I've never went to a school board meeting before, but I really wanted to have a question answered so I decided to go. A few weeks ago I was told by a school employee that a project, a remodel of a intermediate school, was $20M over budget. $20M overbudget for a school remodel?? That's why I went. I arrived at 5:30pm, the board meeting was called into session and I was promptly escorted out of the auditorium because there was an executive session and the public wasn't invited. Oh well. I met a lady in the cafeteria and we began to chat. She has three kids in this school district. At 6:30pm we were invited back into the auditorium and the meeting continued. Lots of agenda items, some perked my ears up, some were hohum. A school employee named Steve, I later found out he was the grand poobah of the physical building guru(sorry I don't know his title), stood up and proceeded to explain how the remodel of the intermediate school was progressing. $15M has been spent as to date with a total cost over run of about a million. He explained in detail on why the overruns happened and I fully understood what he was saying.
The meeting lasted about two hours but what really frightened me was the lack of people in the audience. Only myself and the lady with three kids were present. That's it. A school district with about 2000 kids and probably 10K+ residents and only TWO people show up for a school board meeting.
Is this common for other parts of America? If so then I completely understand why our schools are turning out dolts. No parental oversight of the board members. No input. No nothing to keep the school board on a path which most parents want. I plan on seeing the Superintendent of the school system and the guy named Steve. Pick their minds and express my wishes on how to make the school a better place for the kids. Somehow the board wants to spend large quantites of money on buildings but the average percentile this school system has, compared with the entire state, is around 37% for reading comprehension and 43% for Math. Something is not quite right in this district. Maybe I'll figure it out.
If you have suggestions on how to raise the percentile rates please let me know.
If improving those scores is what the school wants there's a myriad of programs and support out there. It all takes a lot of work on everyone's part though, and changing the status quo means upsetting veteran teachers and entrenched administrators. It takes leadership and a clear vision to change a culture that is ok with mediocre results.
I guarantee there are teachers there that want to do better, but I equally guarantee there are teachers there that see no need to change, and will resist any efforts.
It can be done through, people just have to want it. There's a book called "Beyond Reform" that details how one small school district did it. It started with the superintendent going out into the community and asking employers, parents and colleges what are the skills and traits that a graduate from our school should have? And then they worked backwards from there. Its taken them about 10 years but they went from about 10% passing reading tests to about 70%, the average for schools around here is 50% and they are working hard to get that percent higher. Math scores went from about 8% passing to about 45%, the average for the area is 42% and when I was there they were targeting that to get that number up.