At the September 24 Oshkosh School Board Meeting the referendum questions were discussed. The VERY short story is the interim superintendent recommended a 3 question referendum with the questions looking something like the following -- dollar amounts are NOT set in stone, just a place to start discussions:
Question 1: New Oaklawn/Sunset probably on Ryf Road $15,000,000 (approx. amount based on Feb. 2008 figures)
Question 2: Exceed Revenue Caps by $1,300,000 per year for 5 years for deferred maintenance projects
Question 3: Exceed Revenue Caps by $500,000 per year for Capital Action plans (one example of this might be secured entrances at all schools)
Here is a link to the entire board packet, the referendum information starts on page 38
Here are the deferred maintenance projects:
Projects Prioritized from Deferred Maintenance History
2009
All Schools
Electrical/Lighting Improvements, Upgrading fixtures, emergency & gym lighting $653,400
P.Tipler:
HVAC
A/C $ 275,000
Roof $ 225,640
All Other
North Cylinder repair of elevator $ 80,000
Total $1,234,040
2010
E. Cook Media Center
Roof $75,000
Roosevelt
Boiler $975,000
West (1 of 2)
Bleachers $195,000
W. Stanley (1 of 3)
Windows $55,000
Total $1,300,000
2011
S. Park
Boiler & DDC controls $1,350,000
Total $1,350,000
2012
District Wide
Roof repair/replace $750,000
W. Stanley (2 of 3)
Windows $55,000
West (2 of 2)
Bleachers $195,000
Merrill (1 of 2)
HVAC upgrade $315,000
Total $1,315,000
2013
District Wide
Roofs $750,000
J. Shapiro
HVAC $150,000
W. Stanley (3 of 3)
Windows $55,000
Merrill (2 of 2)
HVAC upgrade $400,000
Total $1,355,000
One thing really jumped out at me... the cost of a new boiler at South Park $1.3 MILLION ... Should the deferred maintenance question fail, I shudder to think what the cuts would look like if the $1.3 Million cost of a new boiler was taken out of operating funds.
A few people have posted on various blogs that the district should fund all its maintenance and capital improvements out of its operating funds. I wonder how many homeowners have enough money in their "operating" budgets to replace their furnace should it go out? I would imagine most would either take out a loan or take the money from a savings account.
So what do you think? Do you like 3 questions vs. just one or two? Would you support any or all of the questions? Why or why not?
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
What is the Role and Responsibility of Elected Officials?
When I served on the school board I attended a conference where the speaker was a Philip Boyle (at the time a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and now a private consultant) he was an excellent speaker who really understood the role of elected officials. That conference clarified for me, my role as a school board member and helped in some ways to explain why the BOE had (and still has) such difficulties making decisions at times. This article explains very clearly what the role of elected officials should be.
Here are some excerpts from the above article:
We call them public values, because they come into play when we act or are affected as citizens. We can group them into four core values (Note: for more detailed discussions of these values and how they shape public policy and political theory, see O'Toole, Stone, Okun, and Brinkley et al.):
Liberty, which includes freedom, choice, access, autonomy, mobility, openness, transparency, individual rights, voluntary, opportunity, individuality, exemptions, privacy, due process, independence, personal responsibility, self-determination, and self-sufficiency.
Prosperity, which includes economy, efficiency, growth, productivity, profit, cost reduction, development, incentives, competition, consolidation, centralization, privatization, standardization, specialization, performance measurement, benchmarking, return on investment, using market rules to make decisions, and quantity of life.
Equality, which includes fairness, justice, tolerance, acceptance, diversity, equity, inclusion, representation, equal rights, equal opportunity, equal treatment, equal results, grandfathering, and a level playing field.
Community, which includes safety, security, a sense of connection and belonging to the people and places where we live and work, a sense of place and identity, health, aesthetics, preservation, restoration, conservation, tradition, customs, the sacred, uniformity, social and moral order, and quality of life.
As shown below, each of these public values represents a competing vision for public education:
Public Education and Liberty
Let parents choose schools, control how education dollars are spent
Charter, magnet, cyber schools
Private schools, home schooling
Open enrollment and transfers
Academic freedom, freedom of speech
Local control and governance
Open meetings, transparency, public input
Public Education and Prosperity
Meet global standards
Further economic progress
Compete in 21st century workplace
Career preparation, real-world learning
Apply market principles to education and schools
Treat parents as consumers
Continuous school improvement
Measurement and certification
Commercialization
Operate schools like a business
Public Education and Equality
Equitable funding
Equal opportunity
Eliminate race, gender, class, ethnic, and cultural biases
Teach all history and cultures
All courses and sports available to all students
Alternative, special, bi-lingual education
Free and reduced breakfast/lunch programs
Non-discriminatory policies governing public use of school facilities
Close achievement gaps
Title IX
Public Education and Community
Meet social and emotional needs
All children learn together
Avoid competition, ranking, social sorting
Strengthen families and communities
Smaller classes, neighborhood schools
Art, music, civics, character education, service learning
Health, exercise, diet, nutrition, physical education
Drug testing, dress codes, zero tolerance
Safe, clean, secure, comfortable, welcoming schools
Raise children, don't just teach children
Save recess!
While there are statements I agree with in all 4 values, my values run much more to the Community/ Equality set than the other 2 (though there are one or two statments in the community set that I do not agree with) as I think anyone can see there are others who were or are on the board whose values run much more to Prosperity and somewhat to Liberty. As the article indicates, no one value is better than any other, the key for elected officials is to balance all the values and leave everyone better off than before they started. It is a tall order and since many officials are not even aware of the struggle with these values, this is rarely the approach taken.
An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life. -- Unknown
Private organizations and institutions can promote one value over the others, but government cannot. We expect the American Civil Liberties Union to promote liberty, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to promote equality, the YMCA and Sierra Club to promote community, and the chamber of commerce to promote prosperity. But only one institution -- government -- is responsible for protecting and promoting all four public values. We prevent anarchy and tyranny, as the Founders intended, by making room for each public value in the public sphere.
And we ask our public officials -- both elected and appointed -- to make good public choices by balancing these values. In this context, public school leadership is not about power, authority, or public opinion. As James Madison might have put it, school boards and administrators are charged with refining and enlarging the public views so that they may best discern the true public interest.
So what do you think? Does this make sense? Does it explain to some degree why the BOE gets stymied? Please keep the discussion ON TOPIC... I will delete ALL posts that stray from this topic.
Here are some excerpts from the above article:
We call them public values, because they come into play when we act or are affected as citizens. We can group them into four core values (Note: for more detailed discussions of these values and how they shape public policy and political theory, see O'Toole, Stone, Okun, and Brinkley et al.):
Liberty, which includes freedom, choice, access, autonomy, mobility, openness, transparency, individual rights, voluntary, opportunity, individuality, exemptions, privacy, due process, independence, personal responsibility, self-determination, and self-sufficiency.
Prosperity, which includes economy, efficiency, growth, productivity, profit, cost reduction, development, incentives, competition, consolidation, centralization, privatization, standardization, specialization, performance measurement, benchmarking, return on investment, using market rules to make decisions, and quantity of life.
Equality, which includes fairness, justice, tolerance, acceptance, diversity, equity, inclusion, representation, equal rights, equal opportunity, equal treatment, equal results, grandfathering, and a level playing field.
Community, which includes safety, security, a sense of connection and belonging to the people and places where we live and work, a sense of place and identity, health, aesthetics, preservation, restoration, conservation, tradition, customs, the sacred, uniformity, social and moral order, and quality of life.
As shown below, each of these public values represents a competing vision for public education:
Public Education and Liberty
Let parents choose schools, control how education dollars are spent
Charter, magnet, cyber schools
Private schools, home schooling
Open enrollment and transfers
Academic freedom, freedom of speech
Local control and governance
Open meetings, transparency, public input
Public Education and Prosperity
Meet global standards
Further economic progress
Compete in 21st century workplace
Career preparation, real-world learning
Apply market principles to education and schools
Treat parents as consumers
Continuous school improvement
Measurement and certification
Commercialization
Operate schools like a business
Public Education and Equality
Equitable funding
Equal opportunity
Eliminate race, gender, class, ethnic, and cultural biases
Teach all history and cultures
All courses and sports available to all students
Alternative, special, bi-lingual education
Free and reduced breakfast/lunch programs
Non-discriminatory policies governing public use of school facilities
Close achievement gaps
Title IX
Public Education and Community
Meet social and emotional needs
All children learn together
Avoid competition, ranking, social sorting
Strengthen families and communities
Smaller classes, neighborhood schools
Art, music, civics, character education, service learning
Health, exercise, diet, nutrition, physical education
Drug testing, dress codes, zero tolerance
Safe, clean, secure, comfortable, welcoming schools
Raise children, don't just teach children
Save recess!
While there are statements I agree with in all 4 values, my values run much more to the Community/ Equality set than the other 2 (though there are one or two statments in the community set that I do not agree with) as I think anyone can see there are others who were or are on the board whose values run much more to Prosperity and somewhat to Liberty. As the article indicates, no one value is better than any other, the key for elected officials is to balance all the values and leave everyone better off than before they started. It is a tall order and since many officials are not even aware of the struggle with these values, this is rarely the approach taken.
An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life. -- Unknown
Private organizations and institutions can promote one value over the others, but government cannot. We expect the American Civil Liberties Union to promote liberty, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to promote equality, the YMCA and Sierra Club to promote community, and the chamber of commerce to promote prosperity. But only one institution -- government -- is responsible for protecting and promoting all four public values. We prevent anarchy and tyranny, as the Founders intended, by making room for each public value in the public sphere.
And we ask our public officials -- both elected and appointed -- to make good public choices by balancing these values. In this context, public school leadership is not about power, authority, or public opinion. As James Madison might have put it, school boards and administrators are charged with refining and enlarging the public views so that they may best discern the true public interest.
So what do you think? Does this make sense? Does it explain to some degree why the BOE gets stymied? Please keep the discussion ON TOPIC... I will delete ALL posts that stray from this topic.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
A Little GOP Hypocrisy
I moved the link here from a different post... thanks anonymous...
I found this to be quite amusing, especially O'Reilly's comments on teen pregnancy...
I found this to be quite amusing, especially O'Reilly's comments on teen pregnancy...
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Vocational Education or College Education?
I found this article from the Washington Post very interesting please read the article (note the civility of the disagreement) and then join the discussion.
For those of you who don't want to read the article but want to participate in the discussion... basically the article was a discussion based on Chris Peters plan that would give both college-oriented and job-oriented students an equal chance. His 3 step plan is as follows:
Step 1:
Condense all universal high school requirements down to those which can be completed within two years and which consist of standards that are essential for the development of an informed citizenry and ensure that the student has the basic skills and knowledge base necessary for life-long learning. Then require all students to master these super-standards before starting either upper-level, college preparatory courses (AP/IB, intermediate algebra, chemistry, etc) or voc ed. course
Step 2:
When high school students reach the end of their sophomore year, present them with four choices:
(1) Continue on a college preparatory path leading to a four-year university or a four-year college transfer track at a community college. This choice would be contingent upon their having passed a standardized exit exam in English composition and literature, health and environmental science, elementary algebra and geometry, U.S. history and government and economics; or
(2) Enter a community college vocational program of their choice , with close supervision and support by their high school and continued access to the high school's extra-curricular activities. This would be contingent on their passing the same battery of exams the Choice 1 students take. Using existing and underutilized community college vocational programs means high schools would not have to reinvent the vocational wheel at their own sites, or:
(3) Receive intensive tutoring in high school, if unable so far to pass all or some of the exams, until they do so. They would have up to two year to climb over those barriers, and then an extra two years of free schooling to take AP and other prep classes on the college track if they so desire. This choice is just for those who want college prep their last two years of high school, including any who started the vocational track, choice 2, but changed their minds, or:
(4) Quit school and choose some other path.
Step 3:
Create a simple report card to evaluate the instructional effectiveness of individual high schools that everyone could understand. It would consist of five simple and largely unfudgeable - measures of the school's success: its pass rate on the two-year exit exams; its rate of graduate enrollment in four-year colleges (either right out of high school or as community college transfer); its AP/IB test-taking rate; its rate of students earning vocational certifications within four years of completing the exit exams; and its rate of graduates earning bachelor's degrees within six years of completing the college preparatory program.
The three steps would eliminate the high school diploma (an utterly meaningless document) and all standardized tests at the high school level except the eight subject-specific exit exams.
I think this is a discussion our school district should have... I don't agree with eliminating the high school diploma but I do think there is merit in much of Mr. Peter's plan. I also share some of the concerns of Mr. Mathews that there is a danger in sending students on one track or the other at the age of 16 (though many European countries do so at a much younger age and I don't believe it is the student's choice, the system decides).
So what do you think?
For those of you who don't want to read the article but want to participate in the discussion... basically the article was a discussion based on Chris Peters plan that would give both college-oriented and job-oriented students an equal chance. His 3 step plan is as follows:
Step 1:
Condense all universal high school requirements down to those which can be completed within two years and which consist of standards that are essential for the development of an informed citizenry and ensure that the student has the basic skills and knowledge base necessary for life-long learning. Then require all students to master these super-standards before starting either upper-level, college preparatory courses (AP/IB, intermediate algebra, chemistry, etc) or voc ed. course
Step 2:
When high school students reach the end of their sophomore year, present them with four choices:
(1) Continue on a college preparatory path leading to a four-year university or a four-year college transfer track at a community college. This choice would be contingent upon their having passed a standardized exit exam in English composition and literature, health and environmental science, elementary algebra and geometry, U.S. history and government and economics; or
(2) Enter a community college vocational program of their choice , with close supervision and support by their high school and continued access to the high school's extra-curricular activities. This would be contingent on their passing the same battery of exams the Choice 1 students take. Using existing and underutilized community college vocational programs means high schools would not have to reinvent the vocational wheel at their own sites, or:
(3) Receive intensive tutoring in high school, if unable so far to pass all or some of the exams, until they do so. They would have up to two year to climb over those barriers, and then an extra two years of free schooling to take AP and other prep classes on the college track if they so desire. This choice is just for those who want college prep their last two years of high school, including any who started the vocational track, choice 2, but changed their minds, or:
(4) Quit school and choose some other path.
Step 3:
Create a simple report card to evaluate the instructional effectiveness of individual high schools that everyone could understand. It would consist of five simple and largely unfudgeable - measures of the school's success: its pass rate on the two-year exit exams; its rate of graduate enrollment in four-year colleges (either right out of high school or as community college transfer); its AP/IB test-taking rate; its rate of students earning vocational certifications within four years of completing the exit exams; and its rate of graduates earning bachelor's degrees within six years of completing the college preparatory program.
The three steps would eliminate the high school diploma (an utterly meaningless document) and all standardized tests at the high school level except the eight subject-specific exit exams.
I think this is a discussion our school district should have... I don't agree with eliminating the high school diploma but I do think there is merit in much of Mr. Peter's plan. I also share some of the concerns of Mr. Mathews that there is a danger in sending students on one track or the other at the age of 16 (though many European countries do so at a much younger age and I don't believe it is the student's choice, the system decides).
So what do you think?
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