School board member Jeanne Anderson drives the Cook County High School robotics team robot at the April 19, 2011 school board meeting. The team brought the robot to the meeting to demonstrate it for the school board. (L-R) Max Simonowicz (standing), Jeanne Anderson, Deb White, Mary Sanders, and Superintendent Beth Schwarz.
The ISD 166 school board has been busy. Facing declining enrollment and uncertain funding levels, the board met with Superintendent Beth Schwarz in work sessions April 11 and 18 to discuss downsizing the administration and discussed the issue again at the April 19 regular school board meeting.
“We certainly don’t want to go into statutory operating debt,” Superintendent Schwarz told the board on April 11.
Schwarz compiled several different scenarios for reducing the administrative budget between now and the 2013-14 school year. The positions being considered for the most drastic changes are the superintendent, the K-12 principal, the school counselor, and the part-time dean.
Superintendent Schwarz and Principal Gwen Carman offered suggestions which each included downsizing the other person’s job to half time. Schwarz recommended eliminating the counselor position, keeping the dean position, and adding lower-paid part time data coordinator and family/student support positions. The teaching staff and Carman’s initial recommendations both called for keeping the counselor and dean positions and adding the data coordinator position. Carman later recommended dropping the dean position to save more money. The data coordinator would administer the new data-driven instruction protocol that uses testing feedback to make ongoing adjustments in the curriculum.
“The numbers are important, but what is our vision? Deb White said. “Can we define what we want our school to look like three years from now, 10 years from now?”
Terry Collins advocated keeping a healthy fund balance but maybe not as much as the board had put into policy a couple of years ago. “I’m not convinced we can put this off for too long,” he said of the budget cuts. He called them “gut wrenching” but “necessary.”
Jeanne Anderson, on the other hand, expressed concern over making changes too quickly in a district that has seen a lot of changes in recent years. “We need stability,” she said.
Jobs mean people
“Nobody wants to see Beth’s job taken from her. Nobody wants to see Gwen’s job taken from her,” Collins said.
“It’s not personal, but it’s personal,” White said, adding that they need to be looking ahead at the financial realities.
On April 17, the board discussed going to a half-time superintendent. Superintendent Schwarz said that the board would be without superintendent leadership in some key areas if they reduced the position. She also said she would not stay if her position were reduced. She questioned whether another referendum would pass without a full-time superintendent in place.
Terry Collins said they might save money by reducing the superintendent position, but they might lose even more money if the reduction resulted in not passing another referendum. Having a part-time superintendent could cause the district to lose “critical communication with groups in the community that form opinion,” he said.
He also said, “I’m really worried about any plan that eliminates the counselor.”
Student support is “critical,” Mary Sanders agreed. The school needs to address issues that kids bring with them to school which keep them from focusing on school, she said.
Questioning what’s necessary
Leonard Sobanja, formerly teacher and principal at CCHS, questioned the need for the data-driven instruction program. He said he used to use daily or weekly tests to find out what the kids hadn’t learned yet. He questioned whether a computer program and someone to coordinate it were justified when the school is facing financial problems. “A good teacher does that in their head,” he said.
Collins said that since they made the decision to try data-driven instruction and they have no indication that it will not achieve what they thought it would – close achievement gaps – they should stick with it for now.
Collins pointed out that both Schwarz and Carman have principal and superintendent certifications and suggested that they not assume that future positions would include the people currently in place. He said he appreciates how much integrity Schwarz and Carman and school counselor Bryan Hackbarth have shown throughout this difficult process.
We need to give the community opportunity to ask questions and give their input, White said. “These are their kids,” she said. “This is public money.”
The board will meet with the five work teams comprised of school board members, staff, and community members on April 28 at 4:00 p.m. in the Jane Mianowski conference room (a meeting that is open to the public) to discuss administrative restructuring and will hold a public meeting Wednesday, May 4 from 5-7 p.m. in the same room.
In other news:
. Principal Carman has formed a Discipline Policy Task Force to create a more detailed written discipline policy than the district has had in place previously. She told the school board she plans to involve parents in this process.
. Principal Carman outlined the criteria for citizenship grades that will be showing up on the report cards of fourth through eighth graders. Teachers will grade students on things like helping out without being asked, making positive change by inspiring others, showing respect, refraining from “inappropriate” behaviors such as excessive talking, not paying attention, and passing notes in class, not putting down other students, being “consistently honest and trustworthy to make the right choices,” and following adult directions. The criteria were developed by the school. Carman said the school works with students who tend to fit into the “unacceptable patterns of behavior” category.
. On April 11, Leonard Sobanja said he wanted to review teacher evaluations because he had been hearing complaints about some teachers who were not creating positive classroom environments. He said he would like the school to look more closely at these teachers “not to can them, but to correct them.” Superintendent Schwarz said a good teacher could get students to learn even with a substandard curriculum, and conversely, a teacher could be “an Einstein” but if he or she were not good at creating a good learning environment, the kids wouldn’t learn optimally. At the April 19 meeting, Schwarz reviewed the school’s evaluation procedures. Principal Carman said she has about two talks a year with individual teachers regarding changes that need to be made.
. Maintenance Director Mike Groth described the bus safety checks drivers must do daily. An alarm goes off if the driver does not walk to the back and open and close the emergency door after the bus is turned off. This is to ensure that children who have fallen asleep are not left on the bus.
Next year’s sixth grade class will not be put into a single classroom, the superintendent reported. Because of its size, a decision had to be made whether to keep them together in one large class or split them into two. . Schwarz reported on Community Education, which has struggled to get enough participation and has had to return $15,315 in funding over the past few years. She is working to stop this from happening in the future.
The board is looking at purchasing a survey mechanism that would contact CCHS graduates at intervals up to five years after graduation in order to help the school tailor its curriculum to the future vocational needs of its students.
Three-year extended leaves of were absence approved for Debra Waage and Anne Hegg. third teacher is considering the same and Super ntendent Schwarz reported that family and consumer science teacher Cindy Muus is considering a retirement incentive package. If she retires, they would re-evaluate the program and consider offering some classes in other departments or using experts in the community, such as chefs, to teach some classes.
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