Let's take a meeting

I will let everyone else draw their own conclusions about what it means that this information is posted no where on the Board of Education's website.

I am betting just about everyone can guess what I think it means.

[Update: I guess someone at Orange County Schools reads my blog, because a notice of the meeting appeared on the OCS website Friday morning.]

But, here is the information I received from a member of the group about the first Merger Task Force Meeting.

What: Orange County Board of Education's Merger Task Force Meeting
When: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 from 6:00-8:00 pm
Where: Orange County Board of Education Meeting Room
200 E. King Street
Hillsborough, NC

The agenda for this meeting includes:

• Developing a calendar for other meetings of the Merger Task Force
• Reviewing the Board of Education's charge for the Merger Task Force
• Examining longitudinal data related to the Merger Task Force's charge

As an advisory body to the Board of Education, the Merger Task Force's meetings should be open to the public under North Carolina's Open Meetings laws.

As such, the public has every right to attend all meetings of this group, and observe its discussions.

I plan to attend next Tuesday, and I encourage every HES and CES parent to join me.

Will you be there?

A rose by any other name would be just as hand-picked

Just for the sake of moving the discussion forward before the anonymous comments (from either side) get any more personal, here is my explanation of why I still feel the term "hand-picked" is an appropriate description of the Board's "Task Force."

According to the Board's own minutes from the September 17th meeting, it established "a task force to create plan(s) or a series of tasks to increase the socio-economic balance (+/- 38%) at Central Elementary and Hillsborough Elementary for 2008-2009."

During that meeting, the Board specifically named 6 of the Task Force's 15 members, and left a 7th member to be identified by the OCS Central Office.

"Dennis Whitling appointed Anne Medenblik and Debbie Piscitelli to serve as Board representatives." Can we at least agree that those two were picked by the Board?

"Dr. Morton and Mary Alice Yarbrough will serve as Central Office representatives." How about those two?

One Central Office representative not specifically named at the meeting was what the Board Minutes refer to as a "leader" and the Raleigh News & Observer calls a "facilitator" tasked to "coordinate meetings." It is unclear whether this person will be a full Task Force member or serve in a support role.

The Board went on to say that "The principals will serve as the administrator representatives." By specifically assigning the principals of both schools, the Board named specific people to the Task Force (Sheila McDonald from CES and Martinette Horner at HES). Surely, we can agree that those two members were "picked" by the Board.

I am guessing that this is where my use of the term "hand-picked" has offended some anonymous posters - the Task Force's teacher and parent members.

In its creation of the Task Force, the Board required that it include two teachers from each school. Principals at the two schools were instructed to "select the teacher representatives." Allow me to illustrate this point with an analogy. Assume I am your employer and control the fate of your career in my hands. Now, further assume I tell you to choose two other employees for a committee that is sure to draw public scrutiny and press coverage. What is the likelihood you will choose someone I feel might rock the boat?

That leaves us with the parents. Nevermind that the Board chose to limit the number of parents on the Task Force to only four, an inexcusibly low number given that these are the families who will most closely feel the impact of any decision the Board makes, but the Board also chose not to open participation to ALL parents.

Unlike the assertion of my anonymous commenter, parents were not simply asked to "VOLUNTEER" to serve on the Task Force. In fact, there was a filtering process that limited the pool from which parent representatives were chosen. And, at least in the case of CES, the pool of eligible partipants was closed before the need was known.

In setting up the Task Force, the Board dictated that "Parent representatives will be selected by the Student Governance Committees." That was interpreted to mean each school's PTA. Additionally, as the Raleigh News & Observer reported, it was suggested that parents be drawn from each school's "school improvement teams." And, in both cases, they were.

As it turns out, the OCS Administration's "Site-Based Management Model" prescribes the structure and size of a School Improvement Team (SIT), as well as dictates who can and cannot serve. The parental component of an SIT includes three parents chosen in a PTA-run election, typically held prior to its members being tapped by the Board for a Task Force.

This is why CES was able to name its parent representatives without delay - they already knew which three parents were eligible to participate, and there was no need to expand the search. The Board could have known with a good degree of certaintly who CES would be sending to the Task Force as well. Two out of three are pretty good odds.

While this may have been the case at CES, HES was an entirely different matter. When the Board called for parents from the group to serve, HES had only one parent on its SIT. This necessitated a delay in choosing parental representatives until the 3-week intersession ended. When HES reconvened, a call was sent out by the HES PTA for people willing to serve on the SIT. With only one evening to decide, those who answered the call were listed on a ballot sent home with every student the next day. Again, with only one evening to decide, parents selected their representatives from a list of people most did not know.

So, let's recap:

• Of 15 Task Force members, the Board picked 6 of them on the same evening they formed the Task Force itself.
• Five more Task Force members (1 "leader" and 4 teachers) were picked by people the Board directly picked for the Task Force.
• Two CES parents were chosen from the pre-formed 3-person group specifically picked by the Board as a source of eligible parents.
• And, finally, two HES parents were chosen within less than two days from a list of parents very few people actually knew.

Of the 15 members on the Board's Merger Task Force, only two names would have surely come as a surprise to the Board.

When the Board can either directly name or exert control over the selection of 11 of the Task Force's 15 members (and may have some insight into who two others may be), I think it is entirely fair to say the Task Force was "hand-picked."

As much as I hate to do it ...

I again feel the need to respond to someone posting anonymous comments to this blog.

While I welcome disagreement with my opinions on the issues, and factual challenges to the things I write (which is why I have never censored or failed to publish a comment on this blog), I do take issue with attacks of a personal nature or attempts to silence those with whom you disagree.

An anonymous poster is currently taking me to task for using the term "hand-picked" when referring to Board's recent creation of a "Task Force" to explore "tweaks" or alternatives to Dennis Whitling's "Big Plan" for merging CES and HES. This person feels that I am not giving due respect to the parents and teachers who "VOLUNTEERED" to serve on the group. I welcome the comments on this matter, and would have happily engaged him/her in a discussion had they not posted the comments anonymously.

However, there is one long-running element to his/her posts that I now feel crosses the line.

Since July this anonymous poster has repeatedly called upon me (and other merger opponents) to remove my child from the public school system rather than point out what I see to be glaring problems in need of addressing. To see examples what is becoming and increasingly frequent call, start here, then go here, then here (toward the very end), and finally here.

I can only refer to this as the "love it or leave it" strategy for silencing a person with whom one disagrees. It is no different than the labeling of civil dissenters of the war in Iraq as "traitors" or "unpatriotic" and suggesting that they leave the country rather than voice their opinions. Such rhetoric has no place in a free society such as the US or in Orange County.

Rather than debating the issue at hand in a civil reasoned way, this person assumes that if I were to send my children to a charter school or home school them, I would leave the workings of the Orange County Schools to more enlightened people, like him/herself.

Of course, the poster is wrong. As long as my recently paid tax dollars are used to fund the Orange County Schools, I will continue to voice an opinion about things with which I disagree. This will be the case regardless of where, or how, my children are educated. It is my right.

That said, if you would now like to have a civil discussion of why I still feel the "Task Force" was "hand-picked" by the Board, maybe we can move forward.

Quote of the Year

From Class Warfare:

"Mark Twain is reputed to have said, 'First God made idiots. That was just for practice. Then He created school boards.'"

In his book, Professor J. Martin Rochester, went on to write, " That's unfair. The fact is that one of the worst positions to occupy other than school superintendent is school board member. There are strong pressures to go along and routinely accept staff proposals, since few wish to alienate the faculty and administration. When board members are elected who refuse to be co-opted, and boldly question the direction the district is going in, they are portrayed by their opponents as bad people who wish to harm the district."

Or, like in Orange County, they are labeled "elitists" or "segregationists."

At least, we are not alone

While I haven't been writing much lately, I have been reading quite a bit.

I am currently reading a book titled "Class Warfare" by a political science professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Unlike the writing of most poli/sci professors, this book does not report the findings of some elaborate research project, rather Prof. Rochester chronicles his family's personal experiences with public education in the St. Louis area.

As he writes in his opening notes, "To the extent that I indulge in telling my own private horror stories, I do so strictly for the purpose of illustrating the bigger picture of educational theories and practices run amok and exposing the failures of our precollegiate education system."

Rather than document the K-12 educational climate of St. Louis, MO in the 1980s and 1990s, Prof. Rochester could have been writing a case study of Orange County, NC in 2007.

"We certainly should not write off the public schools. We need to make them more responsive to parents. The director of governmental relations for the National PTA has stated that parental involvement is 'mostly just rhetoric. Parents are out of the decision-making loop.' The president of the Institute for Responsive Education says similarly 'It's common for school districts to plunge ahead with change efforts with no prior discussion with the community about the need for - or goals of - change.'

The conventional mode of parental involvement in schools is the PTA, where it is generally expected one will not get immersed in curriculum matters and, in any event, will not make waves. As a parent activist in Greenwich, CT says, 'The issues addressed by the PTA have nothing to do with the academic performance of children. They are more concerned about funding for the playground and the social aspects of children... They [the administration] don't really want parents involved."

That sounds pretty familiar to me. The Orange County Board of Education did not launch its "community listening sessions" until after they had "plunged ahead" and voted to adopt Dennis Whitling's "Big Plan."

Also, there was no effort to involve parents at either school, individually or through the respective PTAs, until the Board needed a convenient supply of parents for a handful of "Task Force" slots. But, even then, the number involved was kept small enough to ensure they would have little real control over the process that most directly impacts their children.

I look forward to reading more of Prof. Rochester's prophecies for Orange County. It's a page-turner.