Update On The CO Reorganization Plan

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!

dc

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?

Proposed CO Reorganization Plan

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.

Strategic Plan Survey Not Available

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

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

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

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

Strategic Plan Survey

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

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

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

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

Click Here