TEA to improve, simplify education rules

Less is more. In the effort to better enforce the rules, there is a critical sub-effort to better evaluate the results and effectiveness of those rules --- and revise or eliminate the rules that don[t help.

I'd think this would be a good opportunity for local boards to push back against unfunded mandates and micromanagerial intrusions.

TEA today article:

Government officials are experts at adding but they rarely know how to subtract. Law and regulations are constantly added but rarely do they eliminate or reduce any. Commissioner of Education Robert Scott thinks it is time for this to change.

That is why he announced that the Texas Education Agency will be reviewing all education regulations known as commis­sioner rules. These cover a wide range of topics, such as charter school operations, teacher incentive programs, financial account­ability ratings systems, various pilot programs and much more. The review will also examine how TEA implemented the rules.

“I am convening a series of stakeholder meetings so I can gather direct feedback from those affected most. I want to know what rules are obsolete or burdensome or just aren’t needed any­more,” Scott said.

State sunset law requires that any rule be reviewed every four years. This formal process will continue, but Scott wants to conduct an informal review this year. “If there are changes or updates that need to be made and that I have the authority to make, I will do so. If those changes require legislative approval, I will present a list of potential changes to the Texas Legislature for review when it next convenes in January 2011,” Scott said.

Please take a look at the commissioner rules located at http:// ritter.tea.state.tx.us/rules/home/ and provide your thoughts on how we can improve and simplify our regulations. You can send feedback to commissioner@tea.state.tx.us.

6) PARTNER WITH THE CITY!

The Lancaster Independent School District and City of Lancaster have common interests in developing neighborhoods, streets, sidewalks and parks.

However, the shared goals and objectives have not resulted in shared committees to plan or encourage such development. Each is operating independently, or at best in private, undocumented, meetings between the city manager and school superintendent. Instead, the board president and the council's mayor should appoint formal committees who will jointly study community issues. The committees will present recommendations to both governing bodies. In public. If approved these strategic plans and policies then become a shared background as particular issues arise, and are perhaps negotiated, in the course of normal business.

Sidewalks? How will they support children walking to and from school? Drainage? Can a neighborhood and school share a detention feature? Utilities? Do the city codes on underground lines make sense for a school site?

Cooperation can make both entities more productive.

5) USE PRE-PAID SERVICES!

The Lancaster school board must choose free (or pre-paid) services, when available, rather than buying new additional service.

In particular, the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) offers free services, including general legal advice, to member boards. It is a waste of money and time to direct routine procedural questions to the lawyers on retainer. (It's better than guessing about legal matters -- and guessing wrong. But free good advice is cheaper than free BAD advice.) Similarly the Education Service Center in Richardson ("Region Ten") is taxpayer supported and offers many of the services now solicitied by bid to commercial agencies. It must become the policy and practice of the Lancaster board to exhaust use of free and already contracted support before seeking expensive new help.

Or I think so, anyway. What do you think?

4) TRANSCRIBE CLOSED MEETINGS!

Audiotape board executive sessions, transcribe the discussion, and archive the records as directed by law.

Executive sessions now last too long and too little is accomplished. Much of the delay and inefficiency arises from trustees disputing what been previously discussed. A record of established agreements will help trustees avoid re-fighting old battles and carrying on historic grudges. The school district's legal advisors admit such recordings are legal, although there may be some legal risk, in a lawsuit, to having recordings subject to "discovery". In practice the risk of public embarrassment should lead to more efficient, professional, conduct by all trustees during these closed sessions.

http://www.oag.state.tx.us/AG_Publications/pdfs/publicinfo_hb.pdf

Tweet me!

@JM4LISD

We could have a short chat. How to improve the school district -- Your Ideas?

3) FOLLOW UP!

Establish as board policy and standard procedure that all "ACTION" items approved by the board be assigned a "follow up" date within one year.

Too often a new program is pitched to the board, approved, and financially supported -- never to be mentioned again. A scheduled appointment for reporting results will help ensure those results.

Along those lines -- a year-long organizing calendar, showing all the upcoming items the board intends to discuss. Don't let deadlines like the budget or the public hearings sneak up and bite the board by surprise.

Another day, another proposal.

Note that these are proposals that any board member could have proposed. Could have brought an idea to a vote, at least (if not passed.) The question is not whether these are great ideas. The question is, why hasn't a trustee managed to try.

Politicians often promise "leadership". Right now, I'd settle for decent management.

What TEA would cut

from Texas school programs:Here are some of the $135.5 million in cuts the Texas Education Agency has proposed for fiscal 2011:

Texas High School Initiative programs: $15 million

Teacher Mentoring Program: $16.6 million

Middle school physical education and fitness: $10 million

Science Lab Grant Program: $25 million

Textbooks and kindergarten materials: $10 million

Life Skills Program for Student Parents: $10.1 million

TEA administration: $5 million

Texas Principal Leadership Program: $4.4 million

Source: Texas Education Agency

All districts are going to have to comb thru their budgets with a very sharp eye. Do you suppose our current board is up to the job?

2) QUARTERLY REPORTING!

Another proposal for making the Lancaster School board more effective -- and more directly engaged with the people who CAN help the schools: the campus improvement committees.

Schedule quarterly status reports by campus committees directly to the board.

State law directs principals and superintendents to work with teachers, parents, and community leaders to form "campus improvement committees". These committes now submit annual "campus improvement plans" to the board -- which are filed and forgotten. A routine, scheduled presentation to the board on the progress of the campus toward specific goals will ensure admin effort and funding are directed toward those goals.

Now, the board should NOT attempt to have all eight campus committees present at the same time. The Annual end-of-year report, on the entire district, counts as one -- but that leaves 3 interim quarterly reports per campus. Three reports for 8 campuses means 24 reports - over 12 months is two such reports per meeting. The natural competition between the campuses to have something good to say -- to outshine the others -- will also drive improvements.

You get what you measure. Let's measure frequent IMPROVEMENTS.

1) MEET 2nd MONDAYS!

Re-schedule regular meetings for the 2nd Monday, instead of 1st Monday.

The finance office consistantly struggles to reconcile district books to bank statements. But the trustees have limited visibility into the problem --because their monthly meeting is over before the statements arrive. Shifting back by just one week puts reconciliation and financial reporting periods three weeks AHEAD of present practice, and allows the board to react more quickly to problems.

So, my hat's in the ring. Or my toe's in the water. Or both.

I've been using this site to sound off about how to improve schools for several years now, on and off. Now I'd like to hear from voters, parents, and taxpayers in Lancaster. You tell me ...

I'm running for office so that you have a choice. If the incumbent continued in office without a campaign, you would have no opportunity to voice your views. I value your opinion. I’d like to hear what you, representing your neighborhood, want for our kids and our schools.

Do you think I'd be an asset to the board? I have analytical skills -- see my posts about rising vs falling test scores, and local finances. I can read and interpret financial reports, and I know when something in them just doesn't "smell right". I'm already spending hours (way too many hours, for an audience member) attending every school board meeting. I've been an active volunteer on district committees -- mostly finance, but including a teacher retention team for the strategic planning effort.

Does this offer you ideas about what you and I together can accomplish for our schools?

Please participate. This year, the voters have only one campaign going on. Without a challenger, the incumbents would just continue in position. And whatever has happened in the past would continue to happen. By offering you a choice, I offer you a voice. Raise your voice, Lancaster. I'm listening.

How to fix schools --

Video lessons from Oakland and Cleveland:

Results based budgeting? Would that work here?

Is Carolyn Morris going to have an opponent in this spring's race? Discuss.

Ed Kirkland divorced from reality.

The candidate's forum on Tuesday, 21 April, revealed a trustee who can persuasively and convincingly tell an audience absolute garbage.

Ed Kirkland continues to insist that the LISD has made years of extraordinary improvements in TAKS scores, and has been careful with spending. In particular, he insists the number of administrators and the amount of money spent in school administration is in line with, or below, TEA guidelines.

The hard data, provided by LISD's own PEIMS submissions and reported by their own auditors each year, indicates the complete opposite.

In fact, the test scores in LISD are rising more slowly than the state average. Any gains made, and there have been many, are nevertheless smaller gains than our neighbors have accomplished in the same period, and leave our kids farther behind. Kirkland either is not capable of understanding that, or prefers to that the voting and taxpaying public not hear it.

In fact, the share of funds spent in administration (function code 41) for LISD is more than double the share spent in other districts and in the last year of his board presidency was over three times the state average. (State average spending on admin is about 4%) We have short -changed our campuses of aides and leadership positions in order to staff the headquarters building with "directors" and "specialists" positions filled with people who never teach a class.

Maybe such staffing is actually a good thing. But that is not the case Kirkland attempts to make. He prefers to deny the facts.

He is the smoothest public speaker now running for a trustee seat, with a deep and calm voice and (when he chooses) a pleasant demeanor. But he is unable to use his gifts in service of the truth.

In the last months of his board presidency he attended a meeting at TEA with the audit team that investigated our district finances. Hear his comments on an audio recording of that meeting, archived here: http://bestsouthwest.blogspot.com/2009/04/lisd-ed-kirkland-who-is-her.html (Kirkland's comments are near the final five or ten minutes)

Again, even after an hour of hearing Dr Lewis esssentially confess to, but attempt to justify, excuse, and explain the factual situation, Ed Kirkland lambasts the TEA team for daring to come into a minority-run district and hold them accountable to follow procedure and meet standards. How DARE they pick on a minority district?

This, while denying the rest of the board -- his peers and our elected officials -- access to the same report he was in Austin responding to.

It cost this district, as was pointed out last night, over $200,000 in legal fees to make plain that somebody was "tampering with the mail" -- among other violations -- in covering up and concealing this districts' problems.

Dr Lewis lost his job at the end of that investigation.

Ed Kirkland MIGHT be able to keep his. Because, as we all know, lies, cover-ups, denials and concealment work.

At least, for elected politicians.

What do we see?

Is this a child who is struggling to keep up with his peers?

Or is this a child who is "on the right path, and moving in the right direction"?

Both could be true, of course. These are not mutually exclusive perspectives.

But the folks who believe students are on the right track and are headed in the right direct have very little incentive to think very hard, or change very much, or care very passionately.

Folks who worry that a child IS being left behind will be trying hard to change a great deal. And they care -- a lot.

Lancaster has six candidates competing for three seats on the school board.

We have nearly 300 students graduating High School within weeks of the election. They, too, will be competing for a limited number of seats -- in college classrooms, at desks in offices, behind steering wheels -- competition for a good seat is a constant.

I'm taking comments. Which of the trustee candidates do you think is most likely to help the kid catch the bus?

I see we have no less than three real estate agents running for school board this spring. Cynthia Corbin (also an accountant, and neo-journalist/blogger) primarily makes her living in Lancaster real estate. Marion Hamilton is, apparently, a part time homeseller. But the "big gun" in the real estate market is Historic Town Square's very own Ellen Clark.

I'm somewhat skeptical of the temptations brokers may suffer when dealing with a school district. There was, after all, the proposal to turn the empty lot near the High School into a casino hotel -- which proposal was, according to Larry Lewis, endorsed by former mayor, and property broker, Margie Waldrop. Former trustee Sue Mendoza some what famously was recommended by the superintendent as a property mortgage broker to any new LISD teacher, or at least those getting Dr Lewis's emails. And the district is always in need of help selling distressed properties, taken over for failure to pay taxes.

So it's nice to see at least one of the three realty agents taking the pledge I pledge that I and my immediate family, including parents, children, grandchildren and cousins, will not do business in any way, shape, fashion or form, directly or indirectly, with the school district and/or its vendors during my tenure.

I think, though, I'll let the readers figure out which of the three challengers is foregoing the profit and self-dealing opportunities.

So far as I can tell, none of the incumbents has come out against doing business with the district they govern.

It's liable to be an interesting campaign.

Larry Lewis and the incredible shrinking fund.

Okay, at the end of the 2005-06 school year (August 2006) the audit team from Judd Thomas and Smith found Larry Lewis had drawn down the cash fund balance in the general fund to $274,000. The problem was generally blamed on CFO Eugene Smith.

In 2006-07 the general fund went negative by about $3 to 4 million, which was disguised by a "bridge loan" of six million. The cash on hand appeared positive, but Larry Lewis left the Lancaster ISD actual cash balance , according to TEA investigative review,was negative by about $3 million.

In 2007-08, the year just ending, the district expenses exceeded projected revenue by another $3 to $4 million dollars. The spending was not so excessive that year, but the revenue was short because the attendance rate did not meet Dr Lewis's projections. The annual compliance audit is only beginning. But it appears the cash on hand in the general fund for the year ending August 2008 will be in the red by about $7 to $8 million.

The coming year, school and fiscal year 2008-09, the district has over-hired by at least eighteen teachers -- a $900,000 excess expense over budget. The attendance rate in Lancaster is still falling, and the revenue is about $1.8 million short of projections. If nothing is done, the ending fund balance will accumulate a $10 million debt.

It will be interesting to calculate the rate of debt to the "rise" in TAKS test scores. How much does it cost to rise in the ranks from last place in 2006 to, uhm, well, wherever we are now?

Larry Lewis will no doubt argue that "all districts" have secret payday loan operations, pay unbudgeted awards to favorite employees, and generally ignore Texas law.

He may even be correct.

"Dr Lewis should no longer serve as Superintendent of this District. He has abused his position, committed unauthorized and illegal acts, was dishonest in this investigation, abdicated his leadership duties, and repetitively failed to notify the Board about critical information."

The "Jones Report" continues - pages 4 thru 6 below

The first three pages of the twelve page "Jones Report" on LISD superintendent Larry Lewis.