The budget situation . . .

During our monthly meeting with TEA today, it was said that there are probably many staff members and others that are not aware of the budget cuts that the district will experience this year. That came as a surprise to me because I am so close to it that I simply don’t think about how and why others wouldn’t know. We have shared the cuts with our board and with the administrative team, but not publicly in ways that others would see and understand. So, though I don’ have a lot of people that regularly read this blog, I’m going to start the sharing process right here.


This year is unprecedented in my history as a superintendent with significant revenue cuts being administered during the budget year. From year-to-year we have experienced cuts to non- basic education programs, but not in a year that we have arrived at a balanced budget based upon promised state revenue. Below, is a summary of the proposed cuts based on the Governor, house and senate proposed budgets.

These potential cuts are partially offset by the state distributing the Edujobs federal money to each district. For us, this revenue that we were aware of during the budgeting process, but did not include in our revenue to expenditure comparisons amounted to $1,477,000. If we had budgeted the use of this money, as some districts did, we would be in a much more difficult situation than we now face. Other factors that mitigate against the cut are enrollment and Safety Net revenue above budget projections. The other important variable is that we had already made the decision to use part of the fund balance in the 2010-11 budget, something that becomes more difficult to do in future years. With this additional revenue, we should experience an actual cut of between $119,000 and $269,000 far less than we anticipated earlier in the year and before finding out last week about the additional Safety Net revenue.

Given the process in Olympia, however, we know that there will be much bargaining over the three budgets and that only one budget will finally emerge identifying the cuts for this year and the revenue projections for next year. At this time, based on the three proposals, we believe that we can make it through this year without significant changes to expenditure projections. Next year, however, will present us with a more difficult situation that may once again require adjustments to our program similar to what we experienced in the 2009-10 school year. This is because of the anticipated state cuts and because we used $1,050,000 in fund balance for this year’s budget, something that will be more difficult to do in future years as the fund balance is depleted to balance a given budget. Since we have little capacity to increase revenue the budget balancing alternative is program cuts.

Unless there is a dramatic change from the three proposed budgets to final budget we will be alright this year because revenue is above projections. This additional revenue, with the Edujobs money came close to covering the proposed cuts.

Talent on display . . .

Friday evening was the Mary Lou Harting Memorial concert where our music teachers annually share their talent to raise scholarship money in memory of Mary Lou, a former music teacher at Rock Creek.  The date for the concert was earlier this year and once again almost got by me, but I was able to change plans and attend with my Granddaughter who turned 12 today.  She was very impressed and between the teacher's talent and the beautiful setting said she wants to go to school here instead of in Federal Way.  It was an enjoyable evening, thank you to our music teachers.

Leadership focus . . .

Yesterday, we had our teacher leadership meeting focused on creating a deeper understanding of the Classroom 10 characteristic of key content and checks for understanding. Nancy and Kristin used a video of an elementary classroom lesson to assist us in observing and labeling behaviors aligned with the key components necessary to make learning visual and understood by all students. In one meeting we were able to combine learning and observing, two of the elements necessary for successful staff development that will actually influence behavior. Though I did not leave as an expert, I know that these learning opportunities result in me feeling better about my understanding and capacity to observe and provide feedback and reflection for others.


Through this and other experiences, we are bringing much more clarity to our Classroom 10 goal beginning next year. The emerging focus is on the instructional practices that are necessary to take advantage of the research findings and potential for this work to influence student achievement. These best practices will guide our document development work and content for adult learning. Here is a link to the power point used yesterday to support our learning. Under PD Resources for Classroom 10, click on the power point for key content.

Feedback from teachers about this learning opportunity was positive with suggestions for increasing the opportunity to incorporate videos into our adult learning model.
• The video lab is a great way to show people what you want rather than telling people what to do.
• Make sure to get a variety of videos for different subjects and ALL grade levels.

I also want to share this additional comment on the feedback form because I believe that it captures the current reality for most teachers in our system.
• . . .connections, bringing it to our attention that we already do most of these it is just a matter of being more conscious and deliberate rather than doing something new.

Yes, for most teachers it will not be new learning. We will become more focused in lesson planning to ensure that best practices are embedded in the goals and activities for the day and that we are more intentional about when and how we check for understanding. Lessons will end with a summary and students with the opportunity to reflect on what they learned that day in relation to the identified key content.

In a later post I will share the other learning component of the day focused on language and culture. Until then, if you were a participant in yesterday’s learning opportunity please consider sharing with us your observations, thinking, and feelings.

Voting at 14 . . .

Tonight was a board meeting night with students from the Junior High sharing their community project to identify and document local historic districts. We also had a presentation on the status of our Moodle pilot and our online and blended learning opportunities. We have a great school board. They focus on policy, operate collaboratively, and care about our students and staff.


With this as a background I found the proposal to allow 14 year olds to vote in school board elections interesting. Check this short Education Week article on allowing students to vote for school board members in our state. It is sponsored by Senator Scott White from Seattle. Below, is the description in the Bill Digest, SB 5621.

SB 5621 - DIGEST
Allows students, having attained the age of fourteen as of the date of the election, to vote in school board elections for the district in which they are enrolled and in good standing.

Short and to the point unlike many of the other bills in Olympia. With the fiscal issues faced by the legislators I don’t believe that this bill has much urgency or support, but it is interesting to think about. I understand that board members make decisions that impact students, but providing 14 year olds with the ability to vote for them is a struggle for me. Would they be smart voters?

Anyone care to share your thoughts about this possibility?

Deserved more . . .

There were a few comments to my last post on the Center for American Study review of 9000 school districts return on investment. I also had a few others share in person how nice it was to see the validation of our hard work. Once again, however, it made me wonder why I posted it more as a factual story instead of as a celebration.

This was another opportunity to boast and say thank you to our students, staff, and community that I didn’t take. Since I have a personal goal this year to do a better job of recognizing achievement and celebrating successes, I want to say thank you for the hard work that contributed to the findings in this report. Though the achievement takes place in a classroom, return on investment measures like ours demands quality in all components of our operation.

GREAT JOB! Thanks to all students, staff, parents, and community members who make this a great place for working, learning, and living.

Bang for the buck . . .

Tahoma once again receives a high ranking from a new study I found on Education Week by the Center for American Progress to measure school district productivity. They measured the return on investment for over 9000 school districts across the country using a set of rubrics they developed. The results are based on district demographics and assessment scores from 2008. In their words the goals of the study are to:


First, we hope to kick-start a national conversation about educational productivity. Second, we want to identify districts that generate higher-than-average achievement per dollar spent, demonstrate how productivity varies widely within states, and encourage efforts to study highly productive districts. Third—and most important—we want to encourage states and districts to embrace approaches that make it easier to create and sustain educational efficiencies.

The study uses three different rubrics to rate districts.  On the study's interactive site, we can see that our district does well on all three measures.  The first  measure, Basic Return on Investment (ROI), rates school districts on how much academic achievement they get for each dollar spent relative to other districts in their state.  Green represents good in the charts below.  The green dot with the black circle around it in the "best" section of the chart is us.

The second measure, adjusted return on investment, uses a different form of analysis to be more sensitive to spending differences within states.  Once again the green dot with the black circle is our system.

The third measure, Predicted Efficiency rating measures whether a district’s achievement is higher or lower than would be predicted after accounting for its per-pupil spending and concentrations of low-income, non-Englishspeaking, and special education students.  Our rating can again be found in the best section of the chart.

As can be seen by this study, our school system once again has a high rating when compared to other systems in the state and nation.

Reflecting on leadership . . .

Next week we have the opportunity once again to support the work of teacher leadership teams in five of our schools and two departments. Our goals are to:


• Continue our focus on understanding Classroom 10 at a deeper level with a specific focus for the day on key content.
• Bring clarity to the role of the teacher leader in the Classroom 10 work and the work at the building level.
• Share mental models and skills to increase the capacity of teacher leaders to provide support for their colleagues. The focus for Wednesday is on culture and tools to move towards communities of trust from communities of complaint.
• Provide time in the afternoon for teams to reflect on their learning and to focus on a building need of their choice.

I work with Connie Hoffman to plan these learning opportunities. They are energizing for me and times that I enjoy planning for and sharing my thinking with those in our system with the ability to influence our work. Even though I play a small role, I spend considerable time considering what to focus on and where the leverage is to support increased system leadership capacity.

In planning for Wednesday, I have read and/or reviewed the leadership books pictured below. They use different words and models, but there are themes that run through all of them. One of those that I will focus on Wednesday is the barriers to skillful conversations. We can all identify many of these barriers, but we are not all skillful at facilitating through them to identify issues and concerns of all participants.

Part of what I will be sharing, is the need for us to ensure in conversations that we facilitate that all participate and contribute. Of particular importance is the need to know what each person is observing, thinking, feeling, and wanting at the time. Since all of us have the need to make sense of our experiences, when people do not share these experiences during the meeting, we make up a story with answers to those questions for others in the room. It is these made up stories that result in our mental models that over time make our work much more difficult because the stories come from our assumptions, not the thoughts and feelings of the others on the team.

I’m energized just thinking about it as I believe that our future success is dependent on our capacity to distribute leadership to those with the greatest capacity to influence this work, our teachers.