As this school year comes to a close, there is an electricity in the air. For our seniors, it's graduation. For our families, it's summer vacation and for our administration and teachers it's the feeling that change is not far off. Change, in fact, is just around the corner. In July, our district will welcome a new superintendent, a candidate chosen by our board in part because he comes from within - a graduate of Christina's schools who spent the bulk of his school experience not just in Delaware but in our very own district.
One of the first important tasks that our board and new superintendent will face is the development of new three-year strategic plan as the current plan expires in 2013. When I think back my early years serving Christina, I am amazed at how education in Delaware has changed and how much of it has stayed the same. And I am reminded of what an important role the next strategic plan will play.
When I was first elected to the board, as a parent entering a whole new world, I knew I had a learning curve ahead of me. What I quickly realized was that while many in Christina wanted to do better for our children, were desparate to see achievement improve, we were severely handicapped by the debt repayment of the state bail-out loan that kept CSD alive after Dr. Wise left the district in financial shambles. With so much of our local funds siphoned off to make loan payments and with extremely restrictive funding formulas set for state and federal money, there was little that could be done but stay the course - right the sinking ship and keep those big dreams in check.
In the intervening years, CSD has completely repaid that loan, seen a decrease in enrollment as parents exercise school choice, felt the pain of our state government cutting education funding and passing transportation costs back onto the districts and to tax payers, struggled with going to referendum when our tax base was least likely to be able to afford it, and tackled Race to the Top and Partnership Zone plans in short order time frames as required by the Department of Education. The last two years have been a crash course in education reform for local school boards all the while under a national microscope who have made it clear that Rttt cannot fail in Delaware. That fear of failure is so great that business interests in Delaware have taken school board elections to a whole new level.
When CSD goes back to the development table to create its next strategic plan, our district will have tremendous challenges to address. Of the most important to tackle are the reform interventions that were mandated by Race to the Top - interventions that the Memorandum of Understanding (or contract between the districts and state) requires districts to continue even after the Rttt well runs dry.
The Governor, nor the Department of Education, have not offered any guidance to date to school boards on how to maintain these programs when the federal funding is gone. CSD will also need to address growing pains in our PZ schools. While PZ schools have received greater funding and more flexibility in spending those funds, these schools are only given two years to make tremendous turnaround in student achievement. If the Transformation model utilized in our schools doesn't produce those gains, the PZ regulations require these schools to undergo another intervention model. Our strategic plan must address both successes and failures in our PZ schools.
But, our plan must do even than that - it must set a comprehensive course for all of our schools. Our next plan will need to be guided by parents, community members, teachers, and board members who speak more for our children than for corporate and business interest. The people in the room must be willing to go out of their comfort zones and look to our neighboring districts and charter schools. CSD's leadership should be willing to engage successful charter schools to see which practices can be replicated in our traditional schools. We must look to our neighbors like Red Clay who have developed successful magnet schools. Cab Calloway and Conrad are in great demand. It's worthwhile to spend time studying how Red Clay achieved the magnet school conversion and use that knowledge to inform the choices we make in Christina. And we must double down and listen to our parents, our students, and our teachers - the most important voices in the room.
This strategic plan comes at a crucial time for our children. We must engage in the work of revisioning education education so that schools meet the needs and goals of our students. For some, that goal will be completing college and and attaining advanced degrees. So much of the focus these days is on the students that fit this mold.
But, I believe that we must also invest in programs that will turn out high school graduates with skills and core knowledge that they will need to go immediately into the workforce. It's not enough to pick up a job at the local pizza place. Our graduates need be ready to enter the many trades that support our economy. Once upon a time, a student who was interested in the trades would choice to the Vo-Tech School Districts. Today, Delaware's vo-tech schools have waiting lists - alienating some students from the programs of study they desire. If Christina is to be competitive, we need to develop programs that will engage all students - not just those headed for college.
This next Strategic plan must also speak heavily to the challenges in our middle schools. Christina's middle schools are large campuses that consolidate our children that come from much smaller schools into one boiling pot. All of our middle schools are considered "failing" with regards to AYP. Much of the work to change the trajectory of our under achieving high school students must begin in our middle schools. Yet, as of now, none of our middle schools have been appropriately selected for PZ status. This means that the funding for these schools is still very constricted by state funding formulas and that Christina parents cannot expect to see any infusion of "extra" money that our PZ schools receive the School Improvement Grant.
We must also look at the future of our elementary schools. Many of these schools are high achieving, they are our superstars in so many ways! We must be sure we preserve in these schools the practices that work well. More than that, we must engage their teachers and leaders in helping us identify strategies that will be impactful in our elementaries that are persistently failing. I look to our newest elementary school, Oberle, on the cusp of persistently failing, sandwiched between two Superior elementary schools serving very similar demographics in the same geographic region of the district. What can Oberle's nearby schools share that can help the grown-ups help our children?
Our next strategic plan must address all of these challenges and more. Our school board needs to be comprised of people who really understand what our district faces. Our board members must be devoted to every child, not just some. The real future of our district will be in their hands - not just in leading the plan's development, but ensuring that our district implements those programs and ideas that parents want. Our board members must be accountable to that - I want to be.
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