Indya KINCANNON
2nd District School Board Representative

School Board Update  - October 2007

Fall has finally arrived!  I hope this October finds you happy and healthy.  Our family is busy with school, Girl Scouts and soccer (I’m coaching for the first time). 

Things have been busy on the School Board too, with budget, the Superintendent search and on-going discussions on the school calendar, magnet schools, transfer policy and more.  I apologize for the length of this update – that’s what I get for not writing you more often!  As always, I welcome your comments, questions and suggestions.

 Indya

Superintendent Search
We hired Ray and Associates to help us find a new Superintendent.  They were one of 3 firms that expressed interest in conducting our search and they had the best proposal in terms of cost and quality.  Their fee is $32,500, plus some costs associated with travel for the candidates.  The total cost will be around $40k.

Their services include developing a profile for what we want in a Superintendent, surveying staff and community for input, advertising at the state, regional, and national level, actively recruiting qualified candidates, conducting background investigations, developing interview procedures, and assisting in drafting a contract with the new Superintendent.

Public input is fundamental to the process.  We will seek public input to help us develop the profile and also to help us evaluate the final 4-5 candidates.  We will give equal consideration to all candidates, whether they are home-grown or from far afield.

Ray and Associates has conducted successful Superintendent searches all over the country and they guarantee their work.   Our schools, while not perfect, are not in crisis.  The community is open to innovation and our funding levels are much better thanks to BEP reform.  Being Superintendent of Knox County Schools seems like a great job to me.  I’m confident that we’ll have many strong candidates. 

Budget
In August we approved a budget of $357.4m, up $25m, or 7.5%, over last year’s budget.  I will mention highlights here, but you can view the budget in full detail (74-pages) or in summary form, on the KCS website. 

The bulk of the new money is from the state.  Thanks to BEP 2.0, all large school systems, including Knox County , are receiving a much more equitable portion of state education funds.  Thanks to everyone who lobbied for this much needed change. 

How are we spending the funds?  The budget includes 4% raises for teachers and staff, new positions in high-need areas, new textbooks, and funds to cover increases to health insurance, transportation and utilities.  There are also several new initiatives:  

·          Excellence Through Literacy - An effort to improve literacy education at all grade levels; it adds Reading Coaches, Educational Assistants, and collaborative planning time for elementary schools.

·          Distinguished Professionals Program - allows KCS to hire a retired physicist, for example, to teach a science course when there are no certified teachers available.  

·          Parent Notification System – A system to improve communication with parents about everything from grades to weather emergencies.  A school can contact every family by phone within minutes. 

·          PayPams - allows you to pay school fees and add money to a student’s cafeteria account on-line.

·          Parent Portal - allows parents of middle and high school students to monitor their child’s courses and grades on-line.

There are some strings attached to the BEP money.  The money must be used for student achievement, particularly in struggling schools, and may not be used for facilities.  It also requires principals to have more autonomy over hiring, firing and budget for their school.  (I think additional training is necessary before most principals would be ready for budget control).  Teacher evaluations are more frequent and we’re obligated to establish a differentiated pay plan for hard-to-staff schools, hard-to-staff subjects and bonus pay.  All in all, some welcome reforms!

School Board Retreat
I recently returned from a 2-day School Board retreat.  This annual event helps us explore issues in greater depth and move beyond short term issues that typically absorb most of our time and energy.  Like all of our meetings, this one was publicly announced and attended by numerous members of the press, and a representative of the Knox County Education Association.  We discussed many topics including:

·          Ethics: In light of recent events, it’s important that our policies are as well-written and up-to-date as possible and that each Board member is familiar with the policies and adheres to them scrupulously.  We are going to re-examine and strengthen our policies on ethics and conflicts of interest.   Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.

·          Outside Reading : Before the retreat we read a book I recommended called All Together Now – Creating Middle Class Schools Through Public School Choice, by Richard Kahlenberg.  The premise of this book is that high concentrations of poverty make it difficult to educate children effectively.  The author asserts that economic integration of schools helps low-income children and does not harm middle and upper-income children.  During our discussion I’d say most Board members agreed with the premise, but there was no consensus on how best to economically integrate our schools. Nevertheless, the book helped inform our discussions throughout the weekend.

·          Advocacy beyond Knox County : We made plans to meet with our Nashville delegation in December (date TBD) to let them know our priorities for the upcoming legislative session.  Chief among these priorities will be to maintain BEP 2.0, the reforms passed last session that made funding much more equitable for larger school systems, including Knox County .

We also plan to communicate with our Congressional Delegation about the upcoming reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.   The NCLB Act has noble goals, but also major flaws.  You can read more about NCLB re-authorization here.  A recent commentator proposed some interesting ideas for how to improve NCLB.  

·          Academic Goals – “100/90/90/90”: The administration is proposing a goal that 100% of students complete high school, 90% earn a regular diploma (rather than a GED or Special Ed diploma), 90% of those that earn a regular diploma will take the ACT and 90% of those that take the ACT will earn a 21 or above (out of a possible 35).

These are very ambitious goals!  In 2007 at Fulton 73% of graduating seniors took the ACT and 35% of those students made 21 or above.  At Central, 72% of graduates took the ACT and 60% of them scored 21 or above.  No high school in Knox County currently meets the goal and most are not even close.

I support high standards and ambitious goals, but also believe we need a concurrent plan to give schools, teachers and students the resources they need to meet the goals.  Otherwise we’re just setting everyone up for failure.

·          Capital Plan/Re-zoning: We have some over-crowded schools and some run-down schools.  We have feeder patterns that could be improved so more kids stay together from elementary, to middle and high school.  It is unclear what the financial picture is for building new schools or renovating existing ones. Re-zoning is another way to deal with over-crowding and sub-optimal feeder patterns. These are very difficult issues to sort out and we didn’t make much headway at this retreat.  We are going to meet with Commission and Mayor Ragsdale soon to discuss these issues and hopefully come up with a Capital Plan that meets our students’ needs and is financially viable.

Fulton Assistant Principal Wins $25k Milken Award
Fulton High School Assistant Principal Jonathan Rysewyk received a $25,000 Milken Family Foundation National Educator Award, an honor given to outstanding educators each year.  Education Commissioner Lana Seivers presented the award in a surprise ceremony at Fulton last week.  He was the only recipient in the state of Tennessee .  Mr. Rysewyk is a dynamic and innovative leader at Fulton and we are lucky to have him.   Congratulations!

Magnet Schools, Project GRAD and No Child Left Behind
I am participating in several task forces and teams to evaluate Magnet Schools and Project GRAD.  No Child Left Behind also requires us to make dramatic reforms at under-performing schools.  There is a concerted effort to evaluate and better align our efforts in this area.  What is working?  What isn’t working and why?  What should be changed, added, or dropped to more effectively teach our children?  These are challenging questions.  We expect some recommendations from the administration in December or January.

Transfer Policy à Public School Choice
I intend to propose some changes to our Transfer Policy at our November 19^th meeting.  As you may recall, we removed all aspects of race from our transfer policy this summer, in response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June.  I would like to move beyond the stop-gap measures and propose some more innovative reforms.  Here are my ideas:

·          Re-name the Transfer Office the Office of Public School Choice;

·          Make capacity the main criteria for granting transfers;

·          Institute a lottery when demand for a school exceeds its capacity;

·          Allow families to list their top three choices, so if they don’t get their first choice they can be considered for their 2^nd and 3rd choices;

·          Emphasize that transfers are a privilege and may be revoked due to academic, behavior or attendance problems;

·          Guarantee that all students can attend their zoned school, but encourage families to find the best fit for their child;

·          Transportation to an out-of-zone school would be up to the student and his or her family

This is a work-in-progress, so please share your comments.

Protecting Our Children
Like many parents, I am concerned with the national and local examples of inappropriate behavior between school employees and students.  Sexual abuse or misconduct by a teacher or staff member will not be tolerated or ignored, and I’m committed to assuring that Knox County Schools has all possible safeguards and remedies in place.  We have a policy that prohibits inappropriate relationships between employees and students, but I plan to ask for a full review of our training and procedures in this area.  Prevention is essential.

School Calendar
I’ve heard from a lot of parents about the school calendar.  The first issue was the unusually early and choppy start to the August 08 school year.  The original start date was going to be Wednesday August 6^th for half day, then the next day off (due to an election) then full day on Friday, then off for the weekend.  Not exactly a smooth start for teachers or students!  We’ve changed this and now school will start on Monday, August 11^th, 2008, for a full day.  The first holiday will be Labor Day.

The second issue is about the school calendar in general.  Many people would prefer a later start date (either later in August or after Labor Day), some prefer year-round school, others like the status quo.  All calendar options would have the same number of instructional days (180), it’s just a matter of how the days are allocated throughout the year.  It’s unclear to me whether or not changes to the calendar have an impact on student achievement, which is our top priority.  It’s also important to understand the trade-offs as far as breaks, ending dates and so forth. 

We are going to survey the community to see what people prefer and why.  We’ve asked UT Survey specialists to design the survey for us, and we will vote on the survey design and to whom it will be sent.  The results will give us a clearer picture of what the community wants, although no plan will meet every family’s preferences.

Campaign Update
I am actively campaigning by continuing to visit schools, meet with parent groups, attend community meetings and ask for votes.  Let me know if there’s an event you’d like me to attend or if you’d like to volunteer.

I have qualified to be on the ballot for the February 5^th election.  This is the same time as the presidential primary, as well as many other county races.  School Board is non-partisan, so whichever primary you choose to participate in, you can still vote for me!

Here are some important dates to remember:

- Last day to register to vote:  January 7th

- Early Voting period: January 16th – January 31st

- Election day: Tuesday, February 5th
 
I appreciate your votes.  Please spread the word among friends in the 2^nd District!

Upcoming Issues and Events

School Support Organizations – Last session the legislature passed a law that requires all school support organizations, (e.g. Foundations, booster clubs, PTOs, PTAs, etc) to have their own 501 (c)(3) tax exempt status.  They will also have to comply with new regulations and reporting requirements.  You can read a summary of the law here.  This could have a big impact on our school support groups, some of which are more informal than others.  We will need to adopt a policy to implement the law.

Charter School Application – an application for a charter school called the Thoreau School of Knoxville was recently submitted.  It would be a k-6 Montessori elementary school located in South Knoxville .  I have not read the proposal yet, but think the idea has merit.  Clearly there is demand since there are several private Montessori schools in Knox County .   We have 60 days to review the proposal and then vote to approve or deny the application.  The administration will submit a recommendation to the Board soon.  The application must meet the criteria for a Charter School in Tennessee , which are extensive.

Reach Them to Teach Them – a group of teachers has organized a motivational event called Reach Them to Teach Them.  It’s on November 13^th, 7pm at the Tennessee Theater.  It sounds like a positive effort to inspire teachers and give them strategies for building effective relationships with their students.  I can help teachers with tickets.

PTA Clothing Center – if you’re going through your closets and come up with some clothes you no longer need, please consider donating them to the PTA Clothing Center.  They need all sizes of clothes, and warm coats too.  You can bring donations to the Center at 1000 N. Central Avenue , which is the Old Sears Building , now called Knox County Central.  Call 594-3971 for questions.

Thanks for taking the time to read all this.  I hope it’s been useful information.  Any feedback is welcome!

Very Truly Yours,

Indya