I am going to briefly address three issues from recent meetings: our most recent meeting and the FOIA issues it raised; the Early Learning Childhood Center; and, October’s teacher reassignments.
We Messed Up. I Messed Up.
Last week, the board held a called meeting (you can listen here) to receive legal advice and vote on recommendations from the administration on a couple of issues. While I don’t take issue with how the board handled matters during executive session, I believe we fell short upon returning to the public portion of the meeting. I thought the administration recommendations on which we were voting would be described with some specificity during the public portion. That did not happen. I believe this is a clear violation of FOIA.
I will spare you my excuses for not catching the issue. I clearly should have said something, and I take full responsibility for my role in screwing this up.
I have suggested that the board call a meeting this week to own up to the mistake, do what we can to correct it, and provide the information about our vote that FOIA requires and the public deserves.
Early Childhood Learning Center
You can watch the discussion of this issue at the January 23, 2024 meeting here.
In December 2022, the board voted to reallocate $31 million from the general fund to construct a birth-to-4-year-old center. While I am very aware of the positive impact of birth-to-four programs, I abstained because I was not able to get answers to some fundamental questions — how much would it cost to sustain such a program? why had we not sought partnerships with other agencies, and organizations since this would have been outside our mandate?, etc.
In May 2023, the administration began working with the State Department of Education’s Office of School Facilities, which approves and oversees all public education construction. According to the administration, there were multiple meetings with OSF and no signs of problems.
However, at some point, the district — without notifying the board — informed DSS and the State Fire Marshall in September that it was changing the program’s scope to encompass 3k to second grade only. The administration did not notify OSF of this change until mid-November. The administration did not notify the board until mid-January.
The administration has revealed that someone from OSF indicated that approval for the building was forthcoming in mid-November. Based on this assurance, the administration went ahead with construction. The administration has characterized this as standard practice. In my discussions with a contractor who has done work for the district and with others, this does not seem to be the case. The contractor with whom I spoke indicated that they would never begin construction without written approval in hand.
Be that as it may, the administration continued to build even after it had not received the promised authorization. Then, in mid-December, the State Department of Education said that what we were building did not qualify as a school. The administration did not inform the board or the County about this letter. Instead, it simply continued construction.
About a month later in mid-January, this letter was made public. I first learned of this letter through social media. On January 18, 2024, the county administration called the superintendent, indicating that he intended to issue a stop work order because, without the OSF authorization, the district did not possess a building permit. The superintendent then, and only then, stopped construction of the project.
There are valid questions about how we got so far down the road before getting the State Department’s decision. And I believe we will get answers to those questions. But we cannot ignore some substantial problems on our end.
First, changing this project’s scope without notifying the board, I believe, was problematic. Such a drastic change in scope should have resulted in a renewed discussion about the project. Spending money is a zero-sum undertaking. Any money we spend on this project is money we cannot spend on other projects. For example, the building that houses our Heyward Career Center is 50 years old. It is an understatement to say that the 750 students who attend that center and the teachers and staff who serve them need more. Why didn’t we, at least, have that discussion?
Second, the administration’s decision to keep the board and the county in the dark after receiving the December State Department letter is inexcusable. The fact that the board continues to enable this behavior is partly why we find ourselves in this position.
Finally, anytime I reference our teacher vacancies or our problems retaining social workers or school psychologists, I am told that there are shortages over which we have no control. And, yet, we are now building a school that will require the very people we claim we can’t find.
The board has now voted to approve this project — months after the administration drastically reshaped it. I do not believe it is the best use of this funding given the other problems we are facing in the district.
Teacher Reassignments
As everyone reading this probably knows by now, the district reassigned 11 teachers around the 45th day of the school year. The fact that it was done at all raises significant questions, and how it was implemented can only be described as a disaster. The administration gave teachers little notice and did not involve the impacted principals at all. You can watch the meeting here.
The primary district and board response was that we do this every year, and nothing was out of the ordinary this year. For example, the administration revealed that it reassigned ten teachers in the 22-23 school year. I asked if all the teachers had been reassigned on the 45th day or after. The response was an unequivocal “yes.” This was a blatant misrepresentation. I requested more information about these transfers (see below). We know now that of the ten teachers reassigned last year, three occurred on the first day, and seven were reassigned before mid-September.
I can’t overstate how frustrating it is that the administration consistently provides inaccurate information on important issues like this. This wasn’t the first time. Indeed, when folks ask why I abstain on so many votes regarding HR issues, this is it. We are being asked to vote on important issues, and we’re asked to trust that the information HR provides us is accurate. I do not have that confidence.
Putting aside the debacle that was this year’s reassignments, I believe it is problematic that the board was not informed of reassignments in prior years. For that reason, I will propose a policy requiring the district to inform the board anytime it reassigns a teacher from their original school. That will, at least, ensure that the board is notified and can ask questions. Our involvement may help ensure that any reassignment is necessary and is implemented in a way that mitigates the disruption for all involved.