School system lags on plan

Strategic vision ID’d, not used

After two years, and a series of missed deadlines, the East Baton Rouge Parish school system has yet to settle on a new strategic plan, and it’s not clear how soon they will.

Five of the current 11 School Board members were elected in 2010 on an agenda that included working with community leaders to create a new blueprint that would help lift the school system to among the best in the state of Louisiana.

A 33-member Committee for Educational Excellence, made up of local business and community leaders, spent much of 2011 developing a draft plan, but that plan has collected dust ever since.

The far-reaching document suggests giving principals greater say in the teachers they hire and more control of their school budgets. The document also suggests automatic firing of teachers whose students show the least growth in test scores, firing of principals who fail to meet three-year performance goals, higher pay to teachers willing to work in struggling schools, as well as greater openness to innovation and school choice.

It included an overarching “bold goal” where East Baton Rouge Parish becomes a top 10 school district by 2020. The school system’s latest district performance score recently moved up from a D to a C ranking, but left it ranked 55th out of 71 districts in the state.

The contentious search that eventually led to the hiring of Superintendent Bernard Taylor accounts for much of the delay in ratifying this plan.

Since Taylor started in mid-June, the Committee on Educational Excellence has met twice, once in June, once in November, to get feedback from the superintendent and from community members on the draft plan. After the Nov. 8 meeting, Taylor said he hoped to have a final plan by the end of the year.

Reached by phone Dec. 28, Taylor said he wants to await the results of a series of community forums he plans to hold in the new year. Five forums were held in November.

“We’re asking people what they think, we’re asking people what they want, and before we present anything to the board, we want to make sure there’s a community consensus to move forward,” Taylor said.

At the forums, Taylor has offered a “framework for discussion” that will affect 36 schools in four sections of the parish by turning them into “attendance regions” that offer more choices than currently available.

What will be on these four different regional menus is unclear. Taylor has suggested converting a handful of schools to magnet schools and others to “grade centers” that every child in a given grade and in a given region would be assigned to, unless they choose one of the other school options.

Taylor said the process may be unfamiliar to some in Baton Rouge accustomed to being consulted about decisions only late in the process.

“What we’ve attempted to do is not to plan for people, but people to plan with people,” Taylor said.

Taylor wouldn’t say how long exactly he thinks it will take.

“This is not going to be a rush process,” he said.

Taylor has said the citizens committee did a “stellar job,” but he has suggested changes. He suggested a greater focus on technology, how its recommendations can be funded, consider how its recommendations can be measured, and re-examining the plan’s call for renewed neighborhood attendance zones.

School Board President Barbara Freiberg said the ball is in Taylor’s court.

“He wanted to look at tweaking it in a few areas,” Freiberg said. “Really and truly we’re waiting for him to get back to us on us.”

Taylor, however, rejected the idea that he would be making the recommendations for changes, rather they would reflect the feedback received at the forums.

Board member David Tatman, who is co-chairman of the citizens committee, said he wants general counsel Domoine Rutledge to examine the year-old draft plan to see if any of it conflicts or is made redundant by the sweeping Jindal education agenda approved by the Legislature in spring 2012. He also noted that there’s added confusion because much of that agenda is being litigated in court.

“We’ve have to have counsel look at the strategic plan and make recommendations as to what’s practical and what’s not,” Tatman said.

The draft plan and supporting documents are posted on the school system’s website at http://news.ebrschools.org/explore.cfm/ebrstrategicplan/.

More Information

Here are some ideas proposed by the Committee for Educational Excellence in December 2011 to improve the East Baton Rouge Parish school system:

• Evaluate annually the effectiveness of district instruction and intervention strategies.

• Seek bids from private companies and “intergovernmental collaborations” for “nonstudent-based services.”

• Establish “mutual consent hiring,” where both teachers and principals have to agree on all teacher placements, ending forced transfers. Teachers unable to secure a position would not be rehired.

• Provide access to enrichment, such as arts and vocational classes, at each school.

• Conduct a study to get a better understanding of accessibility and the quality of pre-K centers in Baton Rouge, both public and private.

Comments

1) Comment by BthechangeUwanttosee - 02/01/2013

In the 12/10/12 article School Revamp Facing a Dilemma, it was reported that it was being proposed that Delmont Elem. would be closed and the nearby Rosenwald prek center would move onto the Delmont site. Also, that Mayfair Middle would be shut down and replaced by a new dedicated or schoolwide magnet program. In the 12/25/12 article Inside Report: Pointe Coupee High Handling Criticized a commenter wrote that a national coalition of public activists has been granted a hearing before the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Dept. of Ed. Jan. 28-29 asking for a moratorium of school closings and investigations into incidents of school takeovers particularly in minority and low income schools (including local schools in LA). So, my question is this: Since there is no current definitive plan of action or timeline given that clearly outlines such a plan, at what point will the stakeholders affected by the results of this plan be notified or informed of their ultimate fate? Particularly the students, families, and faculty at Delmont? Are they all supposed to wait it out in limbo not knowing if they have a job for next year (or where it will be), not knowing where their child will go to school in the future? This plan affects people and their lives. Will any due process be allowed like waiting for the results of this year's test scores to be taken into account (will it even matter or alter "the plan" if the scores have improved? Will EBR allow the fulfillment of the origionally agreed upon and allotted 3 years to turn the school around under the SIG grant that the school is currently operating under? Has that part of the plan been decided yet? The public deserves to know more details and for information to be presented and forthcoming in a timely manner, especially when it affects them directly. The people affected need to know what their future plans will be. Based on the previous commenter's remark, it seems like people are taking matters into their own hands and forging their own plan (as they well should) to counteract the vagueness and uncertainty of the current proposed plan. Thank you to Charles Lussier for revisiting this story and staying on it as a reporter. It is one in which the outcome is relevant to many. It seems unacceptable to me the level of unclarity concerning this plan at this stage when instead what has been made clear is the devastating and inaccurate message to students, their families, the community, the teachers, and administrators affected that they are failures. I hope the powers that be will reconsider, will not rush this process and will take their time in making these critical decisions that will permanently affect so many in the years to come. Is anyone in education reform really planning with longevity in mind these days? Do what is best for kids, PUBLIC schools, and preserving successful public community schools. (Or at least afford them adequate time and the opportunity to try.) The kids are the ones who will end up paying the price for the outcome of whatever "the plan" ends up to be and at what cost will that be to them?

2) Comment by tradewinns - 02/01/2013

why does noone want to look at the real problem in our education system? you can shoot the baloney so noone gets their feelings jurt or you can correct the problem. politicians prefer the baloney. looks like they are trying while really not. the problem in our failing schools are failing parents. how do you correct the problem? money! not giving more money (a politicians favorite answer to anything) but by taking away money from the failing parents. regardless of the parent's economic/personal situation, fines should be levied against those parent(s) not performing their parential duties. this is actually not so new. school districts (in the USA) have levied fines for non attendance (that's where schools actually get their money). it works! attendance was up remarkably. so why not expand the proven idea to cover behavior, schoolwork, etc? we may always have the useless with us, but we shouldn't have to pay both for failure in school and failure in life. yes, the poor have to pay also with losing benefit dollars up to and including housing.

3) Comment by phil - 02/01/2013

I think it is ironic that taxpayers pay local taxes and state taxes and federal taxes and each of those government entities seems to have a different plan for how we will use tax dollars for schools in EBR Parish. My first question is when we discuss plans is exactly whose plan are we talking about? As a taxpayer, I think someone needs to decide what the PLAN really is. I personally do not think the voucher plan is an answer to fixing the public schools. In addition, relative to Teach for America I will again suggest that you check out their IRS 990 form. Too much tax money being spent on too many plans in my opinion.

4) Comment by phil - 02/01/2013

Seems like we pass taxes based on a plan and then are told the plan is in the works. I guess we just pass taxes with an open checkbook and then get a plan? Will there be a plan before the tax vote coming up I think this year?

5) Comment by spqr - 02/01/2013

There is a plan. Few are paying attention. 1) It is harder to discipline students allowing teachers to deal with more disruption. Keeping troubled, overaged, and felons in school fools the public into believing new discipline policies are working and helps school performance scores. 2) Hundreds of overage students are allowed to clog schools, the majority of which should be pushed out. When middle and high schools have dozens aged 16-19 two-four grades behind they need to be elsewhere. 3) It is the time of year when the charter schools have identified which students are failing and they will be told to leave and return to mainstream public schools so their scores can look better later in the year. This should not be allowed. 4) Students that are "expelled" are simply sent to other schools to trouble other teachers. 5) Students are allowed to transfer many times per semester for no other reason than they want to. Many teachers-many-have rolls whereby they add and drop 50-100 students per semester. I could go on, but there is a plan.

6) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 02/01/2013

There has been no response to major issues raised by others in the initial "Strategic PLanning Documents." For example, the following has major problems, on multiple levels. "TACTIC NO. 4: Reward teachers who rank in the top 25% statewide of performance in terms of improving student achievement (i.e., using the statewide value‐ added assessment model) and remove those teachers who rank in the bottom 25% statewide of performance." As many may have noticed in recent months, in spite of the state's refusal to release (as most other states have done) detailed data on Value Added Measure (VAM) results, individual schools and or teachers have released reports indicating clear problems with the system. Without going into the problems here, look carefully at the tactic quoted from the plan above. Keep in mind that nearly 50% of teachers leave in the first 5 years of teaching... and now the district is going to release those teachers scoring in the bottom-scoring 25% of a highly flawed evaluation system? Really? The statistical chance of a teacher getting at least one "false negative" in the bottom 25% of the state is pretty high, and they will be released (a nice word for fired) by the District? Other than going to Teach for America or some other "5 week wonder" program, where are they going to get all these teachers. Keep in mind, that no teacher who actually understands the failure of the VAM will want to teach in the system, there are simply not going to be enough teachers to teach in EBR. I admit that most of the "tactics" in the plan are simply restatements of the law and current requirements, but some of these tactics were clearly influenced by the so-called "reformers" in the group. In fact, most of the committees were led by people appointed by the Board President, and were clearly interested in ideology, and not research-based reforms. This plan is in need of MAJOR overhauls. To date, all of the actual work has been pretty much done behind closed doors. It is one thing to hold open meetings... but the meat of this work takes place in the writing. No attempt was made to show how research guided the process.