Renewed Vision Meeting

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

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

IF Training

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?

Missing: Area Advisory Meeting Reports

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.

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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.

Teacher's Survey Update

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.

Teacher's Survey

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.

1. Baseline Assessments (BA)
2. Common Formative Assessments (CFA)
3. Predictive Assessments (PAs)
4. School Improvement Planning
5. Data Warehouse/Reports
6. Early Release Professional Development
7. High Yield Instructional Strategies (HYIS)
8. Instructional Facilitator Model (IF)
9. L to J (Lee Jenkins Resources)
10. PDSA
11. Classroom Walkthroughs (CWTs)
12. Professional Learning Communities (PLC)
13. Virtual PLCs
14. Curriculum Guides
15. Teamwork Matrix

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

1. Budgeting Process
2. Hiring Process
3. Response to Intervention
4. Teacher Evaluation System
5. Corrective Reading
6. Read 180
7. Positive Behavior Support
8. The ISS Triangle Models: Raising Achievement and Closing the Gaps & Effective and Efficient Operations
9. School Improvement Plan Coaching
10. Leadership Academy Week
11. Quality Fair/RACG Day
12. Leadership Academy for Novice Principals
13. Leveled Principal’s Meetings
14. Mid and End of Year Review
15. Instructional Facilitator/Principal Meetings
16. Boot Camps
17. Curriculum Review Week
18. Assistant Principal Meetings
19. Quarterly Principal Coaching Sessions
20. 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.

Strategic Plan Survey Available Again

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

Click Here

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

Transylvania County Schools Superintendent Search

The Transylvania County Schools recently completed the process of selecting a new superintendent. As part of that process, their School Board conducted an online community survey. The survey asked individuals to rank the importance of a list of 20 characteristics desirable in their new superintendent. Leigh Kelley, Times-News Staff Writer, wrote an article about the results of the survey. The online version of the article is available at the link below.

Superintendent Search

The following comments are taken from the article.

When it comes to choosing the next superintendent of Transylvania County Schools, experience in the top role is less important than service as a successful classroom teacher or principal, according to the results of an online community survey.

Among the survey findings:

• It was deemed “very important” for a new superintendent to have strong people skills. This was rated No. 1 one out of 20 characteristics considered desirable.
• The ability to get parents, students, staff and the community to work together was the next highest rated characteristic respondents said they wanted in a superintendent.
• Understanding current school programs, communicating well with all groups in the community and being accessible and responding to concerns in a timely fashion rounded out the top five.
• Being an effective classroom teacher and/or principal ranked eighth out of 20 categories.
• Experience as a superintendent ranked 14th.

There was also a way for people to leave comments. I hope that the I-SS Board will do a similar survey. And, as others have mentioned about school surveys this should be completed using an independent online survey source and not through the I-SS web site. The School Board should get the results without having anyway of knowing who left a particular comment or ranking.

Unfortunately, the article did not give the full results of the survey. I agree with the top ranked items in the Transylvania survey. What other characteristics would you like to see in the new I-SS superintendent?