April 20, 2008 - April 26, 2008 Archives

I ran a roundtable session for National Affiliate members at NSBA's annual conference in Orlando at the end of March. One new board member who attended had a story that will sound familiar to many of you.

He was having a problem with another board member. Whenever this member wanted to stonewall an idea, she asked, "is it best practice?"

The gentleman at my session asked, half-jokingly, if a "best practices" manual existed somewhere.

We at ASBJ hope that our Magna Awards program can serve as a starting point toward finding those best practices. For 14 years, we have been recognizing excellence in board and district programs on nearly any topic you can come up with.

Want to know how a district is dealing with dropouts? Magna has it. Want to find out how to engage Spanish-speaking parents with the schools? Magna has it.

Each year, we ask an independent panel of judges to evaluate the 300 or so entries we receive each year and find the standout programs. The entries are in three enrollment categories: under 5,000, 5,000 to 20,000, and over 20,000. This way, districts are competing against other districts of the same size.

We honored the 2008 Magna Award winners at the School Leaders' Luncheon at NSBA's annual conference in Orlando. The three grand prize winners took home checks of $3,500 each; all of the winners are featured in a supplement to ASBJ that ran in April.

Look online at the 2008 winners; then browse through the past winners. You'll find the contact names and e-mails of the district contacts so you can get more details about their wining programs.

While you're on the site, consider applying for a 2009 Magna Award, so you can add your programs to our growing "best practices" list.

Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor

I can’t even remember what the controversy was all about, just what it felt like to be covering a story for the local paper and see a hostile crowd fix its gaze on me: The Media.

It was back in the early 1980s in Petersburg, Va., where I got my first full-time reporting job. I had been covering some highly charged city council dispute and one night found myself in a hotel ballroom where one side’s supporters were being entertained by a small vocal group.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, the lead singer stared at me and announced to the crowd, amid derisive laughter: “This next song … is for the reporter!” He did not mean it in a nice way.

What did I do? I thought.

No sympathy for me? I can understand. No doubt you, on the other side of the media divide, have felt the same way when you were slammed by your local newspaper or TV station.

I thought about that night in Petersburg recently when I read a report in School Board News on What We Think: Parental Perceptions of Urban School Climate, which was recently published by NSBA’s Council of Urban Boards of Education. According to the survey, parents who rely on newspapers for their information have more negative views of their schools than those who get their information from their child or their own experiences with the district itself.

For example, 76.1 percent of responders agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “My child’s school is a safe place,” when their information came from “self-experience.” When it came from TV, it dropped slightly to 73.8 percent; and when their information came from the newspaper it fell all the way to 61.5 percent.

I can’t explain the reasons for these discrepancies, but I can guess. Much news follows a conflict model; that is, conflicts or controversies make news. This generally works OK when you’re covering, say, the war in Iraq or the latest outburst from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. But it’s less useful in conveying the myriad events that occur in a school district. How, for example, do you describe that critical yet elusive process we call learning?

I could go on, but that would take more than the space I have here. Let me just say that the media -- never monolithic -- are getting more diverse every day. On the one side are responsible newspaper reporters (me? biased?) who try earnestly to just “get it right.” They can be a very collaborative group. For example, the Education Writers Association has a listserv on which reporters from around the country help each other sort through the many complex issues that come up in school districts.

There’s also, to be sure, poor and sensationalized reporting out there as well. And as news gathering expands into the ever-burgeoning blogosphere, there will no doubt be more of this as well.

Finally, let me put in a plug for ASBJ’s Communications columnist Nora Carr, the chief communications officer for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. As a former newspaper reporter, I thought I knew everything about communications, but reading, and at times editing, her excellent columns over the past several month has taught me a tremendous amount about how school districts can “tell their story.” Her April column deals with much of what I’ve been discussing today: It’s called “Setting the Record Straight.”

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

How do you honor a 15-year-old boy who was killed because of his sexual orientation?

GLSEN -- the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network -- says silence.

GLSEN is holding its 12th annual “day of silence” on Friday in remembrance of Lawrence King, who was shot by a 14-year-old classmate in a computer lab at his Oxnard, Calif., high school in February. King, who lived in a group home, was constantly harassed because he was openly gay and had begun wearing makeup to school, according to media reports. His killer reportedly came from a troubled home and is being charged as an adult for the crime.

They’ve asked students to take a vow of silence for all or part of the day to remember King and bring attention to the harassment of gay, lesbian, and transgendered students. GLSEN estimates that more than 500,000 students at schools and universities have taken part in such events.

Students participating in the event are asked to distribute cards to their teachers and classmates that read, in part: “Please understand my reasons for not speaking today. This year's DOS is held in memory of Lawrence King, a 15 year-old student who was killed in school because of his sexual orientation and gender expression. I believe that ending the silence is the first step toward building awareness. Think about the voices you are not hearing today.”

More information on the event is available at www.dayofsilence.org. GLSEN offers a wealth of information on preventing bullying and harassment of gay students, and May’s ASBJ features an interview with filmmaker Debra Chasnoff, who produced “It’s Elementary: Talking about Gay Issues in School.” The video is being re-released with a new, 140-page guide for schools.

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor

Any school board member will tell you that they view technology as an important priority for their school system. But when money gets tight, do their actions match their rhetoric?

That’s a question I’d like to see answered. And it’s one of many that I’m asking school board members and technology directors as I research a future American School Board Journal article on smart practices for purchasing technology—particularly in a slowing economy.

So far, people are saying the right things. School leaders are aware that technology is an important component in teaching students 21st century skills. They say they want to see technology expand and enrich classroom learning.

They also voice an understanding of the dangers of deferring maintenance and trimming funds designated to replace older machines. They understand that aging technology will raise maintenance costs, and that cutting staff training adds to the risk that expensive technology will sit unused in the corner of the classroom.

I also was heartened by a news article reporting that the Massachusetts’ Dover-Sherborn Regional School Committee recognizes the dangers—and recently expressed concern when it received a budget recommendation for a modest cut in the technology budget.

“Some of [the budget] is not staying up with our five-year replacement plan,” one committee member commented. “To me, we could be putting ourselves on a slippery slope.”

The rest of the committee agreed, reported the Dover-Sherborn Press, adding that committee members feared “that if the towns get off-track with technology advancements now, it could lead to a disastrous snowballing effect a few years down the road.”

Smart policymakers, I think. But, as the economy sours and school revenues are trimmed, can this school committee—or any school board—hold the line? Will it matter that, in the long run, it’s a fiscally sound, efficient policy to protect staff development, maintenance, and replacement budgets?

These are questions that too many school boards might have to answer—and answer in ways they won’t like. Sue Helms, president of the Madison City Schools and Alabama Association of School Boards, is a big proponent of classroom technology, but even she is well aware that getting kids to school and putting a teacher in front of the classroom are higher priorities than any high-tech gadget.

“If a school system is trying to decide between a new school bus or computers in the classroom,” she notes, “that’s a no-brainer.”

Del Stover, Senior Editor

I stopped dining at fancy restaurants last year. I haven’t seen my hair stylist in months. I’ve nixed my occasional visits to the coffee shop. And the only trips I’ll be taking in the near future are for business. Ah, the sacrifices we make when money is tight.

No one knows this more than school districts, which are used to doing more with less--- though they’ll have to be even more ingenious and penny-wise in today’s faltering economy. For the May edition of American School Board Journal, I explored the strategies and approaches that school districts take under financial duress.

“Any cut means someone is losing something,” Luz Cazares, the chief financial officer for Alameda Unified School District, said bluntly. The California district is one of many in the state that were blindsided by Gov. Schwarzenegger’s proposal of 10 percent across-the-board cuts to fill a $14.5 billion deficit.

Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget would mean a $4.8 billion reduction in education funding across the state; for Alameda it would mean $4.5 million in cuts for next year’s budget.
“The Governor has put us in a position to cut half of what it took us seven years to do,” Cazares said of the $7.7 million the district had to trim soon after student enrollment began to decline in 2000. “We were blindsided.”

As are parents and children, some of whom stood in trash cans during a recent visit by Schwarzenegger. "Our students/teachers/coaches are too valuable to throw away,” read signs each held.

“There’s nothing like showing up when the governor’s there and sticking read kids and real teachers in trash cans and saying, ‘You know what? This is what you’re doing,” Brook Briggance, a member of the Alameda Education Foundation, told the Los Angeles Times.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor