Category: School Board (Page 4 of 9)

Glass’s Yearly Evaluation – A Pat on the Back Instead of a Kick in the Ass!

November 29, 2019 / ijsadmin

With falling academic achievement and atrocious growth rates substantially below state averages, it was interesting, and troubling, to read the Board’s recent yearly evaluation of Jason Glass.

Most troubling was the Board’s evaluation on what I consider to be the most important metric of the evaluation: Standard 5 Instruction. The narrative of this standard states: ‘Your rating on this standard reflects the disappointing drop in the district’s growth data on CMAS.’ Glass was given an Overall Rating on this standard as ‘Professional’.

For the Board to state that the drop is ‘disappointing’ is nothing but an understatement. When overall District growth rates for both ELA and Math are 3% points below state averages and barely above the growth rates for Adams 14, a District essentially taken over by the state, I would think words such as unacceptable, atrocious, horrific, pathetic and kid damaging would be more appropriate. Is the Board serious about the most important responsibility of the Superintendent? Let’s call a spade a spade here – Jason Glass is failing in his primary responsibility – ensuring kids get an excellent education in Jeffco schools. Yet, the Board gave Glass an overall rating of ‘Professional’. What does that mean? At first glance, ‘Professional’ means to me that someone is doing their job in an acceptable manner. – not great, but not bad. How, when achievement and growth are so bad, can someone be evaluated as ‘Professional’? If I was evaluating someone and they delivered results this bad, you can bet that the BEST rating they would have earned would have been ‘Needs Improvement’, but unfortunately, that’s not the case in Jeffco, with this Board, led by Ron Mitchell.

The Ethics Standard review is also questionable, particularly the rating of ‘Exceptional’ – ‘Your commitment to high ethical standards continues to be a strength of your performance … This trust is built upon your honesty, integrity, and values.’ Was there integrity and honesty in the way that Charters were cheated out of 5B (and probably 5A) monies? Absolutely not! What about the fact that over $10M in 5B funding projects was not accounted for in the highly touted FlipBook? Were projects, like Trailblazer stadium renovation, being intentionally hidden? And what about Kris Schuh’s we ‘anticipated an implementation dip’ excuse he gave to the Board in an attempt to explain falling achievement and growth scores in September? Glass didn’t challenge or attempt to correct this obviously false statement. Or, Tom McDermott, telling the Board that 2019 PARCC data is ‘similar’ to 2018 data when that data actually shows a decline or the misleading statement that Jeffco’s results are higher than the state averages when they should be higher based on different FRL populations . Or even Matt Flores telling the Board that SAT scores have been stable, when they’ve actually been falling. Deception and deceit are rampant in Jeffco and Glass gets an evaluation rating of ‘Exceptional’? The Board has been duped. They really need to open their eyes and understand what is really going on with Glass and District staff.

It’s also interesting to look at the Recommendations the Board gave to Glass. You would think that Recommendation Number 1, the top recommendation, would be related to raising achievement and growth. No, not in Jeffco. Recommendation Number 1 is: ‘Continue to improve the negotiation process with JCEA’. Are you kidding me? That’s the Number 1 recommendation, not something related to educating kids? Is this because JCEA was able to out negotiate Glass and get an additional 1% raise that the Board hadn’t budgeted for? Or is this because of all of the letters the Board got, from teachers, about the negotiations? In the end, this only shows where the current Board’s priorities are – Adults over Kids, Teachers over Students. Shameful.

Recommendations 2 and 3 had nothing to do with education either – essentially more collaboration and dealing with the impending budget crisis.

Recommendation number 4 was also interesting: ‘Identify additional ways to measure student success.’ This is essentially telling Glass that if you can’t meet the state defined measures of academic success – which he can’t – then go out and make up your own criteria. Change the narrative from something you and the District are failing at to something new that you can say you’re succeeding at. How about one of Glass’s famous surveys with leading questions administered unscientifically using Survey Monkey? Yep, that should do it – something that only the Kool-Aid drinking true believers have access to and will complete, excluding those people in the District who may not have access to computers or for those people for whom English is a Second Language and who are currently being hurt the most by District’s failures.

It’s a shame. The Board’s review of Glass seems like a pat on the back when it really should have been a kick in the ass as kids continue to be failed by Jeffco schools.

It’s time to focus on students in Jeffco – Vote Miller & Applegate

October 18, 2019 / ijsadmin

Chalkbeat has recently reported on the fund raising gaps in the Jeffco School Board races.

When I see contributions such as these I always wonder why they were made. Obviously the teachers’ unions see some benefit for the nearly $50,000 they’ve donated so far to Chavez-Lee and Schooley.

For the past 4 years, the Board has been controlled by 5 members who have accepted large amounts of Teacher Union money during their campaigns. The Board made it clear that teacher salaries are a priority and teachers subsequently have seen increases totaling 20%. To finance those increases we have seen department level cuts, a tax increase and a school closing.

However, over the past 2 years student achievement and growth are substantially down. 54% of 3^rd graders don’t meet state literacy expectations. 65% of 6^th graders don’t meet state math expectations. Overall District academic growth is below the state average. That’s atrocious! Kids are suffering – falling behind and never catching up.

So, while the current Board members have accepted union contributions and focused on raising teacher pay, they seem to have forgotten the real reason the school District exists – to educate students and prepare them for a productive life. Students don’t need more of the same.

It’s time to get some independent thinkers and voices on the school Board. The Board needs members who will make it their priority to focus on students and raising student achievement and growth, something that has been grossly lacking over the past 4 years. Miller and Applegate will bring that much needed diversity of thought and opinion into the Board room.

Students, not funding, should be the priority in Jeffco. Vote Susan Miller!

October 17, 2019 / ijsadmin

Recently Chalkbeat published the answers to nine questions they asked Jeffco Board candidates Susan Miller and Joan Chavez-Lee.

The bottom line is that Chavez-Lee is focused on state funding, while Miller is focused on students.

Chavez-Lee says that the biggest issue facing Jeffco schools is the ‘amount of money it receives from the state of Colorado’. Miller, on the other hand, says that Jeffco ‘needs to do a better job of preparing our children for the challenges they will face after graduation’ and highlights the large numbers of students who are not meeting state literacy, math and science standards.

The fact that 54% of Jeffco 3^rd graders do not meet state literacy standards and are doomed to higher probabilities of not graduating from high school, being incarcerated and lower earnings is the biggest issue facing Jeffco’s students and Jeffco. Coupled with declining overall achievement and growth scores, we need to acknowledge that Jeffco has significant issues.

It’s imperative that we have someone like Susan Miller on the Board. While we can acknowledge that more funding would be better, we need someone who more importantly recognizes the magnitude and severity of the education problem we have. We need someone like Susan Miller who will put students, not state funding, first.

The Myriad Lame Excuses for Jeffco’s Disastrous 2019 Assessment Scores

September 11, 2019 / ijsadmin

The scores were bad, but the variety of excuses for the atrocious results seemed endless. Brad Rupert started the Board discussion by attempting to blame the scores on the 5A/5B vote. I just can’t comprehend how that vote would affect scores. Not only was the vote in early November, but how were the kids involved? If the kids weren’t involved, then what Brad really meant was that the teachers were so involved in the vote that they weren’t properly performing their jobs. Is that what he was saying? JCEA probably wouldn’t agree with that, but wasn’t it really an attempt at shifting blame – from the teachers responsible for the scores to … teachers?

Brad’s next attempt was to blame the scores on the shift to the K-5, 6-8 model. Yet, once again, under scrutiny, this attempt backfires. The Board promised the community that the move to the 6-8 model would be good for kids. Growth drops of 7 points in both ELA and Math and real drops of 3 / 4 points doesn’t seem like it was good for the kids. This excuse once again only highlights the poor operational aspects of the move. And, who should bear ultimate responsibility for these scores? Teachers? Isn’t that their job? But, certainly no one will ever mention them as having responsibility for the drop. And, how did this move affect the 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th, 7^th and 8^th grade CMAS scores? What about the PSAT and SAT drops? Lame, lame lame, Brad.

The next attempt at an excuse was Kris Schuh’s “we anticipated an implementation dip” excuse. Really? The District “anticipated” a dip? If a good organization “anticipates” something, don’t they plan for it? Since there was no mitigation, that must make Jeffco schools not a very good organization. In fact, it doesn’t seem like Jeffco did any planning for the “anticipated” dip at all. The “additional planning time” seemed like a knee-jerk, desperation attempt to stave off legitimate Board questions on what the District was doing. In addition, Flores didn’t have an answer for what the District would be doing to help PSAT and SAT scores. ‘Anticipated’? It seems far from it. Flores also stated that scores should be looked at through the lens of the DUIP. Yet, the DUIP showed that scores would increase for the 2018-19 school year. That doesn’t support the “anticipated dip” excuse from Schuh. Someone wasn’t telling the truth – either the person who wrote the DUIP and didn’t include the “anticipated dip” or Schuh in making up the lame “anticipated dip” excuse.

To top the list of excuses, the District attempted to blame a dead teenager, Sol Pais, for the fact that 2 schools didn’t get enough students to school to take the tests. That’s 2, just 2 out of how many? 100+ schools? And Jason Glass really expects people to believe that?

Having bad results is one thing. Good organizations have solid, concrete and measurable plans for improvement. Jason Glass and Jeffco demonstrated their complete and utter incompetence by not having those plans, but instead only producing lame excuses and half-baked and wish-washy plans, with no realistic chance for success to the Board.

Unfortunately, the Board let Glass and his merry band of incompetents off the hook too easily.

It’s time for a change of Board members and Glass. With 5 years now as a Superintendent in Colorado, Glass needs to be put under a critical lens as he has no track record of improving academic performance in either of the two Districts he’s been in.

Jeffco’s 6th Grade Move to Middle School Debacle

September 3, 2019 / ijsadmin

Jeffco’s Board promised that moving 6^th graders to Middle School would be good for the students, despite some studies to the contrary.

It wasn’t!

In fact, measured by test scores it was a debacle and the magnitude of the drops is just mind boggling.

CMAS Math Growth was down a massive 7 points while the number of students meeting state standards was down a comparable 4% points.

It was the same for CMAS ELA. Growth was similarly down 7 points and the number of students meeting state standards was down 3%.

The only people that could call this move a success would be the Jeffco Board of Education who cited the “success” of this move in extending Jason Glass’ contract 5 years.

I think the exact opposite. When you see scores drop like this it demonstrates to me that Glass doesn’t have the leadership or skills necessary to move the District in the right direction and his contract should be terminated. He completely embarrassed the Board, but more importantly he completely let down the kids he’s responsible for educating.

I feel the same way regarding the Board of Education. If they consider this a “success”, their definition doesn’t match mine. I want to see thinking, and results, that are student focused. By extending Glass’ contract the Board clearly demonstrated that they aren’t student focused and they too need to be replaced.

Why Did Jason Glass Get a Sudden 5-year Contract Extension?

June 10, 2019 / ijsadmin

Why did Jason Glass receive a sudden 5-year contract extension? We don’t know the answer to that. We only know that it was discussed in Executive Session, put on the public Board meeting agenda and quickly and unanimously agreed upon.

During the Board discussion multiple Board members had reservations about the suddenness of the vote, in favor of more transparency. In fact, the District’s counsel, Craig Hess, recommended against taking a vote without providing more time for public comment.

However, Ron Mitchell was adamant on jamming through the extension that night, using the fact that the minimal public comment was sufficient.

In the end, using the passage of 5A/5B and the 6^th grade move to Middle School (Edit: maybe the 6^th grade move wasn’t as good as the Board wanted it to seem) as examples of the “good” work Glass has done the vote was taken and ALL Board members voted for the extension – transparency by damned. And just like that, without waiting to see the performance results from Glass’ 2^nd year Jeffco is locked into a still unproven Superintendent for the next 6 years. Not a good strategy, if you ask me.

And finally, once again, Glass’s contract contained no performance incentives. The kids in Jeffco can only hope the unproven “transforming the task” and “Deeper Learning” will actually have a positive impact on education. Without studies and proven results in any other school district I remain skeptical.

Jeffco Continues to Attempt to Hide Full-Time Enrollment Numbers for 5B Charter Allocation

April 17, 2019 / ijsadmin

Enough is Enough, Jeffco!

In response to a CORA request asking for FTE numbers, by school, for every school in the District, Jeffco responded by writing:

At this time, our Subject Matter Experts only have the unofficial student count by school for the Charter Schools and can provide that to you at no cost. If you would like the FTE data for every school in the District they estimate the time necessary to research and retrieve that information to be 3 hours.

This is just a BLATANT attempt to make it difficult for me to get the numbers!

And, it’s outright FALSE!

Let’s look at this from another perspective. If Jeffco truly doesn’t have these numbers:

How could they calculate the Charters’ share of 5B funding?
How does CDE have the detailed, by school numbers?

The answer to the first question is easy – Jeffco couldn’t make the calculation! This makes Jeffco’s response to my CORA request extremely difficult to believe.

For the second question, I know that CDE has the same detailed numbers because I sent a CORA request to CDE with the identical question. And, guess what? CDE responded. CDE gave me, without a fee, the breakout of FTE numbers by school in Jeffco. Yet, for some strange reason, Jeffco doesn’t have those numbers readily. How does CDE have the FTE numbers, readily available, and not Jeffco?

The answers to both of these questions make it impossible to believe Jeffco’s response to my CORA request.

That leaves the question of WHY Jeffco would respond in the manner they did.

Everyone can have their own opinion on the reasons, but I’m going to believe that Jeffco is trying hard to hide something (and I know what it is, thanks to CDE, but more on that later) and their response was outright deception and obstruction of attempts to determine the truth.

The Arrogance of Jason Glass and Ron Mitchell & the Squashing of Questions in Jeffco

April 4, 2019 / ijsadmin

Preceding the March Jeffco Board of Eduction meeting, there were questions in the Jeffco Generations Facebook group and in letters to the Board of Education regarding exactly how the District’s Charter Schools’ share of 5B funds was calculated.

Those questions seemed legitimate, since the CDE numbers appear to give Charters a 10.7% share of students – 9,052 Charter school students out of a total of 84,631 students in the District (w/o GVCA). Because of this, people wanted to see, in the interest of transparency, how exactly the prorated share was calculated and the source of the numbers. You would think that it would have been fairly simple.

Because of what I consider to be this justified confusion, I would have thought I would have seen a somewhat different tone in the Facebook responses surrounding this topic. I would have expected to have seen some potentially empathetic or conciliatory responses such as: “Now that you bring this up, we see how there might have been some confusion.” or “Maybe we should have included something to clarify this in our literature.” or “We’re sorry we created this confusion, we’ll learn from this and strive to do better the next time.” or even “At the (add a date here) meeting of the Charter school consortium, we very clearly discussed that Charters would be receiving a prorated share of the Bond proceeds.” Unfortunately, I didn’t see those responses in the Facebook discussion on this topic. At https://www.facebook.com/groups/1236337263132884/permalink/1758767880889817/ you can go back and see if you agree or disagree with my opinion on this.

Yet at the Board meeting, when the District had an opportunity to put these questions to rest, they didn’t. Worse, Jason Glass and Ron Mitchell essentially shamed people for even asking the questions to begin with.

Jason Glass, at 5:25, stated that he thought the District had gone above and beyond being proportionate, fair and direct with regard to Charters, and stated that he found that the “allegation that we have done anything else is offensive.”

Ron Mitchell then agreed with Glass and stated that it is simply not true when people “accuse us of being unfair.”

Glass and the District staff had the opportunity to answer what were simple questions. They didn’t, and instead stated how they were offended by people asking them. Not only was their arrogance on full display, but all of this was a blow to transparency with regard to 5B funds and Charters. Using words such as “offensive,” “allegation” and “accuse” against people who were just seeking understanding certainly sent an extremely strong message to everyone in the community who might have questions in the future – “How dare you question us? Don’t ask questions!”

Glass came to this District stating that he would listen to everyone and try to bring sides together. His responses to the questions on 5B Charter funding, which should be simple to answer, have been anything but that.

Glass’s and Mitchell’s words at the Board meeting showed who they truly are – arrogant and dictatorial!

Why won’t Jason Glass show 5B Charter calculations?

March 16, 2019 / ijsadmin

As the discussion surrounding the allocation of 5B monies to Charters has continued over the past few weeks, it has been easy to see why there has been confusion. First, EVERY piece of literature put out by the District stated that Charters would receive 10%, or $56M from the bond proceeds. Not one piece that I saw contained an asterik clarifying that the share was dependent upon Full Time Enrollment (FTE) such as “* FTE dependent”. Personally, it makes sense to proportionally distribute the funding based on FTE, but it certainly appears that there are people who strongly believe that they were told that Charters would get a flat 10%, and I can see their point. I wasn’t in those meetings, but the anecdotal evidence is that there was certainly a high degree of confusion in this regards, and not just from EVERY piece of written literature and media.

By the time the Board meeting was held this past Thursday questions regarding Bond proceed allocation appeared to shift to understanding how the FTE numbers were arrived at and the calculation of the prorated share. Those questions seem legitimate to me since using CDE numbers at https://www.cde.state.co.us/cdereval/pupilcurrent it appears that Charter students make up 10.7% of the District’s student counts. These numbers appear to match up with the student count numbers contained on page 20 of the District’s Office Statement to Bond investors that can be seen in this letter to the Board https://www.boarddocs.com/co/jeffco/Board.nsf/files/B9T4N972FC2D/$file/c19119O.pdf, which I would think would be the official, audited numbers. Those numbers show 9,052 Charter school students out of a total of 84,631 total students in the District, or 10.7% by my calculations. I will state that the District may do some additional calculations on these numbers to convert to FTE since some students only attend ½ time, but I think that is what, in the interest of full transparency, people want to see – how exactly the Charter proration was calculated. And, I think it should be simple enough to provide this detail.

Yet, at Thursday’s Board meeting, when the District had an opportunity to put all of these questions to rest, they didn’t.

At the 5:17 point of the Board meeting Livestream Kathleen went into a discussion of the history of past Bond proceed sharing with Charters and then went on to discuss that there are a variety of ways to count students, that the audited student numbers are what the District uses and that Golden View’s numbers are subtracted. Yet, she failed in the most important part of any explanation – showing the actual numbers and formula that the District uses and the source of those numbers. That means that questions remain.

We can only wonder why there is such an unwillingness to show the numbers and calculations.

Is Jason Glass and the District trying to hide something? It seems that it would just be so simple to show the numbers, explain them and let everyone go away satisfied. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened and the questions remain and people are left to wonder why.

To me, it seems that this entire issue has been extremely poorly handled by Glass and the District staff.

Therefore, in the interest of full transparency, let’s see the full accounting of the formula for and source of the student count numbers used to calculate the Charters’ share of Bond proceeds!

What was the rush with Glass’s 5 year extension?

March 10, 2019 / ijsadmin

Why was Mitchell so adamant that the contract be approved at the March meeting?

Even though District Counsel Craig Hess noted that voting on Glass’s contract extension violated the spirit of District policy (at 2:39 of Board Livestream) and 2 Board members noted that doing so could be perceived as lack of transparency, Mitchell was determined to vote on the extension at the meeting.

Mitchell even went so far as to claim that the 2 people who spoke at public comment on the fact that the contract wasn’t even available for review until sometime after early morning Thursday were proof that the public had the opportunity to comment on the extension. (Hey Ron – their comments were aimed at the fact that needed information wasn’t available!)

Multiple Board Members stated that their vote would be the same that month as it would be the following month if they waited.

Yet, Ron Mitchell pushed through a vote, and every Board member dutifully followed along and voted for it.

Just one more blow to transparency in Jeffco!

But why such the rush, there was still well over a year remaining? And, why wasn’t the contract posted to the Board agenda site until the day of the vote? There supposedly weren’t any material changes in it from the original contract, so why couldn’t it have been posted earlier? Certainly, Glass had a copy prior to that time so that he could have it reviewed by his lawyer.

What was Mitchell afraid of? Was he afraid of the public comment he might get because there aren’t any performance based provisions in the contract? Did Jason Glass get another offer and threatened to leave the District if he didn’t get a contract extension that month? Was Mitchell worried about potential comments that might come out regarding some of the deception perpetrated by Glass regarding getting people to vote for 5B?

I guess we’ll never know.

However, we can infer from the actions of Mitchell that he was worried about something. And, he was willing to throw transparency and the spirit of the Board’s own policies to the wind to get the contract extension passed that night.

Shame, shame, shame on Mitchell and the Board!