Now What?

Now that the campaign and election are done it looks like there's lots to learn in the next few weeks. The inaugural meeting is coming up on Dec 6, and a series of orientation or training sessions here and also in Vancouver. I got an email from the board office asking what my top 5 things I wanted to learn about first were. We got to choose from a list of categories. Here's what I put (yes, I gave 10 not 5 things):

• district plan, leadership, technology
• what can/should I do on my own, what should be done only as a group
• school programs and long-term sustainability, is this where "green" initiatives fits?
• are 1701s the only extra funding cases?, equity for all vs. fairness for students generating funds
• the BCPSEA relationship, hiring philosophy for leadership
• trustee/school relationship, the kinds of questions that are worth asking
• purchasing as it overlaps with school and teacher innovation
• categories, is this where 1701s equity vs. fairness issues would come up?
• improving achievement, connection to rural schools (including technology), relationship to other school programs
• figuring out Robert's Rules

I'm also wondering what kinds of things I should use this blog for now that I am a trustee. If anyone has suggestions feel free to leave a comment. I really appreciate the help my husband Glen gave me in researching and editing the blog and campaign material, he really is an ubernerd when it comes to the school district's history and issues. Kind of a walking encyclopedia but with more facial hair. I also appreciate the input that other teachers and parents had on my campaign, there is so much passion and interest out there for making our schools work for the students. Thanks also to my kids for putting up with a big change to their nights. I've been working evening shifts at Costco for the past month, one more shift left and then I'm giving up the job to focus on being a trustee.

Final vote count

35 of 41 polls reporting !!!

With the results mostly in, it looks like I made it onto the board. The polls as of late last night show me at seven of seven, a real squeaker. I am honoured to be chosen for trustee. There were sixteen candidates running for seven seats, two of which had dropped out, so I really hope the seven that didn't make it are willing to stay active as advocates for public education and share their ideas with the new board. All of the dialogue leading up to the election focused on a more open school board office and more responsive board of trustees. This is what I ran for and this is what I will come back to as a focus. The issues I thought were important included teacher support, student support, communication, planning, rural education, technology, and real sustainability. Other issues will come up in the next three years and I hope to continue the commitment from all of the candidates for a more inclusive and transparent process for change. I'd especially like to thank the CORES rural school support group for encouraging excellent dialogue among the candidates, and for all of the teachers, parents, and family who asked good questions, offered support, and provided a student-centered perspective for my campaign. In the coming weeks, I look forward to learning the ropes and start working for some practical, creative actions in the next three years that will benefit our students and school communities.

Cool Playgrounds

A friend of mine (Brent Goerz) sent me these links today for sustainable, creative playgrounds and resources on playground philosophy and design... what amazing ideas and articles! Some of the design ideas are just cool to look at, but many of them would work in a winter city like ours. As Brent put it, "this is from an architect out of TO who uses these options to provide an alternative to plastic crap in schools."

Worth the visit:
http://www.earthartist.com/playground/KOLTS.pdf
http://naturalplaygrounds.com/news.php
http://www.bpfp.org/PlaygroundDesign/

Citizen Bio

Yikes! The PG Citizen 5 of the trustee candidate 500-word bios, including mine.  The other 9 were published but I guess there was a mix up on the others.  Most of them made it to the Citizen's website, though.  For those who are interested, here is what I sent to the Citizen:

I'm 41, a mother of two children, a girl in Grade 2 at Ecole College Heights and a boy in preschool. My most recent full-time work was as a computer mapper for an archaeological consultant.

I'm an active parent at my daughter's school, and I volunteer with the potter's guild. There are many educators and students in my extended family, and I have  a solid understanding of the issues facing our schools. I have pursued fairness and common sense policy in every job and situation I've encountered. I am willing to ask tough questions and challenge the ideas of others, including the government as it seeks to reform the education system. I dislike the use of buzzwords, and will speak plainly about issues in our school district.

As a parent who participated in the school closure meetings in 2010, it became clear that the processes used by our school board were dysfunctional. Trustees were put in a position of listening but not responding, and had to work with a plan that had little flexibility. The input was stored up for use at single “right-sizing” public board meeting - it was a recipe for conflict and exclusion. Students, parents, teachers, the Regional District, even principals felt left out or stonewalled during the planning process, and were told that “bigger is better.” Choice programs were slated for disintegration, previous sustainability plans were ignored, and prior district spending was not under scrutiny. Rural communities were told there was no plan now but they would look at solutions down the road. Other districts like Kamloops managed to make agreeable cuts by changing their plan during consultation. It is not every year that this district will make those kinds of cuts to schools and programs, but we need a new culture at the board office if we don't want a repeat.  An inclusive climate will help address the issues and begin to heal the rift between teachers and management on technology, goal-setting, and professional development.

Over two short weeks in 2010 I was part of a group of teachers and parents that put together the "More with Less Report" suggesting 45 ways the school district could save money, improve delivery of programs, and green up to reduce carbon taxes. This report received some press and commendation from the minister of education, but very few of the recommendations received follow-up. Imagine what a creative, dedicated board could do in two months or two years with the help of its partner groups? Two key challenges will be pushing for a better funding formula for rural schools and ensuring that special needs funding does not get lost in the system.

There are many issues facing our school board, I've explained some on my website http://trusteecooke.blogspot.com. If I had to pick just one it would be the need for a more open and accountable relationship between the school board office and the teachers, students, parents, and community.

Talking Points

Here were the notes I had in front of me at the PG all-candidates meeting... I don't think I got around to many of them...

• mother, 41, married to a teacher, my kids are here, I’m locked in for 13 years or more
• I’ve got a lot of hope for what will happen to them, for what we can do as trustees, and a lot of frustration over what has happened over the last few years
• participated in the 2010 process, saw trustees forced into a corner where it seemed like they had to follow the path of least resistance
• more with less report - we wrote this because the District Sustainability Committee’s big plan was to close schools first and look for other savings later
• just when we thought french immersion was stable the board pulls out an end to sibling priority that caused parents another 5 months of pain
• other parent groups has similar frustration - rural schools, the traditional school, crowding at Heather Park and Glenview, Malaspina, courtesy bussing issues, the list is almost endless and goes back to the brutal process used in 2010
• teachers have ongoing frustrations over technology and classroom composition, and uncertainty about how our board will interpret the gov’t agenda once the job action is over
• I’ll ask tough questions, I’ve been involved in past debates, I love to debate and pursue fairness
• tired of double-speak, message management
• I’m not doing this to add to my resume or because I want to be a politician
• some of my big issues include safer schools, rural school support like getting MAC1 open again, protecting elective programs, stopping the diversion of special ed funding, getting the board office to wake up on technology issues, improving the plans in our district for learning, facilities, and greening up our schools
• I really look forward to working with you and the new trustees and thank you for this opportunity.
• I don’t want to sit and grumble in the playground, I want to pursue fairness for everyone in the district, bring more fairness to board policy
• Jack Layton talked about the need to build a new community on higher ground, I think we need a new more open approach to solving problems in the school district

jitters

Well, that was fun. We had the PGDTA/DPAC sponsored all-candidates forum tonight. Good questions and some interesting responses. Nice not to have any hecklers. It seemed that each person, in their own way, was focused on students. I'm really going to have to get used to the public speaking part of being trustee if I'm elected - I tend to think of what I want to say about things after while, after some time to sort it out. It was nice to meet the other candidates, and get a sense of what they would bring to the board. I kind of wish I could redo the rural schools question as I wanted to talk about the Dunster experience and the need to reopen Mackenzie Elementary. Oh well, part of the learning curve I guess.

Issue #10 Real Sustainability

Problems:

Schools support communities and neighbourhoods, and have a duty to be responsible community players. Over the last 10 years we’ve seen our school grounds increasingly chained up, gated, and made less welcome for neighbours. Friendly users are given the message to keep out, leaving the schools alone to the vandals. These are public lands, and should be open to the public.

Sustaining communities also means being stewards of our resources. Useful surplus equipment (e.g. from closed schools) should not be thrown out, but recycled or donated. It is still not known what has happened to surplus sewing machines, stoves, fridges, pottery and shop equipment from schools closed in 2010.  Either they have been thrown out or their whereabouts have not been properly reported.  The disposal was done quietly and kept out of the press.  Outrageous - this wasn’t junk - these were valuable assets in good repair according to staff from John McInnis and Lakewood. What is known is that hundreds of computers have been thrown out over the last two years, aging but still of use if the district didn't block donations. The issue of a principal throwing out school supplies was in the media this year, but that appears to be an isolated event rather than a pattern.

We need to recover carbon. Currently, school groups that organize efforts to green their school grounds are discouraged, being told that mown grass is preferable to trees and natural vegetation. Our district pays $150,000 per year (? please confirm) in carbon taxes based on the size of its footprint. The Highglen Montessori solar panel project is good start - Dave Leman’s efforts show us an example of something our school district should be prioritizing.

Some of our school groups have attempted to green their school grounds, like install gardens or replant trees that were cut down during the Pine Beetle outbreak. They are told that it is too expensive to do groundskeeping around new plantings, and most of these projects are denied. School grounds can be a place of wonder and beauty for students, and a lot of this has to do with trees. A few trees have been successfully planted, but we should be talking about stands of trees, little forests - thinking 100 years ahead!

Solutions:

Engage neighbourhoods and make use of social capital (the power of motivated people). Imagine how productive the board and board office could be if they became less adversarial with parent groups and said yes more often. Allow municipalities to assume after-hours liability in school grounds if that is why the chains and gates have gone up, and send the message that public school grounds are common ground.

Be public, open, and honest about what happens when a school closes. Donate, repurpose, or auction all surplus equipment and do not throw out usable assets. Appoint a trustee, PAC, or DPAC member to monitor disposal of assets. Our district has gained the reputation of being wasteful and it will take some serious effort to correct this impression.

We need to be more aggressive in reducing our carbon emissions and footprint, perhaps even recovering credits by sponsoring an offset project. To register these with the Pacific Carbon Trust, they would have to be completed by a third party to qualify as schools are currently excluded. They also need to involve something new that didn’t already exist in some form. Installation of outdoor learning space that involves carbon-capturing features (like trees) would qualify. 

Encourage tree planting and garden projects at many school sites in the district. Many of these projects already have volunteer help and funding lined up, so this does not have to be a new expenditure. Look beyond just making school grounds attractive and look for connections for environmental education and outdoor learning spaces.


Offer small incentives for teachers and schools to involve students in greening projects. What a great accomplishment it would be for a student to be involved with an innovative carbon capture project or the start of a new urban forest.

Issue #9 Building Bridges

Problems:

Management and teachers are not often working towards the same goals, especially during the current job action. It has become increasingly difficult to get the trustees and board office to listen to what their teachers are telling them (& vice versa). If there is some return to local contract bargaining, this adversarial relationship needs to soften. Long ago when teachers and administrators were part of the same professional association, it was fairly easy matter for “degrees” of leadership; teachers could take board office positions for a period of time and then return to teaching. Principals taught more classes, and there was a sense of partnership on creating positive learning conditions. Talk to any retired teacher or principal and they’ll describe this era. This team approach took a long time to fade. Even recently, many opportunities for teachers and management to sit down existed. Regular district-wide professional development opportunities with both groups, leadership teams, and district committees that existed from 2000-2009 have all disappeared. To be fair, many of these connections required expensive release time and during times of constraint have been replaced with learning team grants that gives teachers some time out of the classroom for study questions and experiments about teaching and learning. The teacher - administration gap has resulted in many teachers simply doing their own thing in their classrooms and trying to ignore everything else, a classic defense mechanism. The gap is different at every school and seems most dramatic between schools and the board office, so there is a strong role for trustees to play in modeling a better relationship.

The silver lining on the current job action is that everyone in the school system is getting a break from the their regular routines. This has not been easy for all, but it gives everyone a chance to start some new patterns when the job action eventually ends. This will be the perfect opportunity for the school board trustees and board office administration to being a new relationship with their teachers. This will only happen if the board office is willing to examine some of the dysfunction in their past relationship.

Solutions:

Connect the dots between the management gap and the other issues (like #6, #7, #8). Building bridges requires providing opportunities for teachers and specialists to lead change at the district level and for principals and district staff to be involved in learning, even at the classroom level. Design meaningful opportunities for all groups to meet and work together on mutually shared goals.

Lobby both the BCTF and the BCPSEA to agree on some kind of designation that will allow employees from either groups to exchange roles periodically without compromising their professional association.

Encourage trustees and management to spend some time in classrooms to realize the differences between the board office version of what’s going on with other perspectives, including the student perspective.

Be proactive in the research and discussion phase of any future negotiations on local contract issues.  Some items in the teacher contract will undoubtedly return to local bargaining, and the trustees need to be engaged in the process from the outset, and not just reacting or waiting for other districts to set precedents. Why not be a leader?

Lift the gag order (real or perceived) on teachers and principals getting involved in defending public education and giving critique alongside praise to district decisions and policies. This will speed up the rate at which problems with draft policies come to light and make the final outcome more inclusive and powerful. Article E.28 of the PGDTA collective agreement and SD#57 Policy 1170.3 provide starting points for these discussions.

BCPSEA application & job action

Recently, the trustees/government bargaining group (BCSPEA) submitted an application to the Labour Relations Board to deduct 15% pay from teachers in order to balance the job action and put some pressure on the BCTF to give up demands at the bargaining table. I don't support this move. It is crazy to suggest that staff meetings (2 hours/month), supervision (1/2 hour/week), and official report cards (maybe 4-5 hours four times a year) constitute 15% of a teacher's workload. My husband, a teacher, figures that works out to about $250 for a staff meeting. I hope he is getting his money's worth! In reality, teaching is a professional that consumes evenings and weekends, parts of summer and Christmas break, and is focused on the students in class, a passion for their subject, and not the meetings or the hallway supervision. As a parent, I've been able to meet with my child's teacher, and my teacher is no less busy preparing and teaching her class. She has to find her own time to offer a recess break, and supervise it herself outside of the school's regular supervision schedule. This article helps tell the story a little better than I can.

Issue #8 Long-term Planning

Problems:

The district ignored its own 2003 sustainability report in key areas, including the construction of new facilities and configuration changes that would have prevented the big deficit in 2010.  While well-documented funding shortfalls accounted for some of the money woes, the school district spent money and expanded board office staff between 2003 and 2009 as if the enrollment decline was a surprise. Paying the piper, as it was said, was held off until 2010.

The district’s own planning process is not working as intended. The current district plan for student success includes elements simply copied from previous plans that are not longer correct and report on work already underway. The district technology plan and district technology committee have been suspended (2005 and 2009 respectively), and the School Planning Council model has fallen apart without teacher involvement. We need to look positively at the next 10 years of student, teacher, school, and district growth plans.

Solutions:

Sustainability discussions need to happen regularly, perhaps on a three year cycle, and not just in response to crisis. On open model of consultation, similar to the way city plans are developed, and a public review of draft plans should be used. The process used to arrive at cuts in 2010 should not be repeated. Any committee charged with finding savings or building for the future can’t just include board office staff, it needs to include trustees, parents, teachers, administrators, and other partner groups.

The district has to decide what it wants to get out of its District Plan for Student Success. If it is to be more than just a report, there has to be a more robust feedback cycle used, and it should go for editing and review by partner groups. If the district is unwilling to build a new technology plan, it should be included in the annual achievement contract. Again, as with issues #6 and #7, listening and responding plainly to the teachers and administrators who are meant to do the work of district plans is crucial for success.

Learn from other organizations and school districts on how to use the district website for a much more involved level of interaction with educators and the public. We keep hearing about "21st Century" technology skills - to take this seriously we need this modeled at all levels in the school district.

Issue #7 Honesty in Education

Problems: 

Too many policies, goals, bad news, and announcements are “managed,” the message goes through “branding and handling” and the public has to decipher the jargon. These are the techniques used in large corporations and politics, but they shouldn’t dominate education. It is hard enough to read between the lines in government documents, we shouldn’t have to decipher reports from the board office or guess at what is meant by "21st Century Learning."  This buzzphrase in particular has come mean everything from privatization of education, to replacing teachers with commercial distance education services, to project-based learning, to increasing computer skills. Educators must explain what they mean, and not just repeat the phrase.


Schools should be about mistakes and successes, experimentation, and ongoing development. If things aren’t going well (like finances, a program that isn’t working, a school that is empty, or a policy that is counterproductive), we (the board office, trustees, schools, teachers) need to be brave enough to confront the problem head-on and not spin the news to make it look positive. One example is the FAQs that parents received during the 2010 closure process. It seemed that easy, obvious questions were answered in a calming manner, and the tough questions were left off the list. We need to change the culture at the board office so that all partners in education are encouraged to speak plainly and openly about problems and plans. When jargon or buzzwords are used to suggest that something has changed, it can take away from the real effort staff and students put in to make a difference. The school district has entertained so many philosophies as the right way to “go forward” but does not always stop to ask if they are compatible. Professional Learning Communities (PLC), Assessment for Learning (AFL), 21st Century Learning (21C), and Personalized Learning are only a few of the concepts that are in use. Each one may have something positive to offer, but it is too easy to simply repeat the words even if the ideas themselves are not well understood or used in schools. Public education, of all places, should set the bar higher for language and communication.

Solutions:

Co-opt the support of critics and supporters alike in reviewing school district publications. Look for jargon, cliches, innuendo, and “weasel-words” (like they do on Wikipedia) and try to replace them with real data, qualitative data, or genuine language. Enlist the support of the district’s best writers and analysts to critique and edit reports and polish up documents.

Look for ways to use the school district website and other forms of communication to provide interaction with the public and employees. In 2010 the Kamloops School District used their website to post ongoing feedback on their reconfiguration (cutbacks) report, a searchable, organized collection of public input. The result was that the trustees and district staff were able to see where changes to the plan were needed and they could readjust (with wide-spread satisfaction) before heading into a “do or die” meeting. It is important to note that this was not done to please the crowds, it achieved the same financial goals while providing a more convincing case that student learning was protected.