So, despite my procrastination, I can still summarize April without being influenced by what went on tonight. I've already written about the $4 million in capital improvements needed over the next six years, so I won't mention that further.
No Child Left Behind
[NOTE: On 5/9/2012, Mast Way won the appeal mentioned below, so the NH DOE table below is no longer accurate, and is corrected here.]The Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) results are in. (In March, the raw scores were reported.) Some of the results were briefly mentioned at the April 4 meeting, but there hasn't been a substantial report yet. FORE did a great job covering it, so I don't need to say much here. The district as a whole made AYP, but is still a DINI (District In Need of Improvement) as it takes two years in a row of making AYP before a district loses its DINI status.
Here's a table from the state summarizing the AYP results by school (click on it to enlarge). The SINI (School In Need of Improvement) data shows the number of years each school is a SINI based on AYP results in a given subject.
The Middle School and High School both made AYP in all subjects and cohorts (I extracted the per-cohort data from the state here.) They remain SINIs because a school needs two consecutive years of AYP to lose its designation. Moharimet failed to make AYP in reading (for the educationally disabled cohort only), but they are not a SINI because they have not failed in the same subject two years in a row. Mast Way failed to make AYP in reading and math (also for the educationally disabled cohort), and is now in its second year as a SINI. There was a problem with the recording of some educationally disabled students' scores and Principal Gallo has said she will appeal the AYP ruling.
In summary, while we made some progress, three out of four schools and the district as a whole continue to be classified as in need of improvement. It seems odd to hold the educationally disabled kids to the same standard as everyone else, but that's the law.
The New Superintendent Visits
Dr. Morse was in town for the April 18 meeting, and made some welcome comments. He was here to attend various district activities. He went to the pancake breakfast at Moharimet, to Mast Way's production of Peter Pan, and to some other productions. He met with the leadership team and seemed enthusiastic about starting. It now appears that both Directors of Instruction are leaving (and there are rumors of a possible additional resignation coming) so he's going to have some hiring to do.
As previously posted, Dr. Morse's pay package is surprisingly large. I'm hoping the new board holds down future salaries to more reasonable level, and does not use this apparently rushed negotiation approved by the old board as a reason to raise the salaries for the new hires. I read that Dr. Morse was going to reorganize so that there would be one Director of Instruction and one Assistant Superintendent; again, I hope this is not used as an excuse to raise the district's salary expense.
As previously posted, Dr. Morse's pay package is surprisingly large. I'm hoping the new board holds down future salaries to more reasonable level, and does not use this apparently rushed negotiation approved by the old board as a reason to raise the salaries for the new hires. I read that Dr. Morse was going to reorganize so that there would be one Director of Instruction and one Assistant Superintendent; again, I hope this is not used as an excuse to raise the district's salary expense.
There was a discussion of the transition, during which some board members wanted to arrange some overlap where both superintendents are paid for a few days to help with the transition. (This might give us the dubious distinction of having some days where we're paying three superintendents, as Mr. Coulter's contract has yet to run out.) The superintendents themselves seemed to think the formal arrangement was unnecessary and Mr. Levesque agreed to be available as needed.
The Right-To-Know Kerfuffle
The row over whether the new board committed an RTK violation while appointing a treasurer (mentioned last month) seems to be over. The board obtained a letter from their lawyer whose opinion is that they did nothing wrong. At the April 4 meeting, Chairman Barth graciously thanked the candidate who didn't get appointed for bringing the matter to the board's attention. The candidate's husband responded with a nice letter to the board (reproduced below, sorry about the blurry photo), which hopefully ends the matter.
The ABC (Advisory Budget Committee)
At the April 18th meeting, there was a somewhat fractious report from ABC members Anne Knight and Tom Merrick. At issue are the new members of the ABC committee, and the charge (orders from the board) under which the committee operates. The Oyster River Community Blogspot did a nice article broadcasting the need for new volunteers, in which they helpfully looked up the current charge under which the ABC functions. [This issue was on the agenda for the May 2 meeting, but I'm still in the dark about what happened there.]
I've been thinking about Superintendent Levesque's objection to the ABC that they essentially function as a shadow board . He reports that his staff is confused about requests from the ABC versus requests from the board itself. I also recall an odd dynamic from last budget season where two board members had a list of cuts they brought to the ABC for approval, so the cuts would then be presented to the entire board. I think many people thought there was something untoward about that roundabout move.
For all the district's problems, we are really lucky that our current governing structure is a single school board with authority over all school issues. I was aghast at some of the horror stories from the superintendent candidates we met last March. One of them talked about his current situation in a district similar to ours that is governed by four boards -- one from each town, and one for the district as a whole. It seemed a real mess to try to get any agreement out of such a structure. So, I believe strongly we should preserve our current structure, and we should take Mr. Levesque's concerns seriously.
I think Mr. Merrick crystallized the issue when he stated words to the effect that no matter the charge of the ABC, he would continue to pursue whatever budget-related projects he wanted to. This nominally insubordinate stance lends some credence to the superintendent's concern about the ABC being a shadow board.
It goes without saying that any citizen, Mr. Merrick included, is certainly free to research whatever budget or other issue in which they're interested and then report the results to the board, which could be done with a letter and/or a public comment. There's a great example of this: Mike McClurken certainly did an incredible service to the district by independently producing his report.
What's different about the ABC is that they appear to have the authority to request the administration perform work on their behalf. (All an average citizen can do is make RTK requests for records that already exist, and perhaps meet with the superintendent if he agrees.) Given this authority, it stands to reason that an ABC member should probably not be able to impose costs on the district (and using the business manager's time is indeed a cost) for what might be considered personal projects, even if the goal of the project is to aid district budget planning in the future.
The ABC has performed some important functions (I'm grateful to their analysis of the cost of tuition students, for example) so I do not support eliminating the committee. I do however support a much less broad scope for the ABC than the current charge. In my mind, the ideal charge would designate some standing tasks for the ABC (such as the preparation of materials for understanding and presenting various budgets) and otherwise authorized them to act further only when requested to through a duly passed motion of the school board. In would only be when acting under the authority of a school board motion that they may be able to request work from the administration. Obviously any member would be free to pursue whatever personal project he or she wanted, but in those cases would not have the authority to cause the district to do work on his or her behalf. Cases where a minority of the board brings a list of cuts to the ABC for their approval would be eliminated -- the ABC could only evaluate such a list under the authority of a motion passed by a majority of the board.
Well, there's a bit more to report but I'm going to wrap this up for now and maybe add some later.
- Dean Rubine
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