head into the holidays.
A quick summary of some of the items on the agenda for this week:
We’ll continue the discussion of the district’s anti-bullying and anti-discrimination policies.
We’ll continue (and probably conclude) the discussion of how the district should handle voluntary transfer requests at the secondary level as we open a new high school and implement new boundaries. Previous posts here.
We’ll hear an update from the committee studying transportation barriers to attendance and participation in extracurricular activities at the secondary level.
We’ll review the newly updated enrollment projections.
At our work session after the meeting, we’ll discuss the issue of the district’s use of seclusion enclosures. (Previous post here.) We’ll continue our discussion of possible revisions to the district’s facilities master plan as we move toward developing a bond proposal to fund the remaining projects in the plan. We will also discuss the feedback we received through the ThoughtExchange platform.
All that and more! The full agendas are here and here; please chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
A quick summary of some of the items on the agenda for this week:
We’ll continue the discussion of the district’s anti-bullying and anti-discrimination policies.
We’ll continue (and probably conclude) the discussion of how the district should handle voluntary transfer requests at the secondary level as we open a new high school and implement new boundaries. Previous posts here.
We’ll hear an update from the committee studying transportation barriers to attendance and participation in extracurricular activities at the secondary level.
We’ll review the newly updated enrollment projections.
At our work session after the meeting, we’ll discuss the issue of the district’s use of seclusion enclosures. (Previous post here.) We’ll continue our discussion of possible revisions to the district’s facilities master plan as we move toward developing a bond proposal to fund the remaining projects in the plan. We will also discuss the feedback we received through the ThoughtExchange platform.
All that and more! The full agendas are here and here; please chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
Saturday, December 10, 2016
A class size math problem
In my last post, I discussed how smaller elementary schools tend to generate more outlier class sizes. Before I explore possible ways to mitigate that problem, here are a couple of hypothetical questions that help illustrate the issue:
1. Suppose you have a school that has fourteen rooms available as general education classrooms. What would be ideal total enrollment at that school? What would the individual class sizes be?
2. Suppose you have a school that has ten rooms available for general education classrooms. What would be ideal total enrollment at that school? What would the individual class sizes be?
I chose fourteen classrooms and ten classrooms because those numbers work especially well for class size. In a fourteen-room school, you can have two classrooms for each grade level from K through 6. In a ten-room school, you can have two classrooms in each grade from K through 2 (where we usually try to have smaller class sizes), and then one classroom in each grade from 3-6 (where we usually tolerate larger class sizes).
The only constraint: You have to assume there will be an equal number of students at each grade level. So if there are 30 total sixth graders, there are also 30 total kindergartners, though you’re free to split some grade levels into multiple classrooms while not splitting others. (The reason for this constraint is that there is no good way to draw attendance zones that would result in consistently different enrollment totals in the lower grades than in the higher grades.)
Assume that the school is not a high-need school that would qualify for lower-than-average class sizes under the district’s weighted resource allocation model. So the district’s goal would be to keep the class sizes below 26 in grades K-2 and below 30 in grades 3-6. You can exceed those caps if you think that’s the best solution. But you should recognize that anything falling significantly below those goals will put your school below the district averages and make it harder to allocate teachers to high-need schools.
What are the best answers?
Follow-up here.
1. Suppose you have a school that has fourteen rooms available as general education classrooms. What would be ideal total enrollment at that school? What would the individual class sizes be?
2. Suppose you have a school that has ten rooms available for general education classrooms. What would be ideal total enrollment at that school? What would the individual class sizes be?
I chose fourteen classrooms and ten classrooms because those numbers work especially well for class size. In a fourteen-room school, you can have two classrooms for each grade level from K through 6. In a ten-room school, you can have two classrooms in each grade from K through 2 (where we usually try to have smaller class sizes), and then one classroom in each grade from 3-6 (where we usually tolerate larger class sizes).
The only constraint: You have to assume there will be an equal number of students at each grade level. So if there are 30 total sixth graders, there are also 30 total kindergartners, though you’re free to split some grade levels into multiple classrooms while not splitting others. (The reason for this constraint is that there is no good way to draw attendance zones that would result in consistently different enrollment totals in the lower grades than in the higher grades.)
Assume that the school is not a high-need school that would qualify for lower-than-average class sizes under the district’s weighted resource allocation model. So the district’s goal would be to keep the class sizes below 26 in grades K-2 and below 30 in grades 3-6. You can exceed those caps if you think that’s the best solution. But you should recognize that anything falling significantly below those goals will put your school below the district averages and make it harder to allocate teachers to high-need schools.
What are the best answers?
Follow-up here.
Small schools and class size
As will come as news to no one, I put a high priority on keeping our existing schools open; among other things, I think it’s a key ingredient in maintaining community support for district initiatives and it plays an important role in maintaining livable, family-friendly neighborhoods in the central core of Iowa City. But I don’t deny that there are costs involved in keeping our smaller schools open, and I think it’s important to think about what those costs are and whether there are ways to mitigate them.
In this post, I want to consider the effect of small schools on class size. When the district sets class size goals, it can give the impression that class sizes can be fine-tuned. For example, the most recent draft of those goals suggests that most elementary schools should have class sizes of no more than 26 from kindergarten through second grade, and no more than 30 in grades three through six. (The class size goals are lower than that in schools with higher levels of academic need, but most schools will not fall into that category.)
But conforming to those goals is easier said than done, especially in our smaller schools. A school with an enrollment of 240 is likely to have about 34 kids per grade. What do you do with that number? A 34-kid kindergarten classroom is much larger than ideal, so the district would almost certainly choose to break it into two 17-kid classes—a lot nicer, but way below what we could afford to staff district-wide. What if 40 sixth-graders show up? Again, 20 is a wonderful class size, but it’s way below the district median for sixth-graders.
In other words, smaller schools tend to produce more outlier class sizes, forcing the district to choose between class sizes that are significantly above the goals or significantly below them. This effect lessens somewhat as you get into enrollments of over three hundred. A 300-kid school will tend to produce class sizes in the twenties, which is at least better than having to choose between 17 or 34. But it would still be subject to year-to-year fluctuations that could generate uncomfortable choices, and class sizes in the low twenties are still below the district median.
By contrast, large schools give the district enough flexibility that they seldom result in outlier class sizes. In a 600-kid school (assuming the kids are spread out evenly over the seven grades), you can have class sizes of about 21 in the lower grades and 29 in the higher grades. Even if a bigger-than-usual group shows up in one grade, it gets spread out over three or four classrooms, so it’s not liable to generate class sizes as high as 34. As a result, the large school may be less likely to get an additional teacher than the small school with the 34-kid cohort.
In particular, smaller schools pose a challenge for the district’s weighted resource allocation model—that is, the effort to allocate smaller class sizes to school with higher academic need. To create smaller class sizes in high-need schools, we need to tolerate larger class sizes in the remaining schools. If that effect is spread out over many schools, the effect on any one school will be smaller and thus the model will be more politically sustainable. But it’s not so easy for smaller schools to take a “fair share” of that effect—again, because the choice will often be between a class size that greatly exceeds the goals and one that is much smaller than average. If the smaller schools get lower-than-average class sizes, even when they are not high-need schools, the burden of the resource reallocation will fall disproportionately on larger schools. If the smaller schools are expected to tolerate class sizes far above the goals, the burden will fall disproportionately on them. Either way, it becomes harder to sustain the reallocation effort.
Again, I’m certainly not trying to make the case for closing smaller schools. But if we’re going to resist the ongoing pressure to consider closing some of them (and not just Hoover), it makes sense to do some problem-solving around the issue of outlier class sizes. I’ll explore some possibilities in an upcoming post.
In this post, I want to consider the effect of small schools on class size. When the district sets class size goals, it can give the impression that class sizes can be fine-tuned. For example, the most recent draft of those goals suggests that most elementary schools should have class sizes of no more than 26 from kindergarten through second grade, and no more than 30 in grades three through six. (The class size goals are lower than that in schools with higher levels of academic need, but most schools will not fall into that category.)
But conforming to those goals is easier said than done, especially in our smaller schools. A school with an enrollment of 240 is likely to have about 34 kids per grade. What do you do with that number? A 34-kid kindergarten classroom is much larger than ideal, so the district would almost certainly choose to break it into two 17-kid classes—a lot nicer, but way below what we could afford to staff district-wide. What if 40 sixth-graders show up? Again, 20 is a wonderful class size, but it’s way below the district median for sixth-graders.
In other words, smaller schools tend to produce more outlier class sizes, forcing the district to choose between class sizes that are significantly above the goals or significantly below them. This effect lessens somewhat as you get into enrollments of over three hundred. A 300-kid school will tend to produce class sizes in the twenties, which is at least better than having to choose between 17 or 34. But it would still be subject to year-to-year fluctuations that could generate uncomfortable choices, and class sizes in the low twenties are still below the district median.
By contrast, large schools give the district enough flexibility that they seldom result in outlier class sizes. In a 600-kid school (assuming the kids are spread out evenly over the seven grades), you can have class sizes of about 21 in the lower grades and 29 in the higher grades. Even if a bigger-than-usual group shows up in one grade, it gets spread out over three or four classrooms, so it’s not liable to generate class sizes as high as 34. As a result, the large school may be less likely to get an additional teacher than the small school with the 34-kid cohort.
In particular, smaller schools pose a challenge for the district’s weighted resource allocation model—that is, the effort to allocate smaller class sizes to school with higher academic need. To create smaller class sizes in high-need schools, we need to tolerate larger class sizes in the remaining schools. If that effect is spread out over many schools, the effect on any one school will be smaller and thus the model will be more politically sustainable. But it’s not so easy for smaller schools to take a “fair share” of that effect—again, because the choice will often be between a class size that greatly exceeds the goals and one that is much smaller than average. If the smaller schools get lower-than-average class sizes, even when they are not high-need schools, the burden of the resource reallocation will fall disproportionately on larger schools. If the smaller schools are expected to tolerate class sizes far above the goals, the burden will fall disproportionately on them. Either way, it becomes harder to sustain the reallocation effort.
Again, I’m certainly not trying to make the case for closing smaller schools. But if we’re going to resist the ongoing pressure to consider closing some of them (and not just Hoover), it makes sense to do some problem-solving around the issue of outlier class sizes. I’ll explore some possibilities in an upcoming post.
Friday, November 4, 2016
Dismantle the boxes
Several schools in our district contain enclosures known variously as (depending on who you ask) “time-out rooms,” “seclusion enclosures,” “isolation boxes,” or “solitary confinement cells.” The nature of these enclosures varies from school to school, but some of them are made of unfinished plywood, are about six feet by six feet, and are built right into the larger classroom. Some of them appear to be poorly lit to the point of being outright dark inside. The photos above show enclosures at Grant Wood Elementary School.
A child can be confined in such an enclosure as part of the school’s behavior management practices. When the enclosure is built right into the larger classroom, children in the class watch as a child in put into the enclosure. The child in the enclosure can hear the class activity going on outside, and the other kids in the classroom can hear a child’s cries coming from inside the enclosure.
There are state-enacted rules regulating when and how the enclosures can be used, though there have been questions about whether our district has complied with the rules. The Gazette had an in-depth set of articles about the enclosures in September; you can read them here, here, and here. The Daily Iowan reports on the issue today here.
I know there are difficult situations when a child may pose a risk of harm to self or others and that the district needs to have a way of dealing with those situations. There is a lot to discuss about how best to handle those situations. But it doesn’t take an extended inquiry to see that the district can do better by its students than these plywood boxes. The district needs to discontinue using them and dismantle them, in favor of creating more humane spaces and practices for dealing with difficult behavior.
School board agenda for Tuesday, November 8
Very brief meeting scheduled for this Tuesday, in Room 113, since the board room is being used an election polling place. But feel free to chime in with any comments on the agenda.
Thursday, November 3, 2016
Liberty High curricular and extra-curricular offerings
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
U.S. Office of Civil Rights to make site visit to ICCSD
This past Friday (October 28), the superintendent notified the board that the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education will be making a site visit to our district this coming Spring. Here’s the superintendent’s email:
A bit more background: The concerns that the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) identified in 2013 involved the disparate treatment of African-American children in special education placement decisions. An OCR press release summarized the concerns:
In 2009 the US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights pulled some historical District data to review. In 2013 the OCR contacted the District to discuss their analysis of the data. As a result of that conversation, in the fall of 2013 the District signed a Settlement Agreement to address concerns that arose during the data review. Over the past three years the District has been working with OCR to complete fourteen program improvement items outlined in the agreement. The OCR has been able to verify completion of six of these items based on District document submissions. As a normal part of the agreement process, the OCR will be visiting the District this spring to validate completion of the other items. As more details are confirmed I will continue to keep you up to speed on the process.As of now, this is all I know about the site visit. I’ll post more information as it becomes available.
A bit more background: The concerns that the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) identified in 2013 involved the disparate treatment of African-American children in special education placement decisions. An OCR press release summarized the concerns:
OCR reviewed the files of all students who were initially evaluated for special education. OCR identified several African American students, particularly very young elementary students, who were identified as eligible for special education due to behavior issues and were placed in special education for a large percentage of the school day, and noted that some white students of similar ages identified as eligible for special education for behavior were placed in special education for a smaller percentage of the school day. OCR also identified several students who were found eligible for special education even though the presence of one or more potential exclusionary factors was noted in the file. Further, OCR found several students identified as eligible for special education despite scores that did not appear to be significantly discrepant from their peers.In the settlement that our district reached with the OCR in 2013, the district agreed to take specific remedial measures designed to ensure that the district does not treat African-American children differently from other children in special education placement. You can read the Settlement Agreement here; the OCR press release about the settlement agreement is here.
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
What’s curriculum got to do with it?
As I’ve been listening to people’s reactions to the proficiency gaps we’re seeing in our students’ standardized test score data (including from commenters here and here), I’ve been struck by how seldom people seem to raise the role of curricular choices. I’ve seen comments debating the effect of pursuing socioeconomic balance, and comments about the need for more diverse or culturally sensitive staff—both of which are certainly topics worth discussing. And I’ve seen more general comments about the district’s competence and about accountability—which are certainly relevant concepts too, though they need some definition. But isn’t curriculum kind of an elephant in the room when it comes to proficiency data?
My sense is that many people think of the topic of curriculum as a specialized area in which they are inclined to defer to experts (which is to say, to the professional educators that our district hires to make those decisions). It’s hard to argue with that at some level, but it also seems to me that the board can’t entirely relieve itself of the responsibility to be involved in the issue. Curriculum decisions do come before the board for approval, for example. And even if the board were inclined to defer to administrative judgments on those approvals, everyone agrees that the board is responsible for “holding the administration accountable” for the district’s outcomes. How could we do that if we defer completely to their judgments about what the best choices are?
To put it more specifically: Is it possible that the curricular approaches we have taken unnecessarily advantage the kids who have lots of academic support and help at home, at the expense of kids who have less? I say “unnecessarily” because some effect like that is probably unavoidable, no matter what curriculum we adopt. But it doesn’t seem outlandish to think that some curricula might generate more disparities than others.
For example, when I see how much our schools’ curricula rely on homework, even in the elementary years, and how often my own kids seemed to struggle with it to the point where they asked for parental help, I have to wonder how much harder it must be for kids with fewer resources at home—that is, for example, kids whose parents, on average, can’t help them as much with the math assignments, or just don’t have as much time to read to them, etc. If we are, in effect, outsourcing a portion of our instruction to parents, or relying too heavily on the assumption that kids will get certain experiences at home, aren’t we practically asking for proficiency gaps? I don’t mean to say that homework is the cause of the problem; I just mean to give an example of how curricular choices could conceivably play a role.
I don’t know what the curricular options out there are, though, and I don’t pretend to have any special expertise in evaluating them. But at some point, if we are continually unhappy about the gaps we’re seeing in our students’ proficiency data, how should the board go about assuring itself that our curricular choices are not playing a role in the problem? What is the board’s responsibility on that issue, and how should it exercise it?
My sense is that many people think of the topic of curriculum as a specialized area in which they are inclined to defer to experts (which is to say, to the professional educators that our district hires to make those decisions). It’s hard to argue with that at some level, but it also seems to me that the board can’t entirely relieve itself of the responsibility to be involved in the issue. Curriculum decisions do come before the board for approval, for example. And even if the board were inclined to defer to administrative judgments on those approvals, everyone agrees that the board is responsible for “holding the administration accountable” for the district’s outcomes. How could we do that if we defer completely to their judgments about what the best choices are?
To put it more specifically: Is it possible that the curricular approaches we have taken unnecessarily advantage the kids who have lots of academic support and help at home, at the expense of kids who have less? I say “unnecessarily” because some effect like that is probably unavoidable, no matter what curriculum we adopt. But it doesn’t seem outlandish to think that some curricula might generate more disparities than others.
For example, when I see how much our schools’ curricula rely on homework, even in the elementary years, and how often my own kids seemed to struggle with it to the point where they asked for parental help, I have to wonder how much harder it must be for kids with fewer resources at home—that is, for example, kids whose parents, on average, can’t help them as much with the math assignments, or just don’t have as much time to read to them, etc. If we are, in effect, outsourcing a portion of our instruction to parents, or relying too heavily on the assumption that kids will get certain experiences at home, aren’t we practically asking for proficiency gaps? I don’t mean to say that homework is the cause of the problem; I just mean to give an example of how curricular choices could conceivably play a role.
I don’t know what the curricular options out there are, though, and I don’t pretend to have any special expertise in evaluating them. But at some point, if we are continually unhappy about the gaps we’re seeing in our students’ proficiency data, how should the board go about assuring itself that our curricular choices are not playing a role in the problem? What is the board’s responsibility on that issue, and how should it exercise it?
Monday, October 31, 2016
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:
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.
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.
Sunday, October 30, 2016
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:
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:
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.
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: . . .(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.
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.
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.
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.
A few quick thoughts on stationing police officers and drug dogs in schools
I was recently asked about why our district does not have police officers regularly stationed in our secondary schools and why we don’t use drug dogs in those schools to detect and deter drug possession. The topic of “community liaisons”—which I think referred to police liaisons in the schools—was on the agenda for our work session on Tuesday, though the board meeting ran so late we had to postpone the work session.
At the moment there is no concrete proposal in front of us, so I can just talk generally about my predispositions on the issue. In general, I prefer a system where police come to a school when they are called, rather than one in which police have an ongoing presence in the schools. Part of my concern is because of nationwide trends toward treating school disciplinary matters as law enforcement matters. (See, for example, this article.) I’d prefer to have a school official, rather than a law enforcement officer, making the initial determination about whether to treat an issue as a law enforcement matter. As for the counseling role school resource officers could play, I’d prefer to see it played by school counselors who are under the authority of the school system rather than an outside entity.
I would also be concerned about having drug-sniffing dogs patrolling the schools. If they are used at all, I would want to limit their use to situations where there is a reasonable suspicion about a particular person, rather than subject everyone to that kind of examination, for the same reasons that I wouldn’t want to have police dogs routinely inspecting people walking around downtown, just at random and without any particularized suspicion. I’d be concerned about what that teaches kids about civil liberties and privacy. There are also concerns about the reliability of drug dogs’ responses.
The issue of school resource officers came up a few years ago, and the board voted down a proposal to pursue a grant that would have partially funded a school resource officer program. You can read about that issue here. I wasn’t on the board at the time, but I wrote about it here.
At the moment there is no concrete proposal in front of us, so I can just talk generally about my predispositions on the issue. In general, I prefer a system where police come to a school when they are called, rather than one in which police have an ongoing presence in the schools. Part of my concern is because of nationwide trends toward treating school disciplinary matters as law enforcement matters. (See, for example, this article.) I’d prefer to have a school official, rather than a law enforcement officer, making the initial determination about whether to treat an issue as a law enforcement matter. As for the counseling role school resource officers could play, I’d prefer to see it played by school counselors who are under the authority of the school system rather than an outside entity.
I would also be concerned about having drug-sniffing dogs patrolling the schools. If they are used at all, I would want to limit their use to situations where there is a reasonable suspicion about a particular person, rather than subject everyone to that kind of examination, for the same reasons that I wouldn’t want to have police dogs routinely inspecting people walking around downtown, just at random and without any particularized suspicion. I’d be concerned about what that teaches kids about civil liberties and privacy. There are also concerns about the reliability of drug dogs’ responses.
The issue of school resource officers came up a few years ago, and the board voted down a proposal to pursue a grant that would have partially funded a school resource officer program. You can read about that issue here. I wasn’t on the board at the time, but I wrote about it here.
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