While the public may never know, it will be an interesting study in cause and effect for the rest of the TDIP districts. It also might make some of the TDIP districts worry that if their issues become too contentious, they may find themselves in the same situation as South Conejos.

• Is there any one cause?
• Where do you start?
• How do you decide where to spend funding?
• What can you actually accomplish?
• Is it culture?
• Is it a number of issues?

There are always a multitude of reasons for failure. In our school district, we are looking at a number of issues mentioned in the CADI 2009 visit. Turnover, curriculum and culture are in truth our biggest issues. How to best work with these is anyone’s guess. Considering that we are in year 3 of that 5 year time clock, we had better figure out things quickly.

I also found it interesting in that only a few of the TDIP districts were mentioned in this series of articles. There are 13 of them at the moment.

And on a lighter note, A TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson. Bring On The Revolution.

And from the Guardian, an article on splitting up classes into groups and the effect on younger children. I agree with the stance of the reporter. Too often it is social immaturity and to divide classes at such an early age hurts everyone. Considering our Lt. Governor’s stance and focus on early learning, perhaps our state needs to look to see if the same situation can be found here. With new legislation about 3rd grade reading literacy in the works, we need all the information we can get on the subject.

The first meeting of the week was a District Accountability and Accreditation Committee meeting on Monday. Dan is part of this group so we have an interesting time. Dan’s perspective is that of a businessman and I have the school board view. Contrary to popular belief, we donot always agree. There was a great deal of lively discussion. Advertising to raise money for the school was discussed as was asking Shell for money for our district. They are testing our county to see if there is oil here that they can frack. Most of us are unhappy about this. Dan took a Devil’s Advocate view. He said that if Shell wants to show that they care about our county, our community, then they could donate money to our school district.

We got updates on TDIP, Preschool and other issues.

Tuesday… 9am. TDIP Leadership Team met with David Benson, of Focused Leadership Solutions. We had an hour meeting and then David began interviewing various people. At 4pm, we met and discussed some of the day’s work.

6:15pm. We had two board meetings. First off, there was the special meeting. At this meeting, we hired Angelito Balboa, the new business teacher for the high school. Then we committed to the CASB Policy Manual Overhaul Project. It was the first night that our entire board had their own policy manuals.

Our Race to the Top grant is going in with a STEM bent. We shall see how that goes. The Improvement Support Partnership Grant was resubmitted and we are working on the Facilitated Data Analysis/Student Data Driven side of it. There was no new information on Title 1.

Then we switched gears and had a workshop with David Benson. We had a very interesting conversation. Some of the high points that he shared with us about our district were:

• That we need to step back and refocus. Go back to the basics.
• 4 goals and 29 subpoints is too much.
• We are serving ‘too many masters’, which has resulted in confusion and mistrust.
• We need to establish a few goals and try not to do it all.
• pool resources! Look to the other districts doing the same work

He also talked about the works of Richard Elmore, which I found interesting. Wallpaper, chopped bits of work and cargo cult reforms. It was a very intense 2.5 hours.

Wednesday. I got to have my interview with David Benson and after a few more errands, I packed my bags. Dan and I were headed to Denver for the CASB Winter Legislative Conference.

Thursday 7:30am! Brown Palace Hotel. I asked Randy Black if Dan could come along to the conference. His answer was Yes! So, as Dan has often dragged me along to Workforce conferences, it was my turn. The day started off with Dan and I going to the Rural School Districts: Challenges and Opportunities Ahead. It was a conversation about various issues faced by rural school districts and was a good start to a very busy two days.

9am. Former Congressman David Skaggs was our Keynote Speaker. He spoke about the Federalist #10. Powerful stuff! Next was another break out session. I went to the Literacy session and Dan attended the Networking session. At lunch, we heard Lt. Governor Joe Garcia talk. I first saw him a year ago at a Colorado Workforce Development Council (CWDC) conference. In the afternoon, I went to the session on SB 191 while Dan listened to Lobato. Once again, very interesting stuff. That afternoon, we had a session on election strategy and updates on legislation from Dr.  Jane Urschel.

Friday 7:30am. Whoa! Power breakfast chats with Jane Urschel and other board members. Then it was off to the Capital. In all the years I went to Denver as a child on field trips, I never got to take the Capital Tour. So, we took it. I had to laugh as I knew more than our 20-something tour guide. Ah well… what does a budding recording artist need to know about Horace Greeley?

We had a very good time and then joined the surviving conference members in the Old Supreme Court room. Once again, lots of interesting conversations. Now to disseminate all of this information to my board. If there is one thing I could burn into their brains, it would be the importance of attending CASB Conferences!

Two articles for perusal. First off, a victory for Colorado Schools.  President Obama has let ten states leave No Child Left Behind. This is a major change that for these states. It does mean a lot of work for the individual states, but it also returns ‘local’ control. That is a cherished value in Colorado.

Next up. How do you choose a school? Especially for a parent in a new state, city or district. GeekDad is a blogger on Wired that I’ve really come to enjoy. His article on Choosing a school is really interesting.

Here is the Guardian article on education and poverty.

I had just enough time after that meeting to head back to the office and gather my stuff for the next meeting at 6:30pm. This was the night that our board reviewed the Superintendent’s evaluation. While the majority of this board has less than 100 days under it’s belt, the idea of an evaluation didn’t seem too daunting at first. Most of us asked around for opinions from staff, parents and students. Then we worked with an evaluation for that needs a serious reworking.

As board president, I was the one who collated the data and put it into a usable format. This was interesting. A great many issues were brought up that I was unaware of before, and I did talk with the board’s lawyer to have a better understanding of various points of law.

Yesterday was also crazy as one of our schools, Gardner, had an emergency yesterday. We heard bits and pieces during the TDIP meeting. Prior to the executive session, three Gardner teachers came to report to the board what had happened during the day.

On Monday, the smell of smoke was detected in the school. After some investigation, a fan was found which was not turning, but the engine was still running and had heated up the area. The fire department checked it out, and disabled it.

Tuesday, there was a smoke smell that was much stronger. The secretary pulled the fire alarm and the kids left the building. The fire department and the sheriff’s department came to investigate the smell. As it was cold and it was taking a while, it was decided to evacuate the students to the Gardner Community Center. The fire and sheriff’s department along with staff found the issue. Ballasts on a couple of florescent lights had died. They overheated, melted wires and caused the smoke and smell.

In the meantime, there was some confusion about buses and/or parents picking up kids. There is a procedure that is in place ‘built’ by previous staff that had never been used, simply because it hadn’t been needed. Part of that involved parents picking up their children. The staff finally figured everything out and most of the children went home. The few that were still at the Community Center when the ‘all clear’ rang, the rest of the students went back to school and were picked up from there. All in all, while hectic and a bit confusing, things went very well. As a board we were all very proud of how Gardner school handled the situation.

Once the report was over, we moved into executive session to discuss the Superintendent’s evaluation. We finished three hours later and plan to have a second meeting next week.

Next up is a commentary on Apple and the Ipad textbook. While this may sound like a grand idea, this article shows some of the shortcomings of the idea. One must remember that the Ipad isn’t the only tablet in the world. There are a variety of them, some of which are Open Sourced based, which for cash strapped schools can be a boon.

This article from Wired magazine is very interesting. Education is a subject of opinions. This is one.

Now for some TED videos. To quote the TED site … ” TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader.”

These videos are fantastic. The video links I’m sharing today are about Education. Sir Ken Robinson has some very interesting opinions about education. While I’m not asking for you to agree, I’m asking you to think and listen. The first video is about how schools kill creativity. The next video is about the learning revolution.

This meeting was planned to bring together the thirteen TDIP districts across the state in one room. These districts are scattered across the state, and most of them are rural districts. They are: Fort Morgan, Englewood, Adams 50, Lake County, Alamosa, Montezuma-Cortez, Huerfano RE-1, Rocky Ford, Aguilar, East Otero, Ignacio, Karval and South Conejos.

We started off our morning with an opening address by Dr. Keith Owen. I knew him from when he was assistant principal of John Mall High School. Some of the topics he touched on were the state applying for a waiver from NCLB, how that waiver would affect or change the TDIP process, the Growth model of assessment vs the Status or Performance model and how CDE is trying to help the low performing districts. He mentioned that the Denver Post was running a series of articles as well and to be aware of them.

We broke up into groups for a variety of discussions and switched up from time to time so that we talked with other people. We also had presentations by Alamosa, La Junta and Ignacio. These were great as we got a good idea of what other people are doing with the TDIP process in their districts. This fulfilled the purpose of this meeting which was to have ‘Collegial dialogs about the improvement efforts of the TDIP Districts.

Some of the things I noted:

• Use the talent at hand! Our schools and local communities are often our best resources
• We need clear language on what is needed, assessed, etc.
• It takes 5 years to “turn the ship” and TDIP only funds 3 years.
• What is our break even point? How much growth is needed to clear the mark? Where is the leeway?

That dreaded 5 year mark was brought up. According to the law, after 5 years of not improving, the state can step in and take over the district or do what it wants with the district. The problem? Not even the state knows what it will do. As little as 18 months ago when I asked this question of CDE, there was no clear plan. Right now, that dialog is being held in the halls and offices of CDE. The most likely outcome would be for CDE to pull the Accreditation of the district. This means that a diploma from a non-accredited school wouldn’t be worth the paper it is printed on. No college would accept that student. Nor, would the military. They would have to get a GED in order to get into college or the military. On top of that, if a student transfered to a new school, they would have to test to prove that they actually belonged in the grade they said they just left. This is a disaster that no district wants to have happen. On top of this, there is a bill nicked named the Trigger Bill. If this one gets passed, there would be no 5 year chance. CDE could wipe out a district right away. Not a good thing.

While a long day, I felt I learned a great deal. Most importantly, I learned how far behind our district looks in comparison to other districts in the same timeline group. We have a lot of catching up to do in the next few months. The state plans to do this again in April. I’m hoping that we can take more of our TDIP team to the next meeting. It was a very good meeting!

Thank you Becky Smith, Dr. Owens and the staff of CDE.

We then adjourned to the library which had been a point of contention lately. Our IT department had a catastrophic failure of two servers due to overheating. Part of the contents on those servers were all of the mark records for the three school libraries in the district. Plus, the high school library has not been well used since the position was cut nearly three years ago. Right now the library is in transition to become a media center with the help of a 21st Century grant.

The first real agenda item was the Board Teamwork spot. We’ve had two training sessions and we needed to reflect on what we had done. I had an evaluation sheet from CASB to fill out as well as a feedback sheet from Randy Black, our CASB mentor. It gave an overview of everything we had discussed. Last was a possible new agenda to consider for use at our meetings which lists the mission statement and a few other bits.

Once the routine business section was done, we moved into the “Action Items”. That phrase has always tweaked me. I keep hearing stirring patriotic music in the background. Okay, I’m odd. First item was a Board Policy on busing to be changed. After some discussion, it was decided that as a board we needed to work on it and therefore tabled the policy until February.

Next was the hard part. I like and respect our teachers and it is always difficult when one resigns or retires. Last night, we had three that left. First wasLiz Schneider, who has been with Gardner school as a 5th to 8th grade teacher, Next was Linn Baker, the high school art teacher. Last was Linda Jardine, the special ed teacher for Gardner school. Ladies, you will be missed, and we accepted the resignations with such regret.

The board approved a substitute teacher and a volunteer for the district, an overnight trip for the wrestling team, received a home school notification, and accepted a letter from the Gardner Charter School Committee. Originally, Gardner School was considering going Charter. However, with the changes to the district in the last few months they decided that they would withdraw their application. When the committee looked at the budget, how Gardner school fits in the district and a few other items, they changed their mind. It looks to be a very good thing for the district. Gardner school is also looking into becoming a magnet school.

Then it was my turn to explain the odd history of the district’s Strategic Plan. The DAAC started working on this plan in 2007. After many long frustrating meetings, the report was finished. The principal of the time at the high school took it and presented it to the board where it was approved. Then it disappeared. Fast forward to a meeting a few months ago. Theresa England, a teacher and one of the original members of the committee found it. What we found though was not what we had given to the principal. It had changed. However, it was for 2008 to 2013. Our TDIP process stated that we needed one, so we will be revamping this plan. The board will charge the DAAC with reviewing/renewing the plan and presenting it to the board in a timely fashion.

After that, Dawn Olson, the superintendent presented information on the TDIP process, the Race To The Top 3 initiative, and the policy on Use of School Facilities. This was needed as the local Sheriff’s department is considering using the Washington School auditorium for jury selection in a high profile case.  The Safety Committee and DAAC Family and Community Engagement committee reported.

Interesting tidbits… We discovered that the O & E school was now part of the high school. This was an alternative school that had previously been in the district. It has been absorbed into the high school. Our IT department is getting ready to migrate the district webpage information to another webpage service. This in turn sparked a discussion on the tech committee that had previously been part of the district. Julia Marchant brought up the fact that it would be a good thing to have such a committee. The rest of the board members agreed. Dan Harper mentioned that a ‘bottom up’ style of committee for things like tech would be a good thing.

Questions were also asked about the G&T program in the district, ongoing grants, policy manuals and lesson plans. All in all it was a very productive meeting.