| ACCORDING TO OUR BOARD 227 DISTRICT POLICY MANUAL AND BYLAWS, TODAY, WE DESPERATELY NEED NEW SCHOOL BOARD TRAINING TO MOVE OUR DISTRICT FORWARD ACADEMICALLY Outlined below are the policies that are already in place in the District 227 Board Policy Manual, but should be followed by our school board to succeed and move forward. These are the same policies that informed community members have pushed for in district 227 that are already established in our District Board Policy Manual. Without meeting, planning in continuous accountability, academic improvement, and in moving forward with full board and without district accountability measures in place, we are continuing to move backward with delaying tactics. Today, more than ever before, to seize this golden opportunity of a life time in our school district's history to help our children, as a school board we need a training and learning curve that moves upward rather than downward and backward. The District Board Policy Manual presented here, which are in bold and underlined font, is also cited with the supporting Board 227 Policy Continuous Improvement Agreements that are already established in our school district but are not being followed or adhered to by the present board. Today, in the absence of planning with essential steps needed for the next school year and with almost half of the school year already over, we need a school board summit in-service training event now in addressing and learning about our roles and responsibilities as board members to move our district forward. All superintendents that we have interviewed have indicated that board 227 training in continuous improvement development must take place and will make all the difference in our ability, as a school board, to move forward. We must be trained how to take next steps forward in student achievement, and in supportive continuous improvement board policies. According to District 227 Board of Education Board Policy Manual, Item # 2:200, "Any Board Member may request the withdrawal of any items under the consent agenda for independent consideration. Items submitted by Board of Education members to the Superintendent or the President shall be placed on the agenda." With business as usual, The Continuous Improvement recommended policies that the progressive community has asked for almost five years ago have still not been placed on the board 227 agenda through the presidency of Brunson, Norwood, Owens, and now Cheryl Coleman. This school year, we have not met in our summer planning and board self evaluation meeting to plan for the 2013-2014 school year and next month will be November. Talk, collaboration, full board deliberation, and planning for the next school year empowers and becomes action. In the absence of meeting with a plan, we cannot move forward. To plan and have a vision requires us, the school board, to make a plan to achieve a vision with necessary first action steps addressing who, how, where, when and what dates in place to act in achieving the planned vision. For any plan to work, a school board must meet, monitor, assess, and work the plan. Without a strategic implementation plan in place to continually reviewing and monitoring it, we cannot succeed. With it, and the board training that we need, we cannot fail. According to District 227 Board Policy Manual, Items #2:120 for School District Governance, for Board 227 under the title of Board Member Development states: "The Board of Education desires that its individual members learn, understand, and practice effective governance principles. The Board is responsible for member orientation and development. Board members have an equal opportunity to attend state and national meetings designed to familiarize members with public school issues, governance, and legislation. The Board President and/or Superintendent shall provide all Board members with information regarding pertinent materials, publications, and notices of training or development in Board Self Evaluation Orientation. Board Self Evaluation: The Board will conduct periodic self-evaluation with the goal of continuous improvement. New Board Member Orientation: The following steps are taken to orient newly elected or appointed Board of Education members: (1) The Board President or designee shall arrange a meeting with new Board members for the purpose of explaining and answering questions about Board processes and procedures. (2) The Superintendent or designee shall give each new Board member online access to the helpful information including material explaining the Board of Education's roles and responsibilities. (3) The Board President may request a veteran Board member to mentor a new member. (4) New members are encouraged to attend workshops for new members conducted by the Illinois Association of School Boards. We need a school board who is trained in school governance, understands the significance of communication, full board deliberation, addressing our need for board training independently of whether the community or superintendent pushes for it or not. But many of our community leaders are beginning to push for a school board training school improvement plan. We need a school board who understands that board self evaluation and planning for the next school year, which we have not done this past summer for the first time ever, is absolutely essential to move forward. This is the board's role and responsibility. We need a school board who understands that we must lead in taking first steps in improving student performance levels, then lead the school district in this process with outside consultants addressing the FIVE MISSING ESSENTIALS in district 227 in collaborative-deliberative leadership of administration, teachers, effective instruction, a positive school climate environment, and community and parent engagement. In regards to Communications To and From the Board, The District 227 Board Policy Manual states in (item #2:40) in regards to "Staff members, parents, and community members" that "The Superintendent shall provide the Board with a summary of questions or communications and provide, as appropriate, his or her feedback regarding the matter." Our District 227 Policy Manual further states (in item # 6:15) under instruction and School Accountability and Quality Assurance that: "The Board of education continuously monitors student achievement and the quality of the District's work. The Superintendent shall supervise the following quality assurance components, in accordance with State Board of Education rules by: (1) Preparing each school's annual application and quality assurance appraisal, whether internal or external, to monitor each school's process for continuous school improvement. (2) Submitting School Improvement Plans for Board Approval that comply with State law and contain: (a) District 227 Learning objectives; (b) Assessment systems for measuring (onthly or five week) students' progress in the fundamental learning areas; and (c) Reporting systems (monthly or five week assessments) for informing the community and the State of assessment results. (3) Continuously monitoring whether the District and its schools are making adequate yearly progress as defined by State law. (4) If the District or any of its schools fail to make adequate yearly progress, the Superintendent shall take the actions provided in State Law. The Superintendent shall seek the board of Education's approval when necessary. (5)... The Superintendent shall make regular (monthly or five week assessments) to the Board, including projections whether the District and each school will be making adequate yearly progress as defined in State law.
Every board member must be included in our significant planned movement forward to help our children and to protect our schools and community from further ruin. Right now, this is not being done and only three people are sitting at the superintendent selection table with school administration who should never sit there, but only the full board. Only the full board and not the school administration, whom we hire, can sit at the superintendent selection table. The fact that this is not being done are some of the many reasons why the full school board must be trained. The school administration sitting at the superintendent selection and interviewing table and not the full board sitting there, which is our job to do, is illegal and won't fly in this school district or anywhere in America. If everyone, beginning with the full board is to vote in support of improving student achievement performance levels, superintendent selection with full board and community input while respecting everyone, then the full school board must be included in informed decision-making, full board deliberation and listening and respecting everyone's point of view in the process of school improvement and superintendent selection, etc. Today, only two of the board chair's favorite board members are involved in this essential full board only process, and with no community stake-holders involved in this process. This is a formula for continuing disaster and ruin to our schools and community. Every prospective superintendent that we have contacted or interviewed in the past have agreed that this school board desperately needs essential board training in understanding their significant governance roles in improving student performance levels, and that if selected as superintendent, they would help the school board in moving forward by insuring that the board is trained to do its job well. Without this essential board training process, the school board is woefully unprepared in any other process that they don't understand and we cannot succeed. With it, we cannot fail. Without this essential training is the reason that we are still no longer moving forward, academically. If every school board member need to vote in supporting student achievement in informed deliberations and decision making, then every board member must be included since it appears that no one at the school district or on the school board understand the value and significance of ECRA, the data decision making group, in moving forward. By September 2013, ECRA had waited for four months while the school district administrative office delayed in providing it the essential data it needed from the district office to begin helping us. With this delay in lack of pro-action and planning, our school year began in August with a similar delay in deciding what our school district goals should be in moving forward. This is unfathomable. This is not a proactive formula for success, but rather the same delaying-no-planning-no-full-board-lack-of-vision-formula for school failure that we have known for twenty years in school district 227. Since ECRA has waited for four months while the district administrative office has delayed the essential student achievement data that ECRA needs to move forward in helping us, this is almost November, and the ECRA data-decision-making project to be shared by the whole board, district, and community on our school board website, in the front entrance of the three high schools, and in other venues is not being accomplished. Unlike the school board, ECRA's intent was to have the data in May for the school board, district community to be informed on our progress moving forward beginning in August. ECRA needed to be up and running at the beginning of the school year and providing the district and staff the essential summative data in the various summative assessment measures it needs to move forward and to help our children has still not been accomplished and soon half of the school year will be behind us. As a result of delaying tactics, we had to wait for four months to learn that the other essential data component that ECRA has assumed to provide, the FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT data which provided essential five week assessment data would not be provided by ECRA. Since then, we have hired another FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT FIRM to replace ECRA's lack, but the board as monitor nor the board chair of Continuous Improvement, who should report to the school board on formative assessment progress monthly, has not been informed or provided the details or any knowledge of this FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT Program by the school district. Without knowledge, data, and information for planning and decision making in full board deliberation in planning and moving forward with focus, we cannot move forward or succeed. Because of errors of omission and commission on the part of the district administration and the school board's acquiescence in delaying tactics, we are not receiving any of the intended benefits that ECRA can bring to our student and school district, while the school year is almost half over. In fact, as we continue to engage in delaying tactics in declining to meet with ECRA in our last planned meeting, that was planned almost a month ago, ECRA's program is still not up and running because as in the past, the school board through it lack of pro-action, planning for the future, and meeting with the full board to determine next steps in moving forward, we are in reactive mode already in moving backward rather than remaining proactive in moving forward. Because of lack of training and knowledge of our significant roles, the school board is still on shut down in communication, deliberations, limitations, controlling and blocking others who want to move forward, school improvement, and without any efforts or initiatives, knowledge in moving forward, or desire in moving forward. This is indeed unfortumate. With traditional stagnation, lack of planning by the full board in moving forward, that we have seen for twenty years on the school board, we will continue to remain reactive in putting out fires in the absence of common sense planning and having a real effective security and academic action plan. Both board, and administration, who should be leading continuous academic improvement efforts but are not, must lead the district in accountability as employees in this movement. If we are to succeed, we need effective leadership that will inform our community of the effective steps being taken to be successful, not continue to hide in secrecy and non-transparency as the previous board did and do nothing. In fact, the head, our so-called school board leadership who is not working with the full board at all, but with others, is being led by the district rather than the board and allowing its employees to determine whether or not we will move forward in accountability. This has been the practice in this school district for over twenty years now. Without accountability and understanding of our significant roles as board members, we cannot move forward in holding ourselves accountable first, and then holding the district accountable beginning with the superintendent whom we hire, should monitor and evaluate but still don't, and insure that continuous academic improvement progress is moving forward.. Today, to move forward this school board desperately needs the essential school board training in what constitutes school improvement, systems thinking, vision, standards, understanding of measurable objectives required to reach the goal and looking at them on a monthly basis then meeting with the superintendent to address student achievement, the significance of formative assessment in reviewing measurable objectives in moving forward academically, a profile of what constitutes board accountability, the all binding significance of communication and full board deliberation, collaboration and community engagement, our basic constitutional and human rights as both board members and citizens, effective educational leadership skills, instructional effectiveness, understanding what continuous academic improvement looks like and the essential board policies that must be approved and established to support it. The board must understand what their duties and essential roles are as board members if we are to move forward in school improvement and student achievement. That's why effective school board members who have created effective school districts, who are on the front lines of public education, are better trained, more prepared, and deeply engaged in the work being done to improve and turn around our schools. The board is responsible for putting in place the proper keystones for students to learn and achieve at the highest possible levels. The fundamental agenda of school board members must be raising student achievement levels with approval and establishment of the supportive continuous academic improvement board policies and engaging the community to achieve that goal. At this time, none of this is being done but we must begin now to save our children. David E. Morgan, Ph.D., Educational Leadership School Board Member & Chair of Continuous Evaluation Planning Committee Rich Township High School District 227 Olympia Fields, Illinois 6-0461 |
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