Presenting the "Bring It Back in May" POV on the radio!

UPDATE: What a pleasure it was to be a part of the program!  The tone was civil throughout, there were lots of good questions asked, and good information was exchanged.  

The whole thing is being re-broadcast Friday from 2:00-4:00p.  Super easy to tune in!  Just click the link below.  The radio station's stream autoloads with the page.
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Super excited!  (And also terrified.)  I've been invited to share the "Vote No" point-of-view on a local radio show tonight.  It will be my first radio program!

The program is The Queen of Community Conversation on ThaAfterPartyRadio.com.  The host of the program is Claudia Fowler.

Dr. Lew Blackburn, DISD Trustee for District 5, will be representing the "Vote Yes" side.  It's a call-in program, so get those questions ready!

Here's the link, and the live stream of the radio station will auto-load when you get there:

http://thaafterparty.com/artist/queen-of-community-convo/

Link to my info site where I have docs posted:  DISDBond2015.com

Everything in this bond is subject to change - including taxes

Balloon payments.

That's the lynch-pin of the new bond tax plan that Dallas ISD has posted on their site (as of 10/6/15) as the tax plan for the proposed DISD Bond coming before the voters Nov 3. 

Balloon payments.  Really?!!!

Yes.  This is a great example of what's wrong with this Bond.  There is no dependable plan.  Balloon payments was not the repayment plan that was presented to the Board when they voted to put the DISD Bond on the ballot. 

The plan the Board saw depended upon property values appreciated 6%-7% every year for the next five years.  Big problems with that assumption - ask any real estate agent you know (or see this article on my other site.)

I guess this plan is suppose to be an improvement to that one.  I certainly keeps payments within the current tax rate... until the balloon is due!  Just how big is that balloon payment?!

$800 Million.  That's the total of the balloon payments.

Good grief.

But why am I getting worked up about this?  The plan will surely change.  Maybe before the election, maybe after.  After all, EVERYTHING in this Bond is subject to change.

And because really, balloon payments?!  

For more info, charts, and a wonderful quote explaining it all, see the TAX page on my bond info website.

WP Article: "The education-reform movement is too white to do any good"

Not a politically correct title.  Read it anyway. 

Excellent essay that explains clearly why we should partner with communities BEFORE planning changes.  Positive long-term change comes from partnering with a community instead of doing unto a community.

"The education-reform movement is too white to do any good" from The Washington Post.
http://wapo.st/T879Pz

Reminds me of this empassioned plea from Trustee Nutall when the bond plan was being presented at the Board Meeting on June 25, 2015.

[After listing a lot of school and community groups that have been actively meeting about how to address needs at their schools. Video time-stamp 139:25]

“The community has been meeting… So when you say you are going to go back to the community and see what the community wants, there are already [groups]… that are meeting with parents.. that are talking about solutions… I don’t see that in this plan. I see us putting here, like you keep saying ‘We’re gonna go to the community,’ and I’m telling you – meet with the people that are meeting now. And they will tell you the vision that they have for their children.

Include them in this. I’m asking you that as a Trustee… this ‘parental leadership’ style is killing me, telling us what’s best for us when we can tell you solutions to our problems. Include us in that solution! [Lists schools and groups in South Dallas and Pleasant Grove.]

I’m just asking the administration to sit with them, and talk and listen. Don’t come and bring something and say ‘This is what’s best for you.’ And we can work together on a solution, for our children.”

Enlightening read on DMN about what the DISD bond is and is not

Dallas Morning News reporter Tawnell D. Hobbs did an article 10/17 titled "Dallas ISD bond proposal pits needed repairs against new schools".

My comments on four points:

1) Quote from Wanda Paul, DISD Operation Chief:
"At the end of the day, it should be about what's best for the kids"

Yes, it should.  So... whose kids and how many is she talking about?  I have yet to find where the FFTF looked at hard numbers about how many kids will benefit from their current plan versus fixing the top needs on the Parsons facility condition report.

Same for school choice:  how many kids does the current plans serve vs how many kids could be served by expanding current choice programs with the same amount of money?  Keep in mind, new programs will start with just one grade level, where as expanding a current program can mean opening slots at multiple grade levels.

Who knows?  Not in the FFTF meeting notes because there aren't any.  :(

2) Regarding Rosemont, one of the nine new schools on the list:
One of the Rosemont Elementary buildings would be replaced even though it’s listed in “good” condition in a district report.

Literally, over half the schools in DISD are in worse shape than this one.  In the June 25th Board meeting, everyone is surprised to see Rosemont on the list.  Trustee Cowan asked, "Why Rosemont?"*  FFTF Co-Chair Craig Reynolds cited 2002 facility condition info, totally ignoring the 2013 info from the Parsons report.  What?!  

I've been told by an FFTF member that the committee as a whole never discussed Rosemont or voted on it.  For that matter, the FFTF committee never voted on any part of the FFTF plan.  

I've made an open records request about docs supporting Mr. Reynolds' statements, so will post it here and at my DISD Bond Info blog when I get it.

3)  Quote from Trustee Cowan: “But I ask those people who are just focused on ‘choice’ to look at other things — the additions, the HVAC, the roofs, the cafeteria expansions, the CTE [career and technical education] program. It’s not just the past regime."

Would be nice, but what he just listed is NOT what the bulk of the money is going toward.  Only $500M of the $1.6B is earmarked for that, and there is need of $2B just for existing facilities (as noted in the article.)

4) Quote from Trustee Bingham:
“If we don’t do the bond election in November, then those needs are just going to keep multiplying.”

Has she read the bond proposal?!  The majority of funds are going to new things, not existing needs. A lot of existing needs will still keep multiplying under the existing plan!  :(  :(  :(

* See the video from Board of Trustees meeting, time-stamp 145:13

Best statement yet about why to vote NO for the DISD Bond in November.

I love this quote from Bill Betzen, webmaster at http://www.dallasisd2016bond.com/

There is no doubt whatsoever that a bond election of $1.6 billion is urgently needed. The problem with this 2015 Bond Plan is that too much of the money is being spent on low-priority needs that then leave much more urgent needs unmet. More students should be benefiting from this plan without spending more money. That is not happening. This plan came from a void, meetings with no minutes, ideas with no named source for the ideas. Transparency & public involvement is missing!

Bill Betzen, via DMN comment 10/18/15 (emphasis mine)

Sum up: We need a bond.  This ain't it.  Vote NO and tell them to bring a better plan back in May.

What the 2015 bond is & is not

The more I learn about the Dallas ISD bond proposal, the more uncomfortable I become with it.  The process and final product are very different than the last bond in 2008.  What this bond is not:

• This is not a bond whose priority is to bring the facility experience for all students up to an acceptable level (a goal of the 2008 bond.)  
• This is not a bond that prioritizes fixing what we already have (it does not align with the district-wide Facility Condition Index report done by the Parsons engineering firm in 2013).  
• This is not a bond that had any meaningful input in the planning process from community groups that I can find - or for that matter, really any group outside the Administration.  It looks like the Future Facilities Task Force got 100% of their info from the administration, and community meetings didn't start happening until the Administration was done with the plan.  (No minutes were kept for the FFTF, and the committee never voted on the plan that was presented to the Board in June.)

So if that is what the bond is not... what IS the bond?

This bond is a check for $1.7B handed to DISD with no strings attached other than what the state requires for bonds.

• The list of new schools and improvements is marked Proposed and is 100% subject to change.  
• The Board has not voted on any plan associated with the bond.

If you think handing DISD a check with no strings attached is a good idea, then by all means vote for the bond.  But if you don't, then vote NO.  Tell them to do it right and bring it back in May!

(And about that "it will not raise our taxes" claim... there are strings attached to that one.  More on that later...)

Communities & Principals

There is a struggle going on in DISD right now with the Rosemont community trying to keep their principal from being fired.  The Rosemont parents have no illusions on their chances of success - many other popular principals of campuses with good-to-great state ratings have been fired over the last couple of years regardless of how large the community response was.

In 2013, three of the four principals Dallas Morning News had deemed "Super Principals" were let go.  One of them was Sunset's principal, the high school in Rosemont's feeder pattern.  I remember parents in the Sunset community being completely blindsided by the decision.  Sunset had made so many gains during his tenure.

(Read the story here:
http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2013/08/three-of-our-four-annointed-super-principals-have-been-drummed-out-of-disd.html/ )

Each year there are more.  Communities come to Board meetings to protest, but to my knowledge, there has never been a reversal of the decision, except for the very recent case of the Franklin Middle School principal.

The stated goal of the Administration is to create a politics-free principal evaluation system that gets rid of promotion via cronyism and glad-handing.  I think most agree with that goal 100%.  I know I do!  But... there's always a big but, right?  But, what if the system doesn't measure what we think it measures?

As one parent said to me, maybe the system "replaced external politics with internal."

I have no "inside track", so I am just guessing here based on what I hear at Board meetings:  I wonder if the firing offense for some principals is push-back over teacher observation and evaluation requirements?  It seems to have been an issue in the Franklin case (link above).  I also found this article with a letter from one of the Super Principals to her staff in 2013.  The LOLs, DOLs, and MRSs are references to required teacher instructional techniques.  See more about that here.

It's hard to know what is going on.  It's also hard to watch yet another community be blind-sided.

The Epic Battle in Education is about making bricks without straw

There are two titanic forces battling over the future of American public education today.  I'm sure there are official names, but I affectionately call them...

Qualifiers vs Quantifiers

This is a shameful oversimplification, but here are the two sides:

Qualifiers:
Qualifications matter.  This group includes teacher unions, anti-standardized testing activists, liberal arts proponents, the highly-educated "old guard" in the education landscape.  Beloved Sage, Diane Ravitch.

Quantifiers:
Quantification matters.  This group includes Teach for America donors, charter school donors, benchmarking proponents, STEM champions, the Reform movement in education.  Fearless Advocate, Whitney Tilson.

There are so many differences between the two warring sides, that it's easy to forget they both care deeply about the same thing:  Making sure every child in America has the opportunity to get the education he or she needs.  Both groups set that "need" bar pretty high, and they both see education as the best ticket out of poverty for a disadvantaged student.

It's important to remember this core value commonality because each often accuses the other of exploiting the educational needs of poor kids out of greed.   Like the Democrats and Republicans, to an outsider it seems they go out of their way to be against anything the other side is for.  There are many ideological differences between the two, but to me it seems the core conflict is in the answer to this question:

Can a single teacher can be good enough to make sure every student in the classroom gets a good education?

Qualifiers say No.  A good teacher can reach many, and a great teacher even more, but no teacher can guide every child to success because some things are simply out of the teacher's control.  Students (with their parents/guardians) must also take responsibility for their own education.  Plus, to expect teachers to be the primary weapon in the war against poverty is unrealistic, especially with classroom sizes getting bigger and funding getting smaller.

Quantifiers say Yes.  If it can be measured, it can be improved.  Just because something is not being measured doesn't mean it can't be measured, so a measurement needs to be found.  With enough information, data-based training, and effort a teacher can find a way to reach every child in the classroom.  Effective teaching is more important to student achievement than any other factor, including (to some extent) class size and funding.

The conflict of these two opposing assumptions is behind almost all of the clashes between the Qualifiers and the Quantifiers.

It reminds me of the Old Testament story about the Isrealite slaves who were required to make bricks with no straw, a necessary binding ingredient.  I imagine arguments between the distressed people may have gone something like this...

1 - That's impossible!  We can't do it.

2 - We have to do it.  We don't have a choice.  We have to find a way.

1 - We're being set up for failure.  We're going to make a lot of bricks that are not going to be good enough, because we don't have the ingredients we need to get the results demanded.

2 - Very bad things will happen if we don't deliver all the bricks.  Yes, it seems impossible, but we have to try anyway.  And who knows, maybe we'll succeed. There is ZERO chance of succeeding if we don't try.

1 - What?! Are we suppose to create straw out of thin air with wishful thinking? Bricks are made with clay and straw.  We have NO straw.  Trying to make bricks without it is stupid.

2 - Giving up is cowardice!

1 - Look, let's go scavenge our own straw.  We can at least make some of the bricks properly.

2 - That's a huge amount of time and effort for not enough bricks.  That doesn't get our quota met.

1 - No, but the bricks we make will be up to specs. 

2 - Look, we have clay.  Let's do some tests on different ways to make clay-only bricks.  If we approach this methodically, we can find a way to get the quota met with what we have.

1 - Talk about a huge waste of time!  We need straw, we aren't being given it, so we go find it ourselves and make what we can. 

2 - That's not good enough!  We have make quota!

1 - The quota's impossible!  We can't do it!

2 - We have to do it!  We don't have a choice!  We have to find a way!...


... and so it goes, around and around and around.