Transportation Task Force

I got some information on the Transportation Task Force and it is worse than I had imagined.



The Transportation Task Force was formed on February 16, 2012 and introduced to the Board the following day at the Operations Committee of the Whole. There are eight members (not nine as suggested in the presentation made at the Operations Committee) including a chair, four three subject matter experts from the district, and four community members. The chair is Bob Boesche. The four three subject matter experts are Becky Clifford (or her designee) from Special Education, Phil Brockman, and Tracy Libros. The four community members are Dan Payne from ESD Transporation; Sue Race, Director of Transportation from the Tacoma school district; Mike Beck, from King County METRO; and Joseph Paperman, the advisor and public member of the Audit and Finance Committee.

The powerpoint for the Operations Committee suggested that the district subject matter experts would be the ones knowledgeable about "special education, homeless, student assignment, etc." so I guess Phil Brockman has special knowledge about the transportation needs of homeless students.

They were selected for their expertise, but I don't know who selected them. I do know that they were not selected in accordance with the Superintendent's Procedure for selecting members for an advisory committee. I cannot imagine what justification was used to neglect the written procedure. It surely couldn't have been haste. The task force is taking three months between being named (February 16) and their first meeting (May 16). Surely the superintendent's procedure could have been completed within that time frame, no matter how badly she wrote it. There is no haste in evidence here.

Their charge, from the presentation made to the Operations Committee on February 17, is to review and recommend options for more effective and efficient student transportation services. The powerpoint said that their first meeting would be on March 1, but it has been re-scheduled for May 16, a two and a half month delay. The powerpoint also said that they will be focused on immediate changes, as well as changes for 2012-13 and 2013-14. Given that there will be about four weeks left in the school year by the day of their first meeting, and the meeting will come over a month after they were supposed to deliver those recommendations, I'm not expecting any for this school year. In fact, given the fact that their first meeting is also scheduled for two weeks after they were supposed to report out their recommendations for 2012-13, I'm not expecting any next school year either. In fact, I don't see how they are going to deliver recommendations for 2013-14 just five weeks after their first meeting when it took them ten weeks to schedule that first meeting.

Here is their aggressive timeline from the powerpoint. Obviously some dates have passed and the first meeting was pushed back by ten weeks:

2/16 - Authority to proceed
3/1 - Initial meeting
4/5 - Deliver recommendations for immediate implementation
5/3 - Deliver recommendations for implementation prior to start of school
6/28 - Deliver recommendations for 2013 – 2014 (year after next)
11/15 - Implementation update to Operations Committee by Transportation Dept.

Not in my most cynical mood could I have expected this level of fiasco two weeks before the committee has even met. This is extraordinary and merits special notice.