By Antonio D. French
Filed Tuesday, April 11, 2006 at 9:16 PM
The new majority of the St. Louis City School Board wasted no time taking the reins of the troubled district tonight. Labels: Schools
At the first administrative meeting since parents Peter Downs and Donna Jones defeated Board President Darnetta Clinkscale and mayoral appointee James Buford one week ago, the new majority of Downs, Jones, Bill Purdy, and Veronica O'Brien made it clear that they are now steering the ship.
One of the board's early actions was to elect O'Brien the new board president.
Downs then offered a series of additions to the agenda of next week's regular board meeting. The three suggestions were each met with opposition from board members Bob Archibald and Ron Jackson.
Downs recommended that the board discuss at the April 18 meeting a resolution reaffirming teachers' authority to judge how best to impliment the district's standardized curriculum.
He also recommended that the superintendent discuss with parent and teacher representatives the findings of the so-called "Kirner Report" commissioned several years ago to address the problem of discipline in the schools.
Superintendent Creg Williams said that he didn't see the need for such an action. This was echoed by Archibald and Jackson who, along with Flint Fowler, voted against Downs' motions.
Jackson said that he worried that any resolution on teacher authority relating to the standardized curriculum might undermine the district's attempt to compensate for a highly transient student population.
"Are we going to say that teachers can just teach whatever they want?" asked Jackson.
Downs' last request was for the superintendent's office to make available to the public a line item report of all of the district's expenditures for this budget year. Williams and Jackson again said that they did not see the need for such a request.
Jackson said the majority of the public would never read such a long document.
All of Downs measures were approved for discussion at the next meeting by a vote of 4-3. After each vote, applause came from the audience.
Click here to see exclusive photos from tonight's meeting.
5 Comments:
Tha majority of the public doesn't vote. Should we stop having elections?
4/12/2006 11:47 AM
it would be nice to look at the expenditures of the board and staff - and don't forget those of the superintendent... and don't stop after seeing one set of figures...
here in san francisco, yesterday we averted a teacher's strike...
i am going to attempt to cut/paste the bay guardian's version of things...
you will notice that tali woodward (yes, his daughter) has gotten a second set of responses to her information request which increase the amount of money the superintendent spent for "expenses" last year ($45,000 to $55,000)...
and although we already knew that dr. ackerman was billing the district for her trips to st. louis, now we find that she was also taking your superintendent to lunch and billing us for THAT...
and the "district business" she was doing?... well, so far, it looks like she was spending our money to get herself another gig - at the same time we would continue to pay her...
while it's nice that your superintendent gets a free lunch (or two), we really should not be paying for it... of course, maybe you will find that he took dr. ackerman to dinner a couple of times on your dimes...
this is not a great deal of money... but in san francisco, where the teachers have worked without a raise (or cola) for four years and without a contract for the last two, the growing amounts of money lavished by dr. ackerman on herself and consultants (see bay guardian article) have been like spitting in the eye of teachers who actually do the work...
and then dr. ackerman takes the credit when test scores go up...
i have a feeling that these superintendents are like a private club where they teach each other the tricks of the trade... next, dr. ackerman heads to columbia university to head up a program to - wait for it - train future superintendents... five bucks says it is funded by eli broad...
bay guardian text:
Dodged bullet
The issues and emotions behind the teachers strike that almost was
By Tali Woodward and Erica Holt
The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) and United Educators
of San Francisco announced April 11 that they've reached a tentative
settlement to the bitter contract dispute that nearly triggered the
first teachers strike since the 1970s.
Members of UESF already voted 2,203 to 317 to grant their leaders the
authority to call a strike. The overwhelming margin of that vote
probably helped force the compromise, which still must be approved by
both the school board and union membership.
Like most scuffles between labor and management, this one was largely
about money. It's been several years since San Francisco teachers and
paraprofessionals were given so much as a cost-of-living adjustment to
their salaries, and they've now been working without a contract for
close to two years.
District officials said they are in a difficult fiscal position born of
low state funding, declining enrollment, and increased worker health
costs. And as tensions ran high, the conflict was largely cast as a
numbers game.
It might seem odd, then, that talk among public school workers
assembling strike signs at their union headquarters April 9 focused on
a more symbolic issue: lack of respect from leaders of the SFUSD.
The specter of former superintendent Arlene Ackerman loomed
particularly large over the union's strike preparations, despite the
fact that she relinquished control of the district more than a month
ago. Ackerman collected a record salary from the district, yet refused
to meet with UESF leaders during her last 19 months in charge, a
brush-off that still smarts.
"I think there's an issue of arrogance that this Board of Education and
the previous superintendent could spend so flagrantly and then turn
around and say to teachers, 'We don't have enough money for you,'"
Sharon Shure, who teaches US history at Lowell High, said.
Shure's fellow sign-makers told the Guardian that they have to pinch
pennies to subsist in San Francisco, but they still use their own cash
— often several hundred dollars per semester — to buy school supplies
such as dry-erase markers, first aid kits, and subject dividers for
their students' three-ring binders.
So they found it more than a little galling when a flurry of February
news reports disclosed that Ackerman had been spending precious
education funding on luxury hotels and steak dinners. And they felt it
was emblematic of the SFUSD's skewed priorities.
These teachers agree with the union's charge that district leadership
has valued big money consultants, deep expense accounts, and large
salaries for paper-pushers over paying teachers a fair wage. They have
a hard time buying the district's claims of fiscal duress and think
that if funding were simply redistributed, the SFUSD could easily meet
UESF's demands for a 10 percent pay increase.
Paraprofessional Margot Johnson, who works at Mission High, told us
confidently: "They just have strange priorities — like funneling it
into management."
Classrooms or boardrooms?
Many of the signs assembled April 9 read "SFUSD: 3rd in consultancies."
This figure comes from a budget analysis by the California Teachers
Association that put the SFUSD near the top of California districts in
terms of how much money it spends on outside consultants. Only Oakland
and Sacramento spend a higher percentage of their budgets on these
contracts, the CTA says.
District spokesperson Lorna Ho wrote in an e-mail that while the Board
of Education approves all outside contracts, "the decision to hire them
is most often made at the school's site level. It is each school
community that decides how it will spend its budget once it receives
its allocation from Central Office."
But the union points out that some of the biggest contracts — like
those for outside lawyers — originate at district headquarters. "The
general policy of the district is kiss up and kick down," UESF
spokesperson Matthew Hardy said. "Taking care of those on top and not
those in the classrooms."
UESF maintains that the amount of money spent directly in local
classrooms has been declining in recent years. In fact, the union
asserts that the SFUSD is out of compliance with a state guideline
requiring that 55 percent of funding go to the classroom.
One reason may be that in 2004, school records show, the district had
43 employees making more than $100,000 a year — only 7 of those, all
principals, were at school sites. The remaining 36 were administrators,
working at a combined annual cost of $4.27 million. The following year,
Ackerman and her 20 closest advisers were paid $2.73 million.
Ackerman’s legacy
In conversations about the possible strike, teachers frequently
returned to the generous employment package Ackerman received during
her last year here: a quarter-million-dollar salary plus a monthly
housing allowance and her infamous $375,000 severance.
"It's just another example of irresponsible spending," Shure said.
And according to school district records requested by us, the school
district paid at least $216,000 to cover expenses incurred by Ackerman
between January 2001 and December 2005. In 2005 alone she spent at
least $55,000 (not $45,000, as previously reported here and elsewhere,
a figure based on incomplete records the district had distributed at
the time).
When we quoted these updated figures to the UESF members preparing for
the picket lines, they pointed out that Ackerman's expense tab for 2005
is equivalent to the salary for a midcareer teacher.
"At the high school level, that's 110 kids who don't have a teacher,"
said Liz Rogers, who has taught in San Francisco schools for more than
30 years.
Receipts and credit card statements show more of what has been reported
regarding Ackerman's 2005 expenses: frequent stays in luxury hotels,
dozens of plane tickets, and hundreds of meals in expensive
restaurants, including a handful costing more than $500 each. A single
credit card statement from 2004 lists orders from Amazon.com totaling
more than $3,300.
Perhaps the most notable thing in all the reams of paper is a page
stating that Ackerman was reimbursed for at least two January meals
with St. Louis superintendent Creg Williams. In March she accepted a
$75,000 part-time gig acting as a consultant to Williams.
"If we handled our classrooms how the Board of Education has handled
supervising Ackerman, we'd be out of our jobs," Shure said.
Records also show that the seven current members of the Board of
Education spent roughly $70,000 in district funds on meals and travel
(excluding airfare) from 2001 through 2005. In 2005, $10,253 went to
travel costs and out-of-town meals, $2,500 to local dining, and less
than $350 on parking and taxis in San Francisco.
Teachers we spoke with said that since board members do not receive
full-time salaries and because the charges were conservative when
compared to Ackerman's, these costs were not nearly as frustrating. But
all these expenses, they say, show lax safeguards on how school leaders
spend district money. If you totaled up all the expense money spent in
the past five years, you wouldn't get nearly enough money to cover even
a quarter-percent raise for district teachers.
But it's a common theory in business management that effective CEOs
lead by example. The idea is probably mentioned in each of the 50
copies of Jim Collins's management bible Good to Great that Ackerman
ordered from Amazon.com (cost to the district: $962.50). On his Web
site, Collins writes that good leaders have "ambition first and
foremost for the company and concern for its success rather than for
one's own riches and personal renown."
But rather than helping the SFUSD "company," Ackerman's expense bills
have made the district look hypocritical — and put interim
superintendent Gwen Chan and her staff in a tough negotiating position.
It's very possible that no amount of personal frugality on the part
of
administrators would have spared San Francisco this crisis. And SFUSD
officials are right to lay some of the blame on Sacramento. But the
symbolism of an aloof and free-spending superintendent clearly mattered
to teachers who have been buying their own school supplies. The fact
that the new administration was able to broker a last-minute deal in
this emotion-charged context is a very hopeful sign. Whether the new
SFUSD leadership can begin a fresh era of mutual respect remains to be
seen.
4/12/2006 1:08 PM
Time for Plan B -- Charter Schools, or schools outside this wacky new board's dysfunctional oversight.
4/12/2006 1:40 PM
Anony #2 is a hoot. Remember Slay and the PR crew telling us to give reform a chance and not abandon the district because things would have to change rapidly and painfully? I do. Anony #2 should heed Slay's old advice and stop whining. Unless...no...couldn't be...the Slayers were only supporting SLPS if their people could have total control?
4/12/2006 3:07 PM
"Time for Plan B -- Charter Schools, or schools outside this wacky new board's dysfunctional oversight."
It totally blows my mind that Slay and his posse are threatening to give up on the public schools. It reminds me of the behavior of a lot of stubborn little kids I have worked with in the past.
And I mean.... I have friends who have given up on the public schools and taken their kids out of them, but that was one or two kids, and a parent who could not control the situation. Slay&co are in charge of the entire city! If you don't want to deal with the city public schools, don't run for mayor!
But in more positive news YAY VERONICA! I am happy for her. When I attended a Board of Education meeting last year and they discussed the budget, it seemed like O'Brien and Purdy were the only ones there who had actually READ the budget at all, so I was pretty impressed with her and her questions. Yay!
4/13/2006 10:39 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home