This conversation originally took place on my public facebook wall (www.facebook.com/airickleonardwest/) but is worth sharing. It actually started on my twitter page (www.twitter.com/airickwest/) with a tweet I posted: "airickwest loves the scholar-focused, achievement-focused nature of the board's conversation. superintendent covington's presence makes a difference!"

Two insightful and curious readers responded:
- Roxana Shaffe
I'm sorry - but I don't understand how the board and district are being scholar focused and achievement focused when schools are closing and teachers are being let go. It seems to be a contradiction. I am willing to accept that I am missing something...can someone explain further?

- Beth Stroud
I agree with Roxana! We have teachers in my building that are incredible and several that shouldn't have any contact with children. Guess who got pink slips last week??? It is hard to be positive about a district that lets their best teachers go three weeks before school is to start. What are they supposed to do for income when it's too late to get a position in another district? When will the district see that great teachers are the foundation of great schools? Instead of celebrating the teachers doing the work the district rewards them with a pink slip. Go figure.


My edited response is below:

Roxana & Beth,
The questions you ask are extremely appropriate and I'll try to be responsive to them here. Should I fail in my effort, please don't hesitate to email or call me at any time. There are two very different issues being raised: school consolidation and RIF policy.

Concerning school consolidation, I believe that the school closures and layoffs are EXTREMELY scholar-focused. Consider it this way: if you spent the entirety of your monthly budget paying the mortgage and the utilities, how would you pay for food, healthcare and other family needs? This is effectively what we've been doing for years. This district has more than enough resources but it's hard to tell because so much of it is going into facilities. Most school districts with our number of scholars fit them into 24-30 buildings. We've been using more than 60 instructional sites. Last year, one of our buildings that was built to hold 800+ scholars housed fewer than 80. It's not possible to run schools at 50% capacity AND provide the resources our scholars deserve and teachers need. Does school consolidation have a negative impact on the adults in the system? Yes, it can. But our loyalty can never be to the needs of adults ahead of the needs of our scholars. Ever.

Concerning RIF policy, there is no excuse. As a board member I failed to ensure an appropriate policy framework for how the RIFs would occur. What was done in June and July SHOULD happen in January or February. I asked for that to happen last fall but without the full board pushing for it, it didn't happen. Our RIF policy should require that these decisions are made sooner. Just because scholars take precedence over adults in decision making (which must be the case) doesn't make it appropriate to unnecessarily damage adults in the process. But we did and there's no excuse for it. I voted to support the consolidation and would do so again, but moving forward, we must adopt a policy framework that is respectful of our adults while making the hard choices our scholars require of us.

The other shortcoming in our RIF policy is that it considers seniority ahead of performance. That's a union contract issue and a teacher evaluation issue. We allowed this to be in the contract -- because our teacher evaluation processes are inadequate -- and must now abide by it. Again, as a board member, I have not served our scholars (or you) well by not working harder for something better. I will work towards the policy reforms I've mentioned above. On this issue, I won't quietly fail you again.

Labels: KCMSD, What's Not Working, What's Working

According to Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, high school dropouts are three and one-half times more likely than high school graduates to be arrested, and more than eight times as likely to be incarcerated. Throughout the country, 68 percent of state prison inmates have not received a high school diploma. According to researchers, 10 percentage-point increases in graduation rates have historically been shown to reduce murder and assault rates by approximately 20 percent. Increasing graduation rates by 10 percentage points would prevent each year 25 murders and 1,700 aggravated assaults in Kansas, and more than 70 murders and 4,400 aggravated assaults in Missouri.

We have choices to make concerning what we want for our community and the reality is this: the choices we are making as a community are perfectly organized and structured to create the community we have now. Or said differently, we have exactly what we want. If this were not so, we would be making new choices.

We'd be choosing high quality, universal PreK programs (the KCMSD is doing this but currently the State provides no funding for it), we'd be choosing comprehensive birth-to-school models (similar to the Harlem Children's Zone), we'd be doing everything in our power to increase teach quality (as suggested by the New Teacher Project), we'd be choosing to personally engage in the lives of our scholars (like with BE 1!), we'd be choosing to walk away from the socio-economic self-segregation that has come to typify America's urban/suburban dyad. As a community, the choice for our scholars is in our hands: school or the streets. We choose.

Links to experts/research: EdTrust -- Teacher Quality, Center for Public Education -- PreK, Harlem Children's Zone, Fight Crime: Invest in Kids -- Early Education, The New Teacher Project -- Missed Opportunities, BE 1! -- Choose to BE 1!

Labels: KCMSD, What's Not Working