Buddy Hemric's Letter to the Editor

The following is Buddy Hemric's 'Letter to the Editor' that was published in Saturday's Record and Landmark. Buddy has given me permission to post the letter. The wording is a little different from that which was printed in the paper. This is the version that Buddy provided to me and I assume it is what he provided to the newspaper. The Record and Landmark reserves the right to edit submitted letters and in my experience they exercise that right quite liberally.

This past year the ISS school system lost 50 teachers due to retirement or teachers leaving the system. Because of budget cuts at the state & local levels of government these teachers were not replaced. This has caused an increase in class size to 31 pupils per class. There are 35 teachers in the system that do not teach in a classroom. They are called IF Models. I.F. stands for "Instructional Facilitators". What is wrong with this picture?

Of the 35 IFs I found salaries for 26 of them ranging from $36,670 to $63,453. I must note this is an old list and may not be exact. The total cost of these "non-teachers" on this scale is $1,275,475.00. That will average out to $49,056.73 per "non-teacher". With 35 on the payroll at this average these "non-teachers" cost the taxpayers $1,724,086 dollars per year with no return for our kids, and 50 teacher positions left empty.

Buddy Hemric

Board Improvement Plan

At the I-SS Board meeting on Monday, September 14^th, the School Board approved the first reading of the I-SS Board of Education Improvement Plan for the 2009-10 school year. The five goals included in the plan are listed below.

1. Board of Education members communicate with district staff using approved procedure.
2. The Board of Education is accessible and responsive to the Superintendent, staff, and other stakeholders.
3. Board members use the district process and chain of command to resolve problems and complaints.
4. The Board of Education builds and maintains relationships with the community.
5. The Board of Education will ensure stakeholder input in the Superintendent selection process.

The second goal states that the Board is accessible and responsive to stakeholders while the fourth goal states that the Board builds and maintains relationships with the community. Will the Board as a group be truly responsive to the citizens of Iredell County? It seems like Mr. Rogers is the only Board member who replies to e-mails and attends community meetings. As the Board goes through the process of selecting a new superintendent it has an opportunity to show a true commitment to the public. Many have said it before, it is time for meaningful actions and not just words.

Meeting with Brady Johnson and Pam Schiffman

This past Thursday I went to the Central Office to inspect some school records that were ready for me to view. Mr. Johnson walked out into the hall to greet me and took me back to Dawn Creason’s office to get the documents that were ready to inspect and to show me the ones they were still compiling. One set of documents that were finally compiled was the database indexes that I had requested months ago.

Brady invited me into his office and said that he wanted Pam Schiffman to describe what was included in the indexes. Pam said that as far as they knew, I-SS was the first school system to complete the indexes as required by NC law. Brady said it was an obscure part of the Public Records law and that most institutions probably don’t know about it. As a side note, I did not have any problems noticing it when I read the NC Public Records Law that is available one of the State’s web sites.

The indexes show the files and fields included in the School’s database and state whether or not the information is available to the public. As you might suspect some of the databases have information about students and some have information about employees. Some of the databases that the system uses are owned and maintained by the State. Pam told me that if I wanted to see the indexes for those databases, I would have to request that information from the NC Department of Instruction.

Some time ago, Brady had informed me that he would be willing to have Pam explain the formula that I-SS had developed to rank the NC school systems. Since Pam was already meeting with us I asked if she could ahead and explain the formula, which she did. She showed me the categories that she uses to produce the ranking and how she puts them together to determine the final ranking. I must say that I now feel more confident about the process even though I-SS determines what goes into the formula and the weighting for each category. Pam said that she is currently in the process of compiling a ranking based on the latest test scores and that she will share the ranking with me when it is completed. I will post that information when I receive it and will explain more about the formula at that time.

While I was in Brady’s office he showed me a number of binders of documents that Dr. Holliday had left behind. Brady said that any time I wanted to look through them, I could make an appointment to do so. He said that he wants to assure everyone that he believes in complete transparency and that all school documents are available for inspection. Of course that would not apply to confidential information. Brady also asked me what I-SS could do to improve the transparency of the system and I said that one way would be to place more information on the I-SS web site. As an example, I recommended that all documents that are presented to the School Board before and at their meetings should be made available on the web site.

As we were talking, Brady mentioned that he did plan to let teachers take the survey that was presented to the principals just before school started. This is the survey that lists various school procedures and allows the person taking the survey to indicate whether that procedure was working and should be retained as is, or useful but in need of improvement (tweaking), or not useful and should be abandoned. Brady said that the survey would be administered sometime around the beginning of November. He also told me that Larry Rogers, SHS Principal, had taken it upon himself to administer the survey to his faculty. Brady shared the results of two items on that survey. One was the item relating to the IFs. Of the SHS faculty, 11% said to keep it as is, 39% said to abandon it, and the greatest percent said to keep it but to tweak it. The other item was the one relating to PDSAs. I do not remember the breakdown for that one but the largest percentage of the SHS teachers said to abandon it.

At the community meeting, Brady had said that he planned to meet with the IFs and talk to them about what he thought their role should be. This past Thursday, Brady told me that he will be having that meeting with the IFs on this coming Thursday. He said that one of the things he was going to tell them was that with the budget the way it is, come this spring principals may have to decide just how important is it to have an IF and whether that money is needed to retain a teacher or some other staff person.

Brady also said that he wanted to again reassure everyone that he is willing to meet with anybody and to listen to his or her concerns. He said that he has heard that some individuals are still afraid to come forward and speak to him. Brady said that he does not want it to be that way. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I went to the Central Office expecting to just inspect some school records. But, I spent most of my time in Brady’s office talking to him and to Pam Schiffman. I think that this is indeed a true example of how willing Brady is to meet with individuals.

Area Advisory Meetings

When Mr. Johnson met with the citizen’s group he mentioned that the School Board would be holding a number of advisory meetings in order to allow the public an opportunity to participate in the selection process for the new superintendent. The I-SS web site now has more information about those meetings. According to the web site the meetings will begin next week. One meeting will be held at each of the high schools and each meeting will begin at 7 p.m. The schedule for the meetings is as follows.

Statesville High	Oct. 1
North Iredell High	Oct. 13
South Iredell High	Oct. 20
Lake Norman High	Oct. 22
West Iredell High	Oct. 29

We are being asked for our input and it is important that we take the time to participate in this selection process. I am recommending that everyone attend at least two of these meetings. Let’s show the School Board that we want a superintendent that is truly interested in the success of all I-SS students and a superintendent who will provide an atmosphere of collaboration, accountability and full transparency.

Click on the link below for more information.

Area Advisory Meetings Begin Next Week

Message From and To Mr. Johnson

Recently I sent Mr. Johnson an e-mail that dealt with a couple issues. One of those issues was the raises received by the Central Office administrators who were recently moved into interim positions. The following is the response I received from Mr. Johnson regarding that part of my e-mail.

Thank you Paul. The information about the salaries has caused a lot of dissension at a time when I was really trying to build consensus. I sure wish there was a way that I could convince everyone to pull in the same direction.

Brady Johnson, Interim Superintendent

I then replied to Mr. Johnson based on the comments and suggestions given on this blog as well as comments and suggestions I have received in e-mails from teachers and from speaking directly with a number of teachers. The text of my reply is given below.

Brady,

I understand your justification behind the salary increases for the Central Office personnel who were moved into the interim positions. However, you know that, due to many factors including the cuts in the state budget, teachers and other I-SS staff have also had to take on new responsibilities but they were not given salary increases. I think it is fair to say that, for many, the perception is that teachers and others did not get the raises due to the fact they did not receive fancy new titles to go along with their new responsibilities.

That being said, I do think that you can convince everyone to pull in the same direction but it is going to take more than words. You mentioned at the citizen's meeting that you wanted to take some of the pressure off of the teachers and that you were lighten up and tweak the application of the Baldrige plan. From what I have heard, that is not occurring, at least not at a number of schools. There only a few new teachers this year. That means that most of the teachers are quite familiar with the application of the Baldrige model. I recommend that you give teachers the freedom to decide how much of the Baldrige model they want to apply to their classes. Contrary to what Dr. Holliday thought, the majority of the I-SS teachers do know how to teach and they need the freedom and the time to implement a teaching style that best meets the needs of their students. You said that you expect the principals to know their teachers. Thus they should know if a teacher is struggling and be able to provide help as needed. Don't force remediation on teachers who do not need it.

The IFs can best be used to provide help as needed, not to pound teachers with all the Baldrige ideology and acronyms. At the citizen's meeting you also said you also wanted to change to role of the IFs. But apparently that has not changed either. You said that you wanted the IFs to be a true resource like the Lead Teacher that worked with you and your teachers when you were a principal. I am afraid that the only way that is going to happen is if there is a radical change in the IF model. Too many teachers see the IFs as they have seen them in the last couple of years and apparently many IFs want to continue doing what they have done in the past. I think you have to sever the direct connection between the IFs and the Central Office. Keep the IFs in the schools all day every day and have them report directly to the principal. They can meet after school like the teachers do. Another idea is to change the title from IF back to Lead Teacher. There is a lot of baggage associated with the IF title.

Again, let teachers teach. You said that principals and other school staff are at there to support the teachers as they enable the students to learn. Make sure everyone knows that. You said you see the PLC as a valuable teacher resource. I agree, but let the teachers meet and work together and share ideas without the IF getting in the way. If the teachers need the help of the IF/Lead Teacher, they can ask for that help. Why do the teachers have to keep a PLC notebook and turn it in to the IF? Let the teachers set the structure of the PLC to meet their needs not the needs of the IF.

I know that I do not have your experience as a public school teacher and administrator. Certainly my experience is that of a College instructor, although I did earn a High School teaching certificate when I was in undergraduate school. But, I have been married to Pam for 30 years and she has kept me informed over the years of various school procedures. In addition, we have a number of friends who are I-SS teachers and I have also been communicating with a number of teachers via the Citizen's group, my blog, and e-mail. Therefore, I did want to share my thoughts with you based on those contacts.

I know that as interim superintendent there is only so much you can do and that you already have a lot on your plate. From what I have seen and heard, teachers and other I-SS teachers are willing to work with you but they have to know that you are willing to work with them and that the attitude of the Central Office has changed.

Thank you,

Paul Klaene

If you also wish to send a message to Mr. Johnson his e-mail address is listed below.

bjohnson@iss.k12.nc.us

Renee's Requests and I-SS Responses

It seems there has recently been many requests for facts. All information in quotations are responses to requests for information. These requests were sent to Ms. Creason on August 26, 2009 and the information was supplied on September 14, 2009.

• Melanie Taylor's official new title: “ Associate Superintendent of Curriculum & Learning”

• Brenda Clark's official new title and new duties: “ Associate Superintendent of Learning; duties include management of 21st Century grant, managing the Closing the Gap task force, spearheading the effort to open a new career and technical education center, travel and speaking engagements required and paid for by BNQP, and other duties as assigned by the interim superintendent"

• A list of all retired personnel rehired and their salaries: “After speaking with both human resources and payroll; this record does not exist. An employee is not necessarily classified as a retiree in the computer system when they are rehired, so they are unable to be pulled as such. If you are interested in learning more about a particular employee, we can certainly pull that information.”

These are the facts. We are the taxpayers and citizens of Iredell County. These are our tax dollars and our children.

Renee Dulin

Strategic Plan Survey Available Again

I checked the I-SS web site and noticed that the Strategic Plan Survey is live once again. As I did in a previous post, I am recommending that everyone take the time to complete the survey. We are being asked for our feedback on the goals that will determine the direction of the School System for the next year. You may not feel that surveys are important but the survey was mentioned at last week's Committee of the Whole meeting and at this week's Board Meeting. The administration needs to hear from students, parents, teachers, and others. Otherwise it will continue to be business as usual. The administration likes to cite data so let's give them some real data that reflects the wishes of everyone interested in the quality of our schools. Click on the link below to access the survey.

Click Here

Where Is The Humanity?

One of the items discussed at the public meeting with Mr. Johnson was that fact that as the I-SS implemented its version of the Baldrige Plan there was a decrease of humanity in our schools. For example, it was mentioned that since administrators had to spend so much time dealing with all of the Baldrige requirements that they did not have the time to get to know the students as well as they have been able to get to know them in the past. It was also stated that at one school, there were a number of students who identified one of the teachers as the principal.

I recently received an e-mail from a teacher who talked about the importance of the human element. The teacher has told me that I may share the contents of the e-mail with the readers of this blog. I am including the message here.

Hi Mr. Klaene.

Someone at my school made a comment. I believe it holds a lot of truth and is worth sharing.

She said,

"When we began using the terminology "stakeholders and customers" to refer to our parents, teachers, and students, the heart and humanistic characteristics of teaching and learning died."

I thought the comment was profound. These titles are cold and impersonal- which is much like the atmosphere in our schools and classrooms. The words "stakeholder and customers" have slowly but surely sent the clear message that education has joined the corporate world - where lives get shattered because of numbers, and possibilities for individuality and enrichment are stifled at the hands of those in control. Now our education system is diseased by this business mentally.

Someone should mention to our school board and our administration that words are powerful - we would like to be acknowledged again as the humans we are. We can be customers at the Wal-Mart when we purchase a broken, mechanical item. But in school, please let us be teachers. Let us be students. Let us be parents. Let us be a community. Recognize us as givers and seekers of knowledge. That just may be a huge step toward improving morale.

I-SS Teacher

School Board Meeting

The next School Board meeting is scheduled for this Monday, Sept. 14th, at 6:00 p.m. in the meeting room on the second floor of the Iredell County Government Center (200 South Center Street, Statesville). Click on the link below in order to access the meeting agenda. Please consider attending the meeting.

Agenda

Strategic Plan Survey Not Available

I hope that everyone who was planning to complete the Strategic Plan Survey had an opportunity to do so. I checked this afternoon and, although the link to the survey is still available on the I-SS web Home page, the survey itself is not. If you now click on the link to the survey you are now taken to a page that displays the following message.

Sorry, but the survey 'EOY Review SMART Goals' is not currently live, so you cannot take it at this time.

Perhaps someone at I-SS was checking this blog, saw the post about the survey, and decided that the survey should be corrected. Anyone looking at the survey should be able to tell that it was seriously flawed. The statements were cryptic and lacking essential information. I do not know who designed this survey but that person is in serious need of professional training. Maybe it is time for a PDSA.

Of course, it could be that the administration did not like the responses and decided to remove the survey before they received any more negative responses. Remember it is important that the data represents what we want it to represent.

I-SS Committee of the Whole Meeting

The next Committee of the Whole Meeting is scheduled for this Tuesday, Sept. 8th, at 5:00 p.m. in the ADR Education Center. At this meeting the School Board will start the search for the new superintendent by having a representative of the NC School Boards Association give a presentation regarding the obligations of the Board as they carry out the process of selecting a new superintendent. I think it would be very beneficial for anyone interested in the selection process to attend this meeting. Remember that the new superintendent will be directing I-SS and many of us don't want I-SS to repeat the mistakes that have occurred under the direction of the previous superintendent. I think that most I-SS stakeholders would agree that the new superintendent must set a new course for the school system. One that, as was mentioned at the meeting with Mr. Johnson, will bring back the humanistic character of education to our schools.

There are a number of other items on the agenda as well. Some of these other items are the School Improvement Plans, Recommended Changes to the I-SS Strategic Plan, and the BOE Improvement Plan. Remember that most of the work of the School Board is done at the Committee of the Whole meeting. To access the full agenda for the meeting click on the link below.

Agenda

Strategic Plan Survey

I just noticed, today, that among the several items listed under the Announcements heading on the I-SS web site Home page is a link to the Strategic Plan Survey. There is no real information given regarding the survey on the home page. It just has Strategic Plan Survey and under that it has Click Here to give us feedback on our Strategic Goals. There is no information on who is expected to take this survey or what I-SS plans to do with the results of the survey.

If you click on the link and go to the survey you will see that there is not much information there either. At the top of the page is the heading: EOY Review SMART Goals. Now I assumed that EOY meant End Of Year but I did not know what the acronym SMART stood for so I clicked on the ‘Quality in ISS’ link that is also on the I-SS Home web page and from there went to ‘Resources’ to find the link to the I-SS acronym list. Using the acronym list I verified that EOY did indeed represent End Of Year and I learned that SMART stood for Specific, Measurable, Aligned, Relevant, and Time-framed. I am glad that it was listed because I would never have figured that one out.

The instructions indicate that you should review each of the listed ‘suggested strategic indicators’ and indicate whether you agree or disagree with each one. Plus it states that you can leave suggestions for ‘improved measures, clarity, etc.’ I think the word clarity should have been in bold since, as I mentioned, there is not much clarity in the purpose of the survey. In addition, some of the Objectives/Goals listed are lacking in specificity. For example, Objective 2.1 gives some correlation values but does not explain what those values indicate. What percent of all I-SS stakeholders have had a statistics class? Speaking of percents, Objective 4.1 has blank spaces where the percent values are supposed to be given. I guess that once I-SS gets the responses to that one the administration will fill in the percents so the ‘data’ looks good.

At least we are being asked for our input. That is, I guess we are. Therefore, I recommend that everyone reading this post take the survey. There are only 12 objectives to rate. I also recommend that you write some ‘questions, comments or suggestions’ in the corresponding comment box. You can click on the link below, or above, to access the survey.

Click Here

Report of the Meeting with Mr. Johnson

The meeting with Mr. Brady Johnson went very well. It was well attended both by teachers and citizens. Mr. John Rogers, School Board Member, and Mr. Larry Rogers, SHS Principal, were also in attendance.

The meeting started with Mr. Johnson telling everyone a little bit about his background in education as a teacher and as an administrator. He then went on to tell about the start of school and his goals as interim superintendent. As part of that he related some of the achievements of the school system such as the ABC scores, the schools that met AYP, and SAT scores. Mr. Johnson also told how the I-SS scores related to other schools in the state. Overall, I-SS is doing well. For example, with respect to the SAT scores, I-SS ranks 12^th in the state.

Mr. Johnson also talked of the principal’s focus group that was held last spring and that the three main issues brought forth from that session were inconsistent communications within the school system, the IFs were not evaluated by the principals, and that the Central Office did not value the input of the principals. To address those and other issues, Mr. Johnson said he asked the principals to meet and evaluate a number of school processes. He said that one of the processes that principals recommended fixing was the role of the IFs. Mr. Johnson then related some of the changes he put in place to do that such as having the IFs report to the principals and that the IFs will now be away from their schools only a half-day a week for ‘training’ instead of one full day a week.

Of course, Mr. Johnson also spoke of the Baldrige plan and that he saw the Baldrige system as one that aligns everyone in an organization so that everyone is working together toward a common goal. He also added that in the past the application of the Baldrige plan has been somewhat heavy handed at that there were plans in place to take some of the pressure off teachers. Speaking of teachers, Mr. Johnson said that he sees teachers as partners and that every other employee at a school should be working to support the teachers.

In addition, Mr. Johnson described the tentative plans for the search for the new superintendent. He said the process would start Tuesday at the I-SS Committee of the Whole Meeting when a representative of the NC School Boards Association will inform the I-SS Board of their obligations regarding the search procedure. Mr. Johnson added that there would be advisory meetings held at each High School during which the public will have input as to what qualities to look for in the new superintendent. There will also be student advisory meetings and staff advisory meetings. Mr. Johnson also said that there would probably be some type of electronic survey. He said that he expected that applications would have to be in by December or January and that interviews would probably start in February with the final selection to be in March or April.

Following this was the question and answer period. There were a number of good questions and, although I am sure that not everyone was completely satisfied with all the answers, I do think it would be fair to say that Mr. Johnson took the time to sincerely answer each question. Someone asked why the principals were surveyed but the teachers were not. Mr. Johnson stated that he expected the principals to know their teachers and thus to speak for them. There were questions and comments about Baldrige and the role of the IFs. Mr. Johnson again said that changes were being made and that he met with the principals and the IFs together and that he would be meeting with just the IFs to clarify his perspective of their role in the schools. I asked how he was making it known that he saw teachers as partners and that other school employees were working for the teachers. Mr. Johnson said that he had visited some 14 schools and that he was trying to get to the others soon and that he was trying to meet with many individuals at each school. He said that he would like to meet with everyone at their staff meetings but that staff meetings were on Tuesdays and that it would take over 30 weeks to get to every school. Someone then suggested that if he did go to staff meetings that he should take time to meet with just the teachers so that they could speak freely.

There were questions and comments about the EC program and IEPs. As well there were some questions and comments about the continued fear of teachers to speak out. There were also some questions of Mr. John Rogers who at one point commented that in the past the Board would instruct Dr. Holliday to do certain things and that he would often turn around and do something else. That, of course, led to some other questions and comments.

In conclusion everyone seemed to be very appreciative of Mr. Johnson for taking the time to meet with the group and several individuals spoke highly of their interactions with Mr. Johnson in the past. I know that this is not a complete description of the meeting. I did not take copious notes but I did try to cover a lot of what was said. Perhaps others who were at the meeting could leave a comment and fill in the gaps in my narrative or correct me if I did not relate things correctly. I know that Janey Munday gave her impression of the meeting in a comment to a previous post.

Mr. Johnson's Message

The principal at Lakeshore Middle School forwarded the following e-mail to his staff today.

In case you have not had the opportunity to review the cabinet notes I distributed yesterday, I want to ensure that you are aware of the upcoming meeting of the Concerned Citizens Group. I have been invited to speak to this group on Thursday, September 3, at 7:00 p.m. in the media center at Statesville High School.

It has come to my attention that some staff members report that they would like to attend, but are afraid that the district would look unfavorably on this. I have been told that some staff feel as though the administration is against them.

While I do not want to give the impression that I am recruiting members for this, or any other community group, I likewise do not want anyone to get the impression that I am against them or that I would retaliate against citizens for expressing their viewpoints.

Please let your staff know that in our school system, all staff members are free to exercise their right of affiliation and openly express their freedom of speech without fear of reprisal.

Thanks,

Brady Johnson

Interim Superintendent

Iredell-Statesville Schools

I hope that the principals at other I-SS schools are also forwarding the e-mail to their staff as well.