Feeling like being a MAVERICK on your diet? Want to keep a little more CHANGE in your pocket? On Election Day, November 4, stop by Krispy Kreme at Lovers and Greenville. They’re offering a free star-shaped doughnut, with white icing and red, white and blue sprinkles, to each customer wearing an "I Voted" sticker.
Stickerless because you voted early? Bring in your stamped voter registration card.
Thursday at 4:30 the DISD Board of Trustees will hold a called meeting that will include a closed session:
...to deliberate the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of a public officer or employee; including evaluation of the performance of the Superintendent of Schools.
In the aftermath of the audit, the budget crisis, the RIF, continued TEA sword rattling, and the rehiring of over 50 teachers, speculation abounds about Dr. Hinojosa's relationship with the Board and his future at DISD.
It appears to me that this event has pushed from public consciousness the fact that at the regular Board of Trustees meeting at 5:30 the last item on the discussion agenda, item 15, calls for action on the Board's revised ethics policy. This revision had been a pretty hot topic prior to the audit results and then the surprise budget crisis. In light of the recent difficulties faced by the DISD, it seems that the revisions of this policy are an excellent place for the DISD to take affirmative steps to restore public confidence in District leadership. Oops. Review of the policy reveals another missed opportunity.
Continue reading "Dallas ISD Ethics Policy: It shouldn't get lost in the fog of budget crisis" »
In my previous post, I asserted that the Dallas ISD Board of Trustees needs to be revamped to make them more accountable to the citizens of Dallas. That would be a big step, however, and would be years in the making, even if we all agreed. Which I'm sure we do not. There is something else that the Board of Trustees could do in the interim to make the Dallas ISD more transparent, more accountable, and perhaps even more efficient.
Citizen Advisory Committees
The Board of Trustees should create citizen advisory committees to assist them in a number of areas including Budget, Audit, Curriculum, Strategic Planning, Health and Safety, Drop Out Prevention, Staff Development and Training, Athletics and other issues. This would be different from and in addition to the sort of temporary "blue ribbon" committee that already exists for the bond program, or that was just formed by the Superintendent for the budget.
Each committee would be a permanent standing committee, with each Trustee appointing one member. These committees would then work with central staff to review procedures, monitor and comment on progress, ask questions (especially hard questions) and to generally help guard against the kind of oversight that brought about the recent/current budget crisis. It would be an opportunity for more direct collaboration between the administrative staff and the community and could assist the Trustees themselves in keeping tabs on the workings of the DISD.
There are a number of precedents for this. In fact, that DISD does not already have such committees could be considered somewhat unusual. The City of Dallas, for instance, maintains 28 advisory committees on a variety of subjects, as well as 15 quasi-judicial boards to help administer city laws. A list of these is available here:
courtesy of my colleague John Miller. The Texas Governor's Office notes that the Governor appoints about 3,000 people to a very long list of boards and committees. A quick look at neighboring school districts also reveals some that have community committees formed almost exactly as I have described.
Currently, community involvement is mostly focused on individual schools. The formal, legislatively mandated system is the Site Based Decision Making (SBDM) committee that is required at each school. The participation in these, however, appears to vary greatly from school to school and we all found out very quickly during the recent budget crisis that individual SBDM recommendations are not necessarily what they are looking for on Ross Avenue (See this Schutze/Wilonsky Observer post, bottom of page 3 and top of page 4). I also fail to find any reference to SBDM on the Dallas ISD web site. As valuable as I believe the SBDM system is, it appears that opportunities for more broadly based community involvement are needed.
Rick Wamre and I had talked for a while about point/counterpoint posts on what we need to do to get DISD on the right track. I guess with this posting of his on October 19, the "point" has been made, so now it's my turn. My thoughts differ from those of Mr. Wamre and Mr. Blow.
Subdividing the DISD is the last thing we should think about doing. That's just a variation on the NIMBY (Not in my back yard) mindset. Under a plan to subdivide the district, we all get to focus on our local schools and not have to worry about the others. While subdividing the District might allow some of the new smaller districts to more closely mimic the ostensibly more successful suburban districts, it also runs the risk that some of them would instead go down the road of Wilmer-Hutchins. Subdividing the District is tantamount to abandoning the children in the other districts in favor of those in your own new district. I, for one, am not prepared to do that, especially if the starting point is a larger school district that isn't getting the job done. That the District is too big to manage doesn't really stand up to close scrutiny anyway when you consider that there are lots of organization and governmental bodies larger than DISD that do not share the District's problems. Breaking up the DISD is bad for the children and it's bad for Dallas.
Continue reading "Dallas ISD after the RIF: Another perspective on what's needed, Part 1" »
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