Guide to the February 5, 2014 Deliberative Session

The Deliberative Session is tomorrow, Wednesday February 5, 7pm at the ORHS auditorium.  Since it looks like there's a storm coming it's important to note the snow date is Thursday, February 6, same time and place.  I've been informed that the lawyer and moderator are not available on the snow date, so the deliberative session is likely to happen on Wednesday, even if the weather is iffy.

As I've explained before, the Deliberative Session is a real election in which voters present get to amend the warrant articles (ballot questions) which will be voted on by the full district Tuesday, March 11.    I expect amendments proposed to add SROs (police) to the elementary schools and to add back the cut 0.4 FTE World Language teacher.  Last year only around 120 people showed up, so each vote counts a lot.

FORE just explained the nuts and bolts of the DS, so I won't repeat that here.  Here is the warrant from the minutes of the last school board meeting.  I think a slightly modified warrant is slated to be the starting point for the Deliberative Session (click to enlarge).

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The DS warrant is slightly changed from the one presented at the January 14 budget hearing.  I personally don't think the board should have modified the warrant after presenting it to the public.  Instead, they should have saved any modification needed for the deliberative session.

I've explained the warrant before, and I will again as we get closer to election day.  A quick summary: Article 1 elects the moderator, who is running unopposed.  Article 2 elects two at-large school board members (three people have declared, so it's a real race again this year.)  Article 3 approves the contract negotiated with the teachers -- I don't think the public can amend that one as it reflects a previously negotiated deal. 

Article 4 is the confusing one, appropriating one dollar to build a Moharimet Cafeteria.  The one dollar is really permission to go ahead. The renovation is expected to cost $560,000 of which $500,000 will come from the LGC fraud settlement.  Article 5 authorizes the approximately $100,000 Capital Reserve Fund to be transferred to the general fund, to fund the balance of the cafeteria as well as Middle School HVAC upgrades.  The two articles are written in the confusing way they are in case one passes and the other fails.  I suspect the board may ask to amend these to articles to add explanations which clarify things.

Article 6 is the ratification of the tuition agreement with Barrington.  It represents a negotiated contract which has to be approved by the voters of both districts (ORCSD & Barrington), so I do not believe it can be amended at the deliberative session.

Article 7 is the budget.  It's confusing, but the default budget (what we get if "NO" wins) is only for Fund 10, and thus represents a cut of $550K, around 1.4%. 

The buzz is that there are likely to be two amendments to article 7 proposed.

Amendment SRO:  At the January 15th board meeting Madbury parent Lindsay Rains and board member Megan Turnbull discussed adding $50,000 to the budget for the purpose of hiring School Resource Officers (policemen) for Moharimet and Mast Way.    I personally am against this amendment, as there appear to be no evidence that it makes kids safer, but there is evidence that it increases the criminalization of student misbehavior.  It also is insufficient, as ORMS and ORHS currently share an SRO, so by this logic we would need 3 for $75,000.

Amendment LANG: Last December, the administration and board cut 0.4 FTE (i.e. a part time) language teacher from the budget, for a savings for $31,517.   The justification was that this brought the language department up to compliance with the board class size policy of 18 to 22.   Former board member Ann Wright wrote the following on her facebook page;

I hope everyone comes to the ORCSD Deliberative Session and votes to KEEP Wendy Gibson (yes, the .4 Spanish teacher has a name!). She is an amazing teacher who has never been afraid to email or CALL me when she thought my son was having problems and even when he was doing well. We cannot lose teachers like her. Read this, and understand the importance of teachers who CARE!  

So I'm guessing Ann will propose adding $31,517 to the budget for a 0.4 FTE world language teacher.  I'm going to vote NO and support the board and administration's attempt to live up to their stated policy.  There was a long discussion of the issue on January 15.

See you all there tomorrow, weather permitting.

Shirley Thompson, Beloved Citizen, Dies

Shirley Thompson, well loved local citizen, passed Friday, according to the January 31, 2014 Durham Friday Update.  Shirley served on the ORCSD school board, including as chair, in the mid-2000s.   But that was just one of a long list of elected and volunteer service to which Shirley Thompson selflessly dedicated her life.  I'm sure I speak for many when I thank Shirley for all the great things she's done for the town and the district, and for her wonderful example of how to live.

At the school board meeting on December 18, 2013 Shirley announced  that she and her daughter have given a "sizable check" to the Track Fund.  I was lucky to be there, but you can watch it here:

Here are some links:

Shirley's Track Fund Donation

December 18, Shirley Thompson gives a sizable check to the track fund.  (same video as above) 1:34-4:08 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NpMZ6i-qtI&t=1m34s

January 8.  Kenny thanks Shirley Thompson 7:07-8:01 http://youtu.be/jdHFBXOgjHs?t=7m07s

January 15 Todd & Board thank Shirley and offically accept the gift.  31:07-33:00  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-5CH1cYY3w&t=31m7s


Shirley Around Town 

Shirley Thompson Grand Marshall of the Durham Fire Department Parade, July 2011 http://fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110724/GJNEWS_01/707249881

Shirley Thompson  Assistant Moderator, Election Day March 2012.   http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120314/GJNEWS_01/703149903/-1/FOSNEWS By the way, I think Ruth Sample deserves a lot of credit for the increased turnout on March 13, 2012.

Shirley Thompson, Oyster River School Board wins New Hampshire School Board of the Year, 2006.   Serves with Joann Portolupi, chair and a bearded David Taylor.  http://www.nhsba.org/about_awards_edies2006.asp

Durham will post funeral arrangements on Friday Update soon.

Moharimet Classrooms Nixed

No Moharimet classrooms on the ballot

On Wednesday January 8 (agenda, video) the administration proposed a new warrant article seeking to raise $325,000 to build two new Moharimet classrooms.  It was presented as part of the warrant at the Public Hearing January 14th (video).  On January 15th (agenda, video), the Oyster River School Board voted 6 to 1 to remove the proposed article from the ballot.  Member Turnbull was the sole vote in favor of presenting the question to district voters on election day March 11, 2014.

Here is the article that was removed:

ARTICLE 5: Shall the District vote to approve the construction of two additional classrooms for the Moharimet School at a cost not to exceed $325,000 payable over a term of 5 years with an annual appropriation of $65,000, and further to raise and appropriate $65,000 for the first year's payment.  In each of the following 4 years the appropriation of $65,000 will be contained in the operating budget and the default budget.  This is a special warrant article 3/5th majority vote required for passage.

Note that this is in addition to articles 4 and 6, which collectively ask for approval for $600,000 in spending on the Moharimet cafeteria and gym modifications (estimate $560,000).

The plan was to construct a 900 square foot Art room and a 600 square foot Occupational Therapy room.  The rooms would be adjacent to the gym, in the grassy space behind the gym (away from the parking lot).  The hope was to realize some savings by combining the gym/cafeteria and classroom projects.  The room that had been dedicated to OT and other special education at Moharimet became regular classroom space in response to the overcrowding surprise this past summer.

To the best of my knowledge, additional Moharimet classrooms are not part of the $4 million capital improvement plan from a year or two ago that I can no longer find online.  (For that matter neither is a Moharimet cafeteria, though it is mentioned.)

Why spend $325K (0.8% of the budget) to add space to a school where enrollment is forecasted to decrease?  According to the superintendent, the new classroom space, scheduled for completion in October or November 2014, would be used to alleviate the overcrowding expected to persist for several years at Moharimet.  Eventually the extra space could be used for full day K or as space for fifth grade in the elementary schools.

The above LRPC projection doesn't take into account the bus-line redraw with family exemption decision last month.   Assuming a shift to MW of 10 students per year up to 60, I'd modify  Moh enrollment as: 407 398 389 353 307 272 246 232 231 240 249.   By the time we'd paid off the rooms in five years we'll have gone from 407 to 246 students at Moharimet.  I have to believe losing 161 students frees up six or seven classrooms.

Do we really need two more?  I'm guessing that had the question been offered to voters, it would have fallen short of the three-fifths needed to pass.   Not that it matters now, but I'd have thought it would have had more of a chance of passing as a single year appropriation where I think it would only need a simple majority.

Chairman Barth's suggestion to get two more portables (temporary classrooms), while greeted with hoots and laughter (video), makes much more sense than spending $325K for space that's not really needed in the long term.

Elementary School Resource Officers

A Moharimet parent is trying to get an SRO (a police officer) in Moharimet.  Currently the district employs one SRO, who spends 75% of their time at the high school and 25% at the middle school.

Moharimet currently has a Madbury police officer who is often at the school, but is not paid by the district and is not officially an SRO.   Apparently Lee Police declined to provide an SRO for Mast Way, and the superintendent thought having an SRO at only one elementary school would not be equitable.   

  

It's an emotional issue.  There was a lot of rhetoric about Newtown and "what are you going to say when my child is murdered?" which to me is a pretty good sign rationality is taking a back seat.   Member Turnbull proposed a $50,000 budget addition for SROs in both elementary schools.  That ended up not going anywhere at the meeting because it's apparently against the law to add budget items after the public budget hearing.  

I did some quick searches and found a few cases where an SRO heroically ended or averted a school shooting (Arapahoe, Sullivan, Socastee, perhaps Carver and Sleepy Hill).  Columbine famously had an SRO who failed to stop the event.   An SRO shot and killed an autistic student that was stabbing him (Carolina Forest).  There are a few cases of SROs accidentally firing their weapon at school (Highland Central, York Comprehensive), tasering to stop a student fight, and leaving a gun in a student bathroom. Here's an SRO accused of fondling a student.

Member Turnbull said she would bring up the appropriation at the Deliberative Session, when it could be added to the budget by a majority of district voters present.  

My main objection is that while there doesn't seem to be any particular evidence that having police in schools makes students safer, there does seem to be pretty good evidence that having police in school tends to escalate student behavior problems into criminal matters.  I plan to vote NO, but given the emotion surrounding the issue, I bet it passes.

 Deliberative Session February 5th

The ORCSD is an SB 2 form of government, meaning that the traditional town meeting is broken up into two parts.   The first part is the Deliberative Session, which is is like a town meeting where folks can attempt to amend the ballot questions.   Then there's a regular election day on the second Tuesday in March where the voters may approve the amended questions.

The Deliberative Session is February 5th.  It's a real election.  It's usually 7pm in the ORHS auditorium, but I haven't seen that officially yet.  A majority of voters at the Deliberative Session can amend the existing warrant articles (also known as the ballot questions).  Unlike most elections in New Hampshire, there is no same-day registration.  You must already be registered to vote in one of the three towns to be given a voting card at the DS.

The law restricts the possible amendments.  Typically an amendment will change the amount of money to be raised and appropriated by an article.  It is not permissible to amend wording required by law or to change a warrant article from its original purpose.  (Though I'm pretty sure zeroing out the funding is permissible, which presumably changes the purpose.)   The default budget (the budget we likely get if the main budget article fails to pass) cannot be amended.

The Deliberative Session is an incredible part of New Hampshire democracy where a single voter who shows up wields enormous influence.  Last year 120 voters showed up, so it would have only taken 60 votes to modify the budget.   That (barely) didn't happen last year, because a sufficient number of voters present supported the articles as approved by the board.  So please mark February 5 on your calendar and come by the DS -- your vote really counts.

After the DS the articles still have to be approved by the voters on election day March 11 to take effect.  Typically two or three thousand people vote in our March election.

I believe it only takes 25 signatures for citizens to get a warrant article onto the ballot.  For the current year, the deadline to get those petitions in has already passed.  

Besides SROs, the board wants to amend the Moharimet Cafeteria article to say $600,000 instead of $500,000.  This better reflects the estimated construction cost of $560,000.  The worry is that if this article passes and the article transferring around $100,000 from the Capital fund to the general fund fails, there won't be enough money or authority to build the new cafeteria.  To me this is an uncontroversial "technical" amendment, designed to correct a problem with the wording, so I hope it passes easily.

Voters can propose amendments like adding $50,000 to operating fund for SROs, but it's only the monetary amount that is amended.  Even if the amended question passes in March there's no requirement that the district spend the money as intended.  The money gets added to the budget and the board gets to decide what to do with it.   It is likely though not guaranteed the board will do what the majority in the DS wanted.

Taylor Lawsuit Dropped

As a result of a settlement reached with the district, David Taylor withdrew his lawsuit.  Congratulations to Mr. Taylor, the board and the administration on this amicable outcome.  The board agreed to reimburse David for his court costs and to toughen up policies related to Right-To-Know compliance.  Member Turnbull read a statement conceding how her email might be construed as violating RTK. 

David was very helpful to the board at the meeting, pointing out how the attempts to add items after the budget hearing are illegal.   Let's hope this is the last Taylor lawsuit against ORCSD.  

World Language Cut Reconsidered

In other news, there was a tedious discussion about adding back a 0.4 FTE language teacher at the high school.  That's a part time teacher that teaches 40% the load of a full time teacher, which I think means 10 periods a week.  The position was shed as one of the recommended cuts from Principal Todd.  The cut apparently brings world language in accordance with the IIB class size guideline (minimum 18), which was one of this year's budget goals.    The issue now seems to be that the cut increases the likelihood some students won't always get the class they wanted and that will prevent them from ever taking a 5-level or AP language course.  In the end nothing was done, not least of all because they're not allowed to add to the budget after the budget hearing.  Presumably this could come up at the Deliberative Session.  See you there Feb 5.

Board Chooses Barrington, Redraw with Family Exemption, Strings, Math

In a burst of productivity, the board resolved the tuitioning issue and the elementary reconfiguration issue tonight, in addition to approving the FY15 budget last Wednesday.  I'm going to need a new banner.  (12/18/2013 video, agenda, 12/11/2013 video, agenda, minutes.)

Rejecting Newmarket, the board chose to enter into a multi-year tuition agreement with Barrington, essentially continuing the status quo.  As it has in the past, the board chose to redraw the bus line to shift students to Mast Way, but to exempt current Moharimet students and their siblings.   A strings teacher and a math tutor were added to the budget while total spending increased less than 1%.

Barrington chosen 

Tonight, the ORCSD school board approved and signed an agreement commencing in 2015-2016 to accept a maximum of 200 high school tuition students from Barrington.  The Barrington school board approved the identical agreement last week. The 10 year agreement would need to be approved by voters of both districts in March, 2014 before taking effect (recent post).

Barrington, which has no high school of its own, wants to keep its "choice" model.  Barrington students get to choose which high school to attend.   Currently the choice is between Dover, Coe Brown and Oyster River.  The taxpayers of Barrington pay the Dover tuition, which is the lowest of the three.  Parents who choose to kick in a couple thousand dollars extra to make up the difference in tuition can send a child to Coe Brown or Oyster River.

ORHS currently has around 70 tuition students from Barrington, under the terms of a Memorandum of Understanding that is renewed annually.  The current tuition of $13,000 does not include special education.  The current MOU has Barrington fully responsible for the special education cost incurred by its own students.

I haven't read the actual agreement yet, so this is just relaying how it was described at the board meeting.  The newly signed agreement has a tuition of $14,000 that includes the expected special education load.  Superintendent Morse stated the agreement has Barrington paying for additional staffing to serve its own special education students beyond the expected load.

$14,000 for 2015-2016 seems like a bargain to me.  When you count special education Barrington is probably already paying more than that now.

Barrington has agreed to setting a minimum number of students each year and to pay Oyster River 95% of any tuition shortfall in the event of underenrollment.  This allows Oyster River to hire based on projected enrollment without having to bear the risk of Barrington students choosing not to come to ORHS.

The agreement states that when at least 125 Barrington tuition students enroll, ORHS becomes Barrington's "school of record."   The school of record is required to accept any students that might move to Barrington during the year.   I'm not sure what else the ominous sounding term implies, but it does seem like something Barrington wanted out of the deal.

This is essentially the status quo option (continuing with Barrington) with a couple of twists.  Barrington is agreeing send between 50 and 130 more students, to ramp up on a specific schedule, and to guarantee the minimum number in advance.  This gives Oyster River the predictability for planning it desires.  Barrington locks in the ORHS option, gets a great tuition rate that includes special education and gets ORHS as its school of record.

The Newmarket option was rejected by the board because the new enrollment projections, when combined with Newmarket's enrollment projections, cause the total enrollment to exceed ORHS's functional capacity of 915 many years in a row.  If you adjust for the 60-80 half-day vocational/technical students from Newmarket, you keep under 915.

It seems some have taken this high school functional capacity number of 915 as a magic indicator of overcrowding.  The number comes from a capacity study -- it's 85% of the maximum capacity, which counts each classroom as 22 seats (board policy) or the number of workstations in it if it's fewer.  The capacity study assumes that around 160 empty seats is full capacity.  If board policy was 23 seats max, functional capacity would be closer to 950.

Nonetheless the board made the right choice opting for Barrington over Newmarket.  The transition is going to be so smooth as to be unnoticeable.  That's in marked contrast to the Newmarket option, which would have been a large shock all at once.

Until I see the actual agreement I'll reserve judgement on how I'll vote in March.

Redraw with Family Exemption

The elementary reconfiguration issue (recent post) was resolved tonight.  The board chose to redraw the bus line, shifting Moharimet neighborhoods to Mast Way.   The board approved a rather generous Family Exemption -- what I had previously called Full Grandfathering.  With it, any students at Moharimet can finish at Moharimet. Their siblings can as well, as long as they are in the same school.  Though a bit unclear as stated in the motion, the intent was to keep kids from ever having to transfer and to keep families from having kids in both schools at the same time, but nothing more generous.  With the Family Exception, we only shift around 10 kids a year, so it takes five years or so before enrollments equal out.

The Redraw option was moribund a month ago, when the main choice seemed between K2/34 and managed enrollment.   I'm going to take a bit of credit here and say my letter helped revive what has been the district's traditional remedy.

The board mentioned, but did not take up the Mast Way Choice suggestion of my letter.  The idea there was that if a family opted to transfer their child from Moharimet to Mast Way, the district would provide transportation.  Thus every family at the overcrowded Moharimet would have chosen to be there.  The superintendent stated that currently anyone wishing to transfer may, but without action from the board transportation could not be provided.

My unofficial attempt to redraw the map to reflect the vote of 12/18/2013

Instead, to reduce Moharimet's overcapacity faster, the board expanded the map of areas to be shifted.  They began with the map that's been around for a while, drawn by the superintendent in consultation with the transportation director.  In the most surprising vote of the night, the board unanimously chose to shift the rest of the Wedgewood neighborhood to Mast Way.  Member Lane brought up Wedgewood and lamented that it was a victim of previous redistricting.  Then the board proceeded almost gratuitously to victimize it again.  No one had any idea how much the addition would affect overcapacity.  I found the entire exercise ill advised -- if it works as intended we'll end up shifting too many kids to Mast Way.

Budget

Last week the board approved a budget that raises spending 0.9%.  This does not include the effect of the new teacher's contract currently being negotiated.  Nonetheless, the board achieved its stated goal of a spending increase no larger than the inflation rate.

The board easily approved the cuts proposed by the administrators:

The board was presented with a list of ways to add to the budget:

The board chose to approve the Math Lab Teacher, which was changed to a Math Lab Tutor at a much lower cost.

The board actually went beyond the proposed 0.8 Strings Music Teacher.  Instead the board approved a 1.0 Full Time Music Teacher to concentrate on strings.  The new position coincides with an effort to reorganize the music department.  Instead of the current building-based system, the plan is to switch to a "strands" system, where each music teacher potentially plies their trade in multiple buildings.  Everyone seemed very enthusiastic about the new plan.

Maybe it was the distraction from the elementary school reconfiguration and the tuitioning deals, but the normally controversial budget process was not controversial this year.   The budget gets presented to the public on January 14th, and to the individual towns in the weeks after that.  A majority of voters at the deliberative session February 5th can change the numbers on any of the warrant articles.  The voters get final approval on election day, March 11th. (calendar)

At the end of the December 11th meeting, the board voted to authorize the superintendent to reach out to David Taylor to avoid litigation.

The next regular board meeting is on a Thursday, January 2.  Anybody out there want to run for school board?

Redraw with Grandfathering and Choice Under Consideration

The board had a long meeting last Wednesday December 4 (agenda, video).  I showed up to make a comment but I never got the chance as the board immediately called a recess to (non)meet with a lawyer and I had to leave before they resumed.  The LRPC, warrant and counseling reports discussed below can be found in the agenda.  There's a regular board meeting 6:30 tonight (12/11) focused on the budget.

Congratulations to ORHS for making the AP Honor Roll.  The College Board recognized our success in maintaining high scores while expanding our AP offerings.  We are one of 477 schools in US and Canada and one of 70 schools in New England to be so honored.

Board member Charle reported that the middle school composting has incredibly reduced lunchtime waste from 86 pounds to 5 pounds!

Tuitioning.  Tuitioning wasn't really discussed at the meeting, though there was a slide in the enrollment projections that tells the new story.  The new ORHS projections have enrollment increasing then declining.  They do not get below current levels for 12 years (2025-26).

The new projections make a union with Newmarket likely to slightly exceed the working capacity of 915 in the peak years.  I don't stress about that like some do -- the 915 number was computed by assuming that we operate at 85% of the rather small school board policy maximum of 22 per class.

If our high school enrollment isn't shrinking for 12 years, tuitioning to maintain existing programs (beyond the status quo) is not really necessary.  I was all for helping our neighbors over in Newmarket while helping out the Oyster River taxpayers, but Newmarket is acting like we're profiteering because we want them to pay their share of the heat.  I also think there are a few serious problems with the draft contract.  I believe it was reported that the FY16 tuition is now down to $14,000.   I read the contract as requiring the tuition to be further reduced when high school cost per pupil declines, as it certainly will when we take 250 tuition students.   Furthermore, the contract doesn't allow for frequent enough opportunities where either side can start the clock on ending the arrangement.  I don't want us to be stuck for 15 years if things aren't working out.

At this point, given the lack of declining enrollment obviating the need, the very iffy return to the taxpayers after the price reductions, the concerns with the contract and the lack of enthusiasm from Newmarket (including their dreadful cost estimates), I'm currently inclined to pass on Newmarket.  We still have a few years to worry about declining high school enrollment in the year 2025 -- we don't have to rush into a bad deal this year.  Newmarket's problems aren't going away.  My best guess is they're likely to just pay the $2 million to fix their current building and go on.  Sooner or later they'll have to decide whether or not to build a school.  It will still be cheaper then for them to tuition their kids and we'll still be their neighbors.

I'm not sure what the difference is between what Barrington will propose and the status quo where we already get 75 or so Barrington students, but either way I currently see sticking with Barrington as the best option.

Elementary Reconfiguration.   The superintendent reported his advisory committee was making progress on coming up with proposed criteria for a Managed Enrollment plan as well as a proposed K-2/3-4 policy.  In addition to those two options, the board approved Member Rotner's motion to have the superintendent explore Redraw with Grandfathering options.  Member Turnbull asked that the idea of Moharimet parents being given the choice to send their children to Mast Way be considered.  Member Lane expressed doubt that a future board would be able to carry out a Redraw with Grandfathering policy enacted by the current board.  (I found that argument odd.  Much of the board's work is enacting policy for the future -- why would a Redraw policy be any different?)  It was gratifying to see the board acting on my letter.  The goal is to decide at the December 18 meeting, but I'm skeptical a decision will be made then.

Warrant.  Business Administrator Caswell presented the first draft of the warrant.  The warrant is the school district election ballot for March 2014.  There is an article asking the voters to approve the (as yet unknown) tuitioning proposal.  The warrant is further complicated due to the attempt to begin construction on the Moharimet Cafeteria in the current school year.   One warrant article asks the voters to appropriate $1 for Moh Cafe in the current budget.  This establishes the budget line, so is essentially the voters giving the district permission to do the project.   The money comes from the LGC premium holiday (expected to be around $500,000) and $100,000 from liquidating the Capital Reserve Fund (see previous post).  The fund liquidation is done in a separate article that doesn't mention the cafeteria in case Moh Cafe is not approved.  The whole thing will be very confusing to the average voter who hasn't paid much attention.


New Enrollment Projections.  Lisa Allison, head of the LRPC, presented the updated projections to the board.   Compared to last year, the new projections still show a decline, only delayed by a few years.  This is a result of the surge in enrollment this summer of around 60 kids, mostly elementary (and those mostly to Moharimet) and middle school.

The projections have a great bearing on the two grave decisions the board needs to make soon: the elementary reconfiguration issue and the tuitioning issue.   Lisa and the committee do such a thoughtful and diligent job on the difficult work required to produce these important forecasts.  Thanks so much Lisa.  We're very lucky to have you heading LRPC.   I will now proceed to quibble.

Ms. Allison increased the error ranges on the enrollment predictions.  This was the result of changing the method of calculating the expected deviations.  In the past, backcasting (using the new model on historical data) was used to calculate the range.  Backcasting is a kind of data fitting that will almost always underestimate the expected deviation.   The new method compares the past forecasts to past actual enrollments as a percentage and reports the mean absolute deviation (MAD) for each horizon (number of years out forecasted).  This results in what is likely more accurate estimates of the error - the expected deviation from the prediction.

Ms. Allison says the new error ranges are larger, but to my recollection they seem about the same.  It's hard to check as the new district website still seems to lack the old reports. (I didn't find the new report either except in the agenda.)  The new ranges are perhaps more properly thought of as estimates of the accuracy of the committee rather than of its latest model.

I don't want to geek out too much further, but the typical way to do confidence intervals is to estimate the standard deviation of your prediction and double it.  The idea is that a bell curve has 95% of its area between -2 and +2 standard deviations from the mean, so you can expect that 95% of the time your actual observation will be within -2 and +2 standard deviations of your prediction.

When you're getting your estimate by averaging fewer than say 50 points, like we are here, you actually should use the T distribution which has fatter tails (a higher likelihood of large deviations) than the bell curve.  That means you have to go out more than 2 standard deviations to get 95%.  Similarly, MAD is an estimate of standard deviation known to be biased low -- it underestimates standard deviation.

Bottom line, to produce a 95% confidence interval for the projections we need to more than double the reported error ranges.

I learned my statistics on the street, so I could be wrong.  I am always worried there's a square root of N factor I'm leaving out.

Guidance is now School Counseling.  ORHS Counseling Director Heather Machanoff reported on the changes in what is now called the School Counseling Office.  The name reflects that the role of counselor has expanded far beyond just help with class schedules and college applications.  It seems there is a new focus on emotional and other issues that keep students from their full potential.

The students are split among three counselors alphabetically.  This is a change from the past where each counselor followed a class through the four years, requiring four counselors.

The Counseling office ran a Stress Management group last Wednesday.  They put up posters advising students to T.H.I.N.K. before posting to social networks, to only post what's True, Helpful, Inspiring, Necessary or Kind.  Good advice for all of us. The counselors will have four-year-planning meetings with incoming freshmen and their parents, like a fancy private school.

Apparently ORHS has officially eliminated class rank.  The news came as a surprise to the board. Class rank will still be maintained internally but will not be reported on every transcript.  Class ranks can be reported upon student request.  There was a debate between Member Lane and the superintendent about weighted class rank, with the superintendent maintaining that except for AP courses it would be difficult to assign weights to classes.  There was concern that under the old system parents were encouraging students to take easy classes (and avoid challenging ones) to improve their class rank.

Middle School Risk Survey.  Principal Richard bravely volunteered ORMS to participate in the risky behavior survey normally given to high school students.  Among the concerning findings: 42.6% of students report having felt bullied at school. (The 2.6% number  in the summary in the agenda is a typo.)  Principal Richard is determined to reduce this to zero when the school is surveyed again in two years.  The principal expressed some concern over alcohol though he did not relay any specific survey results.

Whew.  Long meeting, long write-up, and another meeting tonight.

Elementary Decision Delayed

This November 20, 2013 school board meeting (agenda) has been an important one on the calendar for a while now.  Despite the very long meeting, almost nothing was decided.

The tuition issue is ongoing, with the only real news being that what began as a common tuition framework is diverging, as Barrington and Newmarket negotiations continue separately.  Barrington is committed to its choice model, so would not send anywhere near the 250 students we may get from Newmarket.  It appears the two potential contracts will have different terms and tuition rates.

The bulk of the meeting was consumed with elementary school rebalancing.  The meeting began with a list of four options: Redraw (no grandfathering), K-2/3-4, Mast Way K and the latest purported silver bullet: Managed Enrollment.  What I currently think is the best option was not included: Redraw with Full Grandfathering and Mast Way Choice.

This latest silver bullet follows on the heels of two previously hailed silver bullets: K-2/3-4 and Mast Way K.  Each has been recently touted by groups of parents as the answer, only to fade as the ramifications are understood.  The community is now seriously fragmented, with each option garnering some support.  The board seems pretty divided as well.

Managed Enrollment

Managed Enrollment is being advocated by a group of parents apparently led by Rob McEwan.  Rob seems to be a just-the-facts kind of guy, which I appreciate, and he's done a remarkably quick and detailed job turning the newest LRPC numbers into a projection of their plan.  Though touted as new, the main idea was proposed in the March 6, 2013 agenda (link not currently online due to district website work) as Centralized Enrollment.   It would be the superintendent's responsibility to assign new enrollees to schools.  In the Managed Enrollment incarnation, the superintendent, using some criteria yet to be spelled out, will send equal numbers to both schools.  Eventually this will balance enrollment.

The plan has a lot of merit.  It doesn't disrupt currently enrolled families, whose younger children would be grandfathered.   The plan achieves specific enrollment targets: within capacity immediately, quickly shedding the modulars and reclaiming special education space now used as a classroom, and eventual parity in enrollment.

Managed Enrollment cleverly shifts the burden of rebalancing to families that have yet to move into the district, sparing current residents.   Well, most.  It's a bit unclear whether all children currently in the Moharimet zone but not yet enrolled will attend Moharimet like they probably expect.  I think the parents' and superintendent's versions of Managed Enrollment differ on this point.

Given that Managed Enrollment appears to have a fair amount of community support, if I had preschool age children that I was hoping would go to Moharimet, I would enroll one right now, before Managed Enrollment becomes a reality.  I might even sign one up for PEP if they're too young to enroll in Kindergarten.  (PEP, the preschool program, charges tuition for students without an IEP recommending PEP.)

  

Of course the crucial detail of how the superintendent decides has yet to be specified.  Let's call the kids in the current Moharimet zone that end up getting sent to Mast Way "the plucked." The realtors were worried that property values would decline if the plucking was confined to particular neighborhoods.  (I actually proposed that plan on April 25th, 2013.)  Others worried that if district-wide, the plucked would feel isolated, as their neighbors all go to Moharimet while they attend Mast Way.

In addition to the property value issue, I pointed out that sending all the new kids to Mast Way may create a stigma, in which Mast Way becomes the school for those "lesser" children that have not previously benefited from an Oyster River education.   Rob McEwan countered that Managed Enrollment achieves rebalancing by 2017-2018 (I think that's the date he said), perhaps stopping the plucking quickly enough to avoid a stigma developing.  Left unsaid was why the administration would want to touch this hot potato, potentially transforming Assistant Superintendent Carolyn Eastman from a very well-liked and well-respected educator in the district into a pariah as she's tasked with awful job of telling parents their kids can't go to the school they expected.

New Enrollment Projections

As mentioned, the LRPC has put out new projections.  The elementary school projections are in the superintendent's presentation from the Elementary Reconfiguration forum Monday.  Despite having 15 fewer Kindergartners show up than expected this year, the projections for Kindergarten are almost unchanged.  45 more first through fourth graders than expected showed up this year.   The new projections increase grades 1-4 by around 50 students for the next three years (through 2016-2017), and by around 15 students after that.

50 students is around a 7% increase, a substantial deviation from last year's forecast.  The superintendent claims elementary school enrollment has now "stabilized."  The projections show enrollment around the current 700 (K-4) for this year and two more, declining to 662 in 2016-2017.  This is essentially a two year reprieve from the previously expected precipitous decline, so perhaps "stabilized" is a bit of an exaggeration.

Redraw with Full Grandfathering and Mast Way Choice

The traditional reaction the district has taken to elementary school imbalance is to redraw the dividing line between the schools and grandfather all the families currently attending an elementary school -- once a Moharimet family, always a Moharimet family, sorta.  The last time this happened was 13 years ago. The grandfathering makes the shift of a neighborhood happen over around four or five years, as only newly entering students not grandfathered would be plucked.  It is typically accomplished without controversy, as the grandfathering mitigates the complaints from current families.

It's a shame the district has let the imbalance get so acute that a more severe reaction seems necessary.  Grandfathering is great for a moderate imbalance, which it gradually corrects with minimal impact on current families.  

My estimate is it would take two years before Redraw with Full Grandfathering got Moharimet down to capacity, claimed by Rob M. to be 389 with the modulars.  To hasten this I suggest we offer Mast Way Choice.  Any Moharimet parent that wants to send their child to Mast Way can.  The bus will pick them up and bring them home.  In other words, give each Moharimet family the choice of whether to attend the potentially overcrowded Moharimet, or switch to the more roomy Mast Way.  This way, if they choose to stay in the overcrowded school, well, that's their choice.

It's my belief that almost all parents would choose to stay at Moharimet even if it is relatively overcrowded.  After all, that's what they opted for in August, when the superintendent proposed sending all the Kindergartners to Mast Way to fix the imbalance.  If that is the preference of the Moharimet parents, why are we in such an absolute rush to correct this?

If we were to do a redraw with grandfathering, we should accompany it with a new policy that ensures the bus line is considered for redrawing every five years or whenever the imbalance gets moderately large.  Full grandfathering would be the normal remedy.  The idea is to avoid getting into the current situation again, where we wait so long that the normal remedy cannot quickly address an acute imbalance.  I don't know what happened before three years ago, but the turmoil in the district resulting in Superintendent Coulter being let go, followed by a one-year interim superintendent and then an all new administration, allowed the issue to be ignored for far too long.

Letter to the Board

Here's the letter I sent the board:

Dear School Board:

I have a proposal for the elementary school rebalancing. Normally I just post my ideas on my blog where they may be safely ignored by all. But I thought this one was worth writing about to you directly.

I call it Redraw with Full Grandfathering and Mast Way Choice. Its main merit is it is the most conservative choice, in the sense it is the most like what we have done in the past. We have to assume that previous ORCSD school boards faced much the same tensions as the current board and devised a scheme they believed would least disturb the community. Indeed, our history relates that past redistrictings were accomplished without the rancor we're currently experiencing.

In the past when an imbalance developed, we'd pick a few neighborhoods along the dividing line to shift from the crowded school to the less crowded school. We would generously grandfather the families of current enrollees -- once a Moharimet family, always a Moharimet family. This way current families got to keep their school and felt little cause to complain. But in five years the neighborhoods will have almost entirely shifted schools.

I think we should do the same thing again. We've already identified the three neighborhoods: North of Lee Circle, Mill Road and Longmarsh/FFrost. Grandfather all the current families. Newly enrolling families from these neighborhoods have to go to Mast Way. It's a slow process -- you'd only get around 10 students shifting the first year, probably slightly more in each subsequent year and it takes five years for the shift to complete (almost -- there may be residual grandfathering).

The main drawback of the Full Grandfathering is how gradual it is. The district has let the overcrowding become an acute problem that cries out for immediate relief. So I propose deviating from history by offering all Moharimet families the choice to send their children to Mast Way. We'd pick them up and drop them off just like now. If a parent is bothered by the overcrowding at Moharimet, they have the option to send some or all of their children to Mast Way. Whatever the reason, if they'd like to transfer to Mast Way, they may. I call this Mast Way Choice.

I think just offering Mast Way Choice solves an important problem. If enough parents opt to transfer, the acute overcrowding will be quickly alleviated. If, as I suspect, almost all choose to remain at Moharimet, well, that's their choice. They have voted with their very children that they prefer an overcrowded Moharimet to a transfer to Mast Way. Why should we make them transfer when they feel this way? The grandfathering will gradually work to fix the overcrowding. But in the meantime the district is respecting the choice each family makes.

One advantage of going with the method of the past is it is what people might naturally expect. Another advantage is that there is much less risk of the unknown: the consequences of any of the other plans are much more difficult to predict, as we've never done anything like them before.

Were we to implement Redraw with Full Grandfathering and Mast Way Choice, I would strongly urge that a policy be passed to explicitly state how the district will handle rebalancing in the future. For example, the policy might be to consider redrawing the line every five years, or sooner if an imbalance presents itself. Full grandfathering will be the explicit expectation for the transition. I would probably leave out any mention of Choice from the policy.

Thank you for your attention and your service. Good luck with your decision.


Very truly yours,

Dean Rubine

Lee, NH
11/21/2013

Mast Way K Again

Mast Way K

The superintendent will hold a question and answer forum on elementary school reconfiguration on Monday, November 18th, 7 pm in the ORHS auditorium.  The board is encouraging anyone with a proposal on how to deal with the imbalance to email it ahead of time to orcsdsb@orcsd.org.  The superintendent (who was absent last night) will be prepared at the forum to list pros and cons of the proposed alternatives.

Parents queue up to make public comments about
elementary school reconfiguration at yesterday's
school board meeting

The elementary school reconfiguration issue continues to incite division in the community.  We're getting reports of friction between friends in Madbury.  The approximately one dozen parents who commented at last night's board meeting  (video 11/6/2013) seemed about equally split into three camps: against option 1 (redrawing the bus dividing line), against option 2 (K-2/3-4) and against both options.  The latest silver bullet is Mast Way K, in which all the kindergarten students in the district attend Mast Way.

In the Mast Way K plan, students attend grades 1 - 4 in their neighborhood elementary schools.  In other words, more than half of the K students at Mast Way transition to Moharimet for first grade.  A motion by board member Tom Newkirk was passed that directs the superintendent to present Mast Way K and possibly other options at the next board meeting, 11/20.

If the Mast Way K plan sounds familiar, it's because variations on the plan have been considered before and already rejected.  Full Day Mast Way K was first proposed in May.  That plan was rejected mostly because of the "full day" part -- the proposed tuition was thought to be too high, but there didn't seem to be much appetite for free (i.e. taxpayer-funded) all day K either.  In July, Mast Way K was proposed again, this time keeping our current half-day model.  That proposal was rejected due to a massive outpouring of sentiment against it by district parents at the August board meeting.  The main concern with that proposal was that it was to be implemented immediately, in a week, in time for the new school year.  That turned out to be too soon for the affected families to accept.

Will waiting until next fall (14/15 school year) make the Mast Way K plan more palatable?  I'm skeptical but I guess we'll find out at the forum.

When To Decide?

This issue of when to decide has also divided the community.   Some commenters made the point that as long as the issue remains open the community is under needless stress, so the decision should be made as planned at the 11/20 board meeting.  Others argued that the board and superintendent need to study the alternatives more deeply, gathering relevant educational research and investigating how similar proposals have fared in nearby towns.

I'm mostly in the "decide now" camp -- I don't think delaying will be that much more likely to result in a better decision, and the stress in the community over this is real and needs to end.  But it's the nature of boards to delay, so I think it's unlikely that the decision will be made at the next board meeting.  The 11/20 meeting is also supposed to decide what if any warrant article about tuitioning will be on the March ballot.

There seems to be some delusion that there's a great solution out there if we can only think of it.  The truth is more likely that there is no perfect solution that is pedagogically sound, quickly fixes the imbalance, minimizes transitions and keeps siblings at the same school.  Or one that has some other obviously positive trait that overwhelms its negatives.  The board will have to weigh the pros and cons of each alternative and choose the least bad one.   It's inevitable that some people are not going to like whatever option they choose.

The parents don't want transitions, don't want overcrowding, don't want their kids in different buildings, don't want 2-decade old "temporary" classrooms, don't want their kids used as guinea pigs in a district-wide educational research experiment and don't want to send their kids to that other school.  Most of them can have most of what they want but all of them can't have it all.  It's the board's job to decide who gets what they want and who doesn't.   Their basic choice is to make a lot of people feel a little disruption or a few people feel moderate disruption.   If it was me (and I'm glad it's not) I'd probably go with a solution that balances the two.  Which leads us to grandfathering.

Grandfathering

I'm resisting the urge to do a detailed analysis of a multi-year simulation of all the different plans, measuring balance, transitions per student and number of times students transition two years in a row (i.e. how many times will a student spend only a single year in one of the schools).  The purpose of the forum a week from Monday is for the superintendent to answer all those questions.

But the tradeoff is illustrated in the underdiscussed topic of grandfathering.  In the past, the district has redrawn the line to correct the imbalance between schools, but it allowed families with a child in one school to finish out all their children at that school.  As David Taylor pointed out last night, this generous grandfathering allowed the decision to be taken without any of the rancor in the community we have today.  Full Grandfathering keeps siblings together and does not impose any additional transitions on any student.

So why not just grandfather today?  Full Grandfathering is great for gradually correcting a moderate imbalance without much community turmoil.  In the first year of implementation, hardly any students are sent to a different school.  Only a few new kindergartners and newly entering first graders with no older siblings in the building would go to a different school than expected.  In our current case where about 60 students need to be shifted to Mast Way for balance, only around 10 or 15 would be shifted the first year.  Since this probably wouldn't even decrease the number of K sections at Moharimet, it would have minimal effect on the overcrowding.  The modulars would remain.  The next year a similar number would shift, and now we might feel a little relief, though we'd still be about as unbalanced as when we seriously realized the imbalance was a big problem.  We'd probably retain the modulars.

After 4 or 5 years we'd be close to balanced, though the cross-district effects of full grandfathering can linger for years beyond this.  It's possible (though unlikely) that we still have a family grandfathered from the last time the line was redrawn around 13 years ago.

So full grandfathering minimizes transitions, but it doesn't really seriously address the imbalance problem for around three years.  Maybe that's fine.  If affected parents prefer overcrowding to more transitions, so be it.

There are less generous grandfathering plans that change the tradeoff.  If we grandfather only the families of current third graders, they and their siblings would stay at Moh next year.  Let's call this 3rd Grade Grandfathering.  Those in the newly drawn Mast Way district who are newly entering or currently in K-2 would go to Mast Way.  This would probably be around 30-40 students, so the overcrowding would be largely alleviated immediately, and fully alleviated the following year.  Under this plan, some kindergartners would be compelled to transition two years in a row.  Most of the burden falls on the current K-2 families which end up on the other side of the line.

Let's say you think it's more important to disrupt fewer families than alleviate the overcrowding quickly.  How about we grandfather those kindergartners who would otherwise spend only one year at Moharimet (K & 3rd Grade Grandfathering)?  Or we grandfather current second and third graders (2nd and 3rd Grade Grandfathering)?  These options take an extra year or two before the overcrowding is correct, but disrupt fewer families.  Some have fewer transitions.

In all the grandfathering plans, you would of course give the families eligible for grandfathering the option to transfer some or all of their children.  You might consider ways to cap the length of time a family can be grandfathered.  You might invite Moharimet families near the dividing line to transfer -- maybe some of them want their children in a less crowded school.

If a line-redrawing is the chosen solution, we should add a policy that assures the imbalance is checked frequently so that future adjustments to the line can be done will full grandfathering.

I've been advocating "Redraw the Line" since last spring, assuming grandfathering would be done. Since the imbalance is so acute and full grandfathering affects it so slowly, I'm in favor of one of the faster grandfathering options, say 3rd Grade Grandfathering.   But it looks like my family (my son's in 3rd grade at Mast Way) will be largely unaffected by most of the plans proposed, so I'd prefer to let the families more likely to be affected have the loudest voice.

Other News

In other news, the district launched its new website at orcsd.org.  Thanks to IT Director Josh Olstad for the great update.  The deliberative session has been moved back one day to Wednesday 2/5/2013.   The public hearing is moved one week to 1/14/2013.  Assistant Superintendent (and Acting Superintendent this week) Carolyn Eastman gave a presentation and led a discussion on standards including the Common Core.   She also mentioned she was in charge of End 68 Hours of Hunger for the district.  This is a great local program that relies on donation to try to make sure that students qualifying for free or reduced price meals during the school week don't go hungry during the weekends.