Sunday, May 25, 2014

School board should reject top-down approach to redistricting

I posted last week about some of my doubts about the superintendent’s recommended elementary school boundary changes. But there’s another, more basic objection to the proposed maps: there’s no reason to believe that they have the support of the community.

If watching national education policy for the last ten years should teach a person anything, it’s skepticism toward top-down “reforms.” From the creators of No Child Left Behind to Arne Duncan to Bill Gates to proponents of the Common Core, today’s education “reformers” have one thing in common: they’re so sure they’re right that they don’t care whether the affected communities agree. As they impose their policies on local school districts, regardless of whether the people in those districts want them, they often use the most high-minded rhetoric. When the people who want to privatize education and close schools in impoverished neighborhoods—inevitably citing studies about “student achievement”—tell you that their cause is “the civil rights issue of our time,” it’s a good moment to be skeptical.

The proposal to enact major boundary changes to meet the district’s diversity goals, largely by sending kids from low-income families to schools farther from their homes, has some unfortunate parallels to other top-down policies. I believe its supporters have the best of intentions (unlike some of the obviously profit-driven participants in the national ed reform debate). But there’s no indication that supporters of this approach have persuaded the community of its wisdom, or even that they’ve persuaded the low-income families who are its supposed beneficiaries and who will bear the brunt of the disruption. The board shouldn’t impose a change of this magnitude if the community doesn’t support it.

I’d feel differently if the current board members had run for office advocating major diversity-driven boundary changes, but they didn’t. (On that, more in my next post.) Nor has the community “engagement” process demonstrated support for that approach. At the community workshops, the district pointedly instructed the public to take the diversity policy’s numerical goals as a given, asking the participants only for input on how to use redistricting to meet the goals, not on whether to do that. It’s almost as if the district learned its lesson from the facilities workshops: if you don’t want to know the answer, don’t ask the question.

I sometimes hear, in response, that “you can’t please everyone,” but that’s just fighting a straw man. Of course you can’t please everyone; no one is suggesting that every change has to be unanimous. Any redistricting is going to make some people unhappy. But that can’t justify imposing a change that doesn’t have the support of most of the broader community. It’s a big leap from “You can’t please everyone” to “So therefore we should adopt my ideas regardless of what the community wants.”

It is understandably tempting for people, even for those who consider themselves progressive, to impose their policies on the community when they have the chance, even without public support. But in the long run, that just legitimizes the kind of top-down government-by-elites that is hostile to progressive values (and to many strands of conservative values as well). If you’re against top-down governance only when you disagree with the policies, you’re not against top-down governance.

Everybody’s got a great idea. The best thing you can do for people, though, isn’t to impose your great idea on them. It’s to empower them democratically. Then try to win them over to your idea. I’m sure that in any community-driven system, many of my ideas would be voted down, but I’d trade all of my policy preferences for a school system that reflected the community’s values. I’d much rather put my kids’ education in the hands of the greater Iowa City community than in the hands of any set of people who think they know better.

Related posts here and here.
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18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent blog. You have captured the feelings of the community.

Anonymous said...

Spot on.

Anonymous said...

Would it make sense to let the public vote on whether or not we want to implement the current, or a revised DP? Maybe at the same time as the bond referendum?

Julie VanDyke said...

Chris says, "I’d feel differently if the current board members had run for office advocating major diversity-driven boundary changes, but they didn’t."

No, you're just counting the ones that voted for it to make up the majority rule of 4 but it was led by Sarah Swisher and she did campaign and maintain that exact stance in multiple discussions I had with her, an opinion with which I clearly disagreed entirely. Still, you're looking at this from the viewpoint of what it has become as if that was what was intended. Had the CURRENT board president and vice president held Murley to everything that was laid out in the original Governance Committee meetings, we wouldn't be in this situation. Oh, yeah, and if Jason Lewis hadn't been distracted and sold out Hoover for Murley's "magic beans".

Chris said...

Thanks, everyone, for the comments. My preference would be for the district to make the high-FRL schools so appealing that non-FRL families will transfer in voluntarily, even if that means diverting resources from other schools. (See this post.) If the administration had started working in that direction earlier, there might even have been a public consensus for a plan like that by now. In the superintendent’s defense, though, the Diversity Policy’s strict deadlines may have been impossible to meet with certainty under that approach, which may be why he took the redistricting route instead. Although the policy’s supporters said they favored voluntary movement, the policy they wrote simply required the goals to be met by certain dates, period. If the board wants a more incentive-based approach, it should make that clear as soon as possible, amending the policy if necessary.

Chris said...

Julie -- You may be right about Sarah Swisher. She ran in 2009 and I just don't even know where to start to find information about her public campaign positions at that time. At the time of passing the Diversity Policy, though, she did emphasize voluntary movement. She also made this statement:

“It’s never been the intent of any board, and I don’t think this board, to remove people out of a building where they’re currently matriculating. In fact, if we have to look at anything that isn’t incentive-based, I would imagine that the superintendent would probably come back to us, and it’s up to him to come back with a plan, with a change in enrollment area, or hopefully, the opening of some new schools, which will give us that opportunity to do redistricting and also hopefully create some capacity for those incentive programs.”

I've never been able to fully understand that statement, though, since I don't see how "a change in enrollment area" is any different from "removing people out of a building where they’re currently matriculating."

Julie VanDyke said...

I think I can interpret that fairly on target, and will after I get my son in bed and scrub off as much nasty patchouli gnat repellent off as possible (even I don't want to be by me). In the meantime, I liked your stance and your comments and agree for the most part...with some "points of clarification" ;-)

Anonymous said...

Has the legality of the DP been confirmed by anyone other than our own council?

Chris said...

Anonymous -- The state is planning to issue some kind of policy about how districts can use FRL data. It might affect what the district can do under the policy going forward, but I doubt it would mean that they can't use maps that they've already drawn.

Julie VanDyke said...

Replying to Chris: Of course I’m right about Sarah Swisher ;-) Though I didn’t pay as much attention to the board level drama until after that election, I did read about it and I remember some of it. At that point I was more focused and active with PTO at Hills and general participation and observation of all redistricting activity. It was after that I began to attend all the board meetings as well. At that time, Sarah and Tuyet were just settling in. I spoke with Sarah at length after several board meetings. She told me herself, paraphrased now of course, that she believed it was acceptable, in fact, necessary, to move people high FRL areas out of their neighborhood schools (and I assume the reverse since that would be necessary) to address socioeconomic balance in the schools. She did not at that time talk about incentivizing, she talked about busing. I objected to that then, I object to it now, and for the same reasons. I do not believe that busing those with the fewest resources out of their support structures, not at least without their agreement to do so, is the way to do it, nor do I believe it is in “their” best interests. Sarah had the polar opposite stance at that time, hands down. I found it offensive then, I find it offensive now.
I is imaginable to me that any of us would think we have the right to tell other people they’re wrong about what’s in their best interest because, even though “we” aren’t one of “those people” we “know better” than they do what’s “best” for “them”, and then create policy that doesn’t engage them in the process from the start, proactively. Policy this important should not be rushed through the vacuum of the Iowa City Community School District Board of Directors or Administration without preparatory community dialogue engagement for many, many, many crucial reasons.

Chris, you said something about having to win people over to an idea…well, NO. Not for this sensitive of an issue. Especially not when the people that most need to be “won” over to the idea, the people it’s really supposed to benefit in the first place, haven’t been consulted publicly on the idea first. Nobody should need to be won over to an idea because it’s supposed to be in “their” “best interest” when “they” weren’t even publicly engaged to come up with whatever the idea should be in the first place, let alone what “their” “best interests” are without asking “them”. Could it even get more condescending and disrespectful than that?

Chris said...

Julie -- I don't think we're really disagreeing. All I'm saying is that if your solution is so great, then you should be able to get people on board for it before you impose it. In other words, in a democracy, the final measure of the worthiness of a policy is whether it has community support. And yes, the easiest way to come up with a policy that has community support is to consult the community first.

Chris said...

Julie -- As for Sarah Swisher, I'm not so much interested in what she said privately, but in what she said publicly when she was running for the board. That's what will shed light on what voters thought they were choosing by voting for her.

Julie VanDyke said...

Reply to Chris: You said about the statement you quote below from Sarah Swisher, “I've never been able to fully understand that statement, though, since I don't see how "a change in enrollment area" is any different from "removing people out of a building where they’re currently matriculating."

---“It’s never been the intent of any board, and I don’t think this board, to remove people out of a building where they’re currently matriculating. In fact, if we have to look at anything that isn’t incentive-based, I would imagine that the superintendent would probably come back to us, and it’s up to him to come back with a plan, with a change in enrollment area, or hopefully, the opening of some new schools, which will give us that opportunity to do redistricting and also hopefully create some capacity for those incentive programs.”---
Well, sentence one, she’s just wrong. The board has intended to move remove people out of one building “where they’re matriculating” to another any time it’s moved people as big or small actions of redistricting. Not sure when the quote from her is dated, but “this board” that she refers to most certainly intended to move people at many different points, particularly when they voted to do so…most particularly when they ignored the very same consultant, RSP, that’s referenced in the article you posted about what the State Department of Ed is doing and Polk ICCSD if I remember correctly. “This board” she refers to actually volunteered Hills and Lincoln kids, just out of the blue since those were not what their consultant recommended.
Hahahahahah, RSP said, paraphrased, that the only way to meet the board redistricting objectives list was to redistrict boundaries and bus to balance FRL including the assertion that the only way it would work, the only way that sufficient numbers of students could be moved without splitting schools up was to move Twain and Wood areas across town to West instead of City and to move Wickham from West to City, again, if I remember correctly. RSP said a LOT of interesting things that people have forgotten, both on and off the record. I would suggest you post the RSP final recommendation for a look back into the past.

Julie VanDyke said...

I don't think we're disagreeing either :-) In fact, I think we're probably the closest we've been to agreement on the DP yet based on what you said you'd like it to be. What you described is what I wanted it to be, and what it was supposed to be in the first place. Murley has poisoned it instead, by turning it into a busing policy instead of working to make it what you described and what the Governance Committee described. He has further destroyed it's potential to do it the way you and the Governance Committee laid out because the real fact is, the busing and redistricting isn't being done because of the Diversity Policy. The busing and redistricting is being done because we're building new schools and trying to utilize the seats we have at some schools and decrease the class sizes at others by using open seats (as SHOULD have been done with Hoover instead of closing it in the first place). But it ain't over till it's over, Roosevelt is still open as a functioning school after "this board" that Sarah referred to, did everything it could to close it. I believe the same is quite possible for Hoover and I'm not going to give up on that, Hills, Mann, Lincoln. Longfellow is in a different situation because of the sheer amount of property surrounding it. Longfellow should either be rebuilt entirely (with the original building preserved and sold as affordable condo apartments if the neighborhood agrees) or upgraded with the HVAC that should be the highest priority need for any school, especially any elementary school, in the district that has been cheated of it for decades.

Julie VanDyke said...

Sentence two of the quote from Sarah: Now that part she’s described well as far as what was communicated from the Governance Committee to the Superintendent as to how the DP goals should be met. The dates and goals were, however poorly determined and worded, placed in the policy to set an initial deadline so that he would provide the board with a superintendent recommendation on what programming he felt would best achieve the DP goals and a proposed timeline in which to do it. I don’t believe the rule of four was opposed to adjusting those goals or deadlines had the superintendent actually EVER even tried to make a good faith effort to research the possibilities for alternate programming and such to incentivize change as he was charged to do in the first place. What Sarah is saying, based on my committee observing and discussion with her, is that the policy was intended to make Murley come up with a plan, a superintendent recommendation to bring to the board. In fact, I think she’s saying he better not come back to them with busing UNLESS it’s part of necessary redistricting for new schools and creates the room needed, at Twain for example (hmmm, those unfilled seats they proposed in the magic bean Twain Taj Mahal mission creep design) to be able to place a magnet school there (or elsewhere) that was one of the main intended ways to reach the DP goals.

Julie VanDyke said...

What pisses me off the most about the Diversity Policy public response though, particularly that from the wealthier and middle-class white non-FRL public from the North Corridor, is that at the time of that, gasp, horrible recommendation that Wickham get moved to City RSP recommendation, if I remember correctly, was that they, paraphrased of course, nodded a vehement collective YES to the idea that instead of redistricting to achieve equity, schools with the highest FRL should be given resources. Jim Schaeffer was very much supportive of that, oh, yes, he emoted even.

Yeah, right. Where’d their passion for that topic go after Wickham missed the axe, the RSP final recommendation was ignored by “this board” and the Hills and Lincoln kids were moved to give “this board” the ability to say they’d done “something” for all the money (guessing, maybe $160,000 total) they gave to RSP to do the redistricting process they then ignored the recommendations of.

Julie VanDyke said...

What pisses me off the most about the Diversity Policy board response though, is its lack of follow-up until it is now apparently too late? Having attended all the Governance Committee meetings where the policy was developed, in addition to playing significant role in the background on the phone with Jeff who was initially re-writing the policy language from the unintelligible version Sarah brought to committee to what it was finalized as, I’m going to tell you again Chris. By the time they were meeting on the policy and developing it, Sarah’s thoughts on what was “best” for other people appeared to have changed a great deal. The non-contiguous islands elimination language and section came from Jeff, not Sarah or the others. Chew on that. While I agree with the need to eliminate islands of poverty cherry picked to cow to racism and socioeconomic discrimination, if you think about it, it’s really Jeff that made the policy language include the part about busing. The rest of the committee pressure and intention while developing the policy was consistently, and I believe what I saw with my own eyes, about making the administration empowered AND charged with creating alternative programming to drive change and improvement towards socioeconomic diversity and to reduce the disparities between schools as they exist now. Murley just never did it, after blowing the first meeting he was to report out on his research into it, and the board never followed up to make him do it. While one would likely place the most responsibility for the disaster on the 4 who voted for the initial version of the policy as passed, once it was voted into policy, it was the responsibility of every board member to push for follow-up by placing it on agendas long, long, long before Marla tried to force it onto the Tuyet chaired Education Committee a few weeks back.
I haven’t seen them bring it up again really, not in a way that would require Murley to do and report out on his charged work of researching and proposing alternative programming, resource allocation, year-round schools etc., again (he shirked it at the Governance Committee meeting he was supposed to present it at initially – showing up with the police in the schools grant urgency red herring instead) until Marla attacked Tuyet about it at the last Education meeting a few weeks ago…after being board president (Marla, two terms) and one of the rule of four that let the ball drop that long (never charging Murley to re-present), so that Murley was able to shirk what he’d been charged with researching and reporting out on (how long ago was the police in the schools grant red herring he tossed out there?) and place ALL of the effort to comply with the Diversity Policy on busing alone. It certainly appeared Marla was off of her rocker that the Chair of the Education Committee, Tuyet, wouldn’t sneak it onto the Education Agenda, as an emergency added agenda item AFTER the meeting agenda had already been determined and finalized. So off her rocker that she snatched out and grabbed Tuyet to try to make her go with her to discuss it privately after the meeting when Tuyet was just doing her best to leave. That kind of desperation, um, yeah, the rule of four and Murley were supposed to have continued the work but the remaining 2 of four (previous board president and current board vice president Marla Swesey and previous vice president and current president Sally Hoelscher) didn’t do their jobs did they? Murley’s magic beans again no doubt.

Julie VanDyke said...

What pisses me off the most about the Diversity Policy policy and the superintendent is the same thing at the root of everything that bothers me about Murley’s performance here, and that is, in my very experienced opinion after hundreds of hours of mutually participatory discussions I’ve had with him in person, by phone, in emails, and in texts; after years of watching what he says vs. what he does; after watching him suggest the budget cuts that hurt kids most of all instead of looking at how the Administration could REALLY address any cuts, if they’re really needed at all, which I doubt, is that from all I have seen, read, observed, and heard from him, Murley cares about what Murley thinks is best for Murley above all else, at all times. And he does whatever he likes to ensure he gets what is best for him above all else. He has shown himself to me as one of the least selfless, most greedy people I have ever known.
Gonna be an interesting group of meetings tonight…wonder when the board will schedule the multiple board complaints that have been filed, particularly the one about Marla’s attack on Tuyet (and the walking quorum of emails, in my opinion, that preceded it). Good thing our board directors understand the bullying policy and set as fine examples of that as they do the integrity of their word forever after having lied and lied to a judge.
Remember folks, the board oath, if I remember correctly, requires board directors to uphold and follow the Iowa Constitution (essentially Iowa Law and the Iowa Administrative Code). So if that’s the case, what does it take to force a no confidence vote in the board and call for an election out of cycle? Because this board has failed to supervise their “sole employee”. In fact, this board has entirely reversed the reporting situation between supervisor and board from every angle I can see.

Oh, yes, and please also remember that in the district Murley allegedly superintended previously, Wassau, WI, the teacher’s passed a no-confidence resolution on his ability to lead and took it to their school board to ask them to fire him. He got out of it, barely, and then popped up here like a bad superintendent whack-a-mole…where will he pop up next? As much as I wish we had someone skilled, wise, fair, smart, honest, kind, understanding, imaginative, engaged, positive and proactive, and that keeps their promises (where’s that pesky Ph.D. we pay him extra for that he said he would have by, what was it, December of his first year in this district and how much have we paid towards keeping his student status eligible to get a degree which it appears he may never complete?), I wouldn’t wish him on any other district either.

Whew....Done.

Hope you can all come to the meetings tonight Tuesday May 27th...and they damn well better record and broadcast that work session too. As grouch as I was about the board, I want to send a bow out, credit given, and appreciation acknowledged to Patti and Tuyet for everything they do, and have done, to try to hold Murley accountable for many things since shortly after he arrived. Probably why they often don't find out information that should be shared with the entire board by Murley, Board P Sally Hoelsher, and Board VP Marla Swesey, until they see it on the news. They've been doing what they can, but without the support of the other board members to create open communication, as appropriate, of all board review materials and crucial information, it really limits their ability to hold his feet to the fire in order to meet his performance expectations doesn't it.