Some Conclusions about the Clinton County School System for consideration by the citizens, parents, and taxpayers of Clinton County By Duane Bristow, Parent, taxpayer, citizen, and product of the school system. February 21, 1991 As some people are aware, I began an investigation of the Clinton County School System about four months ago. I did this on my own volition with the purpose of determining why the system has been unable to provide what I consider an adequate education in a decent environment for the children of the county and particularly for my children. Although, I am sure several people were apprehensive about my efforts, some thought they were quixotic, and some wondered what my ulterior motives were, everyone was cooperative. I have observed several facets of the school system and talked with a number of people including school board members, school administrators, teachers, parents and others. I feel obligated to state at this point that these conclusions are mine alone and that they are based on a very limited investigation. To do the job that I undertook properly, I should have interviewed at least 150 school employees and probably several hundred parents and other citizens. However, I hope it will be understood that one person working alone part time and having to make a living as well cannot do such a job adequately. Nevertheless, I hope that the observations and recommendations I make will be of some value to the community, the Superintendent, and the school board. I was not looking for and did not find any evidence of widespread dishonesty or incompetence within the school system. I was looking for and did find an inadequate organizational structure, inadequate or non-existent goals and purpose, and lack of people with vision and training to run a large organization and accomplish well defined goals. Our school system has evolved over a period of years and, although much improvement has taken place in the last five years, it still essentially operates in the same way it did 40 or 50 years ago. The effect seems to be to perpetuate and maintain the system, to get as many students as possible into as many classrooms as possible with as many teachers as possible for a period of 12 or more years, and to call the product that is turned out by this process a high school educated person. This process probably was adequate and the best that could be hoped for 35 or more years ago, but I maintain that in today's world this is an inadequate process to make our students competitive with students from other areas of the country and of the world. I feel that if enough of the people of the county want to improve this process badly enough that they are willing to put forth the effort, there is no limit to the amount of improvement we can expect. I have talked to administrators and observed school board meetings. I feel that overall administrators and board members are too busy running the school system to have time to plan education of the students. This is not so much a criticism of these people as a comment about lack of overall direction. Perhaps this direction must come from citizens and taxpayers or it will never come at all. To summarize, efficient operation of the school system requires development of comprehensive and well defined goals, plans, and policies to implement the plans to achieve the goals. I think that the present system, for various reasons, will be unable to develop these. Therefore improvement of the educational process to give our students the best possible educational advantages will require that additional time, effort, and planning skills be available from somewhere. The best source, perhaps the only source, I see for this effort is from the parents and taxpayers of the county. I will now attempt to elaborate on these ideas. I recommend that formation of a citizens group of taxpayers monitoring the educational process be explored. The purpose of this group would be to develop specific overall goals for the educational system of the county, intermediate goals necessary to achieve the overall goals, and to recommend policies and procedures necessary to achieve all these. Then this group should monitor all actions of the school board and all significant actions of school administrators and judge these actions as to their effect on these goals. The group should then publicize their conclusions. I see this process as a dynamic ongoing process to supplement the present school organizational structure. I think this group, if formed, should see the school system as a $6,000,000 per year business whose goal is to educate students to be equal to or better than any students educated at the same level anywhere in the world. I think that this group should limit its activities to those defined above and should not get involved in any other school related activities such as fund raisers, etc. I do think that this group should encourage, and probably its members should be members of, other groups such as PTA's, site based management committees, Forward in the Fifth, etc. which would support each school and the school system in general at the local level or at the level of financial or labor support. I am unsure if any employee of the school system should have a vote or be allowed to do any monitoring activities on behalf of the group, although the group should have as many members as possible from their ranks and should draw upon the expertise of school employees in formulating goals and recommendations. It should be understood that any set of goals or recommendations, once formulated, should not be static but should be ever changing as circumstances warrant. I do not think that this group should be allowed to stagnate in terms of a regular monthly meeting, etc. Instead members of the group would be assigned monitoring activities on an ongoing basis and each meeting time and place should be decided at the previous meeting based on what needs to be accomplished and within what time frame. Monitors' reports to the full group should evaluate each action taken by the school system in terms of whether it tends to further group goals, to go against group goals, or to be neutral in these terms. It must be remembered that any action which allocates school physical, financial, or personnel resources to a use which does not further group goals does reduce the resources available for accomplishing goals. I think that since we are committing 12 years of our children's lives to this school system and are indirectly by its actions influencing the quality of the remainders of their lives and of the futures of our community and our future generations, we should all be willing to put forth efforts beyond almost any other commitments we might feel we have. We should also insist that the school system provide our children a decent environment in terms of buses, lunchrooms, bathrooms, halls, classrooms, grounds, etc. during these 12 years and that the behavior of others around them including students, teachers, cooks, bus drivers, janitors, and other school employees be exemplary. I hope to ask 15 to 20 people to join me in such an effort. If I can get commitments from 6 or 8 people, I am willing to see what can be accomplished. If not, I am willing to drop the effort realizing that this can never be successful without the efforts of a number of people. Taxpayer's Monitoring Education 1. Purpose - to develop goals, policies and procedures recommended for adoption by the school system, to monitor the systems actions and to report on the effect of those actions toward achieving the group's goals. 2. Members a. Voting Minimum - 10 - Maximum - 15 to 25 Can not be school board member or employee of school system. Nominated by 3 voting members - elected by 2/3 Get at least 2 or 3 new members each year from parents who will have child entering school system within one to two years Dropped from membership if miss 3 consecutive meetings or if child no longer a student. Both parents cannot be voting members. b. Non-voting - as many as are interested in attending meetings, paying dues, and participating in discussions. c. Dues - enough to pay for sending notice of meetings, and Meeting Reports to all members and to send Meeting Reports to all School Board Members, Principals, and Superintendent. 3. Duties a. Chairman - invite speaker for each meeting from local, state, or national educators. Preside over meetings. Set time and place for next meeting. Reelected with other officers in summer each year. Not a monitor. b. Vice Chairman - serve in absence of Chairman. c. Secretary-Treasurer - collect dues. Keep minutes of meetings. Write meeting reports. Distribute meeting reports. Notify members of meetings. Not a monitor. d. Monitors - committee of 2 to 4 monitors for each school, for school board and for Superintendent's office and other administrators. Attend each school board meeting, meet regularly with Superintendent, administrators, and principals. Observe all actions of school system including, buses, schools, classrooms, extracurricular, etc. Report to full group at each meeting and recommend goals, policy changes, etc. and approval or disapproval of each significant action or inaction by the school system. 4. Meetings - typical a. Meal ? b. Approval of minutes of last meeting. c. Speaker. d. Question and answer and discussion session. e. Monitor's reports and recommendations. f. Vote on changes in goals, policies or procedures recommended. g. Vote on actions or inactions of school system approved or disapproved. h. Announcement of next meeting.