Board Retreat - Board Priorities

The Board held their fall retreat on September 22. Here are the minutes. It includes both the worst and the best thing I think I have ever read about Seattle Schools leadership.

The minutes are a bit hard to follow because they make reference to documents, such as a survey and a gantt chart, which are not included in the minutes. Even without the complete set of reference materials, the meanings come through very clearly.

The meeting started with some chat about how the Board wished the Board would operate - as opposed to how they actually operate. Of course, the Board can operate any way they wish, so if they truly wanted to operate as they claim they do, then they would. This is just like me. I say that I want to exercise, but I just don't do it. So how much do I really, truly, genuinely want to exercise? Not that much. They paid lip services to these aspirations:

• the importance of having a self-evaluative tool
• following a policy governance model
• the need to complete the oversight work session 2-year cycle
• completing the work on the updating of Board policies
• organizing committee meetings and work sessions around strategic goals
• training opportunities for committee chairs, such as having an annual calendar, alignment to Board priorities, and tracking what is work that has to be done
• holding themselves accountable for strategic and operational outcomes
• placing an emphasis on the oversight role to maintain an accountability structure
• connecting the strategic plan and the Board committees to the urgent work of the district

They could do each and every one of these things if they really wanted to do them. The fact that they don't do them is evidence that they don't really want to do them. So why do they even pretend that they want to do these things. Of course, I could be wrong. This could be the moment that they draw a sharp line between the way that they used to do business and the way that they will do business going forward. Yeah, that's a good fantasy. They get opportunities to do these exact things later the same day but don't take any of those opportunities. This whole discussion was one of the most discouraging thing I have ever read about Seattle Public Schools.

Here was the best and most encouraging thing I have ever read about Seattle Public Schools:

Supt. Banda noted his concerns about how to work more efficiently to support the Board in how they make decisions, and that the current pace may create burnout amongst staff. He spoke about getting guidance on the work he does and how to build the relationship to increase trust from the Board. Bob Boesche spoke about the need to stabilize things in the district to then be able to focus on important work to be done. Supt. Banda spoke about prior work where many fast decisions were made and that the structure created issues. He noted the need to look at things from all angles and get greater input from the Board and community. Mr. Ness spoke about different leadership styles and how Supt. Banda uses the servant leadership model, which begins with idea that they want to serve first.

When times get tough I hope to come back to this and read it again.

The Board took a moment for a post-mortem on the Creative Approach Schools MOU to determine how that fiasco was hatched. Director DeBell blamed it all on Director Sundquist and Director Maier: "Director DeBell noted that prior work on the CAS MOU had been handled by two former Board members".Nice. The conclusion they drew was this:

Directors discussed the overall process for items coming before the Board and the level of involvement needed to ensure a better final decision. It was noted that work should be evaluated to determine if it is routine versus reform, and that reform work should come to the Board to provide guiding principles to guide the work.

Sounds like a good rule. Let's see if they follow it.

The Board then turned their attention to the Strategic Plan. They have taken a lesson from the former Strategic Plan, "Excellence for All": Don't try to do too much. They decided that the new plan should only focus on three to five projects. Then they went on to make a long list of things that should be in the new plan:

• determine what should be centralized and which de-centralized
• professional development
• duplicating successful strategies from school to school
• updating the district scorecard
• improving performance management
• create economies of scale in purchasing
• following up on program audits
• following up on unmet goals
• interventions for struggling students

And, like everything else in this fantasy, the Board wants high touch communication featuring monthly progress reports. These are the people who haven't had a quarterly update on the current Strategic Plan since June of 2011.

Now we come to the part of the meeting in which the Board sets their priorities for the year. These will be the three to five items that will be designated as Board Priorities. I'm not sure what comes with that designation. The first items identified for priority were those which were currently underway and needed to continue. They included:

• Common Core Standards
• The equitable access framework
• MTSS
• Bringing evaluations to scale 
• International Baccalaureate at Rainier Beach High School.

The Directors considered these projects and a number of others and pretty quickly determined that the four priorities for the year would be:

1. Bringing Teacher & Principal Profession Growth & Evaluations (PG&E) to scale
2. Development of Equitable Access Framework: Phase I
3. Development & Implementation of Student Support Strategies/MTSS
4. Replacement Strategic Plan

You'll notice a few points about this list. First, three of the four are in the group of continuing projects listed above. Second, the one new project on the list, the strategic plan, is required by policy. Third, "equitable access framework" is a fancy way of saying program placement procedure, which was a board priority last year. Fourth, after identifying these four "Board Priorities" for the year, the Board didn't speak about them again. There were no goals, benchmarks, or deadline. There isn't even a communication plan for them.

It appears that the Board treats these priorities like a Ronco rotisserie - they set 'em and forget 'em. Let's remind ourselves of the Board's Priorities from last year:

Capacity Management (intermediate and long term);

Discipline, specifically with regards to long term suspensions;

Graduation Requirements;

Innovation Schools

Budget Development

Instructional Materials Waiver Process: Determined to be a 2011-12 priority. The Superintendent asked for a discussion around what the Board is asking the staff to accomplish (perhaps in a work session).

Program Access (otherwise known as Access Framework): Determined to be a 2011-12 priority, due by September 2012. (It will be incorporated into the capacity management discussion.)

Bell Times: Focus in 2013, with a status discussion at the 2012 spring retreat.

Summer School/Credit Retrieval: Withdrawn for the purposes of today’s discussion; however, the Superintendent is to send an update in the Friday memo.

Let's review the work completed on these:

• Capacity Management - not done. It has been rolled into BEX IV and it's a mess.
• Discipline policy - not done. To be fair, some initial work has been done.
• Graduation Requirements - not done. Conversation hasn't even started.
• Innovation Schools - not done. This is the Creative Approach Schools and it has been botched - badly.
• Budget Development - not done. Conversation hasn't even started.
• Instructional Materials Waiver Process - done.
• Program Access is last year's fancy way of saying program placement procedure. It had a September 2012 deadline that was, as we know, missed. You'll notice that this year's Board Retreat, while it did identify this as a priority again, didn't make any reference to the fact that it was one of the Board Priorities last year, didn't make any reference to the the September 2012 deadline, and didn't make any reference to the idea of anyone being held accountable for missing the deadline.
• Bell Times - Last year they committed to making bell times a priority this year, but then didn't actually identify it as a priority for this year
• Credit retrieval - withdrawn as a priority

The Board and the District completed only one of the seven Board Priorities for the year. Only one of them was rolled forward as a priority this year. One that was supposed to be rolled over wasn't. I don't know what it means when a project has been identified as a Board Priority but it clearly doesn't mean that the Board is going to hold staff accountable for doing it or even talk about it very much over the year. I don't think the Board knows what it means either. It doesn't appear to mean anything at all.