Keeping minds open…A conversation about learning & schools in Wyoming, Ohio

Cincinnati Magazine’s latest issue points to the WHS’ Language Arts program as one of Cincinnati’s Best in the Tri-State.

The brief article appropriately points out “it’s safe to say that Wyoming High School pretty much excels at just about everything, including language arts” but the timing of this accolade has to be particularly savory for the department.  At a time when both their professionalism and capability is overtly (and inappropriately) being called into question by our own school Administration it is ironic that the broader Cincinnati community can see what seems to be in our Administration’s blind spot.

It is wonderful for the department to be recognized and it is wonderful for the Wyoming community because it is, in effect, an advertisement for the Crown Jewel of Wyoming that has always made this a destination community in the region.  As a community, we need to ensure keeping that Crown Jewel status is the top priority on everyone’s agenda.

Incumbents.

Marty (2,162), Larson (1,889) & Felner (1,699) are in.  Etler & Etler made a respectable showing with a combined total of 1,439 but even with job sharing it’s wasn’t enough votes to break through the inertia of incumbency that has existed on the Wyoming School Board for the better part of a decade. To take a turn from American Express “Incumbency has its privileges”.

Digging deeper into the results, however, indicates that for the first time this decade in Board elections where there were more candidates than seats available – the real winner in yesterday’s election was “Anyone Else, Please !”

It’s not an exact science but here’s the logic.

Of the 6628 registered votes in Wyoming, 3321 voted in yesterday’s election, about 50%…not bad for an “off-year” election.

Each of those voters could vote for 3 people in the Board election – so there were 9963 “chips” available to spread out among the 5 candidates.

Interestingly, only 7189 “chips” were cast across all 5 candidates.

Rather than vote from among the 5 choices available yesterday, 2,774 “chips” voted for Anyone Else, Please, beating out all three incumbents.

This is Anyone Else, Please’s best showing this decade.

In 2003, the first year for which Board election results are available on-line, Anyone Else, Please came in last place.  It was a weak showing, collecting only half of the “chips” he/she would have randomly received.  In 2005, the next year in which there were more candidates than seats available, Anyone Else, Please did much better, running second in a 6 horse race gathering about 15% more “chips” than would have been expected randomly.  In yesterday’s first place showing, Anyone Else, Please gathered almost 40% more “chips” than he/she would have randomly received.  At some point (any statistician help here) that X% more stops being random and starts being real.

Rather than vote for any of the Board candidates available in yesterday’s election, 2,774 “chips” (the votes of almost 925 Wyoming residents, more than a quarter of the residents that invested time in the voting process yesterday)  went to their polling place but went home without voting in the Board election.  That 25% of actual voters sending the message – I can’t pick anyone off this list.  That says a lot about the choices.

Unfortunately, Anyone Else, Please won’t get a seat at the Board table so we’ll have to wait for the 2011 election to see how he/she does against that field of candidates.  Unless, of course, a seat happens to open up by coincidence between now and then…but I suspect the remaining Board members would view Anyone Else, Please too fringe to be considered as a replacement since that would make him/her an incumbent in the next election (and we’ve seen the power of incumbency in Wyoming – can’t share that with Anyone Else, Please).

[note:  I did not include elections in which the number of candidates equaled the number of seats available.  In those cases (2), Anyone Else, Please would have been the far and away winner but those situations are more formalities required by law than real elections so I thought it unfair to claim that Anyone Else, Please would have been the top vote getter in 3 of the last 5 elections. ]

The invisible curriculum consists of all the messages that adults send to children about what is valued and respected in the adult world.  These messages are critical for shaping the character of children, their outlook on life, and their ability to interact effectively with others.  “The content of the invisible curriculum helps teach children how much value to place on themselves and others”.   That was written in the mid-90’s and it as true today as it was then.

What are the students of our district learning today in their invisible curriculum?

What are they learning about the role of teachers in society when the administration of the top school district in the state puts more value on investment in buildings than investment in teachers?

What are they learning about “seek first to understand” when the administration inappropriately and inaccurately jumps to conclusions and accuses teachers of recruiting students to their cause?

What are they learning about standing up for themselves when the Board proactively works to marginalize those with differing points of view as being “fringe actors”?

There is no state ranking for the invisible curriculum, no SAT or ACT scores to highlight, and no state performance expectations.

On the other hand, if the invisible curriculum really is critical to shaping the character of our children, then the invisible curriculum creates the filter through which all other knowledge is evaluated – what could be more important?

My hope is the community will take as much interest in the quality of our invisible curriculum as we have in our visible curriculum.  My hope is the community will make a concerted effort to ensure the Board refocuses their energies on delivering both the visible and invisible curriculum we have come to expect in Wyoming.

Same principle as previous post.  School districts ranked from top to bottom in Hamilton County.  Length of bar indicates salary for a teacher having completed his/her masters degree.  Blue line is current Wyoming salary, red line is Board proposal, green line is teacher request.  In this case difference between offer and request is $497/year.

Even at the teacher’s request, a master’s degree is worth more at over half the school districts in the county, meaning that our top teachers – those with the most formal education in their fields – are volunteering to get paid less than masters degreed teachers in Reading, Deer Park, Princeton, even Cincinnati.  The Board position is that’s not enough.  The Board wants to pay less than Norwood, Madeira, Southwest too.

Seriously…at what point does in become apparent that the legacy this administration is creating will adversely impact the quality of education in the classrooms, the state test results of our students, the district’s ranking statewide and, ultimately, the value of our investment in the community.

I used to have a boss that had a great saying about taking steps to minimize risks – “minimize the maximum risk”.  Our maximum risk is that the educational caliber of our schools deteriorates.  We should be doing everything possible to minimize the probability of that occurrence.  Keeping the quality of our teaching group today does far more to minimize that maximum risk than building a new middle school or middle school gymnasium at some point in the undetermined future.  Will we need a new middle school at some point – maybe and it’s immaterial if the community crown jewel has been tarnished in the process.

Pretty buildings are nice but they won’t replace committed, invested teachers.

In a recent post, I highlighted that the difference between the Wyoming Board of Education starting salary proposal and the Wyoming Teacher’s request was about $1.59 a day.  The chart above puts that more into perspective when compared to starting salaries across Hamilton County.  Data for this chart was obtained from the Wyoming School Board.

The school districts are listed from top to bottom according to their ranking in the most recent state assessment.  That puts Wyoming at the top and Cincinnati at the bottom.  The length of the bars represents the starting annual salary with the scale ranging from $30,000/yr to $42,000/yr (although Indian Hill’s $39,588 is the highest starting salary in the county).

The blue vertical line represents Wyoming’s current starting salary – $36,101/yr.  The red vertical line represents the Wyoming Board offer – $36,823/yr.  The green vertical line represents the Wyoming Teachers’ request – $37,112/yr…$289/yr above the Board offer.

I used the vertical lines to visualize where the current, offer, and requested salaries fit when viewed in light of starting salaries throughout the county.  Today, our teachers are on par with Reading, the Board proposal puts them on par with Oak Hills (Delhi), and the Teachers are requesting parity with Deer Park.

As the Board has so often said, times are tough and it’s rough on everyone.  I agree but we seem to have forgotten that the “everyone” in that includes teachers.  So many of our teachers have so much Wyoming Pride that they’ll bleed blue if you cut them.  The Board’s strategy is betting that they probably won’t leave over a couple hundred a year (and those that do leave can be easily replaced by someone else, probably cheaper).

But what about the college grad who may know nothing more about Wyoming than the quality of its most recent state ranking.  They don’t bleed blue yet.  If they have an option to come to Wyoming, they probably also have the option to go to Sycamore, Princeton, Finneytown, and Deer Park.  As the relationship between the administration continues to deteriorate daily, at what point will those grads start thinking – “Why choose Wyoming when I can make the same money and be more appreciated at Deer Park?”.

Good question – and one we as a community need to contend with before top college teaching grads start voting with their feet for greener pastures.

Well the meeting notes for last Monday’s Board meeting have been released and, as expected, do not at all capture the sentiment and tone of the public comments.  See what was said and see what was summarized by the Board.

Its also interesting to note that these minutes contain a relatively detailed summary of Board President Levy’s opening remarks regarding the teacher negotiations as part of the public record.  At the same time, Mr. Levy’s remarks opening the 9/29/09 meeting regarding the role of controversy among community groups in choosing educational material is still considered a “personal statement” and not available to the public.

Kelly McBride-Reedy does a great job summarizing the meeting in her Community Press article.

Short version:

Community comments challenging the the accuracy and completeness of the 9/29/09 meeting notes.  The Board is pursuing a revisionist history approach, omitting from the notes their opinion that supplemental material should be evaluated by a range of criteria that includes the degree to which material could cause controversy among community groups.

A group of community members read brief statements for inclusion in the 10/26 notes to clarify the 9/29 notes.  The Board shortly thereafter voted unanimously to accept the 9/29 notes as correct without regard to community input.

Community comments during the 10/26 meeting also reminded the district of their own conclusions from the neighborhood school study which concluded it is the quality of the teachers, not the buildings that determines the quality of the educational system.  She urged the district to stop prioritizing a new, as yet unapproved middle school construction project ahead of paying the teachers an “average” salary in comparison to other Hamilton County districts.

What Kelly left out of the article was that Carrie McCarthy, a WHS social studies teacher, was invited to the meeting to share a curriculum proposal she developed for a Human Rights class.  It was absolutely AWESOME and made several of us in the audience wish that we could go back to high school just to take that class.

Having now attended several School Board meetings, I have to confess they’re a lot like watching actors on a stage where everyone has a script.  The only interaction with the community is when someone’s name is called by the President off the public comment sign up sheet.  You get up and it’s like talking to statues – no interaction, no eye contact, no notes, no nothing.  And then you’re done.  The next name gets called and so it goes.

Then they get on with their agenda, easily ignoring the fact that there are 30-40 other people sitting in the room watching the show.  They reference handouts, policies, and programs in code – if you don’t have a copy, you have no idea what they’re talking about.  In one exchange regarding a policy, one board member said “I have a question about the second paragraph on page 2″…everyone shuffles the paper and someone says “I think that’s clarified on at the end of the page continuing or page 3″.  Everyone agrees and they move on…with the audience just sitting there going “hmmmm???” but nobody knows what just happened.  They talk quietly, making it really hard to hear what’s going on and only interact with the audience when they think it’s necessary to call for “order” in the room if someone makes the error of reacting to something they just heard from the stage.  The Board only interacts with individuals they have invited to be part of the conversation.  Without that invitation, we just get to tap on the glass wall between the community and the board to see if there’s any reaction on the other side.

I’ve never been on a school board but I’ve spent a lot of time in meetings with large, sometimes very large groups.  I suspect it is a skill to be able to conduct business like this and so completely and effectively ignore a room full of people.

Unfortunately, our Board has become so skilled at ignoring the “uninvited” public in board meetings that it has become the standard of care when it comes to every interaction with the community.  Incumbency creates arrogance and arrogance becomes the overwhelming message communicated to anyone in the community that fails to appropriately “kiss the ring” when entering into any dealing with the administration and/or Board.

A: That’s the “spread” between the Wyoming district offer and the Wyoming teachers’ request for starting salaries in the district.

To put this differences into perspective, let’s consider it through the eyes of that 2009 education graduate from Miami University up in Oxford.  He’s looking to come back home to the Cincinnati area and get a teaching job in one of the many great school districts around town.  Of course he starts with Wyoming…who wouldn’t since we’re #1 on the state’s list.  After an arduous interview process with, in order, the superintendent’s office, the principal, and finally a couple teachers (who can only ask questions from a list pre-approved by the administration)…he gets a job offer.  He must be pretty good since there were probably 100 applications for that position.

Being a math teacher at heart, he looks at the offer and pulls out a summary created by the Wyoming Board of Education comparing starting salaries across all Hamilton County school districts.  Quickly he realizes there’s more money to be made working in the Cincinnati School district.  That said, Wyoming is a lot more fun (and probably safer) than someplace like, for example, Holmes or Withrow.  So Wyoming still wins even if he is getting paid less than his friends who started in Cincinnati.

But wait a minute – he doesn’t have to go down to the city get get a better salary.  He could go to Oak Hills (Delhi is a pretty nice area), Deer Park, or Forest Hills (Turpin’s football team is almost as good as Wyoming’s).  He also decides there’s more money to be made starting at Madeira, Sycamore, Princeton, and of course there’s always more money to be had in Indian Hill.  Remember – this guy is pretty good.  He got a job offer from Wyoming so, chances are, he could get an offer from Cincinnati or Deer Park or Princeton.   He’s no slouch.

Still, he’s really in love with the Wyoming area and decides to take a starting position at Finneytown because it’s so close…just with a better salary.  It’s like Wyoming (near) in the real estate section.

So even with the Teachers’ requested salary package, our young Miami grad has 10 local school districts to choose from where he will make more money from day one than Wyoming.  If he ever decides to get his Masters (like 71% of Wyoming teachers) that spread versus his other choices will get even bigger.

Sure Wyoming still has it’s reputational intrinsics (for now) but at some point, when the rubber meets the road in today’s economy, those top rookies are going to look at the comp package and start voting with their feet – populating districts like Deer Park and Finneytown and, yes, even Cincinnati.  That’s with the Teachers’ requested salary package.  Go with the Board proposal and you can add Loveland to that list too.

Now it’s easy to say “com’on Mart, the new teacher could easily take the job at Wyoming – its not going to kill him to give up $1.59 a day”. Maybe – he’s still going to be underpaid versus teachers in much weaker school districts either way.

But look at it this way.  This kid is smart (remember the job offer he got from the top district in the state) and he’s probably carrying $10-20k in college loans he’ll be paying off for the next 5 years.  Standing next to him is this guy from the district with $11,000,000 in cash spilling out of his pockets.  Your task is to give one of them $1.59 a day – who will feel it more ?  Who will show their appreciation for it more every day in the way they interact with your children in the classroom ?  Whose life will be different because you decided to take a stand ?

Who will you give it to ?

In the grand scheme of things, it seems unbecoming and just plain petty for a district with over $11,000,000 in the bank to be bickering with the teachers about taking $1.59 a day out of a college grad’s starting salary…especially with all the better financial alternatives (albeit at weaker districts, some by a wide margin) he might have out there today.  Let’s face it – $11,000,000 goes a long way for a lot of days and a lot of teachers at $1.59 a day (as long as you’re not trying to use it for something else, like, say…a new school the community doesn’t agree with).

[note:  That $11,000,000 bank account makes Wyoming one of the richest districts in the area relative to their annual operating budget.]

I added a couple links over on the right (of interest) since so many people have asked me about the specific policy and administrative guideline that we’ve been talking about.  Policy is what is approved by the board in public at the monthly meetings.  Administrative guidelines are the specific rules applied in the schools that are developed privately by the Administration and deployed through the principals’ offices.

The policy comes directly from the Wyoming Board web page.  As we’ve discussed, the administrative guidelines for Wyoming are password protected open only to the Board and Administration so I pulled this one from the Madeira site.  Recall, Madeira is one of the many local school districts that also uses NEOLA to develop policies but they choose to leave their administrative guidelines open for the public and teachers to access.

Since both Wyoming and Madeira policy links connect directly to NEOLA, I assume that 2520A is the same on both sites.  Anyone who knows differently, let me know and I’ll correct it immediately.

Ohio classifies the Wyoming School District as “Excellent with Distinction”, the state’s top rating category.  The district a received 110 points (the highest in the state on a 120 point scale) based on testing scores across the full range of grades.  Keeping that rating, however, isn’t an easy task as the Lebanon School District learned with this year’s ratings. (see Sunday’s Enquirer Article by Michael Clark).

Lebanon has been an “Excellent with Distinction” district for 7 years.  This year – it dropped to “Continuous Improvement”, the 4th (out of 6) categories on par with districts like Cincinnati City, Lockland, Mt. Healthy, and Norwood.  The precipitous drop was caused “when 10 of the students – one third of 1 percent – did not pass reading”.

Interesting, but how does it relate to Wyoming?  For our student population, the magic number would be six.

Translating the Lebanon experience to Wyoming, if six students fail reading, Wyoming goes from Excellent with Distinction to Continuous Improvement.  Makes me wonder what it takes to go from Excellence with Distinction to Excellent, a one category drop…what’s that magic number of students who fail reading…two…one ???  There are likely students in our district that are, through no fault of their own, a subtle step from that failure.  There are no systems, processes, or administrative guidelines that will reach out to those one or two students – only the daily focus of a teacher stands between us and and the potential for a district wide slip.

All we have in Wyoming is schools and the great community that surrounds them.  We don’t have movie theaters, shopping, restaurants, etc…we have schools.  Do you think people would notice if we went from Excellent with Distinction to “only” Excellent.  Keeping Excellent with Distinction should be everyone’s top priority.   I’d like to see the administration’s actions, not just their words, start looking like that’s the case.