Category Archives: issues

Updates on odds and ends

Posted on February 26, 2013 by | 1 Comment

Updates are due on a number of issues, including:

  • Progress on the Board’s evaluation of our new Superintendent;
  • News on the Governor’s weighted student formula proposal (now called the Local Control Funding Formula, or LCCF); and
  • A proposed local hiring policy that was discussed by the Board’s Buildings and Grounds committee this evening.

Superintendent’s Evaluation:  Since hiring Richard Carranza as our Superintendent, we (the Board and Mr. Carranza) have been working on the Superintendent’s evaluation tool. Evaluating the Superintendent is probably the most important thing a school board does, and since I took my seat in 2008 we have worked on various ways of evaluating the Superintendent — struggling to find an evaluation tool that acknowledges the difficulty of the job, represents both consensus and outlier views on the Superintendent’s performance and conveys the Board’s uniformly high expectations for the  management of the district. Board members have always provided confidential written evaluations of the Superintendent, and we will continue to do this. This year, however, and going forward during Superintendent Carranza’s tenure, the Board and Superintendent have established quantitative performance measurements that we will use to hold the leadership team accountable for progress on key priorities and incorporate into the Board’s overall evaluation of the Superintendent.  This is an important step forward in our commitment to transparency and the district’s stated goal to keep our promises to students and families. 

Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF): There have been many news stories in recent weeks about this proposal, and Sacramento insiders say the likelihood of its passing in its proposed form is unlikely. It’s true that the LCFF proposal — if it is fully-implemented — represents a big increase (almost $4,000 per student) in funding for SFUSD and other districts with large numbers of high-poverty, English Learner students. But in a briefing by our Capitol legislative advocates last week, members of the Board’s Rules, Policy and Legislation committee were told that the Governor’s figures represent a best-case scenario that isn’t coming true anytime soon. Though I am in favor of overhauling California’s school funding mechanisms, and believe in the weighted student formula approach, I’m not holding my breath.  To learn more, here are some good online resources:

Proposed local hiring policy: Last but not least, the Buildings and Grounds Committee had a substantive discussion of a proposal (PDF; as originally introduced, without amendments incorporated) by Commissioners Yee and Fewer (Commissioner Haney has also signed on as a co-author) that would direct the Superintendent to put forward a local hiring policy for Board approval. This has been somewhat controversial — partly because it requires a narrow, carefully crafted approach to construction contracting that does not run afoul of state and Federal laws, and partly because it is a hot button issue that inevitably raises issues of race and economic power. The City passed its own local hiring policy back in 2010, which will eventually mandate that 50 percent of jobs on City contracts go to local residents. The Yee/Fewer/ Haney resolution, as amended by the Committee this evening, would require that the district’s policy provide additional opportunity to minority- and women-owned businesses, strengthen the district’s internship programs for students interested in a career in the building trades, as well as many other objectives. There are specific policy prescriptions in the resolution that we have been advised are not possible within the current legal framework, so there is still a lot of work to be done to fulfill the spirit of the resolution while maintaining a bond construction program that is legally compliant and produces high-quality projects, on-time and under-budget. 

Tomorrow night: the Board votes on the Superintendent’s request to issue layoff notices to 114 administrators, classified staff and certificated educators.

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2012-13 Week 2: Here’s what’s happening

Posted on August 29, 2012 by | 3 Comments

I don’t want this headline to mislead people into thinking that somehow I will find the time to blog what’s happening for every week of the 2012-13 school year — let’s be clear that even though I’d love to have the time to update this blog every day, that’s probably not going to happen. Still, I thought week two of the 2012-13 school year might be a good time to “catch up” readers on what’s happening at the moment, since many of you are just tuning back in after a blissful summer of forgetting about everything SFUSD.

School is in full swing, and the big event for the week is happening midday Friday–at long last, the test scores for the 2011-12 school year will be released. The numbers are under lock and key, but I can say that we think they’ll be good — for all subgroups and particularly for the 14 Superintendent’s Zone schools. One key question will be how many students from various subgroups (racial groups, low-income students, special education students) took the test compared to the previous year, and how many took the California Modified Assessment. If most of our students of color took the CST and still improved, that (in my view) will be a huge vindication of the work the district has done in recent years. We’ll see – tune back in on Friday.

As we celebrate schools that improved, and dissect those that did not, we should remember that the standardized tests measure a very narrow group of indicators. Remember the adage (attributed to everyone from Albert Einstein to sociologist William Bruce Cameron):  Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.  There are many thoughtful people across the state and the country urging states and the educational establishment to define school success more broadly, and indeed a recent article in Mother Jones (and a followup interview on KQED Forum) makes the case that one supposedly “failing” SFUSD school, Mission High, is proof that perhaps we are measuring “success” too narrowly.

There was also a Board meeting tonight — we discussed and adopted the Local Plan for Special Education (a document required by the state where the district attests to the services it is providing for students and provides a basic budget for those services); we heard public comment from some parents on resource and student assignment issues, including one charming grandmother and her grandson who came to praise EPC’s handling of their case — the family had wanted to enroll him in Marina MS for 6th grade but was offered Francisco MS instead — they weren’t thrilled at the prospect but accepted the spot and now, a week and two days in, came to tell the Board and Superintendent how happy they were. They had everyone in the room smiling by the time they finished.

The Board conducted a public hearing on initial proposals to our Crafts unions — civil service plumbers, carpenters, and other building trades. Finally we also passed a resolution urging the district to provide whatever volunteer support it can to a Mission High event in support of the Obama Administration’s new “Deferred Deportation for Childhood Arrivals” policy for undocumented youth.

Probably the most contentious issue being discussed at the moment is a proposal from the Superintendent to eliminate the middle school (grades 6-8) at International Studies Academy (ISA) on Potrero Hill. Currently, ISA is a 6-12 school and is designated as the feeder school for Bryant and Daniel Webster Elementary. Instead, the Daniel Webster community has advocated for a Pre-K-8 school on Potrero Hill that would utilize the ISA site. There are some good arguments in favor of this plan: Daniel Webster is growing, ISA is currently under-enrolled and under-performing, and the latest enrollment data shows that demand for Daniel Webster may have slowed since the feeder plan was announced –the Daniel Webster community believes requests have slowed down because prospective families do not want to be fed into ISA for middle school. However, the current proposal would send Daniel Webster and Bryant 5th graders to Everett and keep the ISA open as a small high school.  There are arguments in favor of this approach as well – Everett has space to accommodate these students and is growing in popularity; ISA is one of the few small high schools in the district’s portfolio and represents an important option for students.

The proposal was introduced tonight for first reading but was actually discussed in depth at Monday’s Ad-Hod Committee on Student Assignment — there was a great deal of public comment from the Daniel Webster community and questioning from Board members on how staff arrived at this recommendation above other options.  Tonight, the Superintendent acknowledged that the proposal is affected by a complex mix of factors including transportation planning, enrollment projections and our middle school quality initiative — staff will be hashing out these factors and many others at an internal meeting later this week and after that will decide whether to withdraw the proposal, revise it, or bring the proposal and other possible options back for a deeper discussion at a Committee of the Whole in mid-September. I’ll post more information when I have it.

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The cautionary tale of West Contra Costa

Posted on June 4, 2012 by | Comments Off

State Supt. Tom Torlakson accepts West Contra Costa USD’s final payment from Board President Charles Ramsey as students look on.

On Friday school districts around the state cheered for West Contra Costa Unified, which finally paid off its debt to the state of California four years early. Charles Ramsey, the President of the WCCUSD Board, wrote:

It has been a long journey back to fiscal solvency and local control. Our community and school district have learned a great deal from this dreadful experience. . .  [N]ever allow your district to go into state takeover. It is worse than you can imagine. Some will say that it is fine for the state to come in  . . . As Nancy Reagan stated “Just say no”.

Mr. Ramsey is right — state takeover has been a horrible deal for the students of Richmond, El Cerrito and other communities. Their school district has paid the state $19 million in interest, on top of the $29 million that the state initially spent 21 years ago to bail the district out  (the current board was not involved in the 1990 bankruptcy).  Teachers took pay cuts, school were closed, and programs were cut to pay the debt.

Districts that do not maintain required reserves ($17 million in SFUSD’s case for 2012-13) or positive cash flow three years out are risking state takeover. And state takeover doesn’t just mean a loan that takes decades to pay off. It also means a state administrator, who has the power to set aside labor contracts, close schools, fire staff or take any other action to bring a district back into solvency — that is their only job, and they don’t have to listen to parents, students or teachers in making their decisions.  Trustees from other districts that have  been through state takeover (Oakland USD is one) are in complete agreement with Mr. Ramsey — don’t go there.

SF Chronicle report >>>>

KCBS radio report >>>

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Recap: the rhetoric ratchets up

Posted on May 8, 2012 by | 7 Comments

If you haven’t noticed rising tensions between the district and its main union, United Educators of San Francisco (UESF), you haven’t been paying attention.  The school district and UESF are again in contract negotiations, as the two-year agreement crafted in June 2010 expires June 30, 2012. In June 2010, the district was facing a $113 million deficit over two years (201o-11 and 2011-12), and UESF members and other employees gave furlough (unpaid) days and other concessions to close that gap.

Those concessions expire on June 30, but the budget crisis is not over, based on an analysis by Deputy Superintendent Myong Leigh at tonight’s meeting. California school districts are required to submit board-approved three-year budgets by June 30 of each year, and the SFUSD figures–based on the passage of tax measures on this November’s ballot–appear in the chart below (note that the figures only represent the Unrestricted General Fund — the largest and least restricted pot of money the district spends). There are additional monies — facilities bond funds, special education funding from the state and Federal government, student nutrition reimbursement and other revenues– that are not included here. Many of these programs (special education and student nutrition are major examples) also require a contribution from the Unrestricted General Fund to continue a minimum level of service. So the figures below do not include revenues from restricted programs but do include any contributions of unrestricted funds that are required to keep programs funded by restricted funds completely solvent.

You might also have heard of two state revenue initiatives just concluding the signature gathering phase to qualify for the ballot — the Governor has one, called the “Schools and Local Public Safety Protection Act,” and the California PTA and civil rights attorney Molly Munger have another, called “Our Children Our Future.” Each claim to raise money for education, but it is beyond the scope of this post to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of each. Anyway, districts are being encouraged to budget as if the Governor’s initiative passes; to be prudent most are preparing two budgets: “scenario A (taxes pass)” or “scenario B (taxes fail).” Since Governor Brown’s initative trumps Our Children Our Future if both pass, SFUSD and other districts are using pass/fail outcomes for the Governor’s initiative as the best/worst case scenarios.

SCENARIO A: UNRESTRICTED GENERAL FUND IF TAXES PASS

What the numbers mean:   The school district began the current year with $55.8 million in the bank, which includes $16.6 million in “designated reserves.” These are funds that the state will not let districts spend, under any circumstances, because these funds are expected to be available to state regulators if and when an insolvent district is taken over. In plain language, school boards and district administrators do not have the authority to spend designated reserves. In SFUSD’s case, that leaves $18.7 million in cash that can be applied to the 2012-13 beginning balance.

2012-13: If you add the unspendable reserve of $16.6 million to the available $18.7 million in cash left over from 2011-12, you get a beginning balance of $35.3 million. Current spending projections, which include the expiration of the UESF contract concessions from 2010-11 and 2011-12, add up to $372.5 million. Expected state and Federal revenues add up to $318.6 million. After the beginning surplus of $35.3 million is added in and the required unspendable reserve is subtracted, the district is looking at a deficit of $35.5 million at the end of 2012-13.

2013-14 and beyond: Without any cuts (on top of the cuts we have made in previous years), and/or concessions (remember that earlier contract concessions like furlough days expire on June 30,2012), the negative ending balance in 2012-13 and subsequent years (indicated in red in the table above) is is a problem.  The state will take districts over if they cannot demonstrate a positive ending balance at the end of the next fiscal year; they put you on a watch list and/or begin to intervene if you cannot demonstrate a positive ending balance for the following fiscal year or the year after that.

SCENARIO B: UNRESTRICTED GENERAL FUND IF TAXES FAIL

What the numbers mean:  By comparing the A/B scenarios, you can easily tell that revenues take a hit in 2012-13 and 2013-14 if the taxes don’t pass, which has a corresponding effect on the ending balances for each fiscal year. Still, it’s also apparent from Scenario A that even with new revenues, education funding in California is not at all out of the woods.

How things stand now:  There is a great deal of uncertainty around the district’s budget, not just because of the unknown outcome of the tax proposals (both of which may appear on the November 2012 ballot).  In addition, district leadership and UESF are far apart in their understanding of the district’s fiscal situation, and of what is affordable and what is not. Last week, district negotiators declared that they had reached an impasse with UESF, but union negotiators disagreed with that position and believe there has not been sufficient discussion of their proposals.  The district has appealed to the Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) to determine whether there is any use in the sides continuing to talk or whether a mediator should be appointed. (It would take hours for me to describe what each side has proposed, so if you are really interested you can find descriptions of district proposals here and descriptions of UESF proposals here).

The bottom line: As a Board Member,  I have to decide whether the projections/scenarios above are valid, and whether the funding priorities that will be proposed in the Superintendent’s 2012-13 budget (to be introduced for first reading in early June) are fiscally responsible and in line with the Board’s policy priorities. On Thursday, UESF is holding the first of two votes required to authorize an eventual strike, and its members must decide much the same things: are the district’s publicly disseminated budget scenarios valid? Are the district’s proposals fiscally responsible and aligned with the district’s academic and policy goals? How do the UESF proposals align with the district’s academic policy goals, and are they equally as fiscally responsible as the district’s proposals?

Determining the answers to these questions is not easy, especially since the picture at the state level is still so unclear. Money that is expected today may fail to materialize if the taxes don’t pass in November.  In declaring impasse, the district has asked for an independent mediator to evaluate the arguments on both sides, and help craft a proposed settlement that (in his or her judgment) addresses both sides.

So, layoffs . . .  Until there is an agreement, the district must take steps to be sure its three-year budget is balanced ahead of the June 30 deadline. In February, the Board voted to issue 333 preliminary layoff notices to certificated employees (administrators, teachers, paraprofessionals, counselors, etc.) — those preliminary notices must be issued by March 15.  In its resolution to issue those notices, the Board agreed to skip teachers in 14 Superintendent’s Zone schools, a controversial decision that required review by an Administrative Law Judge.

Yesterday, the judge issued her decision and ruled that the district must conduct layoffs according to seniority, instead of skipping teachers at some schools altogether. Though many Board members believe our original action would have had benefits to the Superintendent’s Zone schools — many of which are historically low-performing–after the judge’s decision we unanimously rejected the Superintendent’s proposal to proceed with the skip and instead adopted (6-1) a substitute resolution that follows seniority to issue permanent layoff notices to 210 teachers, paraprofessionals, nurses, counselors, etc. and eight administrators.  As I said in my remarks before voting tonight, the board tried to do something noble by attempting to keep staffs at the Superintendent’s Zone schools intact — now we will just have to find other ways to support these schools and reduce their high rates of staff turnover.

Other items

  • A petition to open a new KIPP charter high school was introduced and sent to the Curriculum and Budget committees. It will return to the full Board for a vote probably on June 14.
  • A technical fix to the Board’s policy on required qualifications for new JROTC instructors (requiring them to enroll in a P.E. credential program soon after being hired rather than the original language, which stated they must already be enrolled in a P.E. credential program) will be heard in the Personnel and Budget committees and return to the Board sometime in June.
  • Parents from Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy came to protest the  hiring process for their interim principal.
  • A member of the public became angry when he saw President Yee and I chuckling during the layoff discussion — I can understand why it would seem insensitive to be joking during that discussion, and the timing was bad. Still, what we were laughing about was unrelated to the layoff matter being discussed — it was rueful acknowledgement that we had utterly bumbled parliamentary procedure in introducing an “amendment for substitution”  as a “substitute motion” in place of the Superintendent’s original motion, and then calling for a second at the wrong time. Our mistakes required not one but two gentle corrections by Ms. Evelyn Wilson, our long-suffering Parliamentarian.
  • Read “Schools Under Stress,” a report issued today by the education think tank Edsource.  It’s a very thorough discussion of all the budget woes facing California schools.

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Recap: A new Superintendent!

Posted on April 25, 2012 by | 10 Comments

Richard listened as Carlos and members of the Board said lots of nice things about him; his daughter sat at the staff table and recorded every word for posterity.

The big news from tonight’s meeting is that the Board unanimously voted to confirm Richard Carranza as the new Superintendent of SFUSD, beginning in July 2012. He will receive a $245,000 annual salary each year for the term of his three year contract.

Richard has never been a Superintendent before, but he has served as Carlos’ deputy for the last two years and has proved himself more than up to the job of Superintendent of SFUSD. He is smart, hardworking and focused on the job at hand; we like that he has school-age children (two lovely and poised daughters) who are attending (and excelling at) SFUSD schools.  In his remarks this evening, Richard told a story about a time in his life when he wasn’t sure he wanted to go to college. His father took him to work at his job cutting sheet metal in 112 degree Arizona heat, and told him: “I don’t want you to work like me. Work with your head, not your hands.” That was the lesson that set him on the road to being an educator, Richard said, as his proud family looked on (one thing I learned tonight — Richard is an identical twin, and you would be hard-pressed to tell him from his brother Ruben –four minutes younger — if they dressed and combed their hair alike).  Carlos was visibly moved as the Board voted, because having Richard succeed him has long been a dream for him.

The bottom line is that Richard is the right man for the district at this moment. We have made a lot of progress since Carlos arrived, and Richard has proved himself to be a person with the vision, skill and the drive to carry the district to the next level even as he has a deep and first-hand knowledge of where we have been. In addition, I will always be personally grateful to Richard for the way he has championed the special education overhaul.

Other items of note from tonight’s agenda:

  • Board members unanimously passed a resolution authored by several student delegates, articulating a broad bathroom access policy for students. Though each school will be able to craft their own specific rules about bathroom access, the new policy makes clear that bathroom access is a right, and students should not have to explain their bodily functions or restrain them at the order of an adult. Bathrooms should remain unlocked during the school day, and students should be allowed to access them as needed as long as that right to access is not abused.
  • We also passed updates to the Board’s comprehensive health education policy, and heard a presentation of data about some of the health challenges that still affect our students. The updated policy makes clear that health education is a priority for SFUSD students and requests that the district redouble its effort to be sure all students are receiving the recommended number of lessons each year.
  • Large groups from Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy and Buena Vista Horace Mann each came to discuss their principal leadership (the Harvey Milk group spoke in favor of their current principal while the Buena Vista Horace Mann group spoke in favor of a past administrator taking the soon-to-be vacant principal’s job). We heard from teachers who are affected by the Board’s authorization of layoffs back in February, and were urged to rescind those layoffs as soon as possible. A group of non-English-speaking parents came to advocate for more Transitional Kindergarten sites.

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Recap: April 10, 2012 — a little good news!

Posted on April 11, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Update: Oops and a big thank you to Bernal Dad who pointed out that I neglected to mention that Daniel Webster parents came by during public comment to again let us know that they are unhappy with the choice of ISA as a feeder middle school for Daniel Webster. The parents propose a split campus K-8 with the ISA site.

A mostly routine agenda tonight, with a lot of public comment on various topics (see below). I’m leading with the good news, which is that the district has finally reached a deal to sell 700 Font St., a long-abandoned school site that is pretty much smack in the middle of the SF State campus.

As soon the property was formally declared surplus (not sure when that happened but it was probably almost a decade ago), it made sense for SF State to purchase it, but the sticking point over many years has been price. At one point, probably 2007, the district had a buyer and a deposit, but the $13 million deal eventually fell through.

I visited the site back in February and it is an eyesore — it’s boarded up, full of graffiti and a haven for homeless people and those who are troubled or otherwise up to no good.  Because of its condition, age and general layout, it is no longer usable as a school site. SF State has  also had numerous security issues with the site (the property line — on the left — is just feet away from student dorms).

So it’s truly win-win for both parties that we have finally come to an agreement to sell the property for $11.1 million. By law, that income can’t benefit our general fund, as proceeds from real estate assets can only be spent on capital improvements or purchasing other property. However, here’s what it can do: the district will use the $11.1 million to pay down long-term debt on another property, which will realize $875,000 annually in interest savings — interest payments that would have come out of the general fund. In other words, $875,000 we would have had to pay each year for the next 16 years will now be saved and can go to the classroom.

Other highlights from tonight’s meeting:

  • A presentation from the Bay Area Urban Debate League, which provides afterschool debate classes in a number of SFUSD high schools. Debate is such a great way to learn critical thinking, public speaking and general literacy, so I remain a huge fan of this program. Program participants urged us to find ways to make the course a regular part of the academic day at the high schools, and it currently qualifies as a “G” elective under the district’s (and UC’s) requirements.
  • The Board unanimously passed a resolution authored by President Yee which clarifies the support and assistance the district will give to current employees who are non-citizens but working under an H-1B or other visa. Commissioner Yee’s resolution was born from a case where an employee’s work visa expired, and advocates were critical of what they saw as the district’s lack of support for the employee’s application to renew that visa.
  •  Public comment from parents and teachers at Paul Revere, Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, and Visitacion Valley Elementary, regarding personnel decisions. We have heard a great deal from different factions of Paul Revere parents this year, some of whom dislike the current principal and others who like her. Tonight’s group spoke in the principal’s favor and urged the Board to renew her contract (spring is the time we make most of our staffing decisions for the next school year). A group of Harvey Milk parents and teachers, by contrast, urged us to overturn a site council decision to forgo an interview process and offer the current principal another year at the school. Parents and teachers from Visitacion Valley Elementary spoke against the principal’s decision not to “re-elect” (rehire) a probationary teacher at the school.  These are all touchy issues with strong feelings on all sides — because they involve past or future personnel votes by the Board, I’m not going to comment on the merits of each of these positions and no particular opinion should be inferred by what I’ve written above.
  • Finally, three parents of  children who qualify for transitional kindergarten came to protest the district’s handling of the state’s Kindergarten Readiness Act (passed in 2010), which gradually moves the eligibility date  for Kindergarten back over three years, so that eventually children must be age five by September 1 of the year they enter Kindergarten (from the original December 1 eligibility date).  Some believe their current four-year-olds would do just fine in Kindergarten and so are urging the district to issue age waivers to their children. Others are fine with waiting another year for their children to enter Kindergarten, but take issue with the fact that there is not a broader choice of Transitional Kindergarten programs to choose from (the law requires districts to offer Transitional Kindergarten to four-year-olds who otherwise would have been eligible to enter Kindergarten).  I’ve talked to Sen. Simitian, who wrote the legislation to move the eligibility date and create Transitional Kindergarten, and I believe he did a good thing by drawing a new line for Kindergarten readiness. Kindergarten is much more academic than previously, and children who (for whatever reason) are not academically ready really suffer. At the same time, I believe an unintended consequence of the legislation was to create another complex and possibly unfunded mandate for schools. SFUSD’s handling of this issue has been far from perfect but I believe it is compliant with the law and minimizes the district’s financial risk in a time of great fiscal peril (did anyone see the news that state revenues, yet again, fell short of predictions? That’s fiscal peril for schools).  But no, the district’s plan does not meet the needs of all stakeholders and I’m sorry for that.

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Meeting recap: March 13, 2012

Posted on March 13, 2012 by | 3 Comments

Update: I was so tired last night I completely forgot to mention another bright spot from the meeting — an update from Peer Resources on the programs they provide in 13 schools ( high schools and middle schools). This is a fabulous program that teaches teens conflict resolution and leadership skills, and it has changed a lot of lives! It’s a program of the San Francisco Education Fund that needs to be in every high school and middle school. Thanks to Peer Resources for an uplifting report. 

Anger over the Board’s Feb. 28 vote on layoffs continues. We had a large group of UESF members and other labor supporters address the board to oppose the layoffs, and the Board’s 5-1 decision to skip teachers at 14 lower-performing schools.

Some of the arguments were economic: do we really need to do layoffs? What about the district’s reserves? My answer to those questions is that the reserves aren’t enough for the worst case scenario if the tax proposals currently headed to the ballot fail, if the state’s revenues continue to falter and negotiations on the new contract do not produce any savings over projected costs for 2012-13.

Some of the arguments were political: We should be arguing with Sacramento, not amongst ourselves; The district’s layoff strategy is divisive and represents union-busting; Other schools are just as needy as those the district chose to skip. I agree that we should place the blame with Sacramento, but I don’t agree that skipping the SZ schools is union-busting. In voting for the skip my intent was not to weaken the union, but instead to support — in a limited way– schools that have under-performed for generations.  My friends at UESF strongly disagree. Are there more underperforming schools that could benefit by keeping their teachers? YES. But skipping the 25 hard-to-staff schools would have presented an even greater challenge to UESF and I believe for that reason, the Superintendent chose not to go there.  Still, several of us quietly agreed with the El Dorado staff when they told us we had not gone far enough to do anything for their school.  (And I must give an annual shoutout to the El Dorado staff for the way they stand up for their school and for each other. They don’t think much of the Board or district leadership, but anyway I do appreciate their efforts and their advocacy. People are listening, even if maybe you think they aren’t.)

Several members of the Martin Luther King Jr. High community came to talk to us about discipline, leadership and personnel issues at their school; we also heard from several parents of children who are eligible for Transitional Kindergarten and remain unhappy with the district’s decision to go ahead with opening two TK programs — one in Visitacion Valley and one in the Bayview.

Board members unanimously passed a resolution in support of the SF Botanical Garden Society’s plans to upgrade its educational programs through the construction of a “Center for Sustainable Gardening.” These programs benefit thousands of SF public school students each year and I was glad to author a resolution that brings  the Society’s dream of a true education center at the Botanical Garden a bit closer to reality.

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Feb 28 meeting recap: layoffs will skip Superintendent’s Zone schools

Posted on February 29, 2012 by | 11 Comments

Despite some tears and a few tense exchanges between Board members and union leadership, the Board tonight voted 5-1 (Fewer, Mendoza, Norton, Wynns and Yee in favor, Maufas opposed, Murase absent) to:

  • Issue preliminary layoff notices to 123 administrators and 210 instructional staff (teachers, nurses, counselors, etc), as well as 35 early education employees and 106 paraprofessionals (91 others will see their hours potentially reduced);
  • Conduct layoffs according to seniority but skip certain high-need credential areas (math, science, bilingual or special education) and all teachers working in the 14 Superintendent’s Zone schools (they are: Bryant ES, Bret Harte ES, Cesar Chavez ES, Carver ES, Drew ES, Flynn ES, John Muir ES, Malcolm X ES, Paul Revere K-8, Horace Mann/Buena Vista K-8, Everett MS, Mission HS, Thurgood Marshall HS, and John O’Connell HS).
  • The HR department presentation with data/logistics is here.

No one likes layoffs, and authorizing the issuance of layoff notices is the toughest vote the Board takes each year. The process is flawed in many ways — the state doesn’t pass a budget until June (or often later) and yet state law requires districts to notify employees in March if they might not have a job in August.  Uncertainty is bad for individual employees, for the administrators who don’t know who will staff their classrooms in the coming year, and for students who don’t know if their teachers will be there for them when they come back after the summer. 

This year, the annual layoff discussion came with the added twist of skipping the Superintendent’s Zone (SZ) schools. The Superintendent created the SZ in the 2010-11 school year, in an attempt to better focus resources on the district’s lowest performing schools and most underserved neighborhoods. The correlation isn’t perfect — there are a number of low-performing, high-need schools (El Dorado ES and Cleveland ES come to mind) that aren’t in the SZ, and some of the SZ schools are not low-performing (Malcolm X). However, the general idea behind the SZ is that schools (and students) in the Bayview and Mission neighborhood need extra attention and resources.

There has been confusion over the SZ, partly relating to the fact that our SIG schools — designated by the state and Federal government as some of the state’s lowest-performing schools deserving of highly-restricted but generous restructuring grants — are a subset of SZ schools. So, SIG schools get money that other SZ schools don’t get, and that money is governed by a separate (and strict) set of rules. In addition,  after the passage of Prop. A in 2008,  the Superintendent is allowed to unilaterally designate 25 schools “hard-to-staff” and offer teachers in those schools additional salary for teaching there.  All SZ schools are hard-to-staff, but not all hard-to-staff schools are SZ. Get it?

Still, the bottom line for the Superintendent in making the proposal to skip the SZ schools from layoffs was that we have invested millions of dollars in additional salary, professional development, and other resources in the chief asset of the SZ schools: their people. To simply drop them into a seniority-based layoff, he argued, would represent a waste of that investment.

The union leadership had its deeply-felt arguments as well: the annual layoff dance is akin to fighting over crumbs, when the real fight is better waged in Sacramento; and seniority is a bedrock issue for teacher unity — dividing the district’s teacher corps across schools is a strategy that demoralizes staff across the district and doesn’t address the real problem, which is that schools improve when we invest resources in them. Besides, there are many other struggling schools (the aforementioned El Dorado and Cleveland being excellent examples) which will now suffer a greater impact from layoffs because their equally-junior colleagues down the road will be skipped. To the teacher’s union, the Superintendent’s arguments were simply a divide and conquer strategy that represent a shot across the bow in yet another tough contract negotiation year.

Make no mistake, the decision to ask the Board to approve a wider authority for skips this year was provocative — the district created the SZ in 2010-11 but did not at that time articulate a plan to use it to make a case for “special skills and competencies” (the legal standard required under CA law to skip a teacher in a seniority-based layoff).  In February 2011, when we were asked to approve the layoff criteria for the current school year, SZ schools were not established as a skip criteria. There has never been a clearly-published criteria for what makes a school an SZ school, nor one for determining when a school has improved to the point that it is no longer eligible for the SZ.  Putting all of this together, tonight’s vote was a very bitter pill for the union to swallow, and the leadership let us know that they did not appreciate it.

So . . . my reasons? I had a hard time with this and spent a lot of time today trying to find a way to remain true to my commitment to support teachers in all of our schools, as well as my commitments to the students in our lowest-performing schools and poorest neighborhoods. I thought hard about a potential compromise — skipping just the nine SIG schools rather than all 14 SZ schools, but realized that such a move would create a disproportionate impact on four Bayview schools in the SZ — Charles Drew, Malcolm X, Bret Harte, and Thurgood Marshall. In the end, I found I accepted the need for layoffs should our budget picture become the worst case scenario, and decided to go with the lesser of two evils: a layoff strategy that preserves our investments in 14 of the district’s most struggling schools, as opposed to a layoff strategy that could, when all is said and done, put those investments at risk. Hopefully, if the district accesses the City’s Rainy Day Fund and reaches agreements with our unions that put additional money on the table, few or no layoffs will be necessary; but we won’t know that for a few more months.

Finally, I want to commend my colleagues for their respectful, thoughtful and heartfelt discussion on this very difficult issue tonight. Commissioner Fewer deserves special mention for going first and taking the most heat for her passionate and forthright stance. Her actions tonight took great courage, and made it a little easier for everyone else to stand with her.

But wait there’s more! Transportation policy update

We were all pretty much in a daze after taking the required four (count ‘em, four!) votes on the various aspects of the layoffs, so it came as a surprise to me that a lengthy update on General Education transportation policy had also been scheduled for tonight’s meeting — somehow I missed it in the agenda!

But this was an important update as well — many more schools will see transportation cuts next year according to the schedule first announced in December 2010.  The following elementary schools are expected to lose transportation entirely in the 2012-13 school year, subject to final approval in mid-March: Alamo, Argonne, Buena Vista, Cleveland, El Dorado, Glen Park, Hillcrest, Lafayette, McKinley, New Traditions, Ortega, Parks, Redding, Sheridan, Starr King, Stevenson, Taylor, Tenderloin, Ulloa, Vis Valley.

A number of other schools will gain routes, in order to maintain or expand access to specific citywide programs (language immersion, K-8) from CTIP-1 neighborhoods.

For those seeking more information about ongoing transportation cuts/realignment, here is the Powerpoint presented to the Board this evening.

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Posted in BOE, budget, Improving schools, issues, Not so great things going on

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Happy Valentine’s Day! (Feb. 14 meeting recap)

Posted on February 15, 2012 by | 4 Comments

Update (2/16): The district has just released an FAQ on the age waiver issue around Transitional Kindergarten. It’s here.

Lots of routine things on the agenda tonight, with a few items of note:

  • National Board Certified Teachers! I am always cheered by this annual event, where we honor the teachers who have achieved National Board Certification — essentially a rigorous advanced teaching credential.  SFUSD now has 204 NBCTs, which in percentage terms means we are in the top 2 percent of districts nationally and one of the highest in the state of California (LAUSD has more than we do but they are also 10 times our size).
  • Leadership High School: The Board unanimously approved the renewal of Leadership’s charter for another five years. Board members found the school’s presentations and application to be strong, even after the California Charter Schools Association recommended closing the school late last year. Several weeks ago, I was able to attend portfolio defense day at Leadership, where graduating seniors present a compilation of their work around four schoolwide outcomes:  critical thinking, social responsibility, personal responsibility, and communication. I found the students to be articulate, thoughtful, respectful of each other, and very earnest in their reflections on their academic work. In addition, I was impressed that Leadership seniors must pass A-G course work with a C or better to graduate — a more rigorous standard than SFUSD-managed high schools.  San Francisco has higher-performing public high schools (based on test scores, at least) than Leadership, but the Board has never believed that test scores are the only or even the best measure of a school’s quality.
  • QEIA Waivers:  The Board approved the Superintendent’s request to submit waiver applications to exempt the district from certain provisions of the Quality Education Investment Act (QEIA) for the 2012-13 school year, including required class size reduction.  QEIA provides additional funds to fourteen schools in SFUSD as part of a settlement of a lawsuit filed against the state by the California Teacher’s Association.  The settlement spreads QEIA funding over seven years, and sunsets at the end of the 2013-14 school year.
  • Transitional Kindergarten: Board members heard comment from a number of families distressed by the Superintendent’s decision to suspend implementation of Transitional Kindergarten. I have heard from a number of these families, and though I am very sorry for the uncertainty they are experiencing, I can’t at this point advocate for the Superintendent to change directions because of the state budget’s uncertainty and other logistical factors. Some are urging age waivers for students who just missed the cutoff, but even “just offer a waiver” isn’t as easy as it sounds. Cutting TK funding is a proposal, not law, and offering districts funding for young students “waived” into Kindergarten is also just a proposal. There’s no guarantee that when all is said and done with the state budget, districts will actually receive funding for students allowed to attend Kindergarten even though they don’t meet the age cutoff.  And even if districts were assured funding for every student enrolled in Kindergarten, regardless of age, it’s not possible for SFUSD to come up with a fair and well-thought-out waiver policy within the time constraints of the first round — the computer run for the first round of 2012-13 assignment will begin any day, if it hasn’t already. Any delay means ALL applicants will not receive their school assignment offers within the promised timeframe, with numerous ripple effects.
  • Personnel issues: We also heard public comment from staff and parents from several middle schools who are concerned about various personnel issues. This is the time of year when principals begin notifying probationary teachers if they will not be “re-elected” in the following year (in their first two years of teaching, teachers can be dismissed without cause; after those two probationary years, teachers in California are considered “tenured” and can only be fired for cause or laid off for economic reasons strictly based on seniority), and several addressed the Board this evening on issues related to their non-reelection.  The Board will vote on preliminary layoff notices at the February 28 meeting — these will be mailed by March 15 to employees based on seniority. Probationary teachers that are “reelected” may still receive layoff notices if they do not teach in a high-need area, because by definition they have low seniority.
  • Miscellaneous: The Board approved a number of changes to its P120 operating rules as part of a long-term effort to update and standardize our Board rules and policies and put them online in a searchable format; we also re-appointed members of our Citizen’s Bond Oversight Committee and approved terms for upcoming bond sales.

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Posted in BOE, issues

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Meeting recap: January 24, 2012

Posted on January 25, 2012 by | 3 Comments

On tonight’s agenda:

  • A resolution commemorating the 100th anniversary of the San Francisco Unified School District’s PTA (the organization’s celebration of that anniversary will be held February 10 at Patio Espanol — more details here - PDF);
  • Highlights of the school district’s (and its partners’) celebration of Black History month this February  – events include the African American Read In,  the African American Honor Roll celebration honoring 1,200 African-American SFUSD students with a GPA of 3.0 or better (February 29 at St. Mary’s Cathedral, 6 p.m. $10 donation requested), as well as the annual oratory contest sponsored by the San Francisco Alliance of Black School Educators (Feb. 25 at Thurgood Marshall High School, 8 a.m. to 12 noon);
  • “Sunshining” of proposals and counter-proposals for contract negotiations with United Administrators of San Francisco and United Educators of San Francisco;
  • Approval of the annual spending plan for the Public Education Enrichment Fund (PEEF) — Commissioners reviewed the plan at last week’s Committee of the Whole meeting, and heard testimony from members of the PEEF Comunity Advisory Committee suggesting that three activities (teacher recruitment, custodial services for early education centers and funding for the district’s new formative assessments) should be funded with other monies (district staff wrote a response to that report here). For more information and lots more documents, visit the  PEEF web site, which asks for a password but seems to let you in if you just click cancel. In the end, the Board appreciated the input but supported the original spending plan suggested by staff.;
  • Review and approval of the district’s annual independent financial audit — there were two minor findings related to attendance accounting in the district’s early education and afterschool programs, but the independent auditor expressed confidence that the findings were being addressed, and commended staff for a growing string of clean audit reports;
  • An overview of the Governor’s budget proposal released earlier this month – probably the only good thing I can say about this proposal is that it is very much not a done deal. For reasons I can’t quite explain, even the “rosy” scenario — where the Governor’s proposed tax increases passes — results in significant additional cuts;
  • Public comment from parents and community members at Alice Fong Yu and Paul Revere,  and introduction by UESF leadership of the union’s bargaining team for upcoming negotiations. A commenter last week asked me why I haven’t devoted much time in the blog to the competing statements of Paul Revere parents, and the reason is:  I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to muse publicly on personnel issues. This whole episode has been ugly and disruptive for everyone involved and I don’t see how it helps for me to “report” allegations from one side or another.  I did feel momentarily shamed by the comment from one Revere parent who noted the district’s swift response to an outcry from Alice Fong Yu parents when they protested changes to their immersion program (after a meeting with the Curriculum Committee and district leadership last week, a deal for a pilot program was struck that will increase the population of English Learners at the school but maintain its essentially “one-way” immersion model — and tonight the community came to thank us for our swift reaction).  Why weren’t we able to resolve the Paul Revere situation in as swift a manner? the Revere parent asked.  The answer is complex — personnel issues usually can’t be resolved in one meeting and certainly not in public; and there is not the same unified perspective in the Paul Revere community  – teachers and parents have  been vocal about their divided opinions on which direction the school should go. Still, he’s right that struggling schools can’t easily summon 100 parents in matching shirts to attend a Board meeting, but their concerns are just as pressing.

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Posted in BOE, budget, issues, politics

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