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Happy Politically Correct Thanksgiving

Did you catch yesterday’s headline in the Los Angeles Times, “Police called over Thanksgiving dispute at Claremont school”?

According to the article,

Protesters descended Tuesday on Condit Elementary School in Claremont, tersely arguing over the construction-paper pilgrim and Native American costumes worn by kindergartners at a decades-old Thanksgiving tradition. Police were called to the school when tensions rose.

The article also says that the police

officers were monitoring the Claremont Unified Superintendent David Cash’s home after he received hate mail and told police that he feared for his safety.

All of this in response to the district’s attempts to bring politically correctness and  respect for all.

It reminded me of my district’s move toward a politically correct Halloween.  We haven’t taken as strong of a stance on Thanksgiving.  At my school we had a traditional Thanksgiving feast in our kindergarten classrooms yesterday.   After reading this article and reflecting on my own practice I'd like your perspective on this issue.  How should we respond to these adaptive challenges?

I'd love to hear and learn from Condit Elementary School principal Tim Northrop or superintendent David Cash on this topic.

How does your school handle Halloween or Thanksgiving? 

Is it politically correct?

No Easy Answers

Leading members of your team through the process of changing their attitudes, values or behaviors is probably one of the hardest parts of the work we do as principals and superintendents.

It's hard work to improve math scores.  It's hard work to reduce drop out rates.  It's hard work to improve attendance.  It's hard work because there are usually no quick, easy answers and in many cases the solution involves a needed change. 

Leading this type of work is different than the typical, day to day, operational work of principals and superintendents.  Operational work is solved easily with the proper training and skills.  It's when you know exactly what to prescribe and when to apply the correct remedy for a quick and usually easy solution.  Organizing an event, writing your newsletter, developing a schedule or conducting a meeting are examples of the type of technical work we do.

Leading my staff through the process of improving math scores for all children at my school will require a change in teacher behaviors as well as mine. With only 40% of my 6th graders meeting the state standard in math we need change.  It'll take more than a curriculum, it'll take more than money,  it'll take more than great interventions, it'll take more than an easy solution.  For all of my students to meet the standard in math we must do our work differently. This type of work is the hardest that we do.

To improve my skill in this area I just finished reading Leadership Without Easy Answers by Ronald Heifetz.  I'm also taking a class taught by the Center for Adaptive Schools based on the work of Robert Garmston and Bruce Wellman.  At their core, both bodies of work focus on building capacity for improvement.  They both refer to this type of work as "adaptive work".  The adaptive leader doesn't have all the answers and may not even know the cause of the problem.  Asking, "Why are we doing this?" and "Why are we doing this this way?" will help give focus to the hard adaptive work of changing attitudes and behaviors.  It's no surprise that establishing and tending to trust relationships and collaboration are imperative to the success of adaptive work.

I haven't mastered it yet but I have been given many opportunities to practice and lead adaptive work.  I recommend the Heifetz book as well as the work of the Center for Adaptive Schools to those of you who are ready to tackle the hard work of improvement.  In the meantime, I'll take any advice I can get to improve our math scores!

The Exegesis & Hermeneutics of School Funding in Washington State

It's a little known fact that US President Benjamin Harrison didn't originally approve the constitution that Washington had sent him because Territorial Governor Miles C. Moore had forgot to sign it. The remedy in the days long before computers, internet, and fax machines was to redo it in long-hand and resend it to the president.

In that document the 75 delegates that were elected to write it determined that fully sufficient and abundant funding for the education of all children within the borders of the newly formed Washington State would be the top priority above all others. In their words, "It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders, without distinction or preference on account of race, color, caste, or sex." When the citizens of the Washington territory got their chance to see the document 40,152 voted to approve the Washington State Constitution while only 23%, 11,879 opposed it.

The constitution was finally approved and became the document that has formed the basis for all current Washington state law. It also set into motion the priority in our state of funding education above all other state needs. That's strong language. The strongest, in fact, that you'll find supporting public education in any state constitution in our nation. Nevertheless, in 1978, the Washington Supreme Court supported the "Doran I Decision," ruling that the state was not meeting its own constitutional responsibility to "make ample provision for the education of all children." Furthermore, according to "Doran I", Washington had failed to define "basic education" and had neglected its obligation to develop a funding process that didn't rely on local levies. "Doran I" further declared that "Under state law, the legislature has established a general and uniform system for the public schools as required by Article IX, Section 2…but it has not A) expressly defined basic education or determined the substantive contents of a basic program of education to which the children of this state are entitled in today's society or B) provided a method for the fully sufficient funding of such education without reliance on special excess levies." In 1983, the "Doran II Decision" reiterated that the state's responsibility to fully fund basic education also included special education, bilingual education, remedial assistance, and transportation.

To be clear, education is our state's number one funding priority with 40 percent of the state budget used to fund K-12 education. Nonetheless, Washington ranks 43rd in the nation in K-12 state education spending, according to the annual study commissioned by Education Week magazine, which also gave our state an overall grade of D+ in school finance.

Why would a state with such clear direction in its constitution have these issues? Perhaps a little bit of exegesis and hermeneutics may shed some light. If you've known anyone involved in a theological pursuit you may be aware of these terms. Using this technique, theologians seeks to understand what the biblical text meant to the people at the time they were written thousands of years ago (exegesis) and what that same text means for us today (hermeneutics). In the context of the interpretation of our constitution written over 130 years ago, much has changed and the definitions assumed at that time meant something entirely different then. It goes without saying that the children of Miles C. Moore and the rest of Washington's constitution authors lived in a much different time. The ample provisions of that day would represent only a fraction of the meager provisions for today's classrooms. Governmental mandates for schools were virtually nonexistent and the funding required to meet those mandates of today wasn't needed then. Basic education at the time of Benjamin Harrison was indeed very basic. Times have changed. Basic means something different to us today, ample means something different to us today, while the definition of paramount remains the same.

Even when looking at the language of the current funding formulas used to calculate how much money a district gets from the state, exegesis and hermeneutics come into play. These formulas were developed over 30 years ago, before computers, internet, and fax machines. Again, basic means something different to us today, ample means something different to us today, while the definition of paramount remains the same. To address this need, the 2007 Legislature created a Joint Task Force on Basic Education Finance to "review the definition of basic education and all current basic education funding formulas". The Task Force is to "develop options for a new funding structure and all the necessary formulas, and propose a new definition of basic education."

Lawyers continue to argue these definitions and even today the latest lawsuit is in the works for March, 2009. The Network for Excellence in Washington Schools (NEWS), a coalition of community organizations, school districts, education associations, teachers and parents has filed suit against Washington State. At the crux of their lawsuit is the definition of paramount, ample and basic.

Our state school funding system is broken and has been for years. It was never the intent of Governor Morris nor the founders of our constitution that local communities would raise money at the local level through levies for our schools, nor can we continue to rely on the local tax dollars to meet the dramatically increasing financial needs of our schools. It's time for an overhaul of the funding system.

Governor Morris made a mistake by forgetting to sign the constitution on November 4, 1889. His mistake allowed North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana all to become states ahead of Washington by just a few days. He fixed his error immediately and President Harrison received the corrected edition and approved it on November 11, 1889. It took only 7 days to make the correction; forever giving Washington the honor of becoming our 42nd state and thereby approving the constitution they had worked so hard to create. Let's hope our current state leaders, guided by the semantics of that document created in 1889 will hermeneutically interpret and properly apply exegetic analysis to words used by the founders such as ample, basic, and paramount. The result being new and appropriate financial procedures to amply fund the education of all students today. Fortunately they do have a huge advantage in the application of exegesis and hermeneutics over biblical theologians, the Washington State Constitution was not written on Greek, Aramaic or Hebrew.

How's education funding in your state?

A Day in the Life

4/27/07 Elementary Principal

6:28 am Meet with other principals for prayer and support at the local coffee shop
7:45 am Arrive at school
7:48 am Turn on Computer and open email
8:03 am Secretary informs me we're 3 subs short
8:14 am Custodian informs me she's ready for the Earthquake and Fire Drill scheduled for 9:00 am
8:17 am Assessment Coordinator informs me she ready for 21 WASL make tests
8:18 am Develop plan to cover classrooms without sub
8:19 am Admin Intern covers  6th grade class so teacher can attend needed training
8:20 am Counselor covers other 6th grade class so teacher can attend same training
8:25 am Neighboring 3rd grade teacher doubles up her class and takes the first shift of coverage for her 3rd grade colleague out ill
8:28 am School Psychologist wants to debrief last night's IEP meeting and upcoming Manifestation Determination meeting, I have her talk to my secretary to schedule time next week
8:29 am Greet kids arriving to school walkers and by bus
8:33 am Make morning announcements Birthdays, Ecology Club Sign up, Track Team Meeting
8:40 am Call Special Services to determine status of a new student for Monday with special needs
8:45 am Legal Counsel is contacted regarding placement of new student with special needs
8:47 am Gave directions to maintenance department regarding work on the playground with heavy equipment
8:50 am Returned email from upset parent that demanded immediate attention regarding an ongoing complaint toward her child's teacher and a student in that class
8:53 am Prepared for Emergency Earthquake Drill, made calls to fire department and facilities to warn them of the drill
9:00 am Earthquake Drill all students take cover and teachers discuss the procedures for the real thing
9:04 am Earthquake Drill is followed by a mandatory monthly fire drill.  All students exit the building and we follow our plan for accountability
9:10 am Building all clear including preschool and all students accounted for in under 6 minutes
9:12 am All 583 students reenter the building and return to the business of learning
9:15 am I reassign a paraeducator to work in the 3rd grade class with the teachers that will be covering for the sub shortage
9:17 am Reading specialist takes the second shift of coverage for the 3rd grade teacher out ill
9:18 am State Testing WASL makeups began
9:20 am Made 5 phone calls to parents of 6th graders who have said they don't want their child to attend our 4 day overnight 6th grade outdoor education camp
9:32 am Met with student on in-house suspension for chronic misbehavior
9:45 am Met with EBD student in alternate placement for aggressive behavior which needed CPI restraint and escorting from the previous day
10:02 am Talked with teacher having problems with a student
10:10 am Met with Union Rep to discuss upcoming Bond planning strategies
10:15 am Called local hamburger joint to schedule our fund raising day where staff will be servers to raise money for Relay for Life
10:20 am Sub arrives for the 3rd grade classroom without sub and relieves the Reading Specialist
10:30 am Kids of all ages continue to visit the HOSTs room to get free books donated by Comcast
10:45 am Create and send emails to Leadership team members to encourage recruiting for summer professional development activities
11:00 am Talked to 6th grade teacher that is being involuntarily transferred to another school next year because of growth
11:15 am Checked on recess and the complaint of a smell from the heavy equipment working on our field, workers report the use of pig fuel as the unavoidable cause
11:30 am Checked on Lunch lines and I pick up a school lunch of turkey, gravy with mashed potatoes for myself
11:35 am Ate lunch with my playground supervisors and debrief about their thoughts regarding last night's deescalation training
12:01 pm Prepare staff meeting agenda for next Tuesday's staff meeting
12:20 pm Begin Preparation for Weekly on line blog Bulletin, Almost Monday to be completed over the weekend
12:45 pm Finalized preparation for next Wednesday's weekly early dismissal for staff development.  Our guest speaker will discuss the new support model for servicing IEP's with behavior elements such as FBAs and BIPs
1:00 pm Wrote a song to be performed at tonight's District PTA Golden Acorn celebration
1:15 pm Visited Kindergarten classrooms
1:30 pm Followed up on meeting with parent upset with our Anti-Idling campaign in partnership with the Health Department, he referred to it as "Al Gore crap"
2:00 pm Met with upset 1st grade parent that wanted a new teacher because her daughter didn't like school however she hadn't shared her concerns with the teacher yet, so we scheduled a followup meeting with all parties
2:45 pm Walked out to buses with students for dismissal
3:00 pm Met with 2 fathers that work for Comcast about setting up our closed circuit television station for broadcasting video announcements.  I shared my vision, gave them a tour of the facility and we set up a project wiki to begin our work
4:00 pm Met with first grade teacher to discuss her concern about class size equity and the contract
4:15 pm Started reading and responding to my daily 100 plus work related emails
5:00 pm Headed to the High School for this evening's event
5:30 pm Attended the District PTA Golden Acorn Event, as a 1999 recipient I was selected as the emcee for the tonight's auction and I also performed my recently written song (this morning) with the Superintendent and his assistant.  The song was sung to the tune of Row Row Row your Boat and was intended to promote voting for the upcoming school bond measure
8:30 pm Head home
9:00 pm Arrive home
9:05 pm Begin this blog post
10:57 pm Edit this blog post

11:24 pm Posted

11:25 pm Bedtime

A typical day...what about you?

Blogging from NAESP

Steve Poling and I will be attending and blogging from the NAESP conference in Seattle this week.  If you are attending the conference you may want to join us at the Cheesecake Factory for an EduBloggerCon meet-up. In addition, if you're attending the conference and blogging be sure to add the NAESP2007 tag to your photos and posts.

If you can't make it to the conference, you can follow our experiences at Mr. P's Blog and PepTechTalk or watch all the action at HitchHikr.  You can also read the official elogs of Jan Borelli & Tracy Latimer as they document their conference experiences.

Is anyone else going to be there?

Technorati Tags: naesp2007

I Hated School

I hated school. I didn't like to read. My grades were rarely better than a C. As an Air Force brat I started each school year in a different state and once even a different country. My memories of school are limited. I remember my 1st grade teacher blew her whistle most of the day to get our attention. My 6th grade teacher let us chose either the "sting" or the "hurt" for our hacks.  I always selected the "hurt". My 8th grade humanities teacher regularly whacked our wrists with her ruler for misbehavior. I had to see the principal on numerous occasions, but I don't recall a single principal's name or face from my thirteen year career. I'm a product of public education in the 60's & 70's and I have no recollection of school ever being fun.

For the last fifteen years I've been the principal or assistant in six different schools in four different districts and one of my top goals in each has been to make school fun and learning meaningful. We're in the business of creating memories for kids. Why not create great memories! They deserve it.

How do you make school a fun place and create positive memories for kids?

Here's some ideas I've tried:

Be Silly & Wear Costumes and Hats

Smile & Laugh...Play!

How will you be remembered by your students?

How do you create positive memories for kids?

What do you do to make your school fun?

You Make the Call

Did you ever watch NFL Football's "You Make the Call" ?

Each week you were to pretend to be the referee, you were to watch a short clip from a play in a real football game and then you made the call as if you were there on the field.  I loved watching each week and trying to make the right call was always a challenge.  Principals are often times acting as referees and I thought I'd apply that same idea to my posts here each month,  I'll post one or two incidents that I have dealt with as the principal at my school and ask you how you would handle it.  In other words, You make the Call!

Here we go:

The Case of the Inappropriate T-Shirt
A fifth grader comes to school wearing a t-shirt that says "Cowboys from Hell".  He was sent to the office and was given three choices

1. Turn the t-shirt inside out.
2. Wear another t-shirt that the school would provide.
3. Call dad and have him bring in another shirt. 

The 5th grader refuses all options and says his dad told him if anyone body says anything about the shirt, he is to leave it on and call him right away.  Upon calling dad, dad confirms those were indeed the instructions, and furthermore dad states that he was coming right down to explain his son's right to wear such a shirt.     When dad arrives he declares that his son is not removing the shirt.  He further states that the word "hell" can be found in the Bible and by the way the word "bitch" is a female dog.  I tell the dad that this shirt is clearly a violation of our dress code which was sent home on the first day of school.  Dad confirms that he had seen the dress code in the regulations but he never signed it because he didn't agree with it.  I clarified that his signature was only needed to confirm receipt and the regulations and dress code were adopted school board policy.  Dad restates that his son is not removing the shirt while I confirm that he will not be allowed back to class.  Dad said he would take his son home and that he would return tomorrow with the same shirt.   The father took the boy home and the fifth grader returned the next day with a new shirt that said "Flippen Sweet" a Napoleon Dynamite term that we chose to ignore.  What would you have done?

You Make the Call!

The Case of the Girl w/ the Blade
Shortly after getting off the bus first thing in the morning while waiting for the teacher in line, a 6th grade girl tells a classmate that she was about to be suspended and shows the girl a pocket knife in her coat pocket.  The girl with the knife did not open it or make any threats, she merely made the statement, showed the knife in the closed position and placed it back into her pocket.  The classmate was alarmed by this gesture particularly because the girl had a history of sometimes erratic behavior which was a result of her EBD (Emotional Behavior Disorder).  The classmate proceeded to inform the teacher that this girl had a knife.  The teacher held the line and contacted the principal.  I responded and escorted the girl to my office for questioning.  The girl with the knife was cooperative; she confirmed that she indeed had a knife. She said that her mom had allowed her to keep it after she had found it in the yard.  She pulled it out, unopened from her pocket and handed it over.  I called mom and decided to place the student on a one day in-school suspension. What would you have done?   
You Make the Call!