Do Iowa's School Districts Need Consultants?

August 9, 2012, 10:00 a.m. Are They Worth It?

[Credit: Ted Elliott Resources.] The Iowa City Community School District is looking for a consultant -- or consultants -- again. Adam B. Sullivan, "District considers hiring consultant; Firm would determine building capacity, enrollment trends, growth projections," Iowa City Press-Citizen, August 8, 2012, p A1.

[And see, e.g., "School Boundaries: There Are Better Ways," April 16, 2010 ("The ICCSD is not the only school district from among the 15,000 in the U.S. that is confronting the need to redraw its schools' boundary lines. . . . However, most districts also manage to resolve it without months of undirected chaos, changes in direction, and the 'assistance' of expensive consultants."); "School Board Can't Do Job? There They Go Again," January 7, 2010 ("What is it about elected and appointed board members and administrators? Why this compulsive, knee-jerk sprint to search firms and consultants whenever they come face to face with the real job they're there to do? Honestly, what is it? Fundamental, gut-wrenching insecurity and low self-esteem? A political cowardice that seeks to ward off any possible criticism from any quarter with the ability to say, 'But that wasn't our decision; . . ..' Or is it a candid, honest assessment that they are really incapable of doing their job?"); "School Boundaries Consultant Folly", August 28, 2009 (and associated, embedded links); "UI VPs and ICCSD Consultants," August 14, 2009 ("it seems to me the tasks he has identified [for consultants] are tasks well within the job descriptions and expertise of administrators and staff the District already has in place").]

And what do they want these consultants to do? Why does the board think it needs them? The Press-Citizen quotes the superintendent as saying, "As we go through the process of doing facilities planning . . . there is some data we need. We need to know how many kids we have . . .."

This is not calculus, folks. It's not even trigonometry. It's elementary school math.

We had an Australian family visiting us last week. Their young son is almost three years old. He can count. Maybe the Iowa City District could hire him to gather that "data" regarding "how many kids we have." I'm sure he'd be willing to do it for substantially less than the $8000-to-$120,000 bids the board is considering.

Yes, I agree. I am being a little unfair. The board also wants to know "how many kids we're going to have." They think consultants can help them design buildings, draw school boundary lines, and determine transportation and staffing costs. But enrollment projections are already being provided by the University of Iowa. And as I'll soon explain, the decisions in question can and should only be made by board members, not consultants.

Administrative and Executive Pay Scales -- and for What?

What are we paying our school superintendents and college presidents for anyway? With their salaries running ten times those of many of their institutions' employees, and many corporate CEOs paid as much as 400 times their employees' salaries, it's hard to say what level of pay would be appropriate, reasonable and fair. But aren't we already paying them for their expertise to do the very things they want to pay consultants to do?

I'm reminded of the time our Board of Regents was unwilling to exert sufficient effort to retain UI President David Skorton, one of the nation's most highly regarded -- and now highly paid -- university presidents. As Slate has said, "Skorton, a man of great humor, warmth, and charm, is a distinguished research cardiologist and an accomplished jazz musician." Robert H. Frank, "Why Has Inequality Been Growing? How technology and winner-take-all markets have made the rich so much richer," Slate, December 6, 2011. That certainly squares with my own experiences with him -- although I would go on at much greater length regarding the full range of the extraordinary talents of this man. (If I am not mistaken he was qualified to, and did, hold positions in three of Iowa's graduate colleges.)

When the Regents refused him a pay raise, and many expected him to be miffed, his response was characteristic of the man: "When the median family income in Iowa is around $45,000 and I make over $300,000, it’s hard to argue that is not a lot of money. It’s very generous." Nicholas Johnson, "Pricey Presidents' Added Cost," Daily Iowan, March 7, 2006. (Cornell University is now paying him probably about three times that.)

Call me naive, but I think even $100,000 a year, plus benefits -- twice the average Iowan's income -- ought to be a liveable wage in most towns in Iowa today. At $250,000 -- five times the average Iowan -- the recipient is in the top 2 percent of American wage earners, most of whom live in east or west coast locations much more expensive than any in Iowa. Andrew Ross Sorkin, "Rich and Sort of Rich," New York Times, May 15, 2012, p. WK1.

It would be unrealistic to think that a school district or college should be able to obtain the equivalent of a David Skorton at those, or any other, salary levels. Individuals who combine the talents of Thomas Jefferson, Galileo, Michelangelo, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, Jesus, Wynton Marsalis, and Jerry Seinfeld are extremely rare.

So we're not getting those qualities. But what are we getting for our money? What can we reasonably expect? Sometimes it seems like the equivalent of the fellow who applied for a job as chef, and when asked what he most liked to make for dinner replied, "reservations." An institutional administrator whose primary skill is picking consultants is little better than that aspiring chef -- especially if the consultants he finds aren't that much better, either.

The Responsibilities of School Board Members

School board members cannot reasonably be expected to bring high level administrative skills, and K-12 expertise, to their jobs. It is a largely thankless position with little-to-negative payoff professionally, politically, socially, and none financially. As I used to say when serving on the Iowa City school board, "You may not get any pay, but at least you get a lot of grief."

That said, for whatever reason board members have chosen to serve. From my perspective that means they have assumed some self-imposed responsibilities.

They need to combine the desire and ability to listen to all stakeholders, along with the political courage to stand up to the inevitable opposition to the changes necessitated by the best interests of the district.

They must be able to think rationally and precisely about their governance system and come to agreement about their self-imposed procedures.

They need to get themselves informed about the range of issues confronting school districts all across the country, and given our global economy, progressive systems in other countries as well.

They need to recognize that, with 15,000 school districts in this country it is highly unlikely they will confront any challenge that has not already been present, identified, confronted, resolved, and written up about another district somewhere.

There are thousands of useful articles, books, government and foundation reports, education periodicals, and academic research regarding K-12. School board members need to spend at least as many hours informing themselves by searching the Internet, and local libraries, as the hours away from home they would spend attending a national school board convention in a holiday resort at taxpayers' expense.

Many to most of the issues school boards confront are issues that school board members, and only school board members, can address and resolve.

As I used to tell my colleagues, "Normally before you ask an architect for advice you know whether you want to build a courthouse or an outhouse." Only the board can decide what they want to do inside those school buildings -- not an architect, a committee, or a consultant. If they think team teaching and block scheduling are a good idea the walls will be in different places. If the board is persuaded by the available research that the optimum size of a high school is about 800 students, that will affect the size and cost of any new high schools. If the board decides, as advised by the National Commission for the High School Senior Year, that the best place for high school seniors is out of the high schools, that may reduce the "overcrowding" that dictates the need for new buildings.

The same thing can be said regarding school boundaries, class sizes, allocation of students from low income or homeless families. These all involve decisions that should be assumed, personally, by board members -- legally, politically, morally, and administratively -- not "contracted out" to the superintendent, committees, or consultants.

Ulterior Reasons for Using Consultants

Of course, the problem is actually worse than this. Consultants are often used, not because board members haven't done their homework, not because they don't know the answer or how to find it, but because they want to distance themselves politically from the decision. They want to be able to say, "we got the best consultants in the business (or best people in the community to serve on our committee), and this is what they advised." This may be made worse still by paying a consultant who is willing to come up with the recommendation the board has already decided upon.

A Little Closing Consultant Comedy

Well, enough of all this heavy discussion. Let's close with some of the stories consultants even tell about themselves.

Consultants, like lawyers, suffer from an abundance of jokes.

A young consultant in a Mercedes pickup truck, dressed in suit and tie, missed his turn and found himself on a dirt backroad in Iowa alongside a field. Spotting the farmer, he decided he'd have some fun while getting directions.

"If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in that field will you give me one?"

"Sure," the farmer replied.

The young man went to work with his laptop, access to a NASA satellite, and offered the answer: "You have exactly 1322 sheep."

"Right, said the farmrer, who opened the gate, and let the young man into the field to select his animal.

Now it was the farmer's turn. "If I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my animal?"

"OK, take a guess."

"You're a consultant."

"How'd you know?"

"Simple," replied the farmer. "You turned up here although nobody called you. You want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked, and you know nothing about my business. Now give me back my dog!"

How do you know you're dealing with a consultant?

When he took you to lunch he asked the waiter to explain the restaurant's "core competencies."

He can spell "paradigm."

He insists on referring to every serious problem in your organization as nothing more than an "improvement opportunity."

When you asked what he did before becoming a consultant he described it as "my sunk cost."

He is able to say "value-added" without laughing.

He refers to his wife as his "co-CEO." She confides to you that he used to refer to their dating as test marketing, he always put executive summaries on his love letters to her, he wanted to do more market research before they had their first child, and now he wants to re-org their family into a "team-based organization."

(Who provided some of the raw material to stimulate the above? Why, consultants of course. DCS Media "Consulting Jokes" and Tom Antion & Associates, "Consulting Humor.")

Want to be able to talk to your consultant? Forbes has contributed its own list of proposed vocabulary for MBA's seeking promotions. It will also be useful for school board members who wish to appear knowledgeable when talking with consultants. It contains such words and phrases as this sampling from Forbes 89: "thrown under the bus," "low-hanging fruit," "next big thing," "best practices," "peel back the onion," "phoned it in," "elephant in the room," "basic blocking and tackling," "our go-to-market," "move the needle," "the deliverable," "gone viral," "square the circle," "cash cow," "synergy," "incentivize," "perfect storm," "at the end of the day," "let's put lipstick on this pig," "results-oriented," "a one-off," "facing some headwinds," "put that in the parking lot," "let's blue sky this," "where the rubber meets the road," "net it out," "creative destruction," "boots on the ground," "paradigm shift," "data-driven," "win-win," and "wrap our heads around." Eric Jackson, "89 Business Cliches That Will Get Any MBA Promoted And Make Them Totally Useless," Forbes, June 19, 2012.

Concluding Remarks

I don't deny that there may have once been some institution, many years ago in a land far away, that actually benefited from consultants. That's certainly possible. But I'm not convinced we're better off with them than we would be if superintendents and board members would bring their own expertise, study, judgment, and political courage to bear to what are, after all, their personal responsibilities.

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The Beat Goes On, But Music's Out of Tune

May 1, 2010, 7:10 a.m.

Just When I Thought There Was No More School News
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
Schools Update

Boundaries/Redistricting
[If you're looking for links to the prior 11-part series on the recent superintendent search, see "Superintendent Murley's Calm Seas, Smooth Sailing," April 29, 2010.]

When I was asked how I liked being a school board member I often responded, "Well, you may not get any pay, but at least you get a lot of grief." Now it turns out, when it comes to paying for our redistricting efforts we may have the reverse of that: "We may not have solved the boundaries problem during the last year, but at least it's cost us a lot of money."

This morning's Gazette reports, Gregg Hennigan, "Iowa City Schools Paid $106,000 for Consultant," The Gazette, May 1, 2010, p. A3. (Why do we have to get that news from Cedar Rapids? Why wasn't that story in the Press-Citizen -- or did I just miss it?)

But how good is the Board's data? Julie Eisele, "Letter: Where is School Board Getting Information?" Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 1, 2010, p. A11. Apparently the "dangers" of students driving to school along I-80 -- which some parents and Board members have used as an argument against one of the proposed boundary changes -- are statistically substantially less than their driving on in-city routes (according to studies by the staff of the Johnson County Council of Governments, JCCOG).

It's reminiscent of Mark Twain's observation that "It's not what we don't know that hurts us, it's what we know that ain't so." [The quote, in a variety of forms, is variously attributed to Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and others. (The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations, 1987, attributes it to Josh Billings.)

Or, as the poster in the modest office of one of my favorite one-time school superintendents put it: "In God we trust. All others bring data." (Attributed to W. Edwards Demming.)

Oh, and how is the neighboring, big city approach to redistricting going; the one that I wrote about recently? Right on schedule. It took exactly the planned two weeks from the Board's first announcement, through informing parents, public meetings -- to the Board's vote last Tuesday night. And what did their consultant cost them? Not a dime. So far as I know they didn't have one. Is there a lesson there? See "School Boundaries: There Are Better Ways; Options Include: (1) Others' Practices, and (2) Common Sense; The Rock Island-Milan School District," April 16, 2010; and Nicole Lauer, "Rock Island board changes boundaries for six schools," Dispatch-Argus Quad-Cities Online, April 27, 2010.

Now our City Council wants to weigh in on the Board's redistricting with a meeting Monday. That should be a big help -- notwithstanding a Council member's acknowledgment that, "We still feel this is a decision to be made by the School Board." Lee Hermiston, "Iowa City Council to Discuss Redistricting," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 1, 2010, p. A1.

Actually, I think the Iowa City metropolitan area should do a lot more working together (as the School District ought to do a lot more working with other local educational institutions such as Regina and Kirkwood). That's what JCCOG is about. After all, our total population is roughly that of an apartment development in one of the world's larger cities. And yet we're served with dozens of city councils, police and fire departments, bus companies, school districts, and other governmental units and institutions. The City of Iowa City (amongst a great many other organizations) does have a stake in school boundaries. Where they're drawn has an impact on City services (e.g., water, sewer, roads, fire and police), property tax revenues, and the direction of business and residential growth and "development," including that impact on green space and flood control. Unfortunately, we don't currently have the process set up to create, utilize and have the School District benefit from input provided by the City Council of Iowa City (and Coralville, at an earlier meeting).

Students' performance; SINA; and No Child Left Behind

And speaking of educational data, and "what we know that ain't so," take a look at Rob Daniel's "Schools Try to Improve in Math and Reading," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 1, 2010, p. A1.

This could be (and undoubtedly has been) a subject for a doctoral dissertation at a college of education. So I'll just make one little point.

Years ago, as a school board member concerned about our schools' performance, while doing some research on the Internet, I came upon the rankings of schools in either Massachusetts or Connecticut. I don't now remember which. Anyhow, they did not compare the schools with each other on the basis of students' test scores. They compared each school with itself. So a school with an average 82 percentile score was considered a SINA school (not literally, but figuratively) if a reasonable expectation, for that school, would have been a 94 percentile score. Similarly, a school that one would reasonably predict would have a 27 percentile score would be heralded as a great success when it came in at the 42 percentile.

Similarly, Iowa City parents and School Board members, do what you need to do under federal and state law. But if you feel some need to do a comparative evaluation of Iowa City's schools, to make sure you buy a home where your kid can go to "the best" school, make sure you're looking at the right numbers. For example, you might want to look at the progress of the children of middle and upper class parents who stay in the same school from kindergarten through sixth grade. How much progress do they make during those seven years? That's apples-to-apples, schools-to-schools. Or, similarly, consider the children of poor, homeless parents who spend only one year (but at least one full year) in the school. How much progress do those students make in a year? (The same could be done, if you cared to, for race, ethnicity, and special needs students.)

My own (uninformed by such data) opinion is that by those measures all of our schools are roughly equal. We have good teachers everywhere. It's kind of silly to make major decisions on the basis of which school is "best" -- but it's especially silly if your data mixes the test scores of the homeless kid who only stayed in the school for four months with those of the over privileged who spend seven years there. I wouldn't be surprised to discover, with an apples-to-apples comparison, that some of our SINA and high percentage "free-and-reduced-lunch" schools are actually the District's "best" schools. Why? Because, like the old Avis Rental Car ad, their teachers have to "try harder." (Avis' "We try harder" campaign was launched by then-Avis CEO Robert Townsend.)

Pounding nails. You know the concept: Don't be too outstanding in your organization or, like a nail that's sticking out, you'll just be pounded down. I don't know why institutions tend to get rid of their very best people. Oh, I have some ideas, but I won't go into that here. But we may have yet another example from within our School District.

I acknowledge a lack of first-hand knowledge of the facts. But that's never held me back before. But apparently City High has a program called Fas Trac that, while it may need some proof reading help with its spelling, is otherwise working wonders in turning kids' lives around under the charismatic leadership of someone named Henri Harper.

So what is the District doing? It's laying him off and redesigning the program he created into something much more conventional and easily managed. See Editorial, "Programs Only As Good As the Staff Who Run Them," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 1, 2010, p. A11; and two letters to the editor: Claire Ashman, "Changes With Fas Trac; Fas Trac Program is a Success, So Why Cut Teacher?" and Annie Tucker, "Changes With Fas Trac; Fas Trac is Essential in Eliminating Systemic Inequity," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 1, 2010, p. A11.

Wow! And just when I thought there would be nothing more to say about the local schools this morning, and that I'd probably be writing about the joys, campaign contributions, politics of -- and lessons from -- off shore drilling for oil.
_______________

* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself.
-- Nicholas Johnson
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Drawing School Boundaries: Clarity vs. Chaos

November 11, 2009, 7:40 a.m.

Bumps on the Road to Boundaries
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
This morning's blog entry is a commentary about the School Board's most recent efforts at rethinking its elementary school attendance boundaries, at its meeting last evening, November 10.

But first, here are links to earlier entries on this topic and some of the other hot topics from the past week or so that are now getting the most direct hits, among which may be the entries you are looking for:

School boundaries, school boards, and the ICCSD. "School Board Election: Now Work Begins; It's Swisher, Dorau, Cooper; Old Board 'Starting Off Backing Up' With Consultant and Tough Decisions," September 9, 2009, 7:00 a.m. (with its links to 11 prior and related blog entries including, for example, "School Boundaries Consultant Folly; Tough Boundary Questions Are for Board, Not Consultants or Superintendent, Plus: What Consultant Could Do," and "Cluster Schools: Potential for IC District?")

Nicholas Johnson, "School Board Has Work to Do," Iowa City Press-Citizen, November 2, 2009 (and reproduced in blog)

"Boundaries: Only Board Can Do Board's Job; Drawing School Boundaries Made Easy," November 2, 2009

UIHC, Regents and UI.
Executives trip to Disney World: "Mickey Mouse Patient Satisfaction; UIHC's Troubles: Is Orlando the Answer?" November 8, 2009

"Contributions from patients" proposal: "UIHC: 'Sick Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?'; A Check-In and a Check," October 31, 2009, 7:00 a.m. (with numerous updates through November 4, links to additional, related material -- and now with over 30 of the Press-Citizen readers' comments on B.A. Morelli's stories)

Board of Regents and State universities' budget cutting: "Cutting Slack, Cutting Budgets; Regents, University Presidents, Deserve Some Thanks and Credit," October 30, 2009, 8:30 a.m. (with links to prior, related blog entries)

Spence break-in grand jury proceedings: "UI Spence Break-In: Gazette Scoop Illustrates Issues," October 27, 2009

Sunday, November 8, the School Board held a work session at which they navigated one or two bumps in the road to a school boundaries policy. Rob Daniel, "Board lays out redistricting expectations; Schools should have similar numbers of low-income students," Iowa City Press-Citizen, November 9, 2009 ("It was eventually determined that the boundary committee should aim for schools to have a poverty level of no more than 20 percent higher than the district average, which currently stands at about 28 percent."); Holly Hines, "School Board outlines boundary plans," Daily Iowan, November 9, 2009.

Last evening [Nov. 10] it finalized its "criteria." Rob Daniel, "School Board finalizes criteria for boundaries," Iowa City Press-Citizen, November 11, 2009, p. A1:

"the boundary committee will develop two to three scenarios while keeping in mind demographics, finances, keeping neighborhood schools and neighborhoods intact and projected enrollments and building uses. The demographics consideration also includes drawing boundaries in such a way that no school would be more than 20 percentage points higher than the district poverty average, which is currently about 28 percent, the board said. . . . Board member Mike Cooper said . . . 'The more flexibility, the better. I'm sure the committee will take all four of these (criteria) to heart.'"

And see, Holly Hines, "School Board Approves Redistricting Goals," The Daily Iowan, November 11, 2009, p. A2; Gregg Hennigan, "I.C. School Board Settles on Boundary Priorities," The Gazette, November 11, 2009, p. A2.

As always, there's good news and bad news.

The best good news is that this school district is blessed with the leadership of Lane Plugge. It's reminiscent of the line used in a number of songs, "If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all." If it weren't for Lane the Board would have no leadership at all.

His is a perfect personality for the task before us -- and I say "us" because how this boundary business comes out will affect everyone for a few miles around, whether they happen to have children in the ICCSD schools or not. It is a rare superintendent who can work with the likes of me, on the one hand, trying to bring some clear articulation to Board governance and goals, and on the other, keep his calm, and make sure things don't fall too far off the track in the midst of the Board's present chaos, confusion and deliberately structured ambiguity.

He knows what a school board should do -- legally, managerially, financially, and in shaping policy and goals. He knows a superintendent should not be doing the Board's job. But he also has the patience and ability to work with, and around, the hand of cards the voters dealt him.

Having watched the Board's discussion of boundaries last evening, I've kind of reversed my position. As awful as the result may be, for reasons I'll explain in a moment, given the Board's lack of either the will or ability to do its job, the utilization of a consultant and a committee may have been a brilliant stroke on Lane's part. It gives the Board the opportunity it seems to want to be able to avoid responsibility for the ultimate decisions, provides them the assistance they seem to need to do anything at all -- while at the same time avoiding the otherwise awkward, but only available, alternative of having the superintendent to do their job for them.

So Lane's the best news.

Another bit of good news, for which Lane is also responsible, is the creation in advance of a schedule of meetings of the committee, public forums, and the presentation of its ultimate report.

Finally, there is the use of at least one metric in the midst of this sea of ambiguity. The disparity of the percentage of FRL students in elementary schools is to be kept between a 48 percent maximum (the 28% District average, plus 20%) and a minimum that is not specified. (Even if the minimum is also subject to the 20% variation, that would mean schools could have anything from 8% to 48% -- a 6-to-1 ratio.) That would not have been my choice, but I have never argued this is about my choice -- only that the Board arrive at, and announce, its choice, which it has now done and for which congratulations and appreciation are in order.

On this one the Board may actually be reflecting the plurality of community opinion -- though how would anyone know what that is? -- that a 6-to-1 disparity is just fine, especially if the parents in question can continue to send their kids to a school with the low percentage (and the ones who can't are free to transfer out to another school).

I should make unambiguously plain at the outset that I believe the seven Board members, as individuals, are obviously committed to public service, and otherwise worthy of our thanks. The problem comes with what happens to groups, as illustrated by this poster:

The mere fact that each is an outstanding individual -- knowledgeable, caring and bright -- does not mean that when they come together and act as a board that the results will resemble anything done by people who are caring, informed and bright. You may have seen this poster about "Meetings," with the caption: "None of us is as dumb as all of us." [Credit: Despair, Inc.] One of our nation's major gurus of governance, John Carver, puts it this way in defining boards: "boards are incompetent groups of competent individuals." Or you may have heard the definition of a camel, as "a horse built by a committee."

As for the Board's current chaos and ambiguity, I'm reminded of a story. Concerned about their community's lack of progress, a poll was commissioned to ask the question, "Which do you think is the worst problem in our community, ignorance or apathy?" The majority response came back, "I don't know, and I don't care."

Is there a point at which, notwithstanding "elections," so few people care to vote that it is only nostalgic nonsense to refer to a community as a "democracy"? I think the School District may be at that point when 10% or less of eligible voters even bother to vote for their School Board members. Or perhaps it is the case that the population really does follow and understand in great detail the Board's approach to this boundary business, and is so affirmatively in accord with its approach that it sees no need to question what the Board is doing. Whichever it may be, my sense is that mine is a lonely voice in the wilderness on these issues, and that the Board may very well be reflecting its constituents' desires.

Nonetheless, I'm going to continue to share my own view of the matter for whatever inherent persuasiveness it may present to any who care.

I most recently wrote about these issues in Nicholas Johnson, "School Board Has Work to Do," Iowa City Press-Citizen, November 2, 2009 (and reproduced in blog). On that occasion I noted, among other things:

"[It] is the board's, and only the board's, legal, managerial, economic and political responsibility . . . [to] go beyond the vague 'prioritizing its top criteria' . . .. Telling a committee of 30 that it should keep in mind the board's 'priority of demographic considerations' is equivalent to Congress telling the FCC to regulate broadcasting 'in the public interest.' . . .

[T]he board . . . should start by calculating the percentage of "free-and-reduced-lunch" students in the District-wide student population. [It's now done so; the answer is 28 percent.]

It could then say, to state the extremes, that it wants:

• To specify precise percentages to maximize the FRL disparity, within the limits of the law: Some elementaries with a disproportionately high percentage of FRL students, and others disproportionately low (like now). [Of the three options I offered, this seems to be the one it has selected: no minimum FRL percentages specified, a 48 percent maximum (20% over 28%) -- producing conceivably as much as an 8-to-1 disparity from school to school (e.g., 6% vs. 48%).] . . .

Abdicating leadership

But for the board to delegate its responsibility for boundaries to a committee of unelected citizens in the form of a multiple-variable set of criteria with no algorithm, made up of vague categories with no metrics, is an abdication of its responsibility, a kicking the can down the road, a recipe for chaos and frustration, and an unconscionable imposition on the time, energy, good will and financial resources of 30 dedicated local citizens and the public at large. . . .

New data, physical impracticability, political or economic pressures may well call for some rational modifications occasionally.

But at any given point in time, everyone simply must have specific numbers to work with -- numbers not from the administration, a consultant or committees, but from the board.

Having done its job it is then possible, if the board desires, to delegate the task of creating specific, alternative line-drawing possibilities to the superintendent, a consultant or a committee -- but not before."

At that point in time I was only focusing on the ambiguity in the Board's use of language.

Having now watched the deliberations last evening [Nov. 10] I am even more concerned about the chaos involving the structure and process of its decision making.

It has taken what could be a rather unique clean structure and process -- the Iowa Code provides that the Board has the power, and the Board makes the decisions -- and turned it into the ambiguous chaos that prevails elsewhere in government.

o Consider Washington and health care. How's that been working for us? There are 435 folks in the House, almost half of whom have vowed to "break" the President by voting against anything he's for. Now that it's finally come up with a 1000-2000-page bill with something for everyone (at least some of which has nothing to do with health care) it goes to the Senate, where it has been declared to be "dead on arrival" and will require, for reasons best known to the Senate, 60 of 100 votes to pass rather than 50. If there's anything left in it for the American people after it comes out of the Senate, if it ever does, it must go to a "conference committee" for further watering down. Finally, if the President can hold his nose long enough to sign it, it will become law.

o There are similar problems within the Regents' university system. The UI faculty has some power, as do the college deans, president and other administrators -- although, as in Animal Farm, when it comes to the hospital and athletics "some are more equal than others." Nor is that the end of it, for the Regents have a kind of ultimate authority under the Iowa Code, as does the Legislature (or, more particularly, those legislators in the leadership and on the relevant committees).

Elected officials in Washington and Des Moines (at least those who would really like to get things done on the people's behalf) must envy school board members. As with any elected official, Board members have some responsibility to their constituents, and a significant number of stakeholder groups. But the legal authority stops with them; they need report to no one -- not the city council, not the legislature; only the courts can reign them in, and then only if they violate some federal or state law.

Given this rather uniquely clean bit of authority, what has our Board done? It has taken the smoothly working beauty of an Iowa City decision making machine and tried (and succeeded, alas) to turn it into something as chaotic and dysfunctional as the governance systems of Washington for health care and Des Moines for universities. Why would anyone want to do that?

It has, with a skill at ambiguity seldom if ever equaled, dispersed its power in all directions. There are the seven individual Board members. There is the Board acting (as it should) as a Board. There is the Superintendent. There is now a consultant. There are 30 (with promises of more) individuals on a committee. There is the committee acting as a committee (either unanimously, or with widely splintered views). Then there are two of the Board members (Mike Cooper and Tuyet Dorau) who will also hold the title of "ex officio" members of the committee (a wholly inappropriate role for individual Board members); and some imprecise role that will be played out by the consultant, Superintendent, and other District administrators at the committee meetings. All have some -- and often conflicting -- authority for this process and its ultimate decision; for none has that authority (and its limits) been defined.

Like "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory," in addition to creating "criteria" that provide no direction (with the exception of the 20% metric), the Board has now also deliberately created this blob of undefined roles and interwoven quasi-legal loci of power and will have to live with it.

As I listened to the exchange among Board members last evening my concerns were only heightened. Someone sought clarification on "what the consultant has told us we must do." Someone else commented that the 20% metric might be modified in some cases if one of the other "criteria" conflicted. There was some confusion about what "ex officio" would mean.

To end on a more positive note, here's a suggestion that I've written about before.

I believe in "the ratchet principle." You know, like a jack you put under a car. You start with something and then try to improve it. Writers may use it as an alternative to what some have described as the process of looking at a keyboard and waiting for little drops of blood to fall off of your forehead onto the keys.

Let's start with a map -- not one of the "two or three scenarios" the Board is delegating as an assignment to its committee; not as anything anyone thinks the Board would ever end up with. But as a place to start.

Nor need it be a multi-thousand-dollar precise map. Surely the administration can make pretty accurate estimates of many of these numbers.

1. Building occupancy.
(a) Do with building occupancy what the Board has done with FRL. What is the total elementary school population for the District?
(b) What is the maximum occupancy of each elementary (not counting "temporaries"), and what is that District total?
(c) If students were assigned such that every elementary had the identical percentage of its maximum occupancy, what would that percentage occupancy be?
(d) If every elementary student was assigned to the school closest to him or her, working outward from each school in all directions until that occupancy percentage is reached for each school, where would those boundary lines be drawn?

2. Free and reduced lunch.
(a) Do the same exercise using only that nearly one-third (28%) of the elementary students who are FRL.
(b) What is 28% of the student population of each elementary (using the optimum/average occupancy calculated above)?
(c) If every FRL student was assigned to the school closest to him or her, working outward from each school in all directions until its 28% is reached, where would those boundary lines be drawn?
(d) Do the same exercise as in 2 (a)-(c), above, forgetting about the percentages in each school; assign each FRL student to the closest elementary. What percentages of FRL would that produce in each school? You then have the data (with the visual of a map) to decide the most cost-effective way of reallocating FRL students to meet the 48% maximum.

Having done these, and similar, exercises there are some maps on the wall. All can, literally and figuratively, "see" what this is all about. Those involved, whether Board or committee, can then meaningfully talk about the modifications they want in the metrics that produced those visuals. They can "ratchet up" to ever increasing detailed modifications of those maps.

Ideally, as I've suggested before, there is no reason why these kind of "what if" games could not be played with software plus data made available by the District to the administration, Board, committee and any member of the public (presumably online). All kinds of maps could then be drawn by anyone with the time and inclination to do so. I can't believe the software isn't easily available, possibly even for free. (But no, I'm not going to volunteer to take the time to find it.)

Failing that, however, as least some early, fixed maps of the range of what various formulas would mean geographically would be a cheap, and very useful, compromise.
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
# # #

School Board Election: Now Work Begins

September 9, 2009, 7:00 a.m.

It's Swisher, Dorau, Cooper;
Old Board "Starting Off Backing Up" With Consultant and Tough Decisions;
Meanwhile, Part of $6 Million that Mysteriously Disappeared Miraculously Reappears
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
Sarah Swisher led the race from the beginning as the returns came in last night, and ended up with 54% of the votes (2393) in an election that brought out a better than average 6.07% (4392) of the District's 72,000-plus eligible voters. Tuyet Dorau, at 50% (2197), pretty much retained her second place rank throughout the night. Third place shifted between Jean Jordison and incumbent Mike Cooper, but when the North Liberty vote came in, and the counting stopped, Cooper had 47% (2066) to Jordison's 38% (1685).

And a big shout out of thanks from me, on behalf of the District community, to Anne Johnson and April Armstrong, in addition to Jean Jordison -- and Joshua Kaine and Jeffrey Manthey (who dropped out of the race in August) -- for having enough interest in our children and their schools to put themselves out there, invest the time and money in a campaign, and risk the political loss that, in the end, was theirs. I'm pleased to read this morning that a number of them have indicated they intend to remain informed and active in addressing the District's K-12 issues.

See, Rob Daniel, "Swisher, Dorau, Cooper Win in Election; Area Sees Higher Than Average Voter Turnout," Iowa City Press-Citizen, September 9, 2009, p. 1A.

The Consultant Curse. Meanwhile -- unfortunately -- the old School Board, with the election results only a couple hours away, chose to rush through approval of the Superintendent's proposed no-RFP, no-bid (so far as I know), $80,000-to-100,000 contract for unspecified services with the out-of-state consultant RSP from Olathe, Kansas -- without including, or even alerting, the two new Board members. I still don't understand what that was about, but if anything it looks even worse this morning than it did when I last wrote about it. Nicholas Johnson, "School Boundaries Consultant Folly," August 28, 2009. And see, Rob Daniel, "School District to Hire a Consultant," Iowa City Press-Citizen, September 9, 2009, p. A1.

Daniel reports the consultant is supposed to "figure out its [the District's] high school enrollment and districtwide boundary issues . . . [including] analyses of enrollment trends, facilities, grade configuration and boundaries . . .." There will be a "telephone survey of 400 registered voters," public forums in "October or November," with more "forums in January and February." This is to be followed by "a committee of community members, teachers and school board members in March" tasked with coming up with a "boundary scenario" -- whatever that might mean -- which will then be handed to the Board.

Although irrational, chaotic, manipulative, misleading, unnecessarily expensive, and destructive of the Board's proper role, this approach will at least have the virtue of providing the layers of political protection that confusion always offers -- to both the Superintendent and the Board.

Hopefully, the Board will at least include in its management information reporting system requirements of the Superintendent (it does have a MIRS, doesn't it?) a requirement as to how often, when, and with regard to what, it wants reports of consultant progress against benchmarks.

(If you're not familiar with the reference to MIRS (management information reporting system), sometimes MIS (management information system), although normally a tool of management, it can also be modified for boards as a tool of oversight, or governance. Sometimes the MIRS would relate to Board goals (that are also CEO job descriptions, and basis for bonuses -- or dismissal if not met). But they can also be used to monitor delegated management responsibilities unrelated to Board goals and responsibilities, merely to enable the Board to oversee and keep informed (as distinguished from the basis for Board action). In either case, there would usually be a project, an articulation of the purpose or goal of the project being monitored, a metric for measuring progress toward that goal, often "benchmarks" or "mileposts" of accomplishments along that path, and agreed upon times at which reports will be brought to the Board -- often in the form of, or accompanied by, charts and graphs of some kind. See, e.g., my old The Marad Management Information Reporting System (1965).)

Come on, folks, this is not rocket science.

1. Here's what the Board does. It's the job of the Board, and only the Board, to propose, and revise as appropriate, the standards, the parameters, the goals, the metrics to be used in drawing boundary lines in order to implement the policy decisions made by the Board.

2. Here's what the Superintendent (or the consultant) does. It is then the job of technicians (albeit very skilled, well-educated technicians!) to do the actual drawing of the boundary lines that will carry out the Board's orders, apply its parameters, and reach its goals.

3. Here's what the stakeholders do. Those members of the public that care about this process have numerous ways of participating. They can email (phone or meet with) Board members and District administrators, write letters to the editor of the local papers, attend and speak out at Board meetings and forums scheduled for the purpose, discuss the issues within their local PTOs, PTAs and other organizations to which they belong that might be willing to get involved. Some may serve on committees.

To illustrate: The hot button issue involving boundaries is equity -- the disparity in the allocation of "free-and-reduced-lunch" students among the elementary schools.

First off, I believe there are some federal and state legal requirements. If true (I haven't looked into it), presumably all would have to agree we at least need to comply with the law. OK?

Next, what does the Board want the future levels of disparity to be? (This could be a slow transition over six or seven years to ease the impact on current students and parents.) Within the limits of the law, it can keep them what they are, increase them, or decrease them.

If the Board wants less disparity it can propose to make the percentage (a) equal in all elementary schools, or (b) within a range of 3%, 5%, !0% of each other. (Similarly, if it wanted to increase the disparity it could set a parameter permitting even greater percentage variations.)

After, but only after, a majority of the Board has taken a position on these issues, and proposed a "parameter," then and only then District administrators (or the folks from Olathe) can create some alternative boundary line maps that would produce those results.

But these decisions simply must be made by the Board, and the earlier on they are made and the Board's ownership of them is established, the less will be the wasted time and money invested by others. The longer you keep stirring the soup the less likely you are to get clear broth. For the community to keep going round and round about this with no direction from the Board is in no one's long term interest. (Want a national analogy? Think President Obama's delegation to Congress of the major policy decisions about "his" healthcare reforms, as well as the writing of the 1000-page H.R. 3200.)

We don't need to create forums to know that there will be howls of protest from some parents in some elementary schools that now have very low percentages of free-and-reduced-lunch students and under a new, more equitable plan ultimately will have more. Anyone who doesn't know that hasn't been paying attention.

The new Board can decide, and decide now, whether it's willing to stand up to individual schools' opposition for the sake of the entire District, or not.

Do I mean that the Board should ignore public input and ram through what it wants without either truly listening, or responding to, all stakeholders (as the old Board was perceived as doing)? Absolutely not. I would like for it to produce reasoned, rational, respectful, responsive written opinions explaining why it is doing what it is doing, and why it is proposing some courses of action and rejecting others.

What I am saying, and all I am saying, is that the Board should be the first out of the starting gate rather than the last in establishing parameters. Will it refuse to budge in any respect from what it first proposes? I would hope not. But it should be the Board -- from first to last -- that is doing the research, discussing the parameter options, responding to public reactions, making the parameter proposals, the revised proposals and ultimately the decisions as to parameters -- not some consultant from Olathe, the Superintendent, or some community committee (whose job it is to draw the lines that carry out the Board's parameters).

(And since the article makes some reference to designated Board members sitting with the committee I should also note that, in my opinion, this is the worst of all possible worlds. (1) The Board should act through a Board of all members, not individual Board members. (2) I don't think delegating major policy decisions to a committee of citizens telling the Board what to do is a good idea, but (3) if there is to be one it needs to be truly independent of the Board, rather than a neither-fish-nor-fowl creature that is part Board and part not.)

The same analysis can be applied to other boundary related issues.

Equality of occupancy. We have a total number of elementary students in our District. Each school is designed for an optimum occupancy. Hopefully, that total population is a percentage of (rather than greater than) that total optimum occupancy. However, as the boundary lines are now drawn some elementary schools are overcrowded (have a number of students in excess of their optimum occupancy) while others have empty classrooms. The Board can (and I believe should) set a parameter for this percentage occupancy as well: each school should be at the same percentage of optimum occupancy as all the others, or that they should only vary by some fixed percentage from each other. Board's choice.

Equality of class size. Class sizes (for example, how many children their are in each third grade classroom in all of the third grade classrooms throughout the District) vary significantly. This is also something that can be essentially solved with parameters about boundaries, but I don't want to take the time and space to explain that now.

Flexible allocation; long term boundaries. In order to maintain the Board's parameters regarding allocation of students over time (whatever those parameters may be), more or less flexibility can be provided the Administration. This can take the form of what I believe it now calls "zones" (from which students can be assigned among two or more schools) or what I've described as "cluster schools." How much (if any) of this kind of flexibility also needs to be addressed, and resolved, by the Board.

Finders, keepers. How does a school district accidentally lose $6 million? It's a mystery. Fortunately, there are still miracles as well. A good deal of it has recently miraculously reappeared. See Rob Daniel, "School District to Hire a Consultant," Iowa City Press-Citizen, September 9, 2009, pp. A1, A5.

Wait, there's more. I've written about many of these issues before. If you're interested in looking at more of my writing this year on K-12 issues generally, and board issues in particular, here are some links:

Nicholas Johnson, "School Board Election: Now Work Begins," September 9, 2009;

Nicholas Johnson, "Labor and Schools Deserve Respect, Support," September 7, 2009;

Nicholas Johnson, "School Board Governance: First Things First; School Board Forum Producers Charis-Carlson and Yates Create Hit, But Where Was Candidates' Awareness of "Job One": Their Governance Model?" September 4, 2009;

Nicholas Johnson, "IC School Board Needs Fresh Thinking; Swisher Starting Dialogue,"

Nicholas Johnson, "School Boundaries Consultant Folly; Tough Boundary Questions Are for Board, Not Consultants or Superintendent, Plus: What Consultant Could Do," August 28, 2009;

Nicholas Johnson, "School Board Members' Advice; So You Want to be a School Board Member," August 19, 2009;

Nicholas Johnson, "UI VPs and ICCSD Consultants; Concerns About Consultants and Vice Presidents," August 14, 2009;

Nicholas Johnson, "Cluster Schools: Potential for IC District?" June 3, 2009;

Nicholas Johnson, "School Boundaries; Tonight's Schools Meeting and the more to come," March 30, 2009;

Nicholas Johnson, " Demolition Disaster; Come Let Us Reason Together," March 10, 2009 (contains links to additional sources);

Nicholas Johnson," Roosevelt: Valuing Our Schools; Process and Substance in School Facilities Decisionmaking," March 9, 2009 (contains "Earlier, Related Writing" section with links to seven additional sources).

The election's over. Now the work begins.
____________

* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson

# # #

School Boundaries Consultant Folly

August 28, 2009, 7:20 a.m.

For other, related blog entries, see:

Nicholas Johnson, "School Board Governance: First Things First; School Board Forum Producers Charis-Carlson and Yates Create Hit, But Where Was Candidates' Awareness of "Job One": Their Governance Model?" September 4, 2009;

Nicholas Johnson, "IC School Board Needs Fresh Thinking; Swisher Starting Dialogue,"

Nicholas Johnson, "School Boundaries Consultant Folly; Tough Boundary Questions Are for Board, Not Consultants or Superintendent, Plus: What Consultant Could Do," August 28, 2009;

Nicholas Johnson, "School Board Members' Advice; So You Want to be a School Board Member," August 19, 2009;

Nicholas Johnson, "UI VPs and ICCSD Consultants; Concerns About Consultants and Vice Presidents," August 14, 2009;

Nicholas Johnson, "Cluster Schools: Potential for IC District?" June 3, 2009;

Nicholas Johnson, "School Boundaries; Tonight's Schools Meeting and the more to come," March 30, 2009;

Nicholas Johnson, " Demolition Disaster; Come Let Us Reason Together," March 10, 2009 (contains links to additional sources);

Nicholas Johnson," Roosevelt: Valuing Our Schools; Process and Substance in School Facilities Decisionmaking," March 9, 2009 (contains "Earlier, Related Writing" section with links to seven additional sources).

Tough Boundary Questions Are for Board
Not Consultants or Superintendent
Plus: What Consultant Could Do
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
The Press-Citizen reported Wednesday (August 26) that it looks like the School Board's hiring of a boundaries consultant is a done deal. Rob Daniel, "School district closer to hiring consultant; Board members say they generally support idea," Iowa City Press-Citizen, August 26, 2009, p. A1.

The prospect of a consultant being involved in, as Daniel describes it, the "move toward a third comprehensive high school and [the project to] re-align school boundaries district wide," raises a number of possibilities, questions and concerns.

September 8th??!! You've got to be kidding! The story concludes, "[Superintendent Lane] Plugge said he will bring back a 'plan of work' with RSP [the consultant] along with probable costs for the consultants' services to the board at its next meeting on Sept. 8."

In case you haven't yet made a note of it, September 8th is the day when a minimum of two and possibly three new board members will be elected to this seven-person board -- nearly one-half of the membership. (Don't forget to vote.)

Buildings, boundaries -- and the hiring of consultants -- are all highly charged, controversial issues. With the results of the School Board election only hours after the meeting, why on earth would an outgoing board want to decide (or even be briefed on) these issues without the newly elected board members present and participating? It's not as if postponing this meeting would be holding off on a major decision for months, to the detriment of the District. We're talking minutes or hours here.

Tough Boundary Questions Are for Board -- before hiring consultant. There are a number of tough, basic policy issues that simply must be resolved by the School Board and cannot be delegated out to a "consultant" -- or the Superintendent for that matter.

(1) Do we want to continue the piecemeal approach to elementary school (and high school) boundaries, evaluating and redrawing them one school at a time, or do we want to undertake a District wide reevaluation and boundary line redrawing exercise?

What are the Board's goals, and parameters, with regard to:

(2) The disparity in the "free and reduced lunch" populations between elementary schools? Do we, does the Board, want boundaries that result in all schools being within 5 percentage points of each other on this measure? 10 percent? Equal? Or does the Board desire (or is it fearful of challenging) the perpetuation of those disparities -- capitulating to those who like things just the way they are (or who would prefer they be even more unequal)?

(3) The disparity in the percentage of optimum occupancy for each elementary? As with "free and reduced," how much disparity is acceptable in the percentages on this measure? Or is the Board even willing to continue to build new schools rather than more efficiently utilize those that now have empty classrooms?

(4) The disparities in "class size" in terms of, for example, the number of third graders in each third grade classroom across the District? (There are approaches to boundaries that can make all schools' class sizes roughly equal.)

(5) Are we, is the Board, willing to consider any changes in the general configuration of our elementary and junior high schools, changes that would have an impact upon, among other things, boundaries (e.g., K-3, 4-6, 6-8 buildings; magnet schools)?

(6) "Best practices" and most data indicate that, however good our high schools are today (and all three are), they could be even better if we were to follow the advice that no high school should exceed a 600 to 800 enrollment. (Above that, there is a marked increase in drop-outs and absenteeism, bullying and violence, alcohol and drug abuse, graffiti and vandalism, and teen pregnancy. There's also some evidence of a decline in academic performance, though that data is less definitive.) Can we afford to have the best? Can we afford not to? Are we willing to pay for it? The answers to this one obviously affects the discussion and decisions surrounding the "third conventional high school," budgets -- and the transition to the future boundaries for whatever high schools we may have.

(7) Do we want the Board and Administration to have the flexibility of zones within which, over time, new students could be assigned to more than just one school, as necessary to meet the "goals and parameters" noted above?

(8) More generally, do we want to create a process and formula that indicate how boundaries will be modified in the future -- thereby avoiding the need to re-invent the wheel every few years -- or just get the current challenge and controversy behind us as quickly as possible?

Could a "consultant" from Olathe, Kansas, address and give us their opinion about how we should respond to these choices? Of course; but so could anyone stopped at random on any city street in America.

The point is, the above issues are matters of judgment for the people of Iowa City, not Olathe; they are political questions; questions that need to be answered by the stakeholders of the Iowa City Community School District -- through the members of the School Board that they have elected, and will elect on September 8th (as informed by the input of those stakeholders who have spoken at Board meetings and otherwise communicated with Board members).

What a consultant could do. Once these issues have been addressed and resolved by the Board, then and only then there may well remain specialized, technical tasks for which the Superintendent does not have staff expertise available. For example, there's the matter of taking the Board's resolution of its preferred parameters, calculating the amount and location of student population growth over time, and applying the Board's parameters to those numbers. I would think we'd have someone on staff who could perform that function; but if not, that clerical task could be outsourced without having transferred major policy decisions along with it.

The 'What-If' Machine. We have fewer than 12,000 students in the District. That is clearly a relatively small number of entries for a computer. In fact, anyone with Microsoft Office 2007 has the programs to handle that number of entries in either a database ("Access") or spreadsheet ("Excel"). Although mapping software exists, I don't have access to it on my laptop (so far as I know -- one's always discovering new features) -- aside from "Mapquest," Google Earth, and Bing.

So I'm assuming it would not be that big a challenge, in 2009, to come up with the mapping program I describe below.

[Thirty years ago, as one of the presidential assistants to President Jimmy Carter charged with organizing and operating the 1979 White House Conference on Libraries and Information Services, my son Gregory and I witnessed a display of a similar computer program with capabilities far beyond what I'm about to describe. That's why I'm simply assuming that, given the rate of increases in computer capabilities, and decreases in their costs per transaction, what I'm proposing is either already in existence or could be cheaply created.]

What I'd like to see is a combination database and mapping program that would enable anyone in the community -- not just ICCSD administrators and staff -- to engage in "What If" boundary-drawing exercises that would display the resulting boundary lines when driven by alternative inputs regarding such things as elementary schools' percentage occupancy, allocation of free-and-reduced-lunch students, students' distance from schools, and other variables.

Presumably the District (1) already has the necessary raw data to do this (students' names, date of birth, street address, current school) and (2) the ability to protect students' privacy (e.g., use of numbers rather than names, year of birth instead of month-day-year, numbered blocks instead of street addresses).

What if the only metric was that every child is assigned to the closest school? Where would those boundaries be?

What if all schools had free-and-reduced-lunch numbers within 10 percentage points of each other, but students were otherwise assigned to the closest school? What would the boundaries look like?

What if all elementary schools were at the same percentage of their optimum occupancy? How would those boundary lines change?

Such questions and more could be put to such a program and the results quickly revealed. It would ultimately save enormous amounts of time and money for everyone interested in these issues -- including the taxpayers who will end up paying for the consultant. And it would make for much more meaningful, and hopefully civil, participation by the District's stakeholders in the process -- including much more helpful, and fact-based, input from the community to the Board.

If that's what the Board wants the consultant (or some University or other local software experts) to do I'm all for it. We really need a computer mapping program like that -- available to all.

Otherwise, I think the Board needs to wait for the outcome of the school board election September 8th, and then get on with what it is we elect them to do: to bravely, intelligently, and with the aid of their own thorough research, make those tough decisions.
_______________
Here are some additional excerpts from Daniel's story (linked at the top of this blog entry), with my comments interspersed in italics:

The school board heard from representatives of RSP Associates of Olathe, Kan., at its meeting Tuesday night about what the consultants can do to help district officials solve the enrollment and boundary issues. The consultants were brought in by Superintendent Lane Plugge to help determine how to build the new high school in the North Liberty area while the district wrestles with crowding at West High and budget woes.

"Help district officials solve the enrollment and boundary issues" sounds, to me, more like total capitulation to, or delegation of decision making to, a "consultant" than "consultation."

And what on earth does "help determine how to build the new high school" mean? Don't we know how to build a high school? What we often don't do is to thoroughly research and think through all the things we'd like to do inside that high school, and what we want the outcomes to be, and why, and how those decisions might impact the physical structure. A consultant might emphasize the importance of that step. But a consultant can't make those decisions for the Board either. After that, it's a matter of getting some more community input, selecting and working with the architect, and then selecting and working with a contractor or contractors and providing appropriate oversight. That's "how to build a new high school."

Mark Porter, education planner with RSP, said the group has a 97 percent accuracy rate in making enrollment projections over two years. He said the consultants have helped with numerous school districts in settling boundary and enrollment projection issues including helping the Ankeny School District with its plans to build a second high school last year. He said the consultants could help the district get the correct information to make a good decision on whether to build the third comprehensive high school.

"You want this information to be right the first time," Porter said. "You have to have correct data."

RSP, according to principal planner Robert Schwarz, can help the district figure out its enrollment projections using enrollment and development trends, figure migration patterns in and out of the district, and help district officials develop a plan that can be presented for approval by the school board. He said he hopes to spend the fall collecting and analyzing enrollment, census, construction and development data before presenting the group's finding and recommendation in October. The district then can form a committee of parents, teachers and school board members to formulate a plan through meetings and public forums before presenting a plan to the school board for approval in the spring.

Schwarz said RSP could help do this without being biased toward one end or another.

"We are an unbiased third party," he said. "We're going to be looking at real world data that exists in your community." . . .

The reference to "enrollment projections" and the suggestion that the consultant "can help the district figure out its enrollment projections using enrollment and development trends, figure migration patterns in and out of the district" sounds like what I called, above, "specialized, technical tasks" that follow from, rather than precede, determine or supplant, fundamental Board policy decisions. So, although we ought to be able to do that ourselves -- at least with resources inside Iowa City if not within the ICCSD staff, without having to go to Olathe, Kansas -- I'm relatively untroubled with a consultant performing that task.

On the other hand, as the sentence continues, it becomes more problematical: "and help district officials develop a plan that can be presented for approval by the school board." What this sounds like, at least superficially, is that (1) the Board has delegated the boundary policy and third conventional high school decisions to the Superintendent, (2) the Superintendent has handed them off to a consultant, following which (3) the Superintendent will perform the transmission belt function of passing along this "Board policy" created by a consultant to the Board, which will then (4) put its imprimatur on the value judgment of these Olathe residents.

I've never wished more fervently to be wrong. But I just call 'em as I see 'em, and from where I now sit this looks to me like a foul ball.
____________

* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson

# # #

UI VPs and ICCSD Consultants

July 14, 2009, 8:30 a.m.

Concerns About Consultants and Vice Presidents
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
UI vice presidents and ICCSD school district consultants are back in the news.

Wikipedia tells us that "A consultant, from the Latin 'consultare,' means 'to discuss' from which we also derive words such as consul and counsel . . .."

Put "consultants" into Google and you get 88 million hits.

Clearly, there's a lot of discussion going on. Why it's going on and whether it's worth the time and money is what interests me.

Rob Daniel's piece in the Press-Citizen yesterday, informing me that "The Iowa City School District could hire a consultant to help sort out what needs to be done to eventually build a third high school," is what got me thinking about consultants once again. Rob Daniel, "District may hire consultant; Would help smooth planning process for new high school," Iowa City Press-Citizen, August 13, 2009, p. A3.

Similar issues (for reasons I'll discuss shortly) are raised by this morning's story by Brian Morelli, "UI goes forward with VP search; Hope to fill senior communications position by Nov.," Iowa City Press-Citizen, August 14, 2009, p. A3.

It turns out that, notwithstanding the initial objections to the UI expenditure in these economic times, we're going ahead with the creation of yet another Vice Presidential position: "Vice President for Strategic Communication." UI's vice presidents are paid a minimum of $214,000. Thus, this new position -- with benefits, office and staff -- means we're talking well in excess of $300,000 a year (an extra $10 annually from each of 30,000 students).

So why are we doing this now, while cuts are being made throughout the University and UI spokesman Tom Moore acknowledges that "The economic climate requires thoughtful decision-making"? Because, apparently, it was "through that [thoughtful decision-making] process [that] it was determined we should move forward with creating this position."

I guess that explanation should probably be enough to silence all doubters.

After all, as Moore continued, "The new position is essential to . . . assuring that we communicate effectively with all our constituents."

Obviously, I don't have the perspective of the UI president's office, I'm no expert, and I certainly haven't memorized every University of Iowa publication and media effort. But I track every local and national story in the media about the University and almost always have been well impressed with the quality of the University News Service personnel and output, and the range of UI publications: the main UI Web page, the News Digest, the @Iowa news items, the Alumni Magazine and Spectator, the faculty fyi, there's some publication for parents I recall -- and there are no doubt many more, such as our law school's "Iowa Advocate" and four law reviews. When someone at the University stumbles and falls the media is going to notice and report the fact. Not much public relations can do about that. In fact, do too much and we are worse off and charged with "spin," or do too little and we're charged with "stonewalling." That goes with the territory. But day in and day out I'll compare our public relations, quality of News Service releases, and the media treatment we receive as a result, with that of any of our sister institutions. So I don't know exactly what this "communicate effectively with all our constituents" -- obviously suggesting we're not doing it now -- is all about.

Hold that thought. I'll be back to the vice president in a minute.

Before I continue, let me make a couple of things clear. It is not the purpose of this blog entry to criticize either the University or the school district. That's because (a) the points I want to make have to do with administrators' use of consultants, and the equivalent of vice presidents, in general, and (b) because I don't have enough of the background facts involved in these two decisions to come to definitive conclusions about their justification and wisdom. (However, even if I don't have confidence in the answers I do have confidence in the questions and what are not intended to be anything more than superficial suspicions.)

Now let's examine Superintendent Lane Plugge's explanation of the reasons for his consultant.

Daniel reports the consultant is "to discuss the process of getting a new high school built in the North Liberty area. He [Plugge] said the consultant was necessary to help analyze the financial and enrollment data the district already has and use that data to possibly eventually redraw boundaries district wide." He then quotes Plugge, "What I'm looking to get from that consultant is the public engagement in the process."

To summarize, the consultant (a) will "discuss the process" of building new schools, (b) "analyze financial and enrollment data" already possessed, (c) "possibly redraw boundaries," and (d) provide "public engagement."

We'll come back to that explanation as well. But first, just what is it consultants and vice presidents do?

No institution -- corporation, university, government agency -- can have all the specialized expertise it needs in its permanent employees. It makes financial sense, when addressing challenges that could not have been predicted, or that come up extremely rarely, to bring in an outsider -- an architect, trial lawyer, doctor, or specialist in toxic waste disposal. Moreover, even with staff expertise, decisions of sufficient seriousness, when there is disagreement within the profession as to the best course of action, may significantly benefit from "a second opinion."

But all too often the functions of consultants and "vice presidents" (which I'm using in the general sense of anyone holding a title and responsibility for some of a CEO's functions) are far less savory.

A CEO (a title I'll use to include "president," "commissioner," "superintendent," "executive director," or "chair") for a variety of possible reasons may want a "vice president" for "decision deniability," a potential scapegoat, either in general, or with regard to a specific sub-set of his or her responsibilities. Or perhaps he or she is insecure about their ability to do a portion of their job, a job for which they were hired on the assumption they had that expertise. Or perhaps they lack confidence in the ability of those actually doing a given task and, rather than go through the unpleasantness of firing them, prefer to hire another administrative layer of oversight. (Again, I have no factual basis to believe any of this applies to UI VPs.)

A consultant may be hired for similar reasons. They may be brought in, and instructed, to support a decision of the CEO (already made in fact; while the appearance is that the consultant is proposing something not formerly considered) that needs political shoring up. They may be hired to perform tasks well within the job descriptions of permanent employees -- tasks those employees are incompetent, or otherwise simply not up, to performing.

At best, an outside consultant will have to be educated from the knowledge base possessed by the permanent employees. At worst s/he will bring to the institution little more than the general, basic textbook knowledge from their profession that many of the employees could quickly read on their own.

During my time on the school board we recognized the urgency of addressing (creating, actually) the governance system (the role and function of the board; the members relations with each other; the board's relationship to the superintendent, and other administrators; the functions of the superintendent and his/her evaluation; management information reporting systems). We could have hired a consultant; not just someone who had read John Carver's books, but the author -- at a cost of about $5000 a day. Instead, we chose to buy the books, read them, and relate Carver's suggestions to our own local circumstances. As a result, we were not simply accepting a consultant's suggestions with less than full understanding, we were willing to put in the hours necessary to really master the concepts and make the governance system we created our own.

Let me repeat and make clear: (a) I like Lane Plugge ("what's not to like?") and try to be as supportive as I can, and (b) I really do not know the "back story" on why he and the Board are now considering hiring a consultant. (c) I'd like to believe it's fully warranted in this instance.

It's just that superficially and simplistically it seems to me the tasks he has identified are tasks well within the job descriptions and expertise of administrators and staff the District already has in place: the ability to (a) "discuss the process" of building new schools, (b) "analyze financial and enrollment data" already possessed, (c) "possibly redraw boundaries," and (d) encourage "public engagement."

We have bright and experienced school board members. We have a number of administrators with advanced degrees from quality colleges of education. Moreover, isn't the process of building a high school very similar to the process of building an elementary school -- only for slightly bigger people? Isn't that something they've already done? Do they really need a consultant to "discuss the process"? Haven't they been thoroughly trained, aren't they already experienced, in the analysis of financial and enrollment data? Isn't the drawing of school boundaries about as bullseye central to the responsibility of a school board member (setting goals and criteria) and superintendent (application of Board's criteria to data) as any decision they'll ever make?

I've provided some suggestions on how they might improve their efforts at "public engagement" -- as have a number of other members of the public. But this is something they ought to be doing on an ongoing basis, and it's not rocket science. If they really have additional questions about how best to do it there's plenty of advice on the Internet and from local citizens. And perhaps the first principle of "public engagement" is that it is self-defeating to delegate the task to a consultant -- Board members need to involve their personal hearts, minds and bodies in the process.

Ultimately my initial questions about this use of a consultant may be satisfactorily answered. I really do hope so. It's just that those answers are not now apparent.

Similar questions remain for me about the UI's latest vice presidential addition. I am even more hopeful that my initial questions about that one will also be answered.
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson

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Although entered as a comment by "BigOldDiesel" on the Press-Citizen's UI VP story rather than here, because it expresses a reasonable and relevant point of view, different from my own, in fairness I wanted to reproduce it here:

Nick,

Perhaps we've been reading different versions of the PC. It's pretty clear to me that both the ICCSD and the UI have gotten their butts kicked in the realm of public opinion lately, and that they need help.

I agree that both Mason and Plugge should have better skills in terms of PR and public engagement, but at the same time I look at all the things they have to do well as CEOs... we're already asking a lot of our executives, and if they can hire this expertise and that expertise will a) enable better decisions, and b) give them time to focus on areas more appropriate to their skills, that seems like a positive.

I don't like Plugge. I think that he's a pretty poor executive and that he's done tremendous harm to our district. Since we can't get rid of him at this point, I think getting him some help with an issue that's clearly beyond his skills isn't a bad idea.

I like Mason, and I think she and the University needs PR expertise in a huge way.
8/14/2009 11:49:39 AM