They took a meeting

I am sorry for taking so long to post a report from last week's Merger Task Force meeting. My family went out of town last Thursday to attend a wedding and we did not return until Sunday evening.

As such, I have neither had time to write my impressions, nor edit and post clips from the video I shot of the meeting. I hoped that the article from the lone reporter covering the meeting would suffice.

As someone who has paid a great deal of attention to this process for over 8 months now, the Task Force meeting was a mixed bag of frustration and hope.

My frustration came as some Task Force members asked questions that had been answered for the Board over the past 8 months. It was apparent that many of the Task Force members had not been paying much attention to the merger discussion until named to the Task Force. With many new players in the process, it was clear there was no "institutional memory" of what had come before.

But, on the positive side, this lack of an entrenched agenda or committment to an overwhelmingly unpopular merger plan will allow the group to approach the issue less myopically than the Board had done since February.

I saw a glimmer of hope in the Task Force's first meeting.

For the first time, actual parents (you know, those people supposedly at the top of the Orange County Schools' organizational chart) were officially involved in the discussion. For 8 months, the Orange County Board of Education has seemed to employ every measure possible to mute the voices of parents in this process, or to dismiss what was said as the opinion of a small minority. It was not until they decided to formally start "listening" that they seemed to understand the level of opposition from parents at both schools to the plan they adopted in a vacuum.

With the exception of the Task Force moderator, parents on the Task Force asked most of the questions last Tuesday night. It was genuinely a breath of fresh air.

After one two-hour meeting, the group appeared reach a concensus on a few things:

• They need more information before beginning to understand the "problem" they are being asked to solve. The group made a number of requests for more information they felt was needed before they could start to discussing specific ideas.
• They do not feel they currently have enough "evidence" that any specific action will have the desired effect, or what effect any action they take may have. They seem truly interested in making recommendations based on valid educational research rather than some emotional or "deep inside" moral judgement.
• The District knows very little about why parents choose one school over another, whether it is to move their child to HES or to stay at CES when allowed to opt-out. It was suggested that a survey be conducted to gather this information.
• Unlike the Board of Education, The Task Force quickly acknowledged that the District cannot force any parent to send their child to CES (or Efland-Cheeks, and soon to be New Hope). Through the mechanisms of Title 1 School Improvement, families zoned to CES can automatically send their kids to another school. It was mentioned a number of times that CES is now a "school of choice" - meaning the families who stayed at CES chose to be there when they had other options. Yet, again, the District does not know the reasons behind their choice.
• The Task Force also agreed that it was impossible to expect significant recommendations from them by the Nov. 19th full Board meeting. With the possible exception of Debbie Piscitelli, the group does not believe it can come up with changes in time to impact the coming school year. Some said they believe it could take the group as much as "a year to a year and a half" to come up with its final recommendations.

While it was not the most entertaining two hours of my life, it did have its bright moments, and was generally more productive than any of the Board meetings I've attended in the past 8 months.

If for no other reason, my time was well spent when I heard one of the most insightful comments of this entire fiasco. One of the Task Force's parents stated that no balance among the schools would ever be possible until the District creates a situation at CES and Efland-Cheeks that makes parents "want to send their kids there." Too bad the Board of Education has spent 8 months discussing this issue, and not a single minute creating such an environment at any of its three struggling elementary schools.

The next meeting will be the last one before the Task Force reports its progress back to the Board at its next public meeting.

The Task Force meets again on Tuesday, November 13th at 5:30 pm in the Board of Education meeting room at 200 King Street, Hillsborough. (At least this time, the District posted the meeting information more than a few days in advance.)

All interested parties are free to attend. If that isn't enough to bring you in, they also had cookies at the last meeting.