SHS Advisory Meeting

My wife and I attended the first of the Advisory meetings designed to allow the public an opportunity to participate in the selection process for the new superintendent. I think I now know what it is like to attend a Baldrige meeting. While Mr. Johnson and others were speaking my wife would inform me as they used Baldrige terminology. We even ended the meeting doing a plus-delta chart.

Brady gave a brief welcome and then turned the meeting over to two ‘volunteers,’ Paul and Terri, who had been asked to lead the meeting. I did not get their last names. Paul did most of the instructing of what we were to do. I did get the impression that Paul was actively involved in the last superintendent search. I was hoping there would be an open discussion, but as it turned out things were much more structured. There was really no opportunity to simply discuss what the participants wanted or did not want in a superintendent.

We were given a stack of sticky notes and asked to think about what priorities we would like the new superintendent to address and then write our ideas on the sticky notes with only one idea on each notes. The notes were taken and sorted by content and placed on different sheets of chart paper. Each sheet was given a corresponding category label.

As we were writing the notes Brady described the I-SS Proposed Strategic Plan for 2009 – 2012. The items on the plan are very similar to the items that were on the Strategic Plan Survey. Brady did allow for some questions as he went over the plan. For me this presentation of the Strategic Plan while we were trying to complete our notes was a big distraction and took away from the main task of the meeting. It may have even been a veiled attempt to influence the focus of the notes.

After Brady was finished with his presentation and after the notes were sorted the sheets were placed a different tables. The different categories were Non-traditional Student Programs, Personal Qualities, Funding, Harmonious Relationships, Staff Needs, and Student Achievement. Everyone was then asked to select a category and go to that particular table. The individuals at each table were then to group the sticky notes related to the particular categories into groups of related ideas or sub-topics and then to write a statement that described that idea. We were then each given four sticky dots and ask to go around to the various tables and vote for what we thought were the four main ideas of all of the ones listed. These will be tallied and put with the results of the other advisory meetings and then this would be reported to the School Board. They did say that they would also make a list of all of the ideas that were on the individual sticky notes.

Next, they asked what were the character traits or experience and the strengths we would like to see in the new superintendent. They had two chart tablets on easels and wrote ‘Strengths’ at the top of one chart and ‘Character Traits and Experience’ at the top of the other. Then everyone was asked to verbally suggest different strengths or characteristics to be listed on these sheets. Once all of the traits were listed on one sheet or the other, we were give two blue sticky dots and two orange sticky dots. We then were instructed to use the orange dots to vote for two of the listed strengths and the two blue dots to vote for two of the listed character traits/experiences. These will also be tallied and reported to the School Board.

Finally there was a chart divided into two parts with plus listed on one side and delta on the other. We were then asked to use sticky notes to list things that we thought went well with the meeting and place those notes on the plus side of the chart. We were also asked to use the sticky notes to list things that we thought should have been done differently and place those on the delta side.

Overall, I would say that the basic procedures used in the meeting were good and could help if the Board really considers the results. However, there were some problems. The biggest problem was that there were not many teachers or community members in attendance. There seemed to be as many if not more I-SS administrators present and participating in the process. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think that the school administrators should participate in the process of selecting the new superintendent. It is just that there were a disproportionate number of administrators at this meeting and that tended to skew the results. For example, there were a large number of votes for the item relating to data driven principles. Apparently, these administrators want to continue using the Baldrige model.

I strongly encourage parents, community members, and teachers to participate in these meetings. If all of these advisory meetings end up being like this one, we are going to have another Holliday as superintendent. From the comments left on this blog it is obvious that most readers of the blog do not want that to happen. Thus, it is imperative that you attend at least one of these meetings and let your intentions be known. Encourage your friends and your children’s teachers to attend as well. The next advisory meeting is on Oct. 13^th at North Iredell High School.

Another problem I saw with the meeting was that there was only one School Board member in attendance. As you might suspect that individual was Mr. John Rogers. From what I could tell, Mr. Rogers did not actively participate in the meeting. But he was there to observe and to listen to what was said. Mr. Rogers, thank you for taking the time to attend the meeting.