School Board Update 15 October 2005

Greetings,

It’s been a busy few months on the School Board. Below is an update on what we’ve been doing and what’s coming up on future agendas. As always, your questions and comments are welcome. 

Goals for the Coming year
At our annual retreat in September the School Board agreed to the following goals:

1. Increase parental and community involvement in schools;

2. Increase our schools' academic rigor;

3. Revise the budgeting process and presentation strategy to develop greater community awareness of our financial needs and the impact of poor funding on operating performance. 


Merit Pay for Teachers?
The Great Schools Partnership is exploring the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP), in collaboration with the Teachers’ Association. It would introduce multiple career paths for teachers, e.g. mentor and master teachers, as well as merit pay. I would like to see more innovation in how we compensate teachers, such as more pay for teachers in hard to staff schools, and in hard to staff subjects, such as science and math. I know merit pay is a controversial topic, but I think if it’s designed with the input of teachers, it can be done fairly. Innovation in teacher compensation would allow us to respond to the supply and demand of the labor market and reward excellence, just like most other organizations.


Renowned Author, Sharon Draper, to speak at Fulton
Thanks to everyone who contributed money to bring Sharon Draper, a renowned author for young adults, to Fulton High School. I told you about this opportunity in my last update and the response was really heartening. We raised $1500 to bring this great speaker to Fulton where she’ll speak at a morning assembly and offer a writer’s workshop in the afternoon. We raised enough to bring 2 busloads of students from Whittle Springs Middle School too. You’re invited to attend the assembly on Monday, 10/17, at 10am at Fulton High School.


Budget Challenges
After a lot of discussion and consternation, we finally adopted a budget, but not until the first day of school. While our budget process was thorough, we need to start the process earlier and complete it sooner. Completing the budget earlier will allow more time to recruit and hire new teachers and plan better for the new school year. Last-minute scrambling is hard on teachers, students and parents.

We made some difficult choices to stay within our $320m budget. Budget constraints forced us to make cuts nobody wanted to make. Among other things, we made reductions in transportation and Special Education, eliminated Middle School TAG, instituted a hiring freeze and post-poned the purchase of equipment and textbooks. We budgeted the state-mandated raises for certified teachers, but gave no raises to non-certified staff. We did, however, work hard to keep the same health insurance coverage for all staff members, certified and non-certified.


Why did we have to tighten our belts when we got more money? 
The county raised our budget by $6m but our fixed costs (mandated pay increases, insurance, gas, utilities, etc.) increased by $10m. What about the wheel tax? Well I’ve had a hard time sorting out that revenue stream. When the wheel tax was raised by $6, schools got half of that, which results in $1.5m increase to our operating budget. When the wheel tax was raised by $30, none of the additional revenue goes directly to schools. Instead some portion of it comes to schools in the form of debt service for the new high school in West Knox County, funding for the Great Schools Partnership, and money for Physical Plant Upgrades. Those items are all helpful, but we have no discretion over how it’s spent and it’s not part of our operating budget. 


Next Year’s Budget Outlook
I’m told that the budget crunch will get worse before it gets better. Our bus drivers are on the agenda for Monday’s workshop and I imagine they’ll be asking for additional money to help cover the increase in fuel prices. Health insurance costs are going up. Our salaries remain lower than almost every surrounding school system.

So what can I do to alleviate this situation? I will continue to be proactive and advocate for schools at the front end of the County budget process. We need to make our case long before Mayor Ragsdale presents his recommended budget. I will encourage the School Board to present 3 budget options to County Commission this year: 

1. Progress - the amount of money we need to innovate and improve outcomes in our schools
2. Status Quo – the amount of money we need to preserve the status quo
3. Losing Ground – the amount of money we can survive with, but educational quality will drop.

We need to present detailed scenarios for each budget option, such as added or lost teachers, enhanced or diminished educational opportunities and projected impact on student achievement. If our revenues don’t keep up with our expenses we will have to consider systematic cuts, such as closing schools with fewer than 300 students, reducing bus service, deferred maintenance and bigger class sizes.


State and Local Funding for Education
There is a lot of talk in this community about the importance of education. Mayor Ragsdale is leading an effort to reform the Basic Education Program (BEP), which is the state’s formula for funding education. We get less money from the state than almost any other school system in Tennessee. I am all for reforming the BEP formula to better reflect the costs of educating kids in urban areas. One thing missing from the discussion, however, is the local contribution to education. 

According to a table in the News Sentinel earlier this month, Davidson County spends about $900 more per pupil than we do. That has nothing to do with BEP, but rather the community’s willingness to invest in education. Even if all the BEP reforms discussed were adopted, it’s my understanding that Knox County would get a fairly minor increase in BEP monies, maybe $3-4million. If however we upped our local contribution to match Davidson County’s, it would mean an additional $47m for Knox County students. This would require a significant re-allocation of the county’s budget and/or a tax increase, but would result in better educational outcomes for our children. 

I support BEP reform, but think we also need to assess whether our local contribution to schools reflects our stated commitment to education. We CAN control that locally and that could result in a lot more money for Knox County schools and a lot more quickly, than any BEP reform.


What’s Ahead?

• Elementary alternative school

On Monday we’ll hear a formal proposal of an alternative elementary school. There’s no doubt that removing dangerous students from the classroom will help the remaining students and improve the educational environment. I do have concerns about the few kids who are major discipline problems; how they’d be treated at an alternative school; whether they’d be prepared to re-enter their base school; how much an alternative program would cost. I would like to know what the best practices are in this arena. I will ask these sorts of questions at our meeting Monday.


• Magnet schools

In January a team from UT is going to give us a comprehensive evaluation of our magnet programs. I am concerned that our magnet programs are not attracting enough people. This is due in part to recruitment and PR efforts, but we also need to have something to sell. The programs are over 10 years old now and could use some new energy and ideas. We need to make sure that what they offer is unique and valuable enough so people are willing to drive their kids long distances to get to school. A few ideas off-the-top-of-my head:

    o Require auditions to enter the performing arts magnet high school;

    o Continue the Honors advanced curriculum in middle and high school;

    o Since every school has lots of technology these days, transform the technology focused elementary school to a new area of interest, such as a Montessori or language-immersion school;

    o Offer a “traditional” school, k-8, with uniforms and maybe even single-sex classrooms. This is one of the options in Prince William County, VA, and it’s very popular. 


• Block Scheduling – time for reform?

While block scheduling in our high schools has many benefits, I think it may be time to modify it somewhat. Some courses lend themselves well to 90 minute periods, others do not. Some courses are best-suited for one semester; others would be better to have all year long. Currently the block schedules mean a student could take math the Fall of their freshman year and not again until the Spring of their sophomore year. These gaps hurt continuity, can lower test scores, and may not be the best way to educate our kids. Other systems have a hybrid; some classes are 45 minutes and all year long, some classes are 90 minutes, just for one semester. Some classes meet every day, others just 3 times per week. Bottom line is greater flexibility and better educational outcomes. The Chapel Hill, NC, school system recently moved away from pure block scheduling to a hybrid approach. You can read about it here.  I don’t know what’s best for Knox County, but I think a hybrid approach is worth considering.


• Open Enrollment

There’s been some talk about adopting a more open enrollment policy at the high school level. Nationally there’s a big movement towards smaller, more specialized high schools. People have proposed a Finance Academy at Austin-East and some other type of academy at the new high school in Hardin Valley. I like the idea of more specialized high schools. Students often do better with a more specific curriculum and we can no longer afford to offer comprehensive high schools. However, we can’t specialize without offering choice too. If my kids are zoned for the technology high school but they’re much more interested in the International Baccalaureate high school, they should be able to transfer. Of course this brings up issues of transportation, undermining neighborhood schools, rationing slots in schools and a host of other things. Prince William County, VA, has been a leader in offering choice among specialized high schools and it’s been successful by some measures. 


As you can see, school board work is interesting and keeping me busy. Thanks for reading all of this and for letting me serve as your representative on the Board of Education. Please feel free to send me your comments.

Very Truly Yours,

Indya Kincannon
 

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