A different perspective on the current state of Jeffco schools

Author: ijsadmin (Page 7 of 12)

Why is $15M in 5B Bond Expenditures not documented?

The District has very carefully shown that $705M will be funded for capital improvements, and in very broad categories, shown that $705M will be expended on page 2 of the Flip Book.

The District has also very carefully shown the costs of the new and replacement buildings and the improvements at each school.

However, when looking at the details, $15M in expenditures is missing.

Approximately $415M in detailed school projects (as outlined in the Flip Book), $66M in new construction, $64.5 in replacement schools, $56M to Charters and $86M in Contingency gives a total of approximately $690M.

Where’s the other $15M?? That’s over 2% of the total program and it is not a rounding error.

One could say that it was an innocent mistake. Or, one could also say that $15M in expenditures and projects was purposely left out of the Flip Book to prevent questions being raised about those projects.

In 2016, numerous questions were raised regarding the use of funding for renovating stadiums and transportation centers as significant funding was allocated to projects in these facilities. Obviously, those needs still exist, but they don’t appear in any discussions or literature put out by the District or Glass this year.

Does the District have plans to use the “missing” $15M for projects at other locations and subsequently conveniently “forgotten” to mention those projects or put them in the Flip Book to avoid having to answer questions about them?

Is that being honest with the taxpayers? Is that being transparent?

If this is indeed true, it is certainly not being transparent.

I would even go as far as classifying it as intentional deception on the part of Glass and the District and I don’t think deception should be rewarded.

Do You Buy Lightbulbs With a 20 Year Bond?

One of the highly touted 5B District projects is to replace lighting in all schools with LED lights. However, the District has not said what the cost of this project is, merely lumping it into project costs at schools. The District has said that this project will provide annual savings of approximately $10M. Since normal expected payback for lighting projects similar to this is around 3 years, this would mean that the cost of installing this lighting would be in the range of $25-$30M, or 5% of the Bond ask. Is that calculation close?

What we don’t know is the life expectancy of these bulbs. While LED bulbs have a long lifetime, will they last the length of the 20 year payback period of the Bond, or will the District be paying the costs of multiple sets of bulbs toward the end of the payback period? 

We don’t know the answers to these questions as Jason Glass and the District won’t answer them and most likely the bulbs will last far less than 20 years. (Unanswered JeffcoGenerations Facebook question)  

One would think however, that if the project is financially sound, the District would be quick to highlight how they will be saving money that can be put directly into teacher salaries, books and more teachers. When you don’t hear those things, when there is complete silence on the complete costs and benefits of this project, taxpayers can only wonder whether the project is financially sound over the long term and what the real costs are.

Once again, Jason Glass and the District strike a blow to the “transparency” they so often claim to be one of their core principles.

Glass Deceives & Misrepresents with claims of District’s $1.3B in Deferred Maintenance

Before I start, I think it is important to say that I agree that there are significant capital needs in Jeffco.

However, I don’t like to be misled, or deceived with regard to the scope of those needs.

Recently, I’ve heard numerous Jeffco Schools related people, including Jason Glass and Ali Lasell say that Jeffco schools has $1.3B in “Deferred Maintenance” (at 4:44 of A Community Guide from Dr. Glass, and at 6:32 of Talking Ed: Jeffco’s Future Funding ).

However, their claims are far from the truth!

There is a very specific definition of “Deferred Maintenance” in the business world. The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board defines “Deferred Maintenance” as maintenance and repairs that were not performed when they should have been or were scheduled to be and which are put off or delayed for a future period.

The key point is that Deferred Maintenance is maintenance that was delayed. This definition does not discuss, or include, maintenance that may be scheduled to be performed in the future.

I looked at Jeffco’s 2016-2017 Facility Condition Assessment, the latest I could find, to determine how the District came up with $1.3B in Deferred Maintenance. I could not even come close.

First, the document discusses $575M in 2016-17 facilities “needs”. $440M of this comes from facilities and another $135M in Educational Adequacy deficiencies.

Yet, even that $575M total is not “Deferred Maintenance”. $475M of this amount is classified as Priorities 3, 4 and 5. That means that they are costs expected sometime in the future, not maintenance that was deferred.

Since Priority 3 is for 2-3 years in the future and consists of $234M, I will assume that this has all been deferred and can be added it to the Priority 1 and 2 categories of 2016-17. This gives a total of $334M in deficiencies costs in 2018-19.

The other component of facilities costs this document describes are Life Cycle Renewal costs. These costs are related to things such as roofing, heating, plumbing, stairs and elevators. Costs related to this are projected yearly for 5 years out. These costs were projected to be the following:

2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
$51M $108M $94M $73M $43M

Assuming that all Life Cycle costs for 2017-18 and 2018-19 were deferred, we can add another $159M to the District’s Deferred Maintenance to come up with a generous estimate of $493M in Deferred Maintenance costs.

A generous $500M in Deferred Maintenance is NOT the $1.3B in Deferred Maintenance that Glass and Board members keep repeating. Their claims are outright false!

What Glass, Lasell and others are saying is inaccurate, misleading and deceptive and brings the credibility of Glass and the Board into question.

How can they expect taxpayers to trust them and approve a needed Bond package when the numbers they repeatedly discuss are just plain wrong?

Jeffco – Taken for a ride by Jason Glass

 

Recently, Jason Glass did a video interview with Glenn Wallace of Colorado Community Media as they took a trail ride together on mountain bikes.

During that interview, the real Jason Glass was revealed, and it wasn’t pretty.

At 1:55 of the interview, while taking a break from riding, Wallace steered the conversation to a Twitter parody account called @NotJeffcoJason, an account that compares Glass to “Edward Longshanks (a nickname for King Edward I of England), reincarnated in Jeffco.” In a humorous, casual vein, he asked Glass what he thought of it, using a series of silly questions designed to elicit chuckles.

Glass replied that it is his policy to ignore, rather than listen to, accounts with differing opinions than his. He took a pretty strong swipe at those accounts when he said that @NotJeffcoJason was like “a lot of fake Twitter, fake social media, fake news accounts that are around in Jeffco”

First, Glass doesn’t understand the difference between a parody and fake news. If someone does a parody it’s not fake news, it’s a parody. Once Glass starts labeling parodies as “fake news” he starts seeming a lot like Trump.

Glass’s admission that he ignores people in the District who have different perspectives than he does is particularly appalling, especially when he starts accusing them of lying and exaggerating – “they can lie, they can exaggerate, they can say things and then they hide behind this false persona.”

There are just so many disturbing things about this admission. First, he basically said that he doesn’t care about anyone’s opinion except those people who agree with him. He also essentially said that their opinions were all fake news and therefore, essentially meaningless and worthless. But at the same time his supporters such as Support Jeffco Kids spew more fake news than anyone (herehere and here).

In addition, Glass doesn’t just ignore people, he actively blocked people whose opinions he didn’t want to hear on Twitter. He did this until he was informed that a Federal Judge ruled that Trump was violating people’s First Amendment rights when Trump did the same thing, and that ruling applied to public servants, including him.

And this attitude is really counterproductive. Throughout my career as a leader and top executive for a number of organizations, I’ve found that listening to and incorporating differing opinions only makes an organization better. Maybe Glass hasn’t recognized that fact yet. Finally, I think that accusing people of lying is inappropriate and uncalled for, especially by someone in his position.

Glass also took offense to people using fake personas online, instead of using their real names. But there are plenty of Glass supporters who do the same thing, such as “Support Jeffco Kids” and “Jeffco School Board Watch”. Why does Glass apply a double standard?

Personally, I don’t hide behind a fake persona (Glass knows who writes this blog). Yet Glass hid behind some BS interpretation of a District policy to prevent me from expressing opinions he didn’t like at public Board meetings. That’s not just “ignoring”, that’s actively “preventing” the expression of differing opinions. I actually consider his actions in that regard to be another violation of my First Amendment rights, but Glass looks at marginalizing and shutting people down as “things getting better in Jeffco.”

Glass came to this District claiming to be someone that would talk with and listen to everyone. Through his first year on the job he has done the exact opposite. He ignores, marginalizes and blocks anyone who has a differing opinion with his many Trump-like actions.

The only people he listens to are his own disciples and the only people taken for a ride with Glass are the people in Jeffco who unquestioningly believe everything he says.

District says recent 1st Amendment ruling does not provide precedent in Colorado

With a recent ruling by a Federal Court judge in support of 1st Amendment rights relating to President Trump’s pernicious and unconstitutional practice of blocking critics on Twitter, I sent an email to the Board of Education relating to Jason Glass’s similar, Trump-like, behavior.

While Jason Glass coincidentally unblocked my account, the response from Amanda Stevens of the Board was a bit puzzling.

Amanda’s response was:

“Dr. Glass and district leadership enthusiastically support the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution.  In fact, even though this Southern District Federal Court decision does not provide precedent for Colorado, I have confirmed with Craig Hess, district legal counsel, that our practices are in compliance with Justice Naomi Reice Buchwald’s decision.”

And, what exactly does that mean, Amanda?

Are you saying that this Federal ruling has no applicability in Jeffco schools and Colorado? Why then did the plaintiffs’ attorney in this case say the ruling “should guide all of the public officials who are communicating with their constituents through social media.”

And Amanda, in light of this ruling and if Jason Glass is blocking constituents on Twitter, how can you say that the District’s “practices are in compliance with Justice Naomi Reice Buchwald’s decision”?

You can only say that if Jason Glass unblocked people whose viewpoints he didn’t want to hear before you sent a reply.

The fact of the matter is that Jason Glass was violating the constitutional rights of taxpayers in this District. However, in the interest of protecting him, you can’t admit it and go on to provide some meaningless mumbo-jumbo from world renowned constitutional law expert (just joking), Jeffco Schools legal counsel Craig Hess.

Guess what – the law applies to Jason Glass too!

Is Jason Glass illegally violating constituents’ 1st Amendment Rights?

On May 28th I sent the following email to the Board of Education as Jason Glass, the great “listener,” has blocked me on Twitter since late October or early November 2017:

Please direct your employee, Jason Glass, to stop violating constituents’ 1st Amendment Rights and unblock the Twitter accounts he has blocked. A federal judge has just ruled that his blocking of accounts is unlawful.

I would assume that you fully support the 1st Amendment, as I do, as the amendment was written to ensure free and open speech. Sometimes we may not like what that speech is, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that someone doesn’t have the constitutional right to say it.

According to cnn.com, a federal judge, Naomi Reice Buchwald, in New York ruled Wednesday, May 23rd, that President Trump is in violation of the Constitution when he blocks users on Twitter, because Twitter is considered a “public forum” when used by public officials to communicate.

“We hold that portions of the @realDonaldTrump account — the ‘interactive space’ where Twitter users may directly engage with the content of the President’s tweets — are properly analyzed under the “‘public forum’ doctrines set forth by the Supreme Court, that such space is a designated public forum, and that the blocking of the plaintiffs based on their political speech constitutes viewpoint discrimination that violates the First Amendment,” Buchwald wrote.

“We’re pleased with the court’s decision, which reflects a careful application of core First Amendment principles to government censorship on a new communications platform,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight Institute. “The President’s practice of blocking critics on Twitter is pernicious and unconstitutional, and we hope this ruling will bring it to an end.”

Katie Fallow, a staff attorney at Knight who represented the plaintiffs, said the ruling “should guide all of the public officials who are communicating with their constituents through social media.

Jason Glass has enthusiastically supported the 1st Amendment rights of students to rally against gun violence and he has enthusiastically supported the 1st Amendment rights of teachers to rally in support of additional funding for public education. Fortunately in the United States, Jason Glass, a public official, cannot be selective in whose 1st Amendment rights he supports.

Please immediately direct your employee, Jason Glass, to fully support the 1st Amendment and a Federal Judge’s ruling that directly relates to the Twitter accounts of public officials and remove the illegal block he has placed on my @bobgcolorado twitter account and any others he has blocked.

Thank you.

Taxpayers deserve an open and fact-filled discussion on teacher pay

Over the past few weeks we’ve heard many things regarding school funding and teacher salaries.

We’ve heard that:

  • Colorado teacher salaries are 46th in the nation.
  • Colorado teachers have an average annual salary of $46,506.
  • Teachers leave the teaching profession because of low pay.
  • Teacher pay has not kept up with inflation since the Great Recession.

And while all of these statements may be true in some context, in Colorado teacher pay is set at the school district level.

That effectively means that what is happening at the national, or state levels, may or may not be true in Jeffco.

Therefore, Jeffco taxpayers deserve to hear specific data in relation to their teachers so that they can make informed, and local, decisions regarding school funding and teacher pay.

For example:

  • What is the change in Jeffco per pupil funding since the Great Recession?
  • What is the average teacher salary in Jeffco? Can total compensation be quantified?
  • How many teachers in Jeffco have salaries which have not kept up with inflation since the Great Recession?
  • Why, with 2 JCEA negotiated contracts, increased state funding, budget cuts and a school closing, are there still teachers with salaries that have not kept up with inflation?
  • How many teachers in Jeffco have salaries that have increased by more than 125% of the rate of inflation since the Great Recession?
  • What would be the total cost of salary increases, or one-time payments, to ensure all teachers have salaries, or compensation, ensuring cost-of-inflation equivalency since the Great Recession?
  • How would these numbers change if the 2010 mandated 3.5% increase in SAED is factored in, since SAED is to be funded by moneys otherwise available for employee wage increases?
  • What is the exact number of teachers who leave teaching in Jeffco because of low pay?

It’s easy to throw around numbers that may, or may not be in context.

However, in the interest of full transparency I believe that it is important for both Jeffco schools and the JCEA to have an open and fact-filled discussion with Jeffco specific numbers so that taxpayers can fully and completely understand the issues as they pertain to our teachers. This includes an opportunity for taxpayers to ask pertinent and relevant questions.

What do you think John Ford and Jason Glass?

Can you provide full transparency and make this happen?

An Extraordinary Lack of Leadership from Jason Glass

Can anyone give me an example of any organization that would ALLOW its employees to force it to shut down its core functions merely because its employees WANTED to take a day off?

Don’t almost all organizations require supervisor approval if an employee requests a day off?

Don’t (competent) supervisors subsequently ensure that the organization has adequate staffing during the employee’s requested off time prior to granting approval?

What does that say about Jeffco schools then when District and School Leadership essentially ALLOWED sufficient numbers of teachers and staff to take “personal” days on April 26th “forcing” Jason Glass to shut down the District for “safety” reasons?

In my mind, it means 3 things:

  1. That Jason Glass is an extraordinarily weak leader. He clearly demonstrated that he doesn’t have the will or courage to stand up for students and perform his PRIMARY job responsibility.
  2. It clearly demonstrates that students are NOT the Number 1 priority of Jason Glass or the District. The District has one job, and that is to provide a quality education to the District’s students. How does that happen when teachers, and students, are not in class? And what about the 31% of the District’s Free and Reduced Lunch students? Where are they getting their meals that day? It certainly seems that from the actions of teachers taking a “personal” day and Glass shutting down the District, that students are NOT the Number 1 priority.
  3. Jason Glass and teachers don’t care about working parents. What are working parents supposed to do if their kids aren’t in school? Jason Glass and the teachers essentially told these parents that they want them to take their own day off work, take their own “personal” day, or a day without pay so that teachers could “protest”. Selfish, selfish, selfish!

Who is running the school District? Certainly not Jason Glass. And after not standing up for the students and parents, and by extension the taxpayers who pay his salary to ensure kids get an education, JCEA knows that they run the District and can do whatever they want in the future.

What happened here demonstrates an extraordinary lack of leadership. It sets an extremely bad precedent. What will JCEA do next if they now know there are no repercussions for coordinated job related actions? While Jason Glass might agree with some of the funding related issues, it is his JOB to look out for the students, and their education, FIRST.

Finally, why haven’t we heard from the School Board? Actually, that’s not a hard question to answer as we already know the Board is owned by the union.

It is just shocking that there is so much lack of leadership, particularly from Jason Glass. This would just NOT happen in any other organization that is truly serious about its core mission.

Innovation Fund – Another poorly thought out idea by Glass

The difference between a Visionary and Operational organizational leader became painfully evident at this week’s Board meeting.

I agree that an Innovation Fund, managed well, has its place and could derive benefits for the District.

However, once again, as is becoming a common theme with Glass, the implementation details were poorly thought out and demonstrate the operational inexperience and incompetence of Glass and his District staff.

First, even though this may be a good idea, you don’t raid District reserves that have already been depleted by adding seats for the District’s controversial move to a K-5, 6-8 configuration. This puts reserves at the very low end of the recommended level. It also seems extremely dangerous to me, given the length, and now velocity of the economic upturn. As someone who has experienced multiple downturns, that scares me every day. Therefore, instead of planning for the inevitable, as prudent and experienced leaders would do, Glass, and the Board, have put the District into a position of financial weakness if the economy collapses in the short term. All of this for an idea that is not an absolute necessity.

Second, I don’t understand why this needed to happen so quickly, or even how there is any chance that fund uses will show results by the end of this school and fiscal year. Grant recipients won’t be announced until the week of March 5th. This means that awardees will only have approximately 2 months to use the funds and show results before the end of the year. I don’t see how anything meaningful can come about in that short of time. The proposed timeline for 2018-19 is even more puzzling. For that school year recipients won’t be announced until November. While this provides roughly a semester for awardees to implement and obtain results, it completely ignores full-year, or first semester innovation opportunities. When added together, wouldn’t it be better to slow this process down and award grants in the April time frame for the 2018-19 school year? Wouldn’t this give grant awardees planning time that would better ensure the success of their ideas? To account for the District’s budget cycle, grants could be awarded contingent upon the Board approving 2018-19 Operating Funds, removing the necessity of depleting Reserves. If during the upcoming Budget cycle the Board prioritizes other District needs higher than the Innovation Fund, then the awardees do not receive their grants. They would know by June, still have time for planning and eliminating the need to pull from reserves.

All of this raises the question: “What’s more important in Jeffco, a Visionary or Operational leader?” Clearly, Glass wants to be a Visionary, and with this recommendation he wanted a quick “win”. However, he has demonstrated time and time again with his poorly thought out ideas (e.g. no clue regarding implications of and the difficulty of starting an Arts Academy, a HS GT RIE committee that utterly failed in its stated purpose of finding program sustainability and now a poorly thought out Innovation fund created from District reserves) that he and his District staff have no clue, are incompetent and are out of their league operationally.

A Vision is nice, but Glass and his staff have proven that they won’t have the ability to implement it, merely reinforcing DeliverEd’s findings. I guess we shouldn’t expect anything less as the Board hired someone from a District 12 times smaller than Jeffco and without the operational experience necessary to manage a district the size of ours.

District Staff Hides Fact MAP data shows decrease in Growth Rates

At the January 11th Board meeting, Matt Flores and his staff of PhD’s went way out of their way to hide the true facts regarding Winter MAP data.

Starting out by saying they were extremely happy with the data, on several occasions they highlighted that the Growth data was better than the growth data in 2015-16, except for 4th Grade Math.

Yet, the true facts are that Reading growth rates stayed the same or decreased in 4 out of 8 grades in comparison to 2016-2017 and decreased in 6 out of 8 grades for Math.

That’s not a trend we should be seeing!

In addition, Matt destroyed any credibility he had by trying to snow the Board into believing that 4th grade growth rates in Jeffco were worse in comparison to 2015-16 because 4th grade math concepts were harder. He completely ignored the fact that 4th grade math concepts were harder for EVERYONE taking the MAP. Nice try Matt, but after that, why should we ever believe anything he ever says?

The Board, and Matt and his team, should have focused on the disturbing downward growth rate trend. Instead, Matt had his PhDs work overtime to perpetuate the “everything is going great in Jeffco” myth. As a result, no action gets taken and our kids continue to suffer.

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