palaver – def. - unnecessarily elaborate or complex
procedure
“The vast majority of innovation school principals who
answered the survey—86%—opposed the proposal [to limit school autonomy]. They
expressed concerns about Denver Public Schools shifting from a district that
values autonomy to one where schools are run in a top-down, one-size-fits-all
way.” Chalkbeat Colorado, 3/11/22
My thanks to Federico Pena, former mayor of Denver, for his
Guest Commentary in The Denver Post this past weekend: “Denver’s students are floundering; where’s the school
board?”
In
three sentences he captured some of the gap between the board and the
community.
·
“Denver innovation schools have had greater autonomy
over their contracts with teachers and more control over their school budgets,
schedules and academics.
·
“Overwhelmingly,
educators, families and community members spoke in opposition to the board’s
policy [imposing limits on a school’s autonomy] with more than 1,800 people
signing a petition to ask the board to reject it.
· “Still, the board voted to approve the executive limitation.”
The articles above refer to Denver; the example in AV#245 comes from Aurora. Different issues, but a similar dissonance.
**
One reason so many educators are keen to see that their
school has greater autonomy from the district is to avoid the gibberish they see
coming out of the central office.
Advocates for innovation and charter schools make the case (which
seems self-evident) that they know their school community better than the men
and women working in the district office. Better, too, than is feasible for members
of the school board, all volunteers, busy with their own jobs. Especially true in
Colorado’s 30 biggest districts—from Adams 14 (over 6,000 students), on up to
DPS (89,000). Semi-autonomous schools can make decisions based on their own mission,
culture, and current priorities. This simple and yet powerful shift of
authority avoids the structures and the outside control (and the nearly
inevitable one-size-fits-all mentality) we see in our larger districts.
Perhaps it helps to give an
example of what self-governing schools are happy to avoid. What sounds like nonsensical
systems-thinking from district leaders. Babbling away … or Babeling, as in the
Tower of…
This comes from a local school board focused on the critical
issue of staff retention. And a key subset of that: recruiting and retaining teachers
of color. Important matters, to be sure.
But by highlighting statements presented by district officials, I hope you, too, will see more palaver here than good sense. A school person—a principal and any teacher in a leadership role at a school determined to address teacher retention—will be inclined to wonder: How convoluted can you get! And oh yes, did anyone ask me about this work?
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Staff Retention (Attrition by Reason) Other employment in education Employment outside of education Family care Formal study or research Contact non-renewal Illness Job dissatisfaction Military Moving/Relocation Retiring Other Human Capital Update, presented
by HR to APS board, Oct. 19, 2021.[i]
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Let me add (and perhaps this is a partial excuse for the
babbling), all of what follows began in the 6th hour of a school
board meeting, and went into the 7th hour, after midnight.
Again, good grief!
Why do schools want independence from what the central office is thinking and planning and power-pointing deep into the night?
Why do schools wish to free themselves from the systems-thinkers at district headquarters, who operate in a different reality? Because of this kind of foolishness.
Here you are: March 22, 2022. A meeting of the Aurora Public Schools Board of Education. It began shortly after 6 p.m. It is now close to 11:10. The Human Resources Division is making a presentation.
Listen and look for clarity and common sense. Ask principals you hold in high regard:
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Critics of the public education system often start there, that it is a system. One where the voice of school people, i.e., educators, is drowned out by the louder noise from the systems-thinkers who profess “to see the whole picture.” For this very reason, these critics are less inclined to fault rural districts. Such districts often think and act more like schools. Especially when they are one and the same.
As is the case in a district I visited in late March. One K-12 school.
One of Colorado’s 110 small rural districts (under 1,000 students). I
attended the school board meeting. It began at 6:30. It ended at 7:56. The
superintendent (who is also the elementary school principal) spoke like a
school person. What a relief. If I heard the word “systems” once, it must
have been in the report on Building and Grounds. |
Reader, out of respect for you, I will stop quoting after three pages. Enough here, I trust, to make you appreciate why innovation, charter, and independent schools say: we are glad to be free of this nonsense.
**
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“Countering
the Great Resignation,” presented by Damon Smith, Chief Personnel Officer,
Human Resources Division, Aurora Public Schools. (This is
my own transcription of what Mr. Smith and Mr. Vigil had to say. I apologize
for any errors.)
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SLIDE 2 –
Presentation Purpose (All
in bold is directly from the 24 slides.) … information on a component of the APS Human Capital Plan. SLIDE 4 -
The Great Resignation in Education Questions
about instructional modalities (in-person, remote and hybrid), COVID positive
and symptomatic students/staff, a lack of substitutes for class coverage and
dysregulated students and colleagues are all factors that have contributed to
the stressors that today’s educators experience.
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SLIDE 12 –
Gather Employee Insights Retention focus groups “We engage our staff members in retention focus groups.” [The district has been doing this for the 15 years Smith has been with APS, and for several years prior to that.] “The one
difference that is taking place for 2021-22 … is that we’re moving it away
from our homegrown approach to our reaching out to a national research firm,
Hanover Research, and asked them to completely retool our retention focus
group protocols, and then we’ve also hired them to come in and actually
facilitate those retention focus groups so that we can gain insights from our
employees as to what’s working, what’s not working. Hanover Research will
then complete the full analysis of the data that we receive and then develop
a comprehensive report that will then be provided back to the school
district. “Our intent is to then launch that information out to all of our stakeholders so that they can see what was it that our employees said that either brings them back or areas of concern that might be driving them away.” “And then
lastly we’re looking to reinstate the district’s good idea program,” which
Slide 12 explains is: an
opportunity for staff to make suggestions for operational changes resulting
in business efficiencies and/or cost savings. If an employee’s idea is
implemented, they are provided a financial award.
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SLIDE 13 – Ample Employee Recognition “One of the
things that we’ve recognized is we need to do a better job in recognizing our
staff for their work. And that aligns with yet another one of the
recommendations coming from the Society of Human Resources Management – ample
employee recognition. So next fall we will be launching APS’ attitude of
gratitude.” APS Action Aurora Public Schools’ Attitude of Gratitude – By accessing expertise and models from the corporate sector, an employee recognitions program is being developed for 2022-23 that can be implemented at both the site and district levels and facilitate staff recognition for work contributions and engaging in behaviors that exemplify APS’ values. Suggested
components of the employee recognition program [includes]: · In addition to district level activities, a repository of streamlined employee recognition activities that can be implemented at the site level are being developed. “This is an opportunity for us to specifically call out and recognize employees in our system who are doing outstanding work. And the way that we are doing that is borrowing some strategies from the private sector, and looking at how they support and recognize their employees and then creating a repository, … a ‘recognition in a box’ sort of approach, so that site supervisors across the system have the opportunity to have a variety of activities at their fingertips that they can employ to recognize staff. We don’t want to go out and say to our site leaders we need you to uptick staff recognition and not give them some tangible tools that they can easily access and then start to implement across the school district.” [NOTE: Do you know any good “site supervisor” (this is the principal, yes?) seeking said “repository”?] |
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SLIDE 15 – Update compensation plan/schedules regularly “Other approaches that we’re looking at that we believe will impact overall staff retention is looking at how we address class coverage…. This is one [area] where you receive the greatest amount of concern.” Considered approaches to class coverage [includes] [NOTE: What if principals say they ·
Increase the daily rate of compensation for
substitutes would prefer to find/hire subs, people hired through Kelly Education they know and who know their kids, · Adjust the hourly rate for class coverage (to be negotiated) rather than hire through rates could be tiered based on the school substitute fill rate a private company?] ·
Incentivize regular staff attendance; staff
members at each site receive a cash bonus by meeting monthly
staff attendance rate goals (to be negotiated) NOTE:
Please re-read that sentence. Isn’t showing up called doing your
job?] |
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SLIDES
19-24 – APS- Promise54 Action Plan Presentation by Antonio Vigil, Principal on Special Assignment for Promise54 Action Plan
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SLIDE 19 - APS- Promise54 Action Plan - From Current to Future State ● The
Promise54 Action Plan, when functioning as a cross-divisional system, aspires
to become a core technology to help us achieve the above goals. SLIDE 20 –
Setting Intentions The seven goals of the APS- P54 Action Plan originate from best industry practices associated with BIPOC (Black Indigenous People of Color).
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REMINDER: It is now AFTER 12:00 p.m.
The meeting is in its 7th hour. It will end in ten minutes. Here is more of what the board had to endure.
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SLIDE 24
– Goal 6: Build
a working environment that respects the presence of cultural differences in
the system. [Mr. Vigil spoke of work done over several years that has led up to Promise54.} “I’ve been working with our affinity groups … so building on that work we systematized the affinity group process so everything is completely systematized in the way of how you go through the steps, how you become an affinity group, there’s a google site dedicated to it, how you interact with it, it’s very simple, it’s very transparent and up-front, there’s also an evaluative rubric that really demonstrates how affinity groups as they apply to become district-sponsored affinity groups that is very transparent as well, and so there’s a very lock-step process in how you become one of those district-sponsored groups. “And so currently we now have … two official district-sponsored affinity groups – one is our Black African-American affinity group and the second one is our Latinx affinity group … so we have some really strong leadership that is working collaboratively within all those spaces to really create that sense of belonging and that culture of cultural responsiveness to really ensure that our teachers, our staff [are] finding the solace and unity and the community required to really have brave and safe conversations about change and support.” A question comes from a board member about the sustainability and long-term plans of Promise54 “The whole idea is to look at it from a systems-based approach, to look at it from a cross-divisional, a cross-functional approach, and really serve as a nexus. And so what I’ve been doing is meeting with all the different teams and it’s been really effective because we’re able to sit down and talk about how the alignment with the work is shared across the different divisions – so I think what is happening is that there is now a more organic and automated cadence of the work, whereas when we first started talking about it, trying to figure out like bringing clarity to how we show up and how we engage, but more importantly then, how do we have metrics to really evaluate the progress we are making tethered to the goals. It’s not enough to simply say, we check the box and now we have compliance around fulfilling the promise of this specific goal. So I think the sustainability lies within the structures that I am working to build intentionally with those cross-divisional supports and making sure that this shows up on their agenda, that it is part of their daily recognition of how we show up with the work. I think that we’re seeing a lot of progress with those cross-divisional relationships with HR and P54, DOEL and P54, and now COMs and P54, so those are all the cross-divisional relationships that we are working on to establish those systems to maintain and sustain [the work]. From Damon Smith’s concluding remarks: “We’ve
identified a number of activities, but I think it’s important to recognize
and hear what Mr. Vigil is indicating. It’s about changing systems. It’s
about looking at the way that we conduct our business and changing the
systems so that it is sustainable long-term, versus a series of activities that
we’re engaged in, year over year, and on a sporadic basis.” |
Is it possible that those operating inside the system they seek to change become victims of that very system? Trapped, unable to step outside and see matters in a new light?
A school’s freedom to determine
its own policies does not mean it will always see clearly and make the right
choices. But it will be less inclined than a school district to emit a lot of
hot air. The less a school is subject to what simply gets in the way – as
systems-gobbledygook is inclined to do – the better chance it has to succeed.
[i] 2021 Human Capital Update, from the Division of Human
Resources, Oct. 19, 2021, slide #18. https://go.boarddocs.com/co/aurora/Board.nsf/files/C7QKVJ528CEE/$file/HR%20Human%20Capital%20Presentation%20Oct.%2019%2C%202021.pdf
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