The ISS Report

Fall 2010 Area Advisory Meetings

2010-09-28T14:47:00.003-04:00

The following information is from the I-SS web site.

Area Advisory Councils act as influential focus groups for the Iredell-Statesville Schools Board of Education and provide the board with parent and community perspective and guidance on both ongoing issues and strategic planning priorities for the public school system. Meetings are open to the public and are held regularly in each area of the county: North Iredell, West Iredell, Statesville Area, and Southern Iredell.

Fall 2010 Area Advisory Meeting Dates

(all meetings begin at 7 pm in the Media Center)

Lake Norman High School, Thursday, September 30
West Iredell High School, Tuesday, October 12
North Iredell High School, Tuesday, October 19
Statesville High School, Monday, October 25
South Iredell High School, Thursday, October 28

New School Year

2010-08-24T23:54:00.005-04:00

Wishing Students and Staff

a Successful School Year!

Central Support Services

2010-08-22T16:46:00.005-04:00

According to an article in last Sunday’s (Aug. 15^th) Statesville Record & Landmark, the I-SS Central Office is now going to be called ‘Central Support Services.’ The article states that the change is meant to dispel any “us vs. them” mentality and to reiterate that administrators are there to work with the schools’ staff. The article also states that Mr. Johnson said that he doesn’t want staff to look at administrators as roadblocks, but instead as resourceful tools they can use in order to accomplish the goal of educating children.

Later in the article it cites Mr. Johnson as saying that with the district moving from a district of “progress” to one of “distinction” with an 80.7% performance composite for 2009-10 under ABC results, the goal moving forward is to get to 100%. Then the article quotes Mr. Johnson as saying, “You hear people talk about No Child Left Behind, but we’re serious about that.” However, there was no mention of the low AYP scores.

Of course Mr. Johnson also did not mention that one of the I-SS primary goals has been that the district was to have 97% expected ABC growth by 2010 and that another goal was that the district was to meet 96% of the AYP targets in 2010. Remember that the AYP scores are a measure of the success of the ‘No Child Left Behind’ program.

If Mr. Johnson is serious about ‘No Child Left Behind’ then he has to admit that the I-SS AYP scores dramatically decreased this past year and discuss what the district is truly going to change in order to improve both the ABC and AYP goals. I don’t think that rebranding the Central Office as Central Support Services is going to bring much real change in the way that the I-SS administration does things.

Mixed Results: ABC and AYP Scores

2010-08-12T16:48:00.006-04:00

In a previous post I talked about the AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) scores for the Iredell-Statesville Schools. As was reported in that post, only 54.3% of the I-SS schools met the AYP standards for the 2009–10 school year which was a drop of 25.7% from the 2008–09 school year when 80.0% of the I-SS schools met the AYP standards.

The ABC scores for the 2009–10 school year have also been published. According to a recent article in the Statesville Record & Landmark, I-SS's performance composite for the 2009-10 school year increased by 2.1% (from 78.6% in 2008-09 to 80.7%) over the previous year.

You may use the link below to access the Record and Landmark on-line article regarding the ABC scores.

Record & Landmark ABC Scores Article

This 2.1% gain in the ABC scores is small compared to the 25.7% decrease in the AYP scores. Of course I-SS is making a big deal out of the increase in ABC scores and downplaying the drop in the AYP scores. The Record & Landmark quotes Superintendent Johnson as saying “The trend is going in the right direction," and continues that Johnson said the growth is inspiring and a "morale booster" during difficult days for the district. In its article on the I-SS End-of Year Review Session the Record & Landmark reported that Chairman David Cash said that the district did well in its overall performance.

You may use the link below to access the Record and Landmark on-line article about the I-SS End-of Year Review Session.

I-SS End of Year Review Session

I congratulate I-SS on its increase in the ABC scores. However, I-SS needs to carefully examine both the ABC scores and the AYP scores to see why there is only a small gain in the ABC scores and why there is such a significant decrease in the AYP scores. I-SS continues to extol the current I-SS Model without any real proof its efficacy. When dealing with over 20,000 students anecdotal evidence is not sufficient to justify a particular approach to the education of those students.

You may click on the image below to see the 2009-10 ABC scores for I-SS.

I-SS AYP Comparisons

2010-07-25T18:08:00.010-04:00

As was recently reported in the Statesville Record & Landmark, the NC Department of Public Instruction has released the preliminary 2009-10 Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) scores. For the 09-10 school year, 19 of 35 (54.3%) of the I-SS schools met the AYP standards. This is quite a drop from the 08-09 school year when 28 of 35 (80.0%) of the I-SS schools met the AYP standards.

For more information you can read the Record & Landmark on-line article following the first link below or check out the AYP information on the I-SS web site using the second link below.

Record & Landmark AYP article

I-SS web site AYP information

Below is a comparison of the I-SS scores for the last two school years.
(Click on an image to enlarge it.)

Although the AYP scores are not the only indication of the quality of a given school it is an important measure that must be taken seriously when evaluating schools. There are many factors that determine the success of a school and the I-SS administration must examine these factors and find a true path to success.

Perhaps I-SS should take a close look at the Mooresville Graded School district, which had 6 out of 8 (75.0%) of their schools meet the AYP standards. The Mooresville Graded School district has made a concentrated effort to integrate technology in all classrooms and to get computers into the hands of all students. I think that it is time for I-SS to move away from the current I-SS model (aka Baldrige) and move students into the twenty-first century.

June 2010 Personnel Report

2010-07-02T16:30:00.003-04:00

I am including a copy of the June 2010 personnel report that was presented to School Board during the meeting on June 14th. Most of the report is the standard sections of resignations, retirements, new hires, administrative appointments, and administrative transfers. Many of the appointments and transfers have already been announced on this blog or in the media.

The report does mention that Billy Thompson is being named principal of Statesville Middle School and that Kelly Cooper is being named Exec. Director of Middle School/RTL/504 but it does not mention Bobbie Ellis. Ms. Ellis was the principal of Statesville Middle. The May Personnel Report indicated that Bobbie's contract was being renewed but her location was listed as TBD. I have not heard what position Ms. Ellis will have for the upcoming school year.

Pages 1 and 2: (Click to enlarge.)

Page 3:

Superintendent's Contract & Job Description

2010-06-27T18:02:00.003-04:00

I recently requested and received the contracts and job descriptions of several Central Office administrators. I will be posting a number of contracts and job descriptions. I thought it would be appropriate to start with those of Mr. Johnson.

According to his contract, Mr. Johnson is receiving a yearly base annual salary of $160,000. I don’t think that this base salary is unreasonable considering the size of I-SS. (Note: This amount is about $10,000 less than what Dr. Holliday was receiving.) However, I do have to question the rationale for the additional compensation that Mr. Johnson receives.

In addition to paying his base salary, the School System also reimburses Mr. Johnson for his cost of Social Security, his contribution to the State Retirement System, and up to $5,000 for his participation in employer-offered cafeteria benefit plans. These cafeteria benefit plans include such things as vision, dental, and cancer insurance. These are benefits that other school employees must pay for themselves.

I don’t know the additional value of these benefits for Mr. Johnson but some time ago I determined that Dr. Holliday was receiving about $40,000 for these same benefits. I think that this is a way of hiding the actual compensation of the superintendent. The Board should be honest and just pay a reasonable base salary and let the superintendent pay for these other items just as other school employees must do.

I also have a question about one of the items listed on the Superintendent’s Job description under the section titled: MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS OR STANDARDS REQUIRED TO PERFORM ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS. In this section it states that the superintendent must be able to sit, stand, walk and drive a car. It seems to me that to require the superintendent to be able to sit, stand and walk is a clear violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This requirement is also in the job descriptions of other I-SS Administrators.

Superintendent's Contract: (Click on an image to enlarge it.)

Pages 1 and 2:

Pages 3 and 4:

Pages 5 and 6:

Pages 7 and 8:

Pages 9 and 10:

Page 11:

Superintendent's Job Description:

County Funding for I-SS

2010-06-21T16:39:00.005-04:00

According to an article in Sunday’s Record & Landmark, Iredell County will fund I-SS 29.2 million dollars for the upcoming school year. This is several million dollars less than what was requested by I-SS. I am including a copy of the I-SS request below. The article quotes I-SS Chief Financial Officer Melissa Wike as stating that for this fiscal year the district was given 104.8 million dollars from the state. Thus the county funds do make up a significant part of the overall school budget. It should be noted that I-SS has much flexibility in how it spends the county funds.

The Record & Landmark articles also quotes Brady Johnson as stating that I-SS will wait to see how the state budget pans out before making any concrete decision about going forth with I-SS's contingency plan. The contingency plan includes a 2 percent pay furlough for administrators for the second straight year; the elimination of 25 positions through attrition; making Student Resource Officer positions 10 months instead of 11 months; decreasing local supplements for classified and certified teachers by 2 percent; and reducing the central office budget by 19 percent.

You can use the link below to access the web version of the Record & Landmark article about the school budget.

District will wait on state budget

One item in the I-SS proposed county budget is $8,445,946.32 for Supplements, Longevity, and Annual Leave. Two percent of that amount is $168,918.93. That means that two percent of the teacher supplements would be less than 168.9 thousand dollars. Certainly I-SS can make cuts without taking away from teachers’ supplements. In the same proposed budget there is over 3.1 million dollars for Instructional Support. Does this include the funds for the IFs and the supporting cast at the ADR center? If so, there is certainly some money that could be cut in that budget.

I-SS Proposed County Budget

Click on the image to enlarge it.

Update On The CO Reorganization Plan

2010-06-20T15:15:00.003-04:00

On Wednesday, I sent Dawn Creason an e-mail in which I asked for information regarding the individuals (Kris Earl, Judy Honeycutt, Mathew Fail, Linda Gillon, Brenda Clark, Linda Rogers, Carol McCrory, Doug Wooten, Rob Jackson, and Steve Hampton) who were listed on the February 2010 I-SS organizational chart but who were not listed on the I-SS organizational chart submitted to the Board by Mr. Johnson as part of his reorganization plan.

I received the following reply from Ms. Creason on Thursday.

Mr. Klaene-

I just had the opportunity to sit down with Mr. Johnson and discuss the organizational chart.

Coite Sherrill, Chip Weddington, Reginald Brown, Dorothy Woodard, Pam Stewart, Carol McCrory, Mathew Fail, and Brenda Clark will no longer be I-SS employees. Mathew Fail has already left the district, and all others will be completing their work at the end of June.

However, Mr. Johnson has added Kelly Cooper (executive director of middle grades education), Jessica Mellen (Title II administrator) and Tim Ivey (Focused Learning Communities grant director).

Kris Earl is a full-time employee of the EC department. Judy Honeycutt is a part-time employee (retired and returned) working with career & technical education as the career development counselor, Linda Gillon remains the full-time classified personnel coordinator, and Doug Wooten, Rob Jackson, and Steve Hampton (1/2 grant paid) remain in their previous capacities.

Mr. Johnson shared with me that the organizational chart has been reduced to only list department heads. His ultimate plan is to provide individual department organizational charts as well. He asked me to coordinate this effort just this afternoon. As soon as I am able to contact each department leader, I will ensure that all central office personnel are listed on the website, both in directory format as well as organizational chart format.

I hope I've managed to answer your questions adequately without rambling on too much. If you have further questions, I will be happy to help you.

Thanks a lot!

Five of the individuals mentioned by Ms. Creason were not on the February 2010 organizational chart. I don’t know what was the administrative status of those individuals (Coite Sherrill, Chip Weddington, Reginald Brown, Dorothy Woodard, and Pam Stewart). But, looking at the two organizational charts and the information provided by Ms. Creason, there were 3 individuals (Carol McCrory, Mathew Fail, and Brenda Clark) who were on the February organizational chart and who will no longer be employed by I-SS and three individuals (Kelly Cooper, Jessica Mellen, and Tim Ivey) who will be new additions to the organizational chart with 7 individuals (Kris Earl, Judy Honeycutt, Linda Gillon, Doug Wooten, Rob Jackson, and Steve Hampton) who will continue to be employed as CO administrators but will not be listed on the main I-SS administrative chart.

Therefore, is this a true reduction in administrative positions, is it a restructuring of the organizational charts to make a clearer distinction in responsibilities, or is just smoke and mirrors to make it look like a reduction in administrative positions?

A Teacher's Job Description

2010-06-15T17:43:00.005-04:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, Mr. Johnson is suggesting that a number of Central Office administrators should be given salary adjustments (raises) because they are being assigned additional duties as he reorganizes the Central Office staff. I already mentioned that many individuals have stated that teachers are often assigned extra duties without receiving additional compensation. However, those remarks also made me think that it would be beneficial to list the duties, or responsibilities, of an typical classroom teacher.

To that end, I used Google to search for teacher job descriptions. I found several comprehensive lists of teacher duties. I then merged those lists and, with my wife’s assistance, added a few duties that were not already included. As you might suspect the list is quite lengthy but that is just a small testament to the dedication of the teachers. I am including the list below. There is some overlapping between the bulleted items but that is balanced out by the fact that there are numerous other items that could be broken down into multiple duties.

Professional Responsibilities of Teachers:

Prepare classroom and materials for Open House.
Assemble class rosters and get to know students and parents.
Administer Common Formative Assessments.
Prepare lesson plans that reflect a logical sequence of learning objectives and activities and meet the individual needs, interests, and abilities of the students.
Implement instructional activities that contribute to a climate where students are actively engaged in meaningful learning experiences.
Use a variety of instructional strategies and materials that are appropriate for the stated instructional objectives of the students involved.
Collaborate with students to prepare PDSAs.
Identify, select, and modify instructional resources to meet the needs of the students with varying backgrounds, learning styles, and special needs.
Use relevant technology to support instruction.
Instruct and monitor students in the use of learning materials and equipment.
Establish standards of classroom conduct and administer them in a fair, equitable, and consistent manner.
Teach a broad base of understanding without indoctrinating students with his/her own cultural, political, religious or philosophical beliefs.
Ensure that student growth and achievement is continuous and appropriate for age group, subject area, and/or program classification.
Read and critique student papers.
Assist students as they complete class projects.
Provide appropriate feedback on student work.
Appropriately display student work in the classroom and hallways.
Post current PDSA information in the classroom.
Monitor and assess student progress and adjust student instruction accordingly.
Maintain effective and efficient record keeping procedures.
Observe and evaluate student's performance and development.
Assign and grade class work, homework, tests and assignments.
Encourage and monitor the progress of individual students.
Keep accurate records and provide them for school district use and file required reports on a timely basis.
Demonstrate gains in student performance.
Prepare and submit progress reports and report cards.
Apply appropriate disciplinary measures where necessary.
Monitor after school detention room as assigned.
Assist in assessing changing curricular needs and offer plans for improvement.
Collaborate with peers to enhance the instructional environment.
Assume responsibility for meeting his/her course and school-wide student performance goals.
Participate in training and presentations about various teaching techniques.
Meet professional obligations through efficient work habits such as: meeting deadlines, honoring schedules, coordinating.
Attend and participate in required district in-service programs.
Stay current through professional staff development opportunities.
Utilize established channels for handling routine procedures, resolving problems/concerns and making suggestions.
Participate in required staff meetings and conferences.
Keep up to date with developments in subject area, teaching resources and methods and make relevant changes to instructional plans and activities.
Participate in committees as related to student needs, school programs, and district needs.
Works collaboratively to achieve the overall purposes of the school program.
Participate in the development and implementation of the school improvement plan.
Provide a positive environment in which students are encouraged to be actively engaged in the learning process.
Prepare and display motivational items on classroom bulletin boards.
Promote and maintain a safe and healthful environment in the classroom and building.
Maintain an organized and clean classroom.
Communicate effectively, both orally and in writing, with students, parents, and other professionals on a regular basis.
Communicate student academic and behavioral progress to parents.
Develop and maintain positive and cooperative interactions and communication with school staff, clients, and the community.
Establish and maintain cooperative working relationships with students, parents, and schools.
Performs bus and car duty before and after school as assigned.
Participate in extracurricular activities such as social activities, sporting activities, clubs and student organizations.
Provide supervision in non-classroom areas and situations in accordance with the building student management plan.
Monitor students in hallways, cafeteria, gymnasium, and school grounds.
Assign lockers and maintain records of those assignments.
Provide direction and supervision for all school activities to which he/she is assigned (coach, director, supervisor, chaperon, etc.).
Develop a budget for applicable programs and insure that needed materials are ordered with the administrator’s approval.
Care for district resources, equipment and materials assigned to him/her and report concerns regarding facility and equipment to designated supervisor.
When applicable, provide direction and/or supervision for teacher assistants, student teachers, interns, and substitutes.
Maintain a current folder of responsibilities and procedures for substitute teacher's use.
Model professional and ethical standards when dealing with students, parents, peers, and community.
Participate in IEP meetings.
Be knowledgeable of and adhere to all procedures and practices prescribed in the Teacher, Student, and/or Parent Handbooks.
Keep an accurate and detailed accounts of all monies collected and submit detailed accounting of such money to the appropriate building or business office personnel.
Be knowledgeable of and adhere to federal and state laws that apply to his/her job assignment.
Perform all other duties and responsibilities as assigned by their supervisor or district administrator.

To conclude, I thank all teachers and teacher assistants for dedicating your lives to helping students achieve success in the classroom and in the world outside the classroom. As the above list indicates, a significant effort is required to assist students achieve their goals. To all teachers and assistants, have a great summer. Spend some extra quality time with your families and friends, and recharge your batteries because it will not be too long till the beginning of a new school year.

Resources:

Sevenstar Academy, Omaha Public Schools, Waunakee Community School District, and Best-Job-Interview.com.

I-SS Vehicles Driven Home

2010-06-11T18:49:00.010-04:00

There have been several comments on this blog about I-SS employees being allowed to drive school vehicles back and forth to their homes. I recently requested and received a list of I-SS employees who have been provided vehicles as outlined in the school policy code 7612 Employer Provided Vehicles. The list also included vehicles that were not assigned to a particular individual.

The I-SS vehicle policy reads as follows.

The Iredell-Statesville Board of Education will provide transportation for employees in the normal performance of their duties as determined by the Superintendent or designee. Such transportation shall be provided by assigning vehicles on a permanent or daily basis.

The permanent assignment of vehicles will be limited to those persons whose normal duties as determined by the Superintendent, or his designee, to require the use of a vehicle at other than the normal business hours of the central office or required frequently for emergency situations. The permanent assignment of vehicles requires the employee to commute in the vehicle for valid business reasons. This policy prohibits personal use other than commuting except De Minimis Nontaxable Personal Use as defined by the IRS.

The vehicle list I received included 133 school maintained vehicles. Of those 133 vehicles, 102 are assigned to specific school employees. The list also indicates if an employee is allowed to drive his/her assigned car home. Of the 102 I-SS employees who are assigned a school vehicle, 87 of them are allowed to drive their assigned vehicle home. Of course this means that the school is not only providing a car to be driven home but is also paying for the gas and the maintenance of these cars. As has been pointed out in one of the comments to an earlier post on this blog, a number of these individuals do not live in Iredell County.

I understand that a certain number of school employees will need access to a school vehicle at odd hours of the day. For example, a maintenance employee may have to go to a school building after hours if there is a plumbing or heating/AC problem. But, will that require 35 different maintenance employees? That is the number of maintenance employees allowed to drive school vehicles home. And, how many Drivers ED instructors have to come back to school to give emergency driving lessons to students? There are 15 Drivers ED instructors who are allowed to drive school vehicles home.

I don’t have any information on the number of miles driven by I-SS employees as they go back and forth between school and home each day. But, if most of the 87 employees allowed to do so actually use the vehicles this way each day, that will add up to a lot of miles each year. And it is not just the miles to drive home and back. Is I-SS using these 133 vehicles wisely and is anyone actually accounting for the use of each of these vehicles?

I-SS Vehicle List:

Click on an image to enlarge it.

Proposed CO Reorganization Plan

2010-06-10T16:26:00.010-04:00

Brady Johnson’s proposed reorganization plan for the Central Office is now available on the I-SS web site as an item on the agenda for Monday’s School Board meeting. According to the plan the Central Office will be cut by 5% for 2010-2011 and this will be done with the elimination of seven positions and continued salary cuts of 2%. In addition the workload of the remaining central office staff will be adjusted and salary adjustments will be recommended for these staff members. Overall, this is supposed to save $201,000.

The new CO organizational chart is included in the plan. The following individuals were included on the previous organizational chart but are not included on the new one: Kris Earl, Judy Honeycutt, Mathew Fail, Linda Gillon, Brenda Clark, Linda Rogers, Carol McCrory, Doug Wooten, Rob Jackson, and Steve Hampton. The plan does not state if these individuals have resigned or retired, or have been reassigned, or terminated.

There are two additions to the organizational chart. Kelly Cooper is listed as Executive Director of Middle School Education/Rtl/504 and Tim Ivey is listed as Director of SLC Grant.

The reorganizational plan also includes a page that lists the additional duties assigned to a number of CO administrators. For example one of the extra duties assigned to Marty Moore is Speaking Engagements and Baldrige Training and one of the extra duties assigned to Dawn Creason is the BNQP Application. Does this mean that I-SS is going to apply for the Baldrige award again? I also find it interesting that one of the extra duties assigned to Dale Ellis is Staff Development yet Jed Stus is now listed as Executive Director of Staff Development & Training. Why is Staff Development an extra duty for Dale Ellis when Jed Stus will be doing the work?

The final page of the reorganization plan gives a listing of the duties and responsibilities for the Associate Supt. For Human Resources (Dr. Dale Ellis), the Executive Director for Staff Development (Jed Stus), and the Executive Director of Teacher Support (Bill Long).

It does look like Mr. Johnson is trying to streamline the CO administrative staff and that, of course, is a good thing. Is it too little, too late? Is it just a smoke screen to hide the true administrative agenda?

A few questions do come to mind at this time. How many, if any, of the individuals who were on the previous organizational chart but not on the new chart will still be employed by I-SS but with different assignments? What will be the amount of the salary adjustments for each of the individuals taking on additional duties? And, as many have asked before, why are raises (adjustments) being considered for administrative staff who take on additional duties while teachers are consistently asked to take on extra duties without any adjustments to their pay? I think the CO administrators are paid quite well as it is. Let them start earning that salary.

You can access the reorganization plan by clicking on the following link. (Note: For some reason at the time of this posting the following link and the link on the I-SS web site were not active. It is the link I originally used to access the plan. The link is working as of June 10th at 6:25 PM.)

Central Office Reorganizational Plan

I am also including the proposed CO reorganization plan below. (Note: As long as the previous organizational chart is readily available on the school web site, it can be seen by clicking on the image of the chart on the left side of this page.)

Click on an image to enlarge it.

Central Office Reorganization

2010-05-31T20:13:00.002-04:00

According to the agenda for the upcoming meeting of the I-SS Committee of the Whole, Mr. Johnson will be presenting a Central Office Reorganization Plan to the School Board. The meeting is scheduled for Monday, June 7^th.

The agenda is available on the I-SS web site but it does not give any information regarding what might be included in the reorganization plan. I doubt that there will be any trimming of the administrative excess since many of the administrators have just had their contracts renewed or extended and apparently they are hiring a couple of new administrators. Maybe they are just going to shift personnel between the Race Street and ADR offices.

Put the IFs Back in the Classroom

2010-05-28T15:16:00.007-04:00

Shown below is the Letter to the Editor that I submitted to the Record & Landmark regarding the IFs. It was printed in today's edition of the paper. I am including it here for those of you who do not subscribe to the paper. If you compare the letter below to the one printed in the paper you will see they only made a few minor changes. The paper did add the headline included below in green.

Iredell-Statesville Schools cannot afford to keep non-teaching teachers in the district's payroll

To the Editor:

A recent Record and Landmark article detailed the cuts in the proposed 2010 – 11 state budget as regards to education and the response of the Iredell-Statesville School administration to those cuts. As part of his response Superintendent Brady Johnson is quoted as saying that about 50 I-SS employees will retire at the end of the current school year and that the district will fill the 25 most critical vacancies and absorb the rest through attrition. This is supposed to save the district one million dollars.

The May I-SS Personnel Report recently approved by the School Board states that the two current Instructional Facilitator (IF) coaches are being promoted from interim status to permanent status. This indicates that I-SS is going to continue with the IF program. This is a program that has questionable value. The recent teacher survey indicated that many teachers do not find the IF program beneficial.

There are about 35 Instructional Facilitators currently employed by the district. These IFs should be moved back into the classroom to replace teachers who are retiring or resigning. This could save the school system another million dollars in salaries and benefits. If these IFs are truly exemplary teachers let their classrooms serve as models for other teachers. This would be a much better utilization for these individuals. As it is now, the IFs spend much of their time in meetings. They should be in classrooms instructing the students. I-SS can no longer afford to pay 35 teachers not to teach.

May Personnel Report

2010-05-13T21:00:00.013-04:00

Update: The May 2010 Personnel Report is now included below.

I requested a copy of the Personnel Report that was approved by the Board at the May 10^th meeting. Of course it includes things such as Resignations and Retirements, but there were two sections that I found particularly interesting.

The first was the section listed: Approval of Administrative Appointments. Under this section there were a number of administrators listed along with their appointed positions. The list included principals, assistant principals, and Central Office administrators. The Central Office administrators on the list were Marty Moore, Jed Stus, Mary Anne Karriker, Kelly Marcy, Patricia Campbell, Dale Ellis, and Pam Schiffman.

In examining this list I noted that most, if not all, were being appointed to the position that they currently hold. I assumed that this meant that these individuals were being given a new or extended contract. To make sure I sent an e-mail to Dawn Creason asking her for clarification.

Today, I received an e-mail from Dale Ellis in which he stated that his contract and the contracts for Larry Rogers and Pam Schiffman were being extended. He stated that the others on the list had expiring contracts that were renewed and extended. In addition, Mr. Ellis also stated that there were no salary adjustments associated with any of the renewals and/or extensions.

I can understand extending the contract of an individual who is doing a good job in a valuable position. But why were the contracts for Dale Ellis and Pam Schiffman extended when they were not up for renewal? That makes no sense in this economy. If either one was threatening to leave I would say let him or her go.

And, speaking of the economy and all the cutbacks in the classrooms, since the contracts for Marty Moore and Jed Stus were expiring why not just eliminate those positions and reduce the Central Office administrative staff. There are already too many administrative positions at the Central Office.

Earlier I mentioned that there were two sections within the May Personnel Report that I found interesting. The second on was the section titled Approval of Administrative Transfers. In this section it was reported that Sherrard Lewis was being transferred from Interim 6-12 IF Coach to 6-12 IF Coach and that Kim Rector was being transferred from Interim K-5 IF Coach to K-5 IF Coach. I guess that Brady Johnson has decided to continue the IF program. What happened to the results of the teacher survey? With a number of teachers retiring or resigning at the end of the current school year the IFs could have been placed back in the classroom and saved the school system a significant sum of money.

I guess it is just ‘business as usual’ at the Central Office.

May 2010 Personnel Report.

Click on an image of one of the pages to enlarge that page.

School Board Election

2010-05-03T14:39:00.004-04:00

Tuesday, May 4th

Remember that this is the general election for the School Board and not a primary election.

If you live in District 1, or 7, please remember to vote. There is no contest in Districts 3 and 5 and the other districts are not up for election this year.

School Board Candidate Forum

2010-04-07T16:28:00.004-04:00

According to the Statesville Record and Landmark there will be a forum for School Board Candidates on Tuesday, April 13^th, from 7:45 to 9:00 p.m., at Little Joe’s Chapel in Barium Springs. The local Chambers of Commerce and various media outlets are sponsoring the forum. It will follow the forum for the Iredell County Sheriff candidates.

Please note that the initial information printed in the April 4^th edition of Record and Landmark, as well as posted on their web site, includes some incorrect information. Contrary to the information provided by the Record and Landmark, there is no primary for the School Board elections and there is no School Board election in November. The May 4^th election is the general election for the School Board. In both District 1 and District 7, the candidate with the most votes wins the election. As I reported earlier, no one filed to run against John Rogers (District 3) or Bill Brater (District 5) so they will continue to serve on the School Board.

According to the Record and Landmark, if you have a question that you would like to be asked of one or more of the candidates at the forum, you may e-mail your question to dibach@statesville.com with a subject line of ‘Candidate Question.’ It is also reported that due to limited time, not all questions will be asked.

School Board Elections

2010-02-22T15:56:00.003-05:00

The filing period for the School Board elections ends Friday, Feb. 26^th, at noon. Four Iredell-Statesville Board of Education seats are up for election. Those are the seats representing districts 1, 3, 5 and 7. School Board elections are nonpartisan and are to be held at the time of the May primary election. The term of office is for four years.

The information below depicts the schools included in each district as well as the current School Board member representing each district.

District 1- Dr. Ken Wilson

Union Grove, Harmony, North Middle, North High, Central, East Middle (district also overlaps with West Middle and West High)

District 3- John Rogers

N.B. Mills, Northview, Pressly, Statesville High, East Elementary (district also overlaps with West High, North High, West Middle, Statesville Middle, Monticello, Ebenezer, and Third Creek)

District 5- Bill Brater

Celeste Henkel, South High, Troutman Elementary, Troutman Middle, Lakeshore Elementary, Lakeshore Middle, Lake Norman High, Shepherd (district also overlaps with West High, West Middle, and Sharon)

District 7- Karen Watson

Mt. Mourne, Brawley, Lake Norman Elementary, Woodland Heights (district also overlaps with Lakeshore Middle, Lakeshore Elementary, and Lake Norman High School)

According to the Iredell County Board of Elections, Dr. Ken Wilson, Mr. John Rogers, and Mr. Bill Brater have each filed for reelection. Mr. Robert Bobinski has filed to run in the election for the seat representing District 7. As of Feb. 19^th at 2:22 PM, Ms. Watson has not filed for reelection.

In my opinion, unless there is some significant change within the School Board there will not be any significant change in the administration of the School System. NOW is the time for some individuals to step up and speak out for the students. If you live in one of the school districts up for election, please either consider running for the School Board or encourage someone who will make a good candidate to do so.

According to Iredell-Statesville School Board Policy Code 2110, no School Board member shall serve more than two consecutive terms. According to the I-SS web site Dr. Wilson is in his second term and Mr. Brater is in his first term. I could not find information regarding the number of terms for Mr. Rogers and Ms. Watson.

Feb. 2010 I-SS Organizational Chart

2010-02-10T14:43:00.003-05:00

A new organizational chart has been posted on the I-SS web site. There are only a few changes from the chart that was posted in December. One of those changes is that Todd Holden is listed as the Executive Director of Secondary Education. When it was announced in January that Mr. Holden was being promoted it was stated that he was to be Executive Director of Secondary Education and Career Technical Education. I don’t know it there has been a change in his duties or if the Career Technical Education part of his title was just left of the chart for some reason.

Also, the new organizational chart shows Dale Ellis as Associate Superintendent of Human Resources and Bill Long as Director of Teacher Support Services. As I reported in a previous post those changes were made effective in January. One last change that I noticed is that Dawn Creason is now listed as Public Information Officer. Ms. Creason had been listed as Director of Public Relations.

You may click on the image of the organizational chart at the left of this page to enlarge it.

I-SS Innovation Showcase

2010-01-18T16:54:00.014-05:00

Updated Jan. 19, 2010.

I-SS is hosting the First Annual Iredell Statesville Innovation Showcase at the Statesville Civic Center on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. According to the announcement there will be a focus on strategies and simple processes that positively impact student success. There will be booths by teachers and administrators with breakout sessions throughout the day. The event is free and open to the public.

Mathew Fail announced at the Committee of the Whole meeting that there would be some 68 presentations with about 150 presenters. He also said that they were expecting participants from a number of other school districts. Click on the link below to access the announcement.

Innovation Showcase

This is a workday for I-SS. Are teachers being informed of this event? Have they been told that they could spend part or all of the workday attending the Innovation Showcase? No? Why not? Because I-SS does not believe that one-day conferences, workshops, or meetings are beneficial to teachers.

The following statement is taken directly from the I-SS web site. It is located in the Professional Development section under the Continuous Improvement tab.

We believe that professional learning improves the knowledge and skills of our faculty and staff, and can lead to changes in classroom practice and increased student learning. Professional development that is not on-going or collaborative (aka One-Shot Workshop) rarely translates into classroom application or student impact. Research shows that the most effective professional development combines meaningful job-embedded practice with support from instructors through on-going feedback and coaching.

I-SS says that one day workshops do not translate into classroom application or student impact. Yet, at the same time I-SS is spending taxpayer’s money to organize and present such a workshop. Where is the reasoning in that?

I have received the following information from Jessica Mellen, I-SS Graduate Fellow.

The event will be held at the Statesville Civic Center on January 26, from 8:45-4:10 (and closed from 12-12:50 so that presenters may have a brief lunch break). This event is similar in style to a science fair, in that the majority of presentations are on display boards (some complemented with technology) in a large exhibit hall. There will also be concurrent seminar-style presentations which will delve deeper into some widely applicable strategies. Each of the seminar-style presentations will be held 4 times throughout the day--twice in the morning, and twice in the afternoon.

The presenters are all I-SS staff who have volunteered to be a part of this event. The requirement for entry was simply that presentations should demonstrate strategies that are having a positive impact on student learning! At this point there are over 70 presentations scheduled (including the seminar-style sessions), and 150 presenters and volunteers from the I-SS staff.

The goal of this event is to both share knowledge across the district, and to celebrate successes that students, teachers and staff are having in their classrooms and buildings. The project team has been working closely with principals to make sure that all I-SS staff has the opportunity to attend the event, as they are the intended target audience.

There will be a Welcome Table, from which any further questions can be answered and information will be provided on the day of the event.

I do think that this type of event can be valuable to teachers. It is always good to see various instructional methods that are beneficial to students. I only wish that I-SS administrators would acknowledge the fact that I-SS teachers could learn from similar events that are sponsored by other school systems and by professional organizations.

I also received the following Showcase information and schedules from Ms. Mellen.

The following schedules are color coded to match a shift schedule for the schools. In efforts to make this event as accessible as possible for all I-SS staff to attend, schools have been approved and encouraged to bring their staffs to the event on school buses.

All visitors are welcome to attend whenever best suits their schedules: please do not feel obligated to follow the shift schedule. You are welcome to arrive and depart (if you plan to do so) at any point during the day that the Showcase is open. Visitors are also welcome to participate in the raffle, which will be drawn at the end of each of the four shifts noted in the schedule. We will also be soliciting feedback about the event via comment cards throughout the day.

Click on each schedule to enlarge it.

January Personnel Report

2010-01-14T19:00:00.005-05:00

As reported in today’s Statesville Record and Landmark, it was announced at Monday’s I-SS Board meeting that Todd Holden has been promoted to Executive Director of Secondary Education and Career Technical Education. Mr. Holden has been principal of West Iredell High for the last four years. There was no mention of what his new salary will be. I wish Mr. Holden the best in his new position. You may click on the link below to access the Record and Landmark article.

Todd Holden Named Director

It was also announced at Monday’s Board meeting that the interim positions created when Mr. Johnson was named Interim Superintendent are now officially permanent positions. Specifically, the personnel report approved by the Board states the following.

Ron Hargrave goes from Interim Deputy Superintendent/Race Street to Deputy Superintendent/Race Street.

Melanie Taylor goes from Interim Assoc. Superintendent for Curriculum & Instruction/ADR to Assoc. Superintendent for Curriculum & Instruction/ADR.

Dale Ellis goes from Interim Assoc. Superintendent for Secondary Curriculum/ADR to Assoc. Superintendent for Human Resources/Race Street.

Bill Long goes from Interim Assoc. Superintendent for Human Resources/Race Street to Director of Teacher Support Services/Race Street.

As I mentioned in a comment to a previous post, Dawn Creason sent me an e-mail on January 4^th stating that Dale Ellis and Bill Long had gone back to their previous positions and salaries. Obviously this was not a true statement with regard to Mr. Long. As far as I can tell the Director of Teacher Support Services is a new Central Office position created for Mr. Long. Again we see that there is no shortage of money when it comes to Central Office positions. How sad it is for the students at Statesville High School and Third Creek Elementary who have to share media specialists because there is no money to hire a replacement for the media specialist at Third Creek who has recently retired.

Renewed Vision Meeting

2010-01-13T17:21:00.003-05:00

Materials related to last night’s meeting are now available on the I-SS web site. You can find information for each of the system’s key processes as well as issue bins for each. The reports of the principal and teacher surveys as well as the reports of the various advisory meetings are also available. The video of the meeting is not yet available. I want to thank Mr. Johnson for making sure this information was available in a timely manner. You can access the information by clicking on the link below.

Renewed Vision Information

There was a lot of information shared at the meeting but it seemed to be mostly this is what we are doing and don’t you think it’s wonderful. There was some talk of a few changes being made but the bulk of the information was simply a reiteration of the processes that have been in place for some time. Yes, it was mentioned that there would be more flexibility in some of the processes, and yes it was mentioned that changes were made based on input from teachers and others. However those changes were minor changes compared to the feedback given in the principal and teacher surveys as well as in the reports of the various advisory meetings.

There were several initiatives that the principals and teachers said needed major tweaking that did not seem to receive any tweaking. Or, if they were tweaked, they were minor tweaks. Was this a true response to the feedback received from the various groups? I don’t think so. Was it an effort to encourage everyone to be content with the way things are? I think so.

What do you think? Remember, all comments are welcome. Some comments about the meeting have already been given after the previous post.

I-SS to Share Renewed Vision

2010-01-06T18:39:00.003-05:00

Via a notice on the School web site and an e-mail to teachers and support staff, I-SS has announced a meeting to share a renewed vision and improvements for education. The meeting will be on Tuesday, January 12 at 6:00 p.m. in the Mac Gray Auditorium on the campus of Statesville High School. I-SS staff and the public are invited to attend.

According to the I-SS web site, Superintendent Brady Johnson will address attendees and share highlights of feedback received during area advisory meetings, as well as from activities conducted with principals, teachers, and other I-SS stakeholders. Johnson will also share his vision and direction for the school district, including changes to the Iredell-Statesville Schools model for continuous improvement and the district's key processes. Board of education chairman Dr. David Cash will also address the audience on behalf of the Iredell-Statesville Board of Education.

The notice also states that attendees will have the opportunity to share their feedback on the event in the form of written plus/deltas, as well as submit items to an issue bin. There is no mention of any time being allotted for questions and answers at the meeting.

Click on the link below to access the announcement on the I-SS web site.

I-SS to Share Vision

Executive Director of Secondary Curriculum/CTE Programs

2009-12-20T15:34:00.004-05:00

I have heard that Dale Ellis is going back to Human Resources. I do not know if this indeed true but I-SS is currently advertising for the position of Executive Director of Secondary Curriculum/CTE Programs. Mr. Ellis assumed position of Interim Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education/Student Services when Brady Johnson became Interim Superintendent. So it would seem that not only is Mr. Ellis leaving this position they have decided to make it an Executive Director position.

If Mr. Ellis is going back to Human Resources will he return to his old position of Executive Director of Human Resources? And, if so, will Bill Long go back to his previous position. Also, will they revert to their previous salaries as Mr. Johnson promised.

The advertisement for the Executive Director position has a couple of interesting statements. First it simply states State Salary Schedule as the salary for the position. As we know all I-SS Central Office administrators are paid more than the State Salary Schedule amount and I would imagine that this individual will be paid more as well. Also the advertisement includes the statement that if the position is filled by an employee transferring, then this vacancy announcement will serve as notice for that vacancy. I do not know if that is a standard statement on I-SS applications, but to me it sounds like they already have someone in mind for the position as well as someone in mind for that person's position. In addition, how can this be considered an advertisement for the second position unless they already know what that position is?

In my previous post regarding the media specialists at SHS, I included Mr. Rogers' comment that the two media specialists will be shared between SHS and Third Creek Elementary. If the administration feels that sharing media specialists between schools is an acceptable solution why don’t they just share the duties of the Executive Director of Secondary Curriculum between two or more of the current administrators? If sharing is good enough for the students shouldn’t it be good enough for administrators?

To view the advertisement for the Executive Director’s position, click on the link below.

Executive Director of Secondary Curriculum

SHS Media Specialist

2009-12-20T00:48:00.002-05:00

On Friday, I received a phone call from Dewoyne Daye, SHS Student Body Vice-President. Dewoyne was concerned because one of the two media specialists at SHS was being transferred to Third Creek Elementary because the individual at Third Creek was retiring. He said that there were no plans to replace the specialist at SHS and that would mean a reduction in services at the High School. Dewoyne was particularly concerned in that this would mean that the library would no longer be open before and after school. He pointed out that many SHS students do not have access to computers at home and that they use the computers in the library before and after school to complete various class projects. Dewoyne also mentioned that the media specialists assist students and SHS staff in many other ways and that one media specialist at the high school would not be able to complete all of these tasks.

Dewoyne also informed me that at Statesville High currently enrolls 30% of the I-SS High School’s Hispanic population, 44% of the system’s African American population, and 19% of the system’s Asian population. SHS also has 14 different subgroups, which is more than any other high school in the system. In addition, SHS has the largest exceptional children’s population of all the high schools and Statesville High School has been declared a Title One/at risk high school.

Dewoyne asked me about the raises that were given to those taking the interim positions when Mr. Johnson was named Interim Superintendent. We talked about how that money could have been used for student programs and for funding positions such as the media specialist at SHS. Dewoyne said that everyone who works for I-SS should be looking out for the students' wellbeing but that is obviously not happening in this situation.

I think that the administration should be able to find money in the budget to keep these two media specialists at SHS and to hire a specialist to replace the individual at Third Creek. The students at SHS deserve the full support of the administration. I have already sent an e-mail to Mr. Johnson and to Mr. John Rogers in this regard and I am asking the readers of this blog to do so as well.

I received the following reply from Mr. John Rogers.

Paul,

All of the high schools except Lake Norman has lost a media specialist due to budget cuts. It was time for West Iredell and SHS to give up a media specialist. Keith Williams and I have worked closely with Mr. (Larry) Rogers concerning this issue. The plan at present is for both ladies to work at SHS and Third Creek.

This will keep both women at the high school a certain number of days per week. A major issue was the time in the morning and afternoon for students to work in the library on the computers. This will stay the same at the present. One major concern is for an experienced person at Third Creek. We are working on it.

Thanks for your interest and Merry Christmas!!!

New I-SS Organizational Chart

2009-12-15T13:57:00.006-05:00

A new version of the I-SS Organizational Chart is now available on the I-SS web site. It is shown to have a December '09 revision date. Click on the image of the chart located on the left side of the blog to access the full-sized chart.

The only change that I noticed from the chart posted in September is that Mr. Johnson is listed as Superintendent instead of Interim Superintendent. As noted before, all of the other so-called interim positions were never listed as such. I guess it is now official that none of the interim administrators who were to go back to their previous positions and previous pay will do so. I understand the need for some of the changes in position as Mr. Johnson took over as Interim Superintendent and now as Superintendent but there was no justification to increase the salaries of these individuals when the budget was severely limited. As many have previously mentioned, teachers and other I-SS employees have been asked to take on extra responsibilities without a corresponding increase in pay. Shouldn't that philosophy apply to administrators as well?

Baldrige Award Received

2009-12-04T13:37:00.006-05:00

According to the I-SS web site, a delegation of just over 50 administrators, teachers, Board of Education members, and students recently traveled to Washington, DC to attend the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award ceremony. U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke presented the award and Vice President Joe Biden congratulated the recipients. Apparently President Obama was not present.

Click on the link below to access the article on the I-SS web site.

I-SS Accepts Baldrige Award

Update:

Click on the link below to download the video of the Baldrige Award Ceremony. (There is a lot of rhetoric but there are also some excellent selections played by the Air Force Band.)

Baldrige Ceremony Video

IF Training

2009-12-02T16:40:00.003-05:00

Pam Schiffman recently sent an e-mail to I-SS teachers stating that Instructional Facilitator Training will begin in December. The e-mail is marked ‘** High Priority **.’

In the e-mail, teachers are asked if they are interested in becoming an I-SS Instructional Facilitator. Teachers are also informed that future Instructional Facilitators (IFs) are teachers who:

Have had at least five years successful classroom teaching experience career status
Are committed to continuous classroom improvement and the I-SS Model for Raising Achievement and Closing Gaps
Exhibit strong people and leadership skills
Enjoy helping fellow teachers develop high performing classrooms through training, coaching, & support
Are willing and able to work and be paid August 1 through June 30
Are willing to complete training in order to become qualified for future IF positions

The IF Training will begin in December and teachers are to contact Kim Rector or Sherrard Lewis if they are interested. According to the I-SS Organizational Chart, Kim and Sherrard are the Elementary and Secondary IF Coordinators, respectively.

This seems to be another example of the I-SS administration putting the cart before the horse. Most of the principals have indicated that the IF model needs to be tweaked and the teacher surveys have not yet been tallied. The roles of the IFs is still in question, yet someone in the Central Office has decided to go on with the IF training as usual. Shouldn’t the tweaking of the roles of the IFs be completed based on the results of the principal surveys and the teacher surveys before any IF training begins? Or, is that just too logical? Did Mr. Johnson approve this or is someone else running the Central Office?

Area Advisory Summary Report

2009-11-21T15:53:00.006-05:00

I received a hard copy of Paul Hultberg’s summary report of the Area Advisory Meetings in the mail Friday. In addition there was a short note from Mr. Johnson stating that the notes would be posted on the I-SS web site. However, they have not yet been posted, so I am going to include a copy at the end of this post.

I hope that the School Board takes a good look at this summary report as well as the notes from the individual Area Advisory meetings. Mr. Johnson has already stated that he will use the common themes from each of the reports to direct his work. The Board needs to assist Mr. Johnson in this endeavor.

The summary report includes four observations as well as a listing of what seems to be the highest-ranking suggestions from the various meetings. The first of the four observations deals with Baldrige/Continuous improvement. It states that there were diverse opinions on this issue. This is verified in the listing of the various suggestions with many participants indicating that the Baldrige model should be eliminated and others saying it should be continued. It will be interesting to see the results of the Teacher’s survey in this area.

The second observation is titled: Light turnout for parents. However if you look at the total number of participants, you can see that there was a light turnout across the spectrum of all stakeholders. The School Board and administration must do a much better job of connecting with parents and other citizens. Citizens needed to be invited and encouraged to participate in all school activities and they need to know that their suggestions will be taken seriously.

The third observation deals with Technology and states that the participants indicated that technology issues were presented as an important means of accomplishing goals. I know that I-SS has increased the use of computers, smart boards, and other technologies but there is a lack of significant technologies in many of the schools. I-SS seems more interested in having Baldrige ‘wallpaper’ on classroom walls than they are of having technology in the hands of students. Perhaps I-SS should look at what Mooresville Graded School District is doing right in this area such as providing students with laptop computers and integrating the use of these computers in the classroom. Check out the information and video at the link below.

Mooresville Schools: Digital Conversion

The fourth observation is simply the sentence: These sessions document a desire for a more collaborative as opposed to authoritative approach to leadership. There has certainly been a change in this direction with the change in superintendents, but there is still a lot a baggage left over from the past administration that needs to thrown out the window. The emphasis must be on what is best for the students and not on winning some award.

The last two pages of the report list the characteristics and strengths desired in the new superintendent. I do think that Mr. Johnson possesses many of these characteristics and that he is capable of leading the school system. That does not mean we can let our guard down. There is still a lot of work to be done to change the course of the system away from the mistakes of the previous administration.

Update (Monday, Nov. 23): The summary report is now available via the I-SS web site. Click on the link below to access the report.

Advisory Reports

Advisory Summary Report Pages 1 and 2. Click on an image to enlarge it.

Advisory Summary Report Pages 3 and 4. Click on an image to enlarge it.

Area Advisory Notes

2009-11-18T00:55:00.034-05:00

On Tuesday I received an e-mail from Dawn Creason that included Paul Hultberg’s notes from the Area Advisory meetings. They are listed as notes not as reports. The notes first list the issues posted on the Plus/Delta chart that was created at the end of the meeting.
Following this is the list of the participant’s suggestions given when asked to identify the pressing issues for the superintendent to address. After the various suggestions were sorted by category and summarized each participant was given four sticky dots to vote for what they felt were the most important suggestions. This list also includes the tally of the points or votes for each item.

The last part of the notes includes the suggestions for the strengths and characteristics that the new superintendent should possess. The participants were also given four sticky dots to vote in each of these categories and those tallies are included.

In an e-mail reply to Dawn Creason, I asked if there was going to be an overall report and if these notes are going to be posted on the I-SS web site. I have not yet received a reply to those questions.

I also received an e-mail from Mr. Johnson stating that he shared the feedback from the advisory meetings with certified and classified staff advisory groups last week. I assume that these advisory notes are the feedback to which he was referring.

UPDATE: The area advisory notes are now available on the I-SS web site. You can access the notes on the I-SS web site by clicking on the link below or you can click on the images below to see an enlarged image of the individual Pages.

I-SS Web Page: Area Advisory Notes

The links to an image of the individual Area Advisory note pages are included below. Click on the image of a page to enlarge it.

Statesville High School: (3 Pages)

North Iredell High School: (4 Pages)

South Iredell High School: (4 Pages)

Lake Norman High School: (3 Pages)

West Iredell High School: (7 Pages)

Baldrige Award Ceremony

2009-11-14T15:52:00.004-05:00

At the Board of Education meeting last Monday, Mr. Johnson announced that I-SS will be officially receiving the Baldrige National Quality Award in Washington DC on Wednesday, December 2nd. Mr. Johnson also mentioned that President Obama will be presenting the award.

Click on the link below to access the list of I-SS attendees.

BNQP Ceremony Attendees List

Missing: Area Advisory Meeting Reports

2009-11-13T00:31:00.004-05:00

As I stated in my previous post, the School Board’s selection of Mr. Johnson as superintendent was made before the report of the various area advisory meetings was publicized. Wednesday, I sent Dawn Creason, I-SS Director of Public Relations, an e-mail asking to inspect the final report as well as any intermediate reports of the various Area Advisory Meetings that began on Oct. 1, 2009. I also requested to inspect the reports of any other advisory meetings, including the one with certified personnel, that were held relating to the selection of the new superintendent. I received the following reply.

Mr. Klaene-

I have checked, and the minutes posted online are the reports of the advisory meetings. There were no intermediate reports. Additionally, there have been no meetings with certified personnel relating to the selection of the new superintendent.

I have read the minutes of the advisory meetings and they are not the reports that were promised. As a matter of fact, each of the minutes includes the following statement.

All information gathered at this and all Area Advisory Meetings will be presented back to the community in the form of a report from Mr. Hultberg and Ms. Masiello.

Additionally, at the last of the area advisory meetings, Mr. Johnson stated that the advisory meeting report would be posted on the I-SS web site within a few days. Why is there no report? Why was no advisory meeting held with the teachers as promised? Why was there no public survey as promised?

As part of his comments at the Board meeting, Dr. Cash said: “we reviewed recommendations made through the district advisory meeting process and the data obtained from formal and informal surveys throughout the education and civic community.” How could they review the recommendations if there was no report? What formal and informal surveys was he referring to? Perhaps the Board members simply talked to their friends, relatives, and close associates.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know that Mr. Johnson is a capable and dedicated man. I certainly think that he will do a good job as superintendent. However, the Board promised that they would use a particular process in the selection of the new superintendent. Yet, in the end, they chose to abruptly stop that process and go behind closed doors to make their decision. This casts a dark cloud over the whole process and even worse; it casts a dark cloud over Mr. Johnson. Once again, the School Board has shown a lack of respect for students, parents, teachers, other I-SS employees, and the citizens of Iredell County.

New Superintendent Update

2009-11-09T22:06:00.010-05:00

Update: Audio clips have been added.

As I stated in my previous post Mr. Johnson was named New I-SS superintendent at the Board of Education meeting on Monday evening. Dr. Cash, Board Chairman, said that the decision was made at a previous meeting. I assume that it was made done during the closed session after the Committee of the Whole meeting last Monday. Click on the link below to access the official announcement on the I-SS web site.

Board Selects Johnson

Click on the link below to access the announcement on the Record and Landmark web site.

Johnson named I-SS superintendent

Prior to naming the new superintendent, Dr. Cash made a number of comments some of which are not included in those announcements. Some of Dr. Cash's comments are listed below.

“One of the most, if not the most, important responsibilities of a Board is to ensure the placement of a leader or CEO who shares the vision of the institution and is able to capably and responsibly nurture the institution in carrying out its mission. As the Board of I-SS began to consider who would be chosen to become our next superintendent,

we reviewed our vision to improve student learning by igniting a passion for learning and began to contemplate what leadership skills could help us all be excited about our focus on learning,

we thought about our mission …

we considered personal attributes and characteristics of a leader …

we reviewed recommendations made through the district advisory meeting process and the data obtained from formal and informal surveys throughout the education and civic community.

Resulting from this process, several common themes, skills, attributes, characteristics of our next desirable leader emerged.”

You may now listen to Dr. Cash's comments and announcement.

He then went on to make additional comments and stated some of the reasons behind the Board’s decision before making the actual announcement.

While I think that Brady Johnson is a good man and was an excellent choice for Interim Superintendent, I think that naming him Superintendent was a very premature choice. The reports of the area advisory meetings have not yet been publicized, the advisory meeting with certified personnel has not yet even been held, and there has been no public survey. The board made certain commitments regarding the selection of the superintendent that have now been totally discarded.

The Board is again stating that they really don’t care about students, teachers, parents, and the public. They made this decision on their own without the full input of the I-SS stakeholders. That is not a good for anyone but the Board. They were not properly carrying out the duties of their elected positions. Quite simply, they took the easy way out.

You may now listen to Mr. Johnson's comments.

New Superintendent Named

2009-11-09T19:02:00.003-05:00

At tonight's Board of Education meeting Dr. Cash stated that Brady Johnson had been selected to be the new superintendent. Before making the announcement, Dr. Cash read a number of recommendations that were made at the various advisory meetings and stated that the Board had made their decision based on those recommendations.

Congratulations to Mr. Brady Johnson!

In a subsequent post I will give more information and some comments.

Teacher's Survey Update

2009-11-07T00:53:00.003-05:00

Note: I entered the following as a comment to the original post about the teacher's survey but I decided to enter it as a separate post as well.

I met with Mr. Johnson Thursday afternoon. We spent most of the time speaking about the teacher’s survey. Mr. Johnson said that he did not put abandon as one of the choices because he was afraid that teachers would mark abandon and not explain why. As for only listing 15 items, while the principals had 34 items on their survey, Mr. Johnson said that he knew some of the items on the principal survey did not relate to teachers and that he wanted to select those items that he felt were the ones that were the most critical to teachers. He also said that he wanted to keep the survey more manageable. Mr. Johnson said that he probably should have structured the survey differently but that he is interested in hearing from the teachers.

Mr. Johnson said that a number of the surveys have already been returned and that he has looked over some of them. He also showed me a few of them. I noticed that there were many items marked as needing to be tweaked. Mr. Johnson indicated that he was pleased that there were also many written suggestions. Some of the suggestions were quite lengthy.

Mr. Johnson said that they would probably have to have someone come in and tally the results. He mentioned a name but I will not say who it is because the person has not yet been contacted. Mr. Johnson said that he does want teachers to complete the survey, that they will get a report of the findings, and that he will act on the responses.

Mr. Johnson said that one of the things that he is hearing is that teachers want more flexibility. He said that for the last two years I-SS was doing everything strictly ‘by the book’ so they could win the Baldrige Award. Mr. Johnson added that I-SS cannot maintain that pace and things have to change. He said that there is still some resistance to that change among some administrators. Mr. Johnson said that some principals were still very committed to the way things have been done and even told him that he should not give teachers the opportunity to take the survey. Mr. Johnson said that he has heard from some teachers that things have been better this year, but he also admitted that for others things have not changed.

Creativity vs. Standardization

2009-11-04T01:19:00.004-05:00

There is an interesting article available on CNN.com titled How Schools Stifle Creativity by Sir Ken Robinson Ph.D. It also includes a video of a talk Sir Robinson gave at the 2006 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference. Sir Robinson speaks of how educational institutions often stifle the creativity of students. The following are some statements that Sir Robinson makes in the article.

“What is the argument? In a nutshell, it's that we're all born with immense natural talents but our institutions, especially education, tend to stifle many of them and as a result we are fomenting a human and an economic disaster.”

“In education, this vast waste of talent involves a combination of factors. They include a narrow emphasis on certain sorts of academic work; the exile of arts, humanities and physical education programs from schools; arid approaches to teaching math and sciences; an obsessive culture of standardized testing and tight financial pressures to teach to the tests.”

“It happens in part because the dominant systems of education are rooted in the values and demands of industrialism: they are linear, mechanistic and focused on conformity and standardization. Nowadays, they're buttressed by major commercial interests in mass testing and by the indiscriminate use of prescription drugs that keep students' minds from wandering to things they naturally find more interesting.”

“There's a wealth of talent that lies in all of us. All of us, including those who work in schools, must nurture creativity systematically and not kill it unwittingly.”

I-SS must follow State and Federal regulations, but in the last several years the administration has put in place a ‘one size fits all’ application of the Baldrige plan. This has forced teachers to comply with an I-SS mandated standardized mechanism of PAs, PDSAs, formative assessments, PLCs, IF lead meetings, plus/deltas, and the like. Teachers are left with little time or energy to truly promote student creativity.

At Monday’s Committee of the Whole meeting, two teachers gave enthusiastic presentations of how they use Predictive Assessments in their classrooms. I am glad that these teachers have been able to integrate this mechanism in their classrooms and use it to enable their students to succeed. The problem is that the Board members and the administrators see these presentations and think that since this instructional method is working in these classrooms, then it should work in all classrooms. Educational studies have shown that teachers need the freedom to use whatever instructional methods best suit the strengths and talents of their students. These two teachers were invited to speak at the Committee of the Whole meeting. There are many I-SS teachers who successfully use other instructional approaches to inspire their students to learn. Why doesn’t the administration invite them to speak at School Board meetings?

Click on the link below to access Sir Robinson’s article and video.

How schools stifle creativity

Teacher's Survey

2009-11-01T20:43:00.005-05:00

As has been mentioned in several comments to a previous post, I-SS teachers are now being given the opportunity to take a version of the survey that the Principals took back in August. Pam Schiffman, Associate Superintendent of Accountability and Technology, sent the survey, via e-mail, with the subject line: I-SS Learning initiatives Opinion Activity – FOR TEACHERS. The survey lists a number of I-SS initiatives/processes and asks for input about each one.

Both Mr. Johnson and Mr. Rogers told me some time ago that the teachers would be given the same survey that was given to principals. However that did not happen. First of all, principals were given the option of listing most items as OK as is, tweak, or abandon while teachers are not given the option to directly mark abandon for any of the items. It was mentioned in one of the blog comments that teachers could write abandon in the Suggestions For Improvement section, but teachers should have been specifically given a column to mark abandon for individual items.

Next, the principals were given 34 items on their survey while teachers were only given 15 items. The following items were on the teacher’s survey.

Baseline Assessments (BA)
Common Formative Assessments (CFA)
Predictive Assessments (PAs)
School Improvement Planning
Data Warehouse/Reports
Early Release Professional Development
High Yield Instructional Strategies (HYIS)
Instructional Facilitator Model (IF)
L to J (Lee Jenkins Resources)
PDSA
Classroom Walkthroughs (CWTs)
Professional Learning Communities (PLC)
Virtual PLCs
Curriculum Guides
Teamwork Matrix

The principal survey included all of the above items except High Yield Instructional Strategies and it also included the following items.

Budgeting Process
Hiring Process
Response to Intervention
Teacher Evaluation System
Corrective Reading
Read 180
Positive Behavior Support
The ISS Triangle Models: Raising Achievement and Closing the Gaps & Effective and Efficient Operations
School Improvement Plan Coaching
Leadership Academy Week
Quality Fair/RACG Day
Leadership Academy for Novice Principals
Leveled Principal’s Meetings
Mid and End of Year Review
Instructional Facilitator/Principal Meetings
Boot Camps
Curriculum Review Week
Assistant Principal Meetings
Quarterly Principal Coaching Sessions
Whole Group Principal Meeting

Granted, some of these additional items on the principal’s survey such as Assistant Principal Meetings and Whole Group Principal Meeting do not apply directly to teachers and would not need to be included on the teacher survey. However, a number of them do apply directly to teachers. For example, Teacher Evaluation System, Response to Intervention, The ISS Triangle Models, and Corrective Reading all have direct teacher involvement. Teachers should have been given the opportunity to rate these items as well.

I think that Mr. Johnson needs to have Pam Schiffman restructure the survey or at least give a valid explanation of why these items were not included on the teacher’s survey and why teachers were not given the direct opportunity to mark any items as needing to be abandoned.

WIHS Advisory Meeting

2009-10-30T13:48:00.004-04:00

I attended the Advisory Meeting at West Iredell High School last night and I must say that I think that this one was much better than the one at Statesville High. The procedure was the same but the presentation was a little clearer. Of course, the presenters have now had the opportunity to go through the process several times and I had gone through it once before.

However, I think the biggest change was in the group of participants. At the first meeting, my wife was probably the only teacher in attendance and there were a significant number of Central Office administrators present. At this meeting that ratio seemed to be reversed. I did not know most of the people in attendance but from the comments of those present there did seem to be a significant number of teachers at this meeting. The comments seemed to be more related to students, teachers, and classrooms.

There were two School Board members in attendance as well. John Rogers was there and he told me that he had been to all of the advisory meetings except one. Charles Kelly was also there. He told me that he had attended a couple of the other Advisory Meetings.

At the end of the meeting Mr. Johnson stated that they hoped to have the reports from all of the meetings posted on the school web site in a few days. I am looking forward to seeing the overall report. Click on the link below to access the I-SS web site.

Iredell-Statesville Schools

Baldrige Program Grades On A Curve

2009-10-12T01:27:00.004-04:00

Much fanfare has been associated with I-SS winning the 2008 Baldrige Award and much has been said about the costs associated with the process of implementing the Baldrige award and the costs of applying for the award. Now let’s talk about the award itself. I will describe some of what I have been able to learn about those processes by examining the feedback reports that I-SS received from the Baldrige Program.

The Baldrige National Quality Program (BNQP) uses a given set of criteria to evaluate those institutions that apply for the award. That set of criteria is available to institutions before they prepare their materials to submit to the BNQP. Apparently the bulk of the application is a narrative in which the institution itemizes its achievements related to each criteria item. In 2007, I-SS submitted a 58-page narrative and in 2008, I-SS submitted a 51-page narrative.

Each member of the BNQP Board of Examiners evaluates the narrative and assigns a percentage score to each category. The examiners then perform what is called a Consensus Review during which the team reaches a consensus on the score for the applicant. That review and score is then used to determine if the applicant warrants a site visit.

Site visits are conducted for the highest-scoring applicants to clarify any uncertainty or confusion the Examiners may have regarding the written application and to verify that the information in the application is correct. Based on the site visit the percentage scores for each criteria item may change. The final individual item scores, along with a weighted value for each category item, are used to determine overall score called the Band Score. The Band Score ranges from 1 to 8 with 8 being the best score.

Listed below are the I-SS scores for each category in 2007 and 2008. The scores are given as a percentage range rather than a specific percentage value. The percentage range is based on the Scoring Guidelines, which describe the characteristics typically associated with specific percentage ranges. The given scores are the final scores after any adjustments based on the site visits.

Baldrige Education Criteria

Category	Value	I-SS Score ‘07	I-SS Score ‘08
1 Leadership
1.1Senior Leadership: How do your senior leaders lead?	70 Points	70 – 85%	70 – 85%
1.2Governance and Social Responsibilities: How do you govern and address your social responsibilities?	50 Points	70 – 85%	50 – 65%
2 Strategic Planning
2.1Strategy Development: How do you develop your strategy?	40 Points	70 – 85%	50 – 65%
2.2 Strategy Deployment: How do you deploy your strategy?	45 Points	50 – 65%	30 – 45%
3 Student, Stakeholder, and Market Focus
3.1 Student, Stakeholder, and Market Knowledge: How do you obtain and use student, stakeholder, and market knowledge?	40 Points	70 – 85%	50 – 65%
3.2 Student and Stakeholder Relationships and Satisfaction: How do you build relationships and grow student and stakeholder satisfaction and loyalty?	45 Points	70 – 85%	50 – 65%
4 Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management
4.1 Measurement, Analysis, and Improvement of Organizational Performance: How do you measure, analyze, and then improve organizational performance?	45 Points	50 – 65%	50 – 65%
4.2 Management of Information, Information Technology, and Knowledge: How do you manage your information, information technology, and organizational knowledge?	45 Points	50 – 65%	30 – 45%
5 Workforce Focus
5.1 Workforce Engagement: How do you engage your workforce to achieve organizational and personal success?	45 Points	70 – 85%	50 – 65%
5.2 Workforce Environment: How do you build an effective and supportive workforce environment?	40 Points	50 – 65%	70 – 85%
6 Process Management
6.1 Work Systems Design: How do you design your work systems?	35 Points	50 – 65%	50 – 65%
6.2 Work Process Management and Improvement: How do you manage and improve your key organizational work processes?	50 Points	50 – 65%	50 – 65%
7 Results
7.1 Student Learning Outcomes: What are your student learning results?	100 Points	30 – 45%	50 – 65%
7.2 Student- and Stakeholder-Focused Outcomes: What are your student- and stakeholder-focused performance results?	70 Points	30 – 45%	30 – 45%
7.3 Budgetary, Financial, and Market Outcomes: What are your budgetary, financial, and market performance results?	70 Points	50 – 65%	30 – 45%
7.4 Workforce-Focused Outcomes: What are your workforce-focused performance results?	70 Points	50 – 65%	50 – 65%
7.5 Process Effectiveness Outcomes: What are your process effectiveness results?	70 Points	50 – 65%	30 – 45%
7.6 Leadership Outcomes: What are your leadership results?	70 Points	50 – 65%	30 – 45%

As mentioned before, these scores are used to determine an overall score called the Band Score. In 2007, I-SS received a Band Score of 5 out of a possible 8. The descriptors for the 2007 Band Scores of 1, 5, and 8 are given below.

2007 Scoring Band Descriptors

Band Number	Descriptor
1	The organization demonstrates the early stages of developing and implementing approaches to Item requirements, with deployment lagging and inhibiting progress. Improvement efforts focus on problem solving. A few important results are reported, but they generally lack trend and comparative data.
5 I-SS Score	The organization demonstrates effective, systematic, well-deployed approaches responsive to the overall requirements of the Items. The organization demonstrates a fact-based, systematic evaluation and improvement process and organizational learning that result in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of key processes. Results address most key customer/stakeholder, market, and process requirements, and they demonstrate areas of strength against relevant comparisons and/or benchmarks. Improvement trends and/or good performance are reported for most areas of importance to the organization’s key requirements.
8	The organization demonstrates outstanding approaches focused on innovation, full deployment, and excellent, sustained performance results. There is excellent integration of approaches with organizational needs. Organizational analysis, learning, and sharing of best practices are pervasive. National and world leadership is demonstrated in results that fully address key customer/stakeholder, market, process, and action plan requirements.

In 2008, the BNQP used a system of two Band Scores one for Processes and the other for Results. I-SS received a Band Score of 5 for Processes and a Band Score of 4 for Results. Again, that is out of a possible 8. That yields an overall percentage score of 62.5% for processes and 50% for results. The descriptors for the 2008 Process Band Scores of 1, 5, and 8, and for the 2008 Process Band Scores of 1, 4, and 8 are given below.

2008 Scoring Band Descriptors

Band Number	Process Descriptor
1	The organization demonstrates early stages of developing and implementing approaches to the basic Criteria requirements, with deployment lagging and inhibiting progress. Improvement efforts are a combination of problem solving and an early general improvement orientation.
5 I-SS Score	The organization demonstrates effective, systematic, well-deployed approaches responsive to the overall requirements of most Criteria Items. The organization demonstrates a fact-based, systematic evaluation and improvement process and organizational learning, including innovation, that result in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of key processes.
8	The organization demonstrates outstanding approaches focused on innovation. Approaches are fully deployed and demonstrate excellent, sustained use of measures. There is excellent integration of approaches with organizational needs. Organizational analysis, learning through innovation, and sharing of best practices are pervasive.

Band Number	Results Descriptor
1	Results are reported for a few areas of importance to the accomplishment of the organization’s mission, but they generally lack trend and comparative data.
4 I-SS Score	Results address some key customer/stakeholder, market, and process requirements, and they demonstrate good relative performance against relevant comparisons. There are no patterns of adverse trends or poor performance in areas of importance to the Criteria requirements and the accomplishment of the organization’s mission.
8	Results fully address key customer/stakeholder, market, process, and action plan requirements and include projections of future performance. Results demonstrate excellent organizational performance levels, as well as national and world leadership. Results demonstrate sustained beneficial trends in all areas of importance to the Criteria requirements and the accomplishment of the organization’s mission.

The BNQP does not give a percentage based on the Band Score but the I-SS score of 5 out of 8 yields an overall percentage score for 2007 of 62.5%. And for 2008, I-SS received a Process Band Score of 5 out of 8, which is another 62.5% and a Results Band Score of 4 out of 8, which yields a percentage score of 50%. Weighting these scores equally, I-SS received an overall score of 56.25% for 2008 and that is the year they received the Baldrige Award. The scores for the individual categories verify this lower score for 2008. I-SS scores went down in 10 categories from ’07 to ’08 and only went up in 2 categories from ’07 to ’08.

What does all of this prove? It proves that, as many have thought, the whole Baldrige Award is a sham. How is it that I-SS had such terrible scores and still received the award? Did the BNQP committee just figure that it was I-SS’s turn to get the award? What would I-SS administrators say if they found out that students in a given class were receiving A’s while averaging 50% to 62.5%? Do you think that a high school student would be selected valedictorian or salutatorian with these averages? I don’t think so. It would be interesting to know how many man-hours and how much money was wasted pursuing this award.

Click on the link below to access the I-SS 2008 Baldrige Application, the I-SS 2007 Feedback Report and the I-SS 2008 Baldrige Feedback Report. I-SS provided me with a digital copy of the 2007 Baldrige Application, as it is not available on the school web site. I recommend that you look at these documents. They certainly provide some interesting reading material.

I-SS Baldrige Information

NIH Advisory Meeting

2009-10-11T14:39:00.003-04:00

The next advisory meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 13^th, at North Iredell High School. The meeting will start at 7:00 p.m. Again, the main purpose of the meeting is to allow students, parents, teachers, and others an opportunity to participate in the selection process for the new superintendent. You may not think that the School Board is truly going to listen the public’s input, but if we don’t speak out that just gives the Board members an excuse to do whatever they want.

If the same process is used at this meeting as was used at the SHS meeting, the participants will first be asked to list the priorities that they wish the new superintendent to address. That is what should be the main concerns for the school system. After that, the participants will be asked to list the character traits, experience, or strengths that the new superintendent should possess.

I have another meeting Tuesday night so I will not be able to attend this advisory meeting. I hope several readers of this blog will attend the meeting and then leave some comments so we can get a report of the main emphasis of this meeting.

Ron Clark Academy

2009-10-04T15:06:00.004-04:00

CNN.com has an excellent report about the Ron Cark Academy in Atlanta. The academy uses non-traditional methods to energize students and to encourage them to learn.

In the report Ron Clark states: “It all involves with the teachers. You can talk about the state government. You can talk about principals, superintendents. It all comes down to finding passionate people who want to teach. We have to give teachers more freedom, trust them more, and allow them to use their own creativity to fire up their students in the way they know they need to be.”

We need a superintendent who is going to be like Ron Clark. We need a superintendent who will encourage teachers to use their passion for teaching. In the report there was no talk of Baldrige principles. The Baldrige model, as implemented by I-SS, does not give teachers the freedom and trust that they need to be creative in their classrooms.

Click on the link below to access the CNN report.

Ron Clark Academy

SHS Advisory Meeting

2009-10-04T14:12:00.008-04:00

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.

Buddy Hemric's Letter to the Editor

2009-09-27T21:25:00.003-04:00

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

2009-09-27T16:52:00.003-04:00

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.

Board of Education members communicate with district staff using approved procedure.
The Board of Education is accessible and responsive to the Superintendent, staff, and other stakeholders.
Board members use the district process and chain of command to resolve problems and complaints.
The Board of Education builds and maintains relationships with the community.
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

2009-09-26T19:21:00.003-04:00

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

2009-09-25T19:47:00.003-04:00

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

2009-09-20T14:40:00.003-04:00

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

2009-09-16T13:46:00.003-04:00

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

2009-09-15T13:44:00.005-04:00

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?

2009-09-14T16:40:00.001-04:00

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

2009-09-13T14:21:00.004-04:00

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

2009-09-07T17:03:00.007-04:00

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

2009-09-06T17:03:00.004-04:00

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