Sue Flicop

The whole swine flu situation at Oak Hill raises a big question for me—besides the obvious one about whether or not the school should have been closed. I think we will be able to answer that in the next few days as the number of students who are out sick either increases or decreases. To me the other big question is about communication: how should communications have been handled right from the beginning?

With alarming information in the national and local press, it was only natural for parents to need more info and reassurance than the brief note and phone call from our school system and health department. One constructive idea is to have parents directly ask questions—either that first night in person at the Oak Hill concert or on the school website where the experts in Newton can respond quickly. An alternative is to ask parent leaders to help identify questions to which the community needs answers. More recently, the Q & A format with lots of information and data seemed to work much better.

As an Oak Hill parent, I heard rumors about when the school would close—none of which turned out to be true. The absence of information does NOT control rumors, it fosters the SPREAD of rumors.

We now have so much access to correct and incorrect information through the internet that it is important for Newton public schools and the Health Department to get out in front of this type of situation by communicating openly and fully from the beginning. This is an important lesson to help us prepare for a more serious health crisis.

Click here to read my first guest column in the Newton TAB: Newton TAB Guest Column 5-12-09.

Just some quick thoughts regarding Monday’s meeting where the CAG discussed the capital cost structure report. I’ve been disturbed by the process the report outlined for how school maintenance is actually scheduled, performed, and paid for. As the report describes, it is very inefficient and leads to a system where no single department is accountable for the work. We end up with less maintenance work in the schools for the money.

The CAG recommendation is to merge both departments and house the new group on the municipal side. This will create administrative efficiencies as well as increased accountability since one group will be directly responsible for all the work. In the end, we should have a better system for maintenance for our dollars—and would better be able to figure out where any problems are. As usual, the devil is in the details, but we can surely start making this change where the schools will certainly benefit.

At Monday night’s public discussion of the Citizens Advisory Group report on performance management, I was part of the group focused on pay-for-performance. It was an interesting discussion that I hope will continue in the future. An important distinction for us all to consider is the difference between a pay-for-performance systems and cost reduction methods in education. While in the private sector, increased performance and productivity might lead to the ability to cut staff, this is not necessarily the case in education. If a teacher is very successful on all the performance measurement points, we are not then going to add more students to the classroom, or reduce supports from coaches and professional development resources. The focus of performance evaluations in education is on performance, not on cost reductions.

For almost a year, I’ve been reading up on pay-for-performance in public school systems as part of my research for the Strategic Planning Group. In this group, I have advocated strongly for a 360º evaluation system, which would include feedback from all those people who interact with the employee being evaluated. For example, parents should have an opportunity to evaluate teachers and principals, and teachers should be able to evaluate their superiors. A strong evaluation system that gathers feedback from a variety of sources is an essential part of any pay-for-performance system in Newton.

Overall, I’ve found there are two main elements we need to include no matter what the details of the merit program are: a collaborative relationship with the unions and resources to help institute the system.

First, we need to work collaboratively with the teacher’s union to develop a system that teachers, administrators, and parents understand and embrace. This includes working together to determine how to measure an excellent education—do we use MCAS scores and/or SAT scores and/or other quantitative measures? What qualitative factors do we include? How do we measure the performance of teachers whose subject areas aren’t covered by tests, like art and PE? Do we focus on performance at the school, group, or individual level? These are thorny and quite possibly contentious issues that require input and agreement from the school system and from the community.

Second, we need to have the resources to institute a reward system and make improvements when performance falls short. I don’t just mean the costs of any monetary rewards, but also the costs associated with instituting a strong evaluation system and professional development. Evaluators must be properly trained and supported to create substantive and meaningful feedback that will lead to better performance and honest assessments. Without a way to evaluate staff and to help them improve their performance, a pay-for-performance system will be ineffective at improving our children’s education.

There were some positive changes made tonight–clearly the Superintendent and the School Committee were being receptive to feedback from parents.  The changes affect the proposals for the high schools–specifically, there will be no reduction in the maximum number of blocks a high school student can take, and the savings from changes in the PE requirements might be achieved differently.  But it’s not clear how.  I came out of tonight’s School Committee meeting more confused about the budget than when I went in.

It is clear that cuts will be made at the high schools–the budget still calls for a reduction of 13.9 FTEs from the high schools, and that didn’t change tonight.  But what these cuts mean to the high school students wasn’t specified, and probably won’t be known for a little while. I’m fine with the principals having the flexibility to respond to the students’ preferences, but I do hope that parents will get a chance to respond before everything is finalized and when the impact of the cuts is known.

Another example of incomplete information concerns fee increases.  The School Committee feels it can find an additional $40,000 from increasing the Use of School Building fees. I’ve heard them mention focusing on C permits–those for organizations either for-profit or from outside Newton. The budget also contains a $40 increase per student for transportation fees.   As I’ve written before, I feel that we need a full analysis of these fees followed by public discussion. Unfortunately, we’ve reached the point where a decision needs to be made without either of these happening.

The Student Services section of the FY10 proposed school budget has a number of interesting proposals.  For several years I’ve heard that it would be less expensive to serve “in-house”  many of our students who are currently placed out-of-district due to special needs.  These savings would arise because the costs are more controllable when Newton provides the services.  Currently, NPS is told how much it needs to pay to send students to certain day or residential programs–there is no room for adjustment or negotiation.  For FY10, the costs of these programs will increase 8% from FY09.

The proposals we heard last night also add the essential element of meeting these students’ needs in a thorough, thoughtful, and supportive way.   This is truly a win-win situation–the students will be well-served (maybe even better-served since they can remain closer to home) and NPS will see significant cost savings.

Just a few preliminary thoughts right after tonight’s budget presentation…

First, a very big thanks to Jeff Young, members of the Central Staff, and all 21 school principals for accepting a wage freeze for FY10.  This is a wonderful symbol of their commitment to public education here in Newton as well as a significant sacrifice at a time when many families are worried and struggling to make ends meet.

Second, I had expected far more cuts in the budget this year, and agree with Jeff Young that this is primarily due to a big assumption in the budget of a COLA freeze for all NPS employees.  Without this freeze, NPS would be in a far worse situation.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed…

Third, I am pleased to see some movement in the budget regarding elements of the strategic plan.  Some of these ideas, such as reaching out to local colleges and universities, benefit our students and NPS by providing expertise to our school system at a bargain rate.  We also get the chance to see future teachers/staff in action, which can help determine if they should receive an offer to stay in Newton.

I have some personal experience in this, as I graduated from the Co-op MBA Program at Northeastern.  I worked in a financial services company performing cost/benefit analyses for six months.  I know how valuable that experience was for me, and I was clearly aware that I was being evaluated regarding a future position at that company.

As it the budget stands now, we still are facing cuts in staff, increased class size, reductions in programming, etc.  It  is a very complex document, and I plan on pouring over it this weekend.   I expect to post on this blog after each budget meeting, if not more often during the whole process.

Last night, the Fees Sub-Committee presented a “progress report” to the whole committee that wasn’t really progress at all. I’m not an advocate for adding or increasing school fees, and in a perfect world (or even a slightly better one) I hope we wouldn’t have any at all. But we are in the middle of a serious financial situation and we know that the upcoming budget is going to be very painful. We also know that fees for certain services/programs can help offset potential cuts in those services/programs. So the most fiscally responsible thing the fees subcommittee can do right now is to present different scenarios for different types of fees over the next few years and seriously consider the pros and cons of each—before the budget is finalized.

Instead the fees subcommittee presented only a $20 increase in student parking fees, mainly because the fee hasn’t changed in six years. They recommended no change in athletic fees or the 4th grade music fee, and stated that they would not make any recommendations about the transportation fees and USB (use of school building fee) in time for the FY10 budget discussions.

I am not advocating specific increases or new fees at this point in time. But the argument that the data is unknown or unpredictable doesn’t work for me—there is past history, neighboring communities’ past history, and some reasonable assumptions we can make. This was done last year when evaluating the potential effects of the 4th grade music fee.

I recognize that it is not fun thinking about new or higher fees—but it is a sign of responsible fiscal leadership to consider reasonable options and discuss them in public before cuts are planned and approved.

After attending and participating in both Strategic Planning presentations, I’m interested in the diversity of opinion about setting priorities among the 12 initiatives. About half of the initiatives were focused on what and how we teach, and include interdisciplinary learning, differentiated learning, technology and media use, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), etc. I didn’t see an overwhelming consensus in this area, though many put an emphasis on “educating the whole child,” which means including the arts, music, etc. in addition to other aspects of a traditional curriculum, as well as STEM and interdisciplinary learning.

I did see that every group felt some priority should be put on the teaching staff—either in hiring top quality professionals, in retaining them, or in giving them time to collaborate. Many felt that those all went together, but disagreed on which one would lead to the others. For example, I heard people say that if we focused on retaining top quality teachers, we would also attract top quality teachers as they hear that we value their work and provide a good environment in which to teach. Others felt that hiring the best teachers would automatically create a better environment and the collaboration would inevitably happen.

Many participants commented on some missing pieces, primarily regarding the financial situation of the schools (i.e. how can we make these initiatives happen without extra money?) and the school-parent connection (i.e. what can/should parents do to support this work at home?).  These are areas we can address to improve the Strategic Plan.

It was fascinating to hear all the different ways of prioritizing…the arguments were very persuasive and passionate. On the Strategic Planning Team, we did a similar exercise and noted all the connections between the different initiatives—this was also true for the many small groups who participated.

At tonight’s meeting, the School Committee had a sobering discussion about the CAG report with members of the CAG Education Committee. Questions focused on the structural deficit, the decline in education here in Newton, best practices and communities we should emulate/investigate.

The idea of better communication with the public was mentioned several times. Recommendations on how to do this included better use of the website and a more transparent decision-making process that clearly delineates the trade-offs that need to be considered. I would also add the need to educate Newton residents about our education system.

In order to fully understand the complexity of each decision, people need to learn more about the different parts of Newton Public Schools and how they interact and affect each other. Regarding methods, we need consistent, frequent, and direct communication. If NPS could gather families’ email addresses along with emergency numbers at the beginning of each year—an idea I hear floated by parents frequently—it could send regular (every two to three weeks?) information and updates directly to parents, as well as keep a library of these emails on its website. Armed with more information, we can all better understand and participate in discussions of priorities and values.