Having witnessed the development of Kennewick School District’s North Star goals and knowing these goals will drive KSD programs and allocation of staff and district resources for the next 7 to 10 years, KSD Citizens proposes a more inclusive process guaranteed to enlist community and staff participation from the beginning, instead of at the end.
The current process for developing Kennewick School District Strategic Plan North Star goals suffers several inherent weaknesses:
• The initial plan was proposed by one board member who, potentially, has at least two notable biases favoring MAP testing and certain reading programs. This “stacks the deck”. See notes.
• Superintendent Dave Bond’s proposal, which was accepted for consideration, made it clear these goals will be developed from the top-down. See notes.
• While the board and administration conducted an interesting dialogue over the goals from January to March, there was no authentic participation by the community or school district staff until they were permitted to review the goals in April.
• In April, only two public meetings were offered with little public notice and only 25 community members attending.
• Individual school buildings were to schedule opportunities for parents and staff to review the goals but building principals were tasked to make that happen with inconsistent results.
• Consequently, a handful of people are empowered to set the direction for KSD for the next decade, prioritizing a budget of over $143 million per year.
During the May 25 school board meeting where the goals were reconsidered with information from community surveys, the discussion was primarily a conversation between board members Dawn Adams and Lynn Fielding with support from Adam’s niece, Heather Kintzley. The views of Kathy White and Wendy London received scant attention.
During this meeting, at this late date in the process, there was uncertainty about whether the district goals should focus exclusively on instructional issues or include operational issues (the SMART goals relate to student performance and achievement).
There is uncertainty whether all goals can or should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Related to student performance and achievement, Time-bound) goals but the board has eased away from this requirement. I think this issue could be resolved by differentiating between goals and objectives. See notes.
Bond expressed his concern that community and staff members did not truly comprehend some of the goals so they could not realistically evaluate them.
London pointed out that while the goals address reading and math programs, as well as sports programs, there is no mention of the value of other district classes like science, social studies, PE, Health, world languages, exploratory and elective classes. A consequence will be continuation of the narrow curriculum which does not effectively meet the needs of many students.
Scanning the Kennewick School District Strategic Plan Survey Results reveals some district buildings had very little staff or community participation in reviewing the goals. This is particularly so in buildings with higher minority populations.
With over 30% minority student population in Kennewick schools, there is, at this time, no minority representation on the school board and a less than robust effort by the board to solicit the opinions of minority parents and community members in developing North Star goals.
Teachers I have spoken with report little confidence their views will get genuine board consideration this late in goal development.
I attribute these issues to a failure of school board leadership.
Another Plan
KSD Citizens’ bias is for a process which is accessible, open, transparent, inclusive, well understood and designed from the community up. This proposal would address most problems with the current process.
Many Kennewick schools have site councils made up of administrators, staff and parents which could be utilized to initiate the development of the Strategic Plan North Star goals. A protocol would be written to clearly present the expectations of all participants. Up to a year should be available to complete the process. Results would be presented to the board for their review and adoption.
The process should assure parents and teachers are involved in every building and district program. A minimum of 10 or 15 parents and other community members from each building should participate. Buildings which currently have no site council should be encouraged to organize one or to create a building committee tasked with this objective. See notes.
Local control of education is too important to leave development of these goals to just a few. No other policy initiative is more important.
Notes:
- Board member Lynn Fielding serves on the NWEA board. NWEA provides the MAP test to school districts. Fielding is also on the board of directors of the Children’s Reading Foundation which sells books and reading programs to school districts.
- These affiliations present a potential conflict of interest which could factor into his decision making and goal setting.
- Goals are broad; objectives are narrow.
Goals are general intentions; objectives are precise.
Goals are intangible; objectives are tangible.
Goals are abstract; objectives are concrete.
Goals can’t be validated as is; objectives can be validated.
- There is a significant body of literature about writing goals and objectives. Perhaps the school board would benefit from a review.
- It is my observation that Superintendent Dave Bond has labored earnestly to develop KSD’s Strategic Plan, but he must, ultimately, satisfy the requirements of school board leadership.
- A complaint I have heard from board president Adams is that the community is not present to be engaged with the board at meetings and community presentations like those offered last October and November. This project would motivate a high degree of participation across the community given the responsibility and stakes involved.
For more background on this issue see –
http://ksdcitizens.org/2010/10/07/school-board-report-by-tom-staly-3/
http://ksdcitizens.org/2011/05/30/kennewick-school-board-report-may/
http://ksdcitizens.org/2011/05/31/kennewick-schoool-district-strategic-plan-survey-results/
NWEA –
http://www.nwea.org/about-nwea/our-leadership
Children’s Reading Foundation –
http://www.readingfoundation.org/Lynn-Fielding-Biography.jsp
About 40 years ago the Kennewick School District set about developing goals pretty much in the way Tom Staly suggests. We kicked off the process with a huge community meeting with participants grouped by areas of interest following a keynote for the total group. At the end of the evening each group reported their initial findings and the products were collected. KSD was one of the first districts in the nation to pioneer the use of the Delphi Technique to develop district-wide consensus and was written up in a national magazine at the time. The process included a random selection of district residents who were then sent a series of surveys based on the outcomes of the community meeting, gradually honing down to the really important goals. Administration and staff were given opportunities to comment along the way as well. The final document had broad support from the community and staff and served as a template for curriculum and instruction planning for many years. The goal document was updated periodically using mail-out surveys and internal reviews.
Several long-lasting changes in planning and programming came about as a result of the goal development process. The community asked for a greater emphasis on career and vocational development programs and the district responded with the award-winning CE-2 program, what is now Tri-Tech, and big improvements in equipment for existing programs. The curriculum planning process was overhauled and a detailed, teacher-based process was put in place with a 5-year cycle for review and renewal. Community and School Board interest led to an emphasis on developing higher-level thinking skills, hands-on science programs, and examination of controversial issues.
All of this began to unravel with the retirement of Superintendent Don Anderson 22 years ago. His replacement and new board members instituted top-down planning, abandonment of the curriculum planning process, shutting down CE-2, and ending any emphasis on higher-level thinking. As time has passed, the emphasis has moved to test scores in two subjects (especially reading) resulting in a huge narrowing of the curriculum and a complete move away from the earlier district goals. Perhaps that is what the patrons of the district really want, but we will never know given the process currently in place.