Anyone else get the idea that District 150 is just making things up as they go along?

Grading Policy

I didn’t get a chance to see last night’s school board meeting, but according to the Journal Star, the district’s administration defended their new grading scale:

“For students who have made an effort . . . the lowest grade we’re asking teachers to give students is 50, however, there are students who are not making an effort, they are not turning in complete assignments or not turning in assignments at all – certainly zeros or other grades below 50 are appropriate and can be entered into the grading system,” Chumbley said, adding the administration looked at ways students were “not always put in that hole of not being able to climb out.”

So, say you have two students, and each of them gets two questions out of ten correct on an assignment. According to Mr. Chumbley, the teacher could give one of those students a 20% and the other a 50%, depending on whether the teacher thought the student was putting forth sufficient effort. Thus, even though both students did the same work, one of them will get a higher score than he earned. At this point, grades cease to reflect what the student has actually learned, which was, I thought, the whole point of grading. And pity the poor student who tries real hard and gets only five out of ten questions correct; he doesn’t get any extra credit for effort. He gets a 50 just like the kid who tried real hard and only got two questions correct. The less you achieve, the more benefit you receive.

Hinton chimed in, too:

While backing the new grading procedures, Superintendent Ken Hinton also described it as “a work in progress.”

“Once you give many children a zero in regards to their work, it shuts them down. In other words, they know there’s no way to recover,” Hinton said. “And so what we’re doing, we’re trying to do, is reach a happy medium, keep expectations as such that you have the responsibility of doing your work to the best of your ability while at same time recognizing that if you don’t do your work, the zero is still there.”

Administrative procedures are not voted on by the School Board, but Hinton said alterations can be made to incorporate board concerns.

There’s no way to recover? Have extra-credit assignments been banned from District 150? How are expectations kept high when you’re giving extra credit to those doing substandard work for no other reason than “we don’t want to discourage them”? But best of all, this grading system which has already been implemented is a “work in progress,” and “alterations can be made.” So maybe halfway through the year, they’ll change the grading scale again.

Year-Round School?

Meanwhile, the district is now suggesting Lincoln Middle School switch to a year-round schedule. And this is a bit confusing: the Journal Star says it was presented that this would be “a pilot program for year-round schooling.” However, WMBD-TV reported: “Hinton says the school day will mimic the new Glen Oak and Harrison Schools when they open: 45 days of school, 15 days off and so on…” A “pilot” is “something that serves as a model or a basis for making copies.” But if the proposed Lincoln schedule is supposed to be mimicking the schedule at two other schools, it’s not a “pilot.”

Of course, “no costs of the pilot program were presented Monday night.” That’s just as well, since you can’t trust any cost estimates coming from the administration. Although no costs were presented for changing Lincoln, there were other costs presented:

One stumbling block administrators foresee in making more schools in the district year-round is air conditioning. Many buildings don’t have air. It could cost about $6 million to put air in each high school, for example.

So we have a plan to pilot year-round school, but we know that if we actually go to year-round school district-wide, it’s going to cost millions of dollars to put A/C in existing buildings. And the district is so financially-strapped, they’re closing schools. But they’re going to consider changing the schedule in such a way that they’ll have to spend millions of dollars to accommodate it.

Speaking of closing schools…

The district still doesn’t have a plan for closing Woodruff. They just know they’re going to close it. Who knows where the kids will go next year? Who knows how much it will actually save? What will happen to the Woodruff building?

One group is tired of the District’s “shoot first, ask questions later” policy. They’re going to file an injunction against closing the school unless D150 comes up with a plan by the next school board meeting.

Ah, the travails of the improvised school district.

Here’s part of Laura Petelle’s rationale for voting to close a high school:

These planned 43 staff reductions will total approximately $2.7 million in savings. [emphasis added]

An additional $800,000-$900,000 in savings may be realized by shuttering a building for the year and not paying operating costs (operating costs are somewhat, but not astronomically, higher at Woodruff than at Peoria High).

These are lower-end estimates. [emphasis added] There may be more job cuts to be found, and there may be more savings from those initial 43 cuts. May.

Now, I’m not trying to pick on Laura. Lord knows she does her homework. She did more due diligence and was more transparent about her justification than any other board member now or in recent memory.

But imagine my surprise last night when I heard on the news that closing a high school would save “$1.5 to $2.7 million.” I could hardly believe my ears. I wasn’t home to watch the meeting, but I taped it, so I pulled out the tape of the meeting and, sure enough, there was Superintendent Ken Hinton saying that closing Woodruff would save “$1.5 to $2.7 million.”

I’ve been following this issue pretty closely lately, and I can tell you that I never heard an estimate lower than $2.7 million. Maybe they said it before, since I don’t hear everything. But I don’t remember it. And considering that Laura — who’s on the board — said that $2.7 million was a “lower-end estimate” just a week before the vote, I’m inclined to say that this new range of figures is brand new information, brought forth at the last moment from Mr. Hinton.

This raises several questions, none of which are very comfortable:

1. How are these numbers derived? That’s a huge range. The difference between $1.5 and $2.7 million is $1.2 million.
2. Why can’t the administration narrow down the savings more than that? Was it not based on 43 staff reductions as Laura’s blog post stated? What has changed?
3. Is this an indication that Mr. Hinton has already started spending the projected savings (i.e., begun making plans to keep teachers/administrators on the payroll for other purposes), and is trying to mask it by lowering the savings estimate for closing the school?
4. Would board members have been as inclined to close a school if they knew the savings might only be $1.5 million, or would they have looked for other cuts that total that amount (canceling the Edison contract gets you half way there instantly, for example)?
5. Why wasn’t this new savings range made available sooner? Were the board members informed of the change in estimates before Hinton’s report Monday night?

This is the reason citizens don’t believe any numbers that come out of 3202 N. Wisconsin Ave. It always appears that the numbers are either (a) pulled out of a hat, or (b) deliberately manipulated to elicit the vote the administration desires. Or both.

Here’s one more question: Is anyone going to tabulate the actual savings next year after all is said and done to see if it matches the estimates? Considering they haven’t done that for any other school closing, my guess would be “no.”

In stark contrast to another elected official, rookie school board member Laura Petelle demonstrates the kind of transparency and accessibility the public expects from their representatives in the 21st century. She invites dialog with her constituents, she shares pertinent information in a timely manner, and she explains her votes (proving that she has thought them through and is not making knee-jerk decisions). And she does it on the internet where the info is easily accessible to all.

That’s the way it ought to be. Even if you don’t agree with her vote, at least you understand her argument and appreciate the effort she’s gone through to make a good, conscientious decision she believes is in the best interests of her constituents and the district at large.

In today’s post, she’s talking about the closing of a high school. She’s probably going to vote to close Woodruff. Fellow board member Jim Stowell has indicated his desire to see Peoria High close instead. No doubt it will be a split vote, and who knows which way it will go? Billy Dennis is predicting Woodruff will be closed on a 4-3 vote. We’ll all find out on Monday, September 21.

In the meantime, hop over to Laura’s blog and read her reasoning. It’s a perfectly logical decision, and I applaud her for her transparency. However, I do have a couple of questions. (Don’t I always?)

1. PBC Funds: Petelle states that one of the reasons they must close a high school is that “there are issues relating to the PBC bonds that will provide a further $25 to $30 million in bonding authority for our District.” Basically, if they don’t close a high school, they don’t get that additional funding. However, there’s another requirement in order to utilize those bonds: the supporting document Petelle provides states, “Final planning, however, is dependent upon the need for the District to identify the projects.” Yes, I too would like to know on what they plan to spend that additional funding, if they were to get it. First, I’d like to know why they need to spend it at all. If they need to cut the number of facilities, and if our building capacity exceeds our enrollment, and if the school district is in a structural deficit, I don’t see the justification for taking on more debt. Is it just so they can max out the PBC funding limit and keep our taxes high? If there is no clear project needing funds, then it looks like they’re just spending the money for the sake of spending it, and that doesn’t sound like it’s in the best interests of the taxpayers.
2. Torts: One of Petelle’s commenters (“Jon” — who might be the same “Jon” who comments on the Chronicle) made a shocking observation. He looked at the 2009-2010 Tentative Budget that Petelle put up on her site and asked, “What is the TORT category? …It has an expected deficit of nearly $4.1MM compared to only $900k the prior year. Its expenditures increased from $6.1MM to $8.6MM while at the same time its revenue fell from $5.2MM to $4.5MM.” Laura responded that it is the “tort lawsuit fund.” I just happen to have received recently (courtesy of the Freedom of Information Act) a list of pending lawsuits against District 150. By my count, there are 83 total. I haven’t surveyed other school districts to see how this compares, but at first blush this number sounds very high to me. Given the impact this is having on the district’s bottom line, this issue really should be investigated. What is causing all these lawsuits? Is there a common thread? Can anything be done to reduce their occurrence?