The End of Transparency in Program Placement

The new program placement policy will soon be adopted by the Board and when that happens they will close the door on transparency.

Wendy London, while saying that they want to have a transparent process, essentially told the board that it is "staff work" and the public will not be allowed to know how decisions were made. Program placement will not be an open or honest process. That dream is dead.

You can watch the video here. Jump to 73:00 for the start of the discussion or 79:00 for when Wendy London starts speaking.

Here's a transcript:

"So really procedures are going to be re-created. Part of what you know has occurred over time with the student assignment plan changing and with us looking at the nature of our programs and enrollment changes and so forth. Creating just a new procedure to look at how we place programs and how we make sure that Teaching and Learning is working side by side with Facilities, that we’re looking at enrollment projections for all program placement - not in silos but altogether - so we can make decisions about resources. Uh… and… and… do it as a holistic look within updates, looking at enrollment changes all year long giving you those updates. So, uh, in terms of process and procedure, I think we’re really doing sort of a re-start because we’d had some changes in how we assign students."
"The part of the discussion that you weren’t able to hear at the committee meeting: my comment was that in doing this work in other districts this is just- this is generally staff work. Where we’re working on this all the time. And since you’re looking at all programs, um, we will be engaging stakeholders as appropriate all along the way. However, where we’re used to dealing with specific programs in isolation with a specific parent group advocating for that program that’s where we get into problems where we resource… silo’ed resources where we end up doing – getting – one program done, moving on to the next and then “Oh my goodness” we’re not thinking holistically and we’ve given our space away and now we have other things to look at. So… so where do you engage the community if you’re looking at the entirety? You do it where it’s appropriate to get input when there are decisions or questions to be asked of that group. But this is really staff work that is ongoing and we’ll build in checkpoints to build, to make sure that everyone feels good about the process. There is full transparency and this is the procedure that we need to create. So I can’t tell you exactly right now where we would engage the public because it’s a completely different process. We’re not looking at one program at a time. Does that make sense?"

This is also, of course, the end of FACMAC and the end of the Advanced Learnng Program Task Force. This is staff work and it is not appropriate for them to engage the community about it.

Comments

Patrick said…
For this to be the end of transparency in program placement, there would have to have been transparency in program placement.
Anonymous said…
"There is full transparency and this is the procedure that we need to create."

Immediately followed by...

"So I can’t tell you exactly right now where we would engage the public because it’s a completely different process."

Followed by...
"Does that make sense?"

The answer to that question is no. Those two sentences are mutually exclusive (hint: that is a math term. Look it up).

-Transparency is apparently only for jellyfish
K. Voss said…
We all need to take a moment to praise Smith-Blum, Carr, and Peaslee for their fairly relentless questioning of London. I especially applaud Smith-Blum for refusing to accept London's non-answers on community engagement. Send your messages of support NOW. They don't vote until August and the Board is capable of submitting revised language on this.

Email McLaren as well. She seems to be dropping the ball on this but I believe she will re-engage if pushed by her constituents. The Board knows this is an important issue to families and if there was ever a time to bring out the "You are there to represent your community" card, this is it.
Anonymous said…
It's hard to know what's worse- pretending to accept community engagement, and then ignoring it, as the district has been doing in recent years, or no longer even including the public in the discussion. Of course, the former is far preferable, albeit infuriating.

By taking the public out of the discussion entirely, the district is taking a huge step toward furthering their culture of lawlessness that Charlie wrote about recently. If the district no longer has to feign even the pretense of transparency and following the rules, the district staff will be completely free to break any/all rules they like. They have been anyway, but this would definitely exacerbate the problem.

As far as appealing to the board members on this, I agree that hats should go off to the board members who questioned London on this new "policy", but I don't hold out much hope for help from McLaren. She seems to be under the spell of the district staff, naively believing everything they tell her, and spending more time congratulating them on their hard work than questioning any of them on anything.

I wonder if Banda will let all this happen? Allowing the staff to officially end public engagement and transparency in program placement would be contrary to his efforts to turn the district around. That effort will require sunlight and accountability, both of which would be thwarted by this change.

-Frustrated
Charlie Mas said…
Director Smith-Blum's question was not about community engagement (although Ms London's answer and Director Carr's follow up answer were).

Director Smith-Blum's question was about transparency. She wanted to know how, in the absence of a written procedure, people could be assured that the process was honest and fair.

Ms London's answer was that this is "staff work" and so it is not subject to public scrutiny. In short, even with a procedure the process will not be transparent and people will not be able to assure themselves that it is honest and fair. The staff has no intention of providing transparency because the staff has no intention of following an honest and fair process.
jl said…
I do like what she says about being more holistic however. Sometimes engaging individual schools in process is just lip service anyway. Transparency and sound justification is important, but not at the expense of favoring one constituency over another, or making decisions that only impact the squeaky and powerful wheels. re; McDonald's special program at the expense of common sense for neighboring schools.
Charlie Mas said…
At the July 3, 2012 board meeting, when the revised Program Placement policy was introduced, Director Smith-Blum asked a question about transparency. She asked how members of the public could be assured that the new process for making program placement decisions is honest and fair. Ms London gave a circumloquacious answer which, when reduced to its essence was: This is staff work that will be done behind closed doors and neither the public nor the Board will be able to confirm that the process is honest or fair at all. She told the Board that program placement will not be transparent - not at all.

That should be unacceptable to the Board.

The Board should not dictate the procedure for program placement. That would be stepping over the line between governance and management and it would be inappropriate. However, they can - and should - exercise their governance role to require that the superintendent write and follow procedures that provide transparency and allow the public and the Board to know that the program placement decisions are honest, fair, and data-driven.

Watch the video again with this understanding. Jump to minute 73:00 for the start of the discussion or to 77:00 for Director Smith-Blum's question and Wendy London's answer.

Director Smith-Blum gets it. I'm not sure if any of the other Board members get it or not.
Carol Simmons said…
Thank you Charlie for providing the video revisit to the School Board meeting. It was ridiculous for Ms. London to respond as she did. Also, it was ridiculous for the Staff to recommend that the term "Race" be removed from the title of the Equity and Race Policy document. Directors Smith-Blum, Carr and Peaslee questioned the non-answers on community engagement and non transparency; and Directors Patu and Peaslee advocated for the term "Race" to be included in the title of the Equity/Race policy. Good for them. Staff should not be making these decisions. Why is it necessary for School Board Directors to have to file Amendments to staff policy work? How many times must we go to court?
Anonymous said…
And so how will this new policy (and even the past policy) be affected if Charters become a reality. If the staff wants to place or take away a program at a specific building, and the families and/or staff object, could they turn around and apply for Charter status to negate the District's plan?

If this is the case, a transparent process and tons of community engagement would at least help to head this kind of occurrence off at the pass.

SolvayGirl
Charlie Mas said…
Wendy London is trying to soothe the Board to sleep with a fairy tale about some apolitical district in a far off land.

In this magical kingdom the few "programs" that have to be placed would be driven primarily by geography. All schools would meet the academic assurances of providing baseline services to all students who enroll. The academic assurances include core instruction addressed at grade level and instruction in the arts. In middle schools and high schools it also includes advanced classes and a range of electives.

In addition, those students who have special academic needs and can have those needs met in an inclusive setting get all of the services they need in a general education classroom. This includes students with 504 plans and IEPs, English Language Learners, and advanced learners. In our magical fairy tale district all of these students get services that meet their needs.

This is the baseline that every student should be able to get all across the magical fairyland District, and, if you believe Wendy London, in Seattle as well.

There are, of course, students with special needs which cannot be addressed with services delivered in the general education classroom. If there is a cluster of N students who should be served in an X program and that cluster of students lives generally in the School A attendance area, then the District informs the families and informs the school that an X program with N students will be located at School A.

For example, if a B.O.C. program needs a cohort size of 20-40 students to be effective, and there are 32 students needing B.O.C. services who live in or near the Sand Point Elementary attendance area, then the District informs everyone that there will be a B.O.C. program for those 32 students at Sand Point.

No discussion, no politics, and not much judgement or discretion exercised. It is what it is. It is staff work and no amount of public input is needed or helpful.

But, of course, we do not live in a magical fairy kingdom and, despite Wendy London's assurances, the District has not converted to this new vision. Consequently, programs placements and student assignments are driven largely by political forces. Examples abound.

All of the elementary schools in the Aki Kurose attendance area supposedly have "A.L.O." programs, but it is the rare one that actually provides any A.L.O. services or has any students participating in their "A.L.O." The designation is purely political theater.

At the same time, despite the fact that there are at least 250 elementary APP students - enough to form a cohort - living either in the Bryant attendance area or in one of the adjacent attendance areas, the District would NEVER designate Bryant as an APP site. Bryant should also, by all rights, be a Spectrum site, but it isn't. Instead, Spectrum-eligible students who live in the Bryant attendance area cannot gain access to a Spectrum program because, in another politically driven move, the District makes the programs too small to accommodate all of the eligible students.

The day that the District decides to handle Program Placement in a non-political way, the day it is fair and honest, I will quit my bitching. I hope that day comes soon. This is not that day.

If the Board doesn't recognize that this is not that day, then they are thicker than they appear.

I will believe that we are there the day that the District sites elementary APP near the students' homes: the northeast.
jl said…
I agree,it should not be political. It should be practical and data driven... and flexible. Staff need to be able to make decisions, then defend them to the board. Otherwise it is only politics that drive every minute choice. And make it impossible to have decisions made that make sense, because the fact is that you cannot please all the people all the time. When things like your Bryant example happen, no one can do anything at all because of the politics. What makes sense does not drive the decisions. I am sure someone would be upset if they made Bryant a spectrum or app site. And someone else is upset because they don't. The problem is no one can make that decision. I believe we want the same thing, but differ in who to trust in that process.
Charlie Mas said…
This should not be about trust.

Trust is personal and the District is an institution. The District's policies survive changes (lots of changes) in personnel and should not be written with the current personnel in mind.

Even if I were to trust Mr. Banda and Ms London, that is no guarantee that their successors will be deserving of the same trust.
Charlie Mas said…
Ms London is now trying to claim that the quarterly and annual reports will provide the required transparency.

They won't.

First, the new policy language about the reports is little different from the currrent policy language about reports and the reports we have received under the current language do not provide transparency.

Second, the reports come AFTER the decisions and the transparency needs to come BEFORE the decision, so even if the reports were detailed, they would be too late.

I'm not sure if everyone knows what transparency means. Transparency, in this context, means that the rules are known and that they treat everyone the same. It means that the requirements for a program placement are the same are known in advance and the criteria for the decision are known in advance and that the Board and the public can see that the process was fair and honest.

It's not about public input. I agree with Ms London that this is staff work and that it should be decided by the set criteria and the data, not by the influence of advocacy groups. But how can we know that if the criteria are secret?
Charlie Mas said…
By the way, I am not positively impressed by Mr. Banda's contribution to the discussion which was, essentially, that the policies don't matter. The staff are gonna do what the staff are gonna do and the Board and the public are just going to have to live with it.

He pretty much confirmed the culture of lawlessness. He pretty much confirmed the idea that no one is feeling constrained by the policies and that we all have to rely on the good intent of the specific individuals exercising authority without regard to the rules.
Jack Whelan said…
SPS has a culture of reactive expediency rather than a culture of compliance. The reasons for this are complex and predate the current underfunding crisis. But when there is no money, as there is none now, you are by definition in crisis, and when you are in crisis the rule book gets tossed out as you improvise to deal ad hoc with each successive crisis. And of course this creates a bigger mess in the long run, which guarantees that you remain in this chaotic crisis state, and so rules and policy transgressions are the norm rather than the exception.

I think that's a real problem, and if I were sitting on the board, or if I were Banda inheriting this problem, I don't know how I would deal with it. Probably in a reactive, ad hoc, improvisational way. But, short term I think that I would also triage it by identifying areas where there would be no toleration for policy transgressions--and mean it. And other areas where I'd be more flexible. Long-term I would work to simplify policy by devolving more critical decision making to local educational communities.

But even in the cases where I'd be more willing to be flexible, I'd be acutely aware that people use the crisis excuse to justify and disguise political agendas that have nothing to do with what is in the overall best interest of SPS, even though they will always spin it so that it's all about what's best for the children. Is it ever about anything else? As soon as someone says that these days, I assume there's another agenda until proved otherwise.
Jan said…
jl said: I do like what she says about being more holistic however. Sometimes engaging individual schools in process is just lip service anyway. Transparency and sound justification is important, but not at the expense of favoring one constituency over another, or making decisions that only impact the squeaky and powerful wheels. re; McDonald's special program at the expense of common sense for neighboring schools.

jl -- I am not sure I can tell what you mean, but I think what you say is exactly why we need a transparent process. If they won't identify the criteria used (geographic proximity, equitable distribution of programs, available space, cost of renovations to accommodate a program, anticipated growth/shrinkage, etc.), how can we tell what they are using as criteria (because other possibilities include -- bribery (overt or through legal but smelly targeted grants/contributions, squeaky wheels in well-organized, well-financed communities (as opposed to other communities whose kids are as important, but whose families are economically challenged, or don't speak English, or are culturally not accustomed to being confrontational, etc.), and so on. Undoubtedly, in a "resource-scarce" world (and public education is that), program placement decisions will never make everyone happy. But decisionmakers need to be accountable for what they do -- even if they know, and we know, that not everyone will be happy. But if there is no policy that describes HOW it is that they will attempt to be transparent, and HOW it is that they will attempt to weigh competing demands for the same resources, how can they be fairly evaluated? How can parents make a credible argument? The lack of policies to codify what they will look at, who they will listen to, and how they will make the process transparent enough that people can evaluate these things will absolutely lead to ill-will and conflict, as various lobbying groups jockey for position, secret decisions made based on secret criteria leave parents with the impression that money, or politics, or race or cronyism (or whatever) have tilted the process unfairly. And at that point, having ceded all control to the staff, it WILL in fact be true that any interference by the board will be micromanagement -- because there will be no policy framework for managerial decisionmaking to be measured against on anything BUT a micromanaging basis.

I think Mr. Banda is being pressured by his new staff to prove that he is in "their camp" by agreeing to back what is basically a horrible decisionmaking process that will lead to corruption (or the appearance of it) and foster mistrust. I think he needs to signal to parents that he will not let staff continue to mismanage the district with no oversight.

But I would totally support the honesty of coming out and saying -- we are in a horrible place. We are overfunded and running out of space. All the stuff that Jack says -- about crisis management and triage -- is true. But just SAY so, devise policies around transparency and process that take that into account, and then manage (and disclose) to those criteria.

Personally, what I hear from Ms. London is -- we staff can't manage the program placement well, and the fact that we do it so badly (and infuriate so many parents) means -- well, we spend too much time on it. So, please, let us just go downstairs and do whatever we damn well please, in a room with no windows. We promise to be quicker, and it will sure be easier for us!
Charlie Mas said…
I'm preparing a message to the Board.

Here's what I'm thinking of saying:

Regarding the proposed policy 2020, I agree with Wendy London. Program placement is staff work. Not only would public input add very little value to the process, public input would unduly politicize it. Program placement decisions should be driven by the numbers of students needing special services and the location of their homes, not by the relative strength of their advocacy groups.

As the Board Action Report makes clear, program placement does not include curricular focus. It is not about alternative programs, STEM, language immersion, or Montessori. Those are not program placement; they are something else. Program placement is only about special education programs, bilingual programs, and advanced learning programs.

I think we all agree that the Board should not be making program placement decisions or interfering with them. Policy makes those decisions for the superintendent to make. Moreover, the Board should not dictate the process for these decisions. That would also cross the line from governance into management.

However, the Board has a legitimate and necessary governance duty to require the superintendent to have a transparent process. Whatever procedure the superintendent establishes must be open to public scrutiny so that the Board and the public can be assured that it is honest and fair. It is not sufficient to trust that the process is honest and fair; we must be able to see for ourselves and know that it is honest and fair. That is what is missing from this policy. That is what this policy needs. The Board needs to write that requirement into the policy.

Equitable access to programs with a particular curricular focus needs to be the subject of another policy entirely. I suggest that the Board ask the staff to draft one.

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