Improve Jeffco Schools

A different perspective on the current state of Jeffco schools

Author: ijsadmin (Page 12 of 12)

Disappointed in the hiring of Dr. Glass as Jeffco Superintendent

May 21, 2017 /

We’ve all now heard that Dr. Jason Glass rose to the top to become the new Jeffco schools Superintendent. Yet with all of the praise from numerous people and organizations not one mention was made of Dr. Glass’ record of improving education performance. That’s right, not a single mention by anyone, including quoted comments from every single member of the Board of Education.

There’s a reason for that – he doesn’t have a record of improving academic performance.

Shouldn’t that be the single most important quality that we, as a community, and the Board of Education, were looking for?

In Eagle County, where Dr. Glass is coming from, academic growth rates for Language Arts are 2 points below those of Jeffco and 3 points behind in Math, and both of those are below the state averages.

Colorado ACT scores actually dropped in Eagle County by .7 point from 2014, when Dr. Glass arrived, through 2016 while ACT scores rose by .1 point during that same time period in both Jeffco and the state. An .8 point difference between Jeffco and Eagle County is a fairly significant difference on that test and doesn’t bode well for our students.

With a track record of under-achieving academic performance, it wasn’t a surprise to me that Dr. Glass’ contract does NOT include a provision for a performance bonus as was the case with the previous Superintendent. If Dr. Glass’ past performance is any indicator, he wouldn’t have earned it. Instead, the Board of Education made him the highest paid Superintendent in the state ($313,750 per year including most of the identified extras) with no financial incentive to improve academic performance. I find that a hard pill to swallow.

Finally, with all of the talk about the transparency of the hiring process and the citing of various candidate numbers provided by the search firm, I think it is important to recognize that these same numbers were provided during the last Superintendent search in 2014. The current search was no more and maybe a little less transparent than before, since in 2014 we at least got to see the resume of Mr. Mcminimee which has not been provided for Dr. Glass. In addition, having a sole ‘finalist’ to skirt Colorado law was not transparent or right in 2014 the same as it is not right or transparent in 2017.

For the record, here are the publicly available numbers provided by Ray & Associates for the 2014 search – 257 individuals contacted by Ray & Associates, 63 completed applications, 11 candidates prescreened + 2 alternates, 6 candidates invited to interview, 5 participated with a candidate pool representing gender, racial and geographic diversity (California, Colorado, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington).

The bottom line is that I am extraordinarily disappointed in Dr. Glass’ track record on improving academic performance and the fact that his contract does not include a performance based bonus.

It might be time for us all to take a step back and recognize that we might not be getting what we need most with this Superintendent – someone who has a real record of improving education performance. We also have to recognize that just because someone says the process was transparent doesn’t really make it transparent.

A different perspective on Jeffco Schools’ new Superintendent

May 5, 2017 /

In the real world, performance counts. Performance is how individuals, teams and organizations are evaluated. Past performance IS a good indicator of future performance (doesn’t include the stock market).

So, as a retired Army officer in addition to having two decades of executive management experience in K-12 education related organizations, I decided to take a look at the past performance of Jeffco Public Schools’ new superintendent, Jason Glass, in his position as Superintendent of Eagle County Schools to see what we should expect.

I am not impressed.

Based on the publicly available data at the Colorado Department of Education (http://www2.cde.state.co.us/schoolview/dish/dashboard.asp), we shouldn’t have too high of expectations relating to improvements in the education performance of our kids. This raises the questions in my mind then of “Why was Jason Glass hired?” and “Is Jason Glass the best person for the job of Jeffco Public Schools Superintendent?” But more on that later.

First the data. Colorado, like many states, uses student growth, rather than student achievement, to make judgments about school quality.

Here’s 2016 Eagle County and Jeffco English Language Arts Growth data compared to the state average growth. Red cells indicate growth rates below the state average and green cells indicate growth rates above the state average:

As you can see, Eagle County ranks below the state average, and Jeffco, in almost every category in English Language Arts. While neither Eagle nor Jefferson County students do well in ELA growth against state averages, at least Jefferson County has a few bright spots.

But let’s compare Eagle County directly to Jeffco. Here’s where it starts becoming clearly evident that there is a problem.

  It is clearly evident that student growth rates in Eagle County generally lag behind student growth rates in Jeffco. How can we expect Jason Glass to improve our student growth if he has already shown he can’t do that in a district 12 times smaller than ours?

Let’s take a look at Math growth rates and see if we get similar results. First, in comparison to state growth rate averages.

  In Math, while we see a significant improvement for both Eagle County and Jeffco growth in comparison to state averages, that growth seems to be greater in Jeffco – and again, Eagle County lags significantly behind.

In a direct comparison between Eagle County and Jeffco we get the following:

    Once again, we can clearly see that student growth in Eagle County lags significantly below the growth in Jeffco.

Since past performance IS indicative of future performance, would we entrust the education performance improvement of Jeffco’s kids to someone who clearly is worse than what we had? And, if Jason Glass couldn’t improve education performance in a school district of 7,000 kids, how can we expect him to do that in a school district 12 times larger, with 86,000 kids?

I understand that Jason Glass is a prolific writer and is well respected. However, growth performance data suggests that we may be getting a ‘talker’ instead of a ‘doer’.

In the interest of improving education performance in our school district and for the sake of our kids, I’m surprised we couldn’t have found someone with a more results oriented background.

Be careful, Mr. Superintendent!

May 4, 2017 /

When hired as the new Jeffco Public Schools Superintendent, you may very well be walking into a no-win situation. Don’t be seduced by the salary and a self-confidence that leads you to think that you can solve all of the problems.

Granted, as with most districts, we have issues related to educational performance. However, this may be the easiest of your problems to solve.

We also have financial issues, but again most school districts have these problems.

But the biggest issue you will have, and probably the hardest to solve, is a division within our community and our utter lack of trust in the last 2 sets of Boards of Education. A contentious set of issues and a subsequent recall election resulted in a completely new Board in 2015. The Superintendent hired by the previous Board was subsequently put into a very difficult position and essentially didn’t make it to the end of his contract.

The current Board ran on a platform of trust and transparency. It exhibits neither, most recently exhibited by their skirting of Colorado law in naming you as the single finalist – an action similar to the previous Board which was soundly criticized by the community at the time.

You have a Board that exhibits no leadership. How will they react to your plans and the strong leadership attributes you will bring to the table? Will they let you lead or will they, as they have recently shown, suppress your leadership and attempts at innovation and performance improvement? Will you just be a financial caretaker? I doubt that’s what you want to accomplish.

You have a Board and District staff that were unable to gather sufficient financial trust so that our community was the only one in the metro area to not pass Bond and Mill levy proposals last November. How will you quickly re-establish community trust so that there is a greater chance of success the next time a proposal is sent to the voters? Based on what I perceive as fiscal mismanagement, the current Board has set the bar pretty high for me to trust the district with more of my money, and I know many citizens agree with me.

You have a Board and a staff who seem to have forgotten that their true constituents are the taxpayers and students. How will you bridge the divide between the community and a Board and District staff that seem willing to kill successful programs in a dogged determination to fund salary increases that are unsupported by true evidence and were rejected by taxpayers?

You have a District staff that thinks of dollars before students. There is swamp that needs draining. A new mindset needs to be put into place that supports students and nurtures excellence.

You have a Board that ignores a taxpayer pointing out inaccurate minutes, and a Board president who border-line bullies other Board members to approve those minutes without a review, bringing into question the accuracy of all previous Board minutes. How do you work with the community, and Board, to restore the trust lost in that episode?

You have a Board and staff that uses narrow and clearly biased budget survey questions as a screen to make financial budget decisions that run counter to taxpayers’ clear desires. How do you regain the community’s trust in the budget process after that?

You have a Board that has chosen to pursue a K-5, 6-8 model despite evidence showing that this is detrimental to academic performance and kids’ social needs, and despite the public’s rejection of the concept. Once again they are prioritizing dollars over students.

You have 3 seats on the Board coming up for election in November. With built-up and continued mistrust, anger at Board decisions and lingering divisions surrounding the 2015 recall – what will be the makeup of the Board after November and how will that affect you personally? We saw how that worked out for the previous Superintendent – now gone.

Be careful Mr. Superintendent!

You don’t use financial reserves to fund COLA increases!

April 20, 2017 /

At a Special Meeting-Study/Dialogue Session of the Jeffco Board of Education on April 20, 2017 the Financial Oversight Committee (FOC) provided the following Advice to the BOE (document here):

The FOC supports the staff recommendation to fund up to 1% of the COLA increase, using reserves if necessary, in the event state funding falls short of providing the budgeted 2% increase.

Who funds COLA increases from reserves? Even if you fund that year’s COLA increase from reserves, where does this money that is now built into compensation come from in following years if reserves were used this year?

That is pure and simple fiscal mismanagement of taxpayers’ money.

It’s bad enough that the staff would even make that recommendation (although they do have a history of bad recommendations). However, what’s even worse is that the Financial Oversight Committee would even support that recommendation.

This is just wrong on so many levels. Another bad staff recommendation and a Financial Oversight Committee that is not doing its job for us.

Why doesn’t the Jeffco School Board want collaboration in developing a plan for sustainable funding for the District’s HS GT program?

April 19, 2017 /

Despite a public proclamation regarding finding a collaborative sustainable funding solution for the District’s HS GT program at Wheat Ridge during the February 9th Board budget reduction Meeting, the District’s and Board’s actions since that time have been anything but collaborative.

Repeated emails to the Board and public comments at the past 2 Board Meetings requesting formation of a collaborative committee that included ALL stakeholders have been met with STONE COLD SILENCE! Since this has now been on-going for over 2 months, it leads one to believe that the Board and District staff have something to hide.

What the District is trying to hide finally came to light in a response to a letter from the GT parents from Kevin Carroll, the District’s Chief Student Success Officer. In discussing his Board directed conversation with the Wheat Ridge principal, Mr. Carroll wrote, speaking of funding after 2017-2018:

“Beyond that point, if the program is to continue at Wheat Ridge High School, it will do so leveraging the Student Based Budgeting (SBB) dollars that come with each of these students.”

“Our initial conversations this spring are not related to seeking alternative funding sources outside of SBB (Student Based Budgeting) dollars, but instead discussing current scheduling, staffing, and funding structures within the SBB framework, as was directed by the BoE.”

Unfortunately, this is an Alternative Fact created by Mr. Carroll. The Board did NOT direct sustainable funding come solely from SBB, as Board Member Amanda Stevens clearly stated on February 9th (summarized at: http://jeffcoschoolboardwatch.org/?p=4357):

Stevens: I’d like to revisit the GT issue and request that it be a shared cost model that isn’t requiring 100 percent school dollars or 100 percent district dollars. Says she wants to make sure that it doesn’t become a one or the other, where the program might get pulled out of WRHS and sent elsewhere if WRHS decides its SBB dollars aren’t sufficient to make it fully self-funding next year.

Mr. Carroll is clearly not following the direction of the Board and doesn’t seem interested in collaboratively attempting to find a solution with ALL of the stakeholders.

This is quite shocking since as Chief Student Success Officer, he oversees the District’s GT programs and is the person you would most expect to actually be leading the effort to do everything possible to support an indisputably highly successful and life-changing program. Yet, he is doing just the opposite – doing everything possible to cut funding. This is not the type of District staff leadership Jeffco needs or should want.

So, here’s one more public plea for the Board and School District to show the leadership the students and taxpayers deserve. Either the interim Superintendent should form, or the Board should direct the interim Superintendent to form, a committee with representatives from ALL of the stakeholders so that a full and open discussion of ALL of the issues (some of which are identified here: http://yourhub.denverpost.com/blog/2017/04/incompetent-management-in-jeffco-the-case-of-high-school-staffing/179765/) can take place. This should be followed by a public report back to the Board. This committee should include at least the following members:

  • Kathleen Askelson, Finance, Chair
  • Kevin Carroll, Chief Student Success Officer (oversees District GT programs)
  • Griff Wirth, Wheat Ridge HS Principal
  • One of the District’s HS GT Teachers
  • One member of the Wheat Ridge HS School Accountability Committee
  • One HS GT parent representative

If this committee is not formed in fulfillment of the Board’s desire for a collaborative solution, we can only believe that there really is something to hide. We can also believe that the Board is willing to say one thing in a public meeting but, through a total lack of leadership and opaqueness, allow something completely different to transpire behind the scenes. That’s not leadership, and it is a betrayal of the taxpayers’ trust.

Where is the Jeffco Board of Education’s Integrity, Respect, Transparency and Leadership?

April 13, 2017 /

At the Board of Education meeting on April 6th I raised an issue regarding an inaccuracy in the February 9th Board Minutes, prior to their approval.

You can imagine my surprise and shock when the Board instead approved the Minutes, failing to even consider my observation and request for a review.

I went into the meeting thinking that an honest mistake may have been made when developing the Minutes. I left thinking that the Minutes had been consciously written to change what really transpired in February.

As a taxpaying parent, I raised a legitimate issue with the February 9th Board Minutes. The discussion at that meeting, surrounding the District’s HS GT program, did not direct that sustainable funding come solely from SBB (Student Based Budgeting), yet that is what was reflected in the Minutes. The Board completely ignored my observation and review request. This was blatantly disrespectful, not only to me, but also to the GT students and the HS GT program whose funding will almost certainly be affected by this change. The Board’s actions reflect poorly on the Jefferson Country Board of Education and breed distrust and an appearance of opaqueness.

What went on behind closed doors so that the Minutes were written in that manner?

When the Board decided not to discuss my point it demonstrated that:

  • They were lazy and/or tired.
  • They did not like who delivered the message or the manner in which it was delivered.
  • They were willing to say one thing at the Board meeting on February 9th when they knew many people were watching, but hoped to hide a different message in the normally unread Board meeting Minutes 2 months later.
  • The Board was subsequently convinced of a revisionist history interpretation of what was said at the meeting by a District staff member.
  • Board members were afraid to say anything after the Board President called for a motion to approve. Or,
  • The Board thinks they know everything and don’t want anyone disagreeing with them.

None of these is a good reason to blatantly ignore a constituent who raised a reasonable request to review inaccurate Minutes surrounding a wide-ranging discussion. As elected public officials, they have a responsibility to ensure accurate Board Meeting Minutes. They failed to fulfill their responsibilities in this case!

This Board ran on a platform of trust and transparency. Yet, their actions as a Board on April 6th were disgraceful, disrespectful, show a complete lack of leadership and merely further the community’s distrust of the Board and the District staff.

Jeffco Board of Education should be embarrased

February 14, 2017 /

The Board of Education is most likely embarrassed by the some of the recent budget recommendations proposed by the Superintendent and his Cabinet. I don’t think the Board expected to see some of the cuts first proposed on January 26th.

In the end, the Jeffco School Board made good decisions for the district at the February 9, 2017, Board meeting – keeping the District High School GT Center at Wheat Ridge High School open for another year, retaining needed services for special needs students, and closing just one school instead of five.

Even though the Superintendent surprisingly changed his recommendations later in the meeting, it still meant that the Board had to hear a deluge of testimony that the planned budget reductions would negatively impact the education of our kids and our community.

It should have never come to that. And now, thanks to the Superintendent and his Cabinet, a Board elected with the stated intent of restoring the trust of the community has an even higher hurdle to overcome.

If the Superintendent and his staff really cared about our kids, understood our community and recognized the life-changing value of district programs, they never would have recommended several of the reductions. Their impact analysis was superficial and misleading. They never should have even recommended cuts to student-facing programs for Phases 1 and 2, the most likely to be cut. They should have known about the district’s 4-month notification policy for closing schools. They should have recognized the life-changing and life-saving impact of the District’s only High School GT program run by a Colorado Teacher of the Year finalist. They should have known about the Peck Alumni club and the value of local schools and their programs to the community. They should have recognized the value of the Social Emotional Learning Specialists. They should have known that $400,000 in Title I money would be lost. But, they didn’t.

To the Superintendent and his Cabinet, these programs and schools were just budget lines.

They should have looked harder for alternatives. My daughter, a junior in the HS GT program recommended for elimination, presented alternatives at the meeting that should have been investigated in greater detail:

  1. Cutting additional Achievement Directors. Reduce these highly paid non-student facing positions from 14 to fewer than the 12 in the reduction recommendation.
  2. Use some of the $17.5M in the schools Materials and Supplies contingency that is hidden in the budget. This contingency actually grew by more than $7.5M from 2015-2016. The recommended $600,000 Superintendent’s reduction pales in comparison to the total contingency.
  3. Reduce the amount of savings the Board is looking for. Only one year after renegotiating a new teachers’ contract, do we really need $25M in compensation investment – double the amount requested in the failed bond issue last November?
  4. Determine if some of the $24M in 2015-2016 budget surplus is sustainable and can be used to fund the student-facing programs recommended for elimination.

In addition, last year the district built reserves by $12M to what the CFO has categorized as a safe level. Can’t some of that money be used for programs and compensation in 2017-2018?

The Board could restore some lost community trust by having the Superintendent fire the members of his cabinet who made recommendations that would have had such devastating effects. Then the Board should immediately fire the Superintendent. It would be better for this community to have no leadership than leadership that clearly considers successful programs and schools to be merely budget lines, and isn’t creative enough to find less impactful alternatives.

Jeffco School District staff recommends cutting successful programs for kids at both ends of academic spectrum

February 5, 2017 /

On January 26, 2017 the Superintendent’s Cabinet, among other things, recommended:

  • Eliminating all (30) social and emotional learning specialists and a coordinator.
  • Eliminating all (20) literacy interventionists.
  • Eliminating four of 16 resource teachers who help support teachers of students determined to be gifted and talented.
  • Cut the 2 GT teachers who run the District’s only HS GT program at Wheat Ridge.

Let’s hope that the Board was as surprised by these recommendations as I was.

By all indications, these programs are successful and working to help our kids. Schools nationwide are investing in social emotional work, which helps students develop skills to manage their emotions, resolve conflicts and make responsible decisions. District research shows that the literacy interventionists are “closing the gap for our most highly impacted populations.” The targeted cut of the 2 GT teachers includes a 2017 Colorado Teacher of the Year Finalist.

All of these successful programs were designed to help students on the margins. It makes me wonder what message the Superintendent and his Cabinet is sending to teachers, students and the community with these recommendations?

The Board has an opportunity to show the community that it really does care about kids and their education by rejecting these recommendations and finding other ways to fund their desired compensation investment of $25M.

If the Board accepts these recommendations, we will be left questioning their priorities and reasoning, and an at-risk population will be deprived of vital resources. While I agree that compensation issues need to be addressed, the district and the teachers union just signed a 5-year agreement a year ago. A reasonable person needs to ask if there really remains an additional $25M need for increased salary, or if this is payback for the union’s support during the election?

The School Board needs to remember its responsibility to put the kids first!

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