And We're Off!

I am always amazed at the flurry of activity that happens in schools the last week to ten days before the start of classes. Admittedly, I sometimes have a brief moment of panic wondering if we are in fact going to meet our deadline. Of course each year we do because of the hard work and commitment of our staff to seeing the job through to the end. Our maintenance and custodial staff deserves a tip of the hat for what they were able to accomplish this summer, and in particular during the final push to the start. The weekend before school started staff were in the buildings waxing floors in the elementary school and working on a ceiling in the high school. Then on Wednesday evening (the eve of the first day), our crew stayed late to finish up some ceiling work in the junior high. Most notably they did all this short staffed, so if you see them around town please take a moment to thank them for their efforts. 

Because of this extra effort and the incredible work of our faculty to get their rooms and lesson plans prepared we have had an outstanding start to the school year. Our teachers were so helpful and flexible as we started it has been truly phenomenal! Today it is only the fifth day of school, and already we are beginning to establish a routine. Indeed it seems like eons ago we were all gathered for the opening kick-off in the high school auditorium. During my visits to classrooms I am observing students who are engaged with their teachers in creative and very well designed lessons. 

If your child hasn't had an opportunity to try our new hot lunch program yet, I would highly encourage it. So far the feedback has been very positive and the students are enjoying a quality lunch that is prepared fresh daily. If you have been following me on Twitter then you are aware our participation rate for hot lunch is up. Last year on the first day of school we served 281 meals. The first day this year we served 438. We do expect that number to continue climbing as the word gets out on how great our lunch program is! While we can attribute high quality and delicious meals to the increased participation rate, we also have to take special note that our enrollment has increased. 

Our first day enrollment is up 26 over last year, and is the highest first day count we have had since I started tracking it in 2012. Now while not an apples to apples comparison, our first day enrollment number of 748 is the largest number of students served in the district since 2008 when we posted a BEDS number of 749. Keep in mind the first day enrollment number is unofficial and will continue to fluctuate over the coming weeks. We officially count students on October 1st, so stay tuned!

Increasing enrollment is a great thing for our school district! But it does come with its own unique set of challenges. As our enrollment rises, we will need to adjust staffing accordingly. The next couple of weeks will be important as classes begin to stabilize and we determine if additional staff may be necessary. Indeed, it is beginning to look as if we may need to add some additional courses at the high school. 

Transportation is another area that we are closely monitoring. For our afternoon routes we have added a half route to Country Terrace after discovering route 19 had 42 students riding to Butterfield and 34 to Country Terrace. While in theory the bus for route 19 has a rated capacity of 77 students, that assumes those students are five years old and fit three to a seat! Luckily we were able to find a driver for this route, and at some point we may be looking to add the morning leg of that route as well. 

It has been a fantastic start to the school year! It is great having everyone back and seeing our hallways filled with students once more! 

Marigolds or Walnut Trees: Message to the Faculty and Staff to Start the 2018-2019 School Year

Portions of this blog have been used with permission from the Cult of Pedagogy by Jennifer Gonzalez. Please download a copy of the original post: Find Your Marigold: The One Essential Rule for New Teachers right here.

We all have the ability to change the outlook and attitude of those around us. This ‘superpower’ can’t be understated. I have learned in my career the approach I use can significantly impact the outcome of any interaction I have with you—and you with your students. A smile or playful and positive attitude can soften even the hardest of hearts. And at the same time, each morning when we climb out of bed we get to decide whether or not it is going to be a good day—or bad day. That decision when we walk out the door and head toward this school will impact everyone we come into contact with.

No matter what job you do in this district, it is mission critical and we couldn’t do it without you! Across all classifications of employment in our school, we have felt what it’s like when we are short staffed: in the ranks of our teaching staff, paraprofessionals, bus drivers, or custodians. Granted there are plenty of people around to lend a hand, but the fact is we need you and your expertise. You matter! The people around you matter. Not only do these people matter, they are the people who will help push you forward to greatness this school year.

I encourage you to be that light, that inspiration, and that steady hand that will guide [first year teachers] during this year of ‘firsts’. Take a moment to think about your first year in this profession; consider your original discernment to this noble work when you help push one another forward.

Each of us chose this work because we wanted to make a difference in the lives of children. Many of us had an experience in our own formative years that led us to our place in this auditorium today. For me, it was my high school music teachers. Without them seeing a talent in me, or hearing the proverbial ‘he has so much potential’; I wouldn’t be here. No joke. I was destined for something far different than what I am blessed to be doing right now. I am sure you all have a story or experience that led you down this path. Remember the spark that lit the fire and started your career. Then, think of the child [in your classroom this year] that was you. While they may not all be destined to careers as educators, they most certainly are counting on you to help them in their quest of self-discovery. What will they be, and how will you help unleash that potential? I encourage you to consider this when you climb out of bed in the morning and are preparing for another great day at Hudson Schools. Contemplate all the good you are going to do and the positive impact you will have on each student that comes into your classroom. Meets you in the hallway. Gets on your bus in the morning. Drops off lunch money in your office.

Positive impact and positive attitude. Last week we attended the SAI conference in Des Moines. One of our keynote presentations was by Michelle Geilan who studies happiness, those who have a positive outlook, and the impact they have on those around them. We can in fact change our behavior, and we can change the behavior of those we come into contact with by the words we choose and the smile on our face. Think about this: research shows that a positive outlook leads to 31% more productivity, 25% better performance ratings, and 23% less stress.

According to Geilan, the three greatest predictors of success are: work optimism (believing good things will happen); positive engagement (believing that you can succeed); and support provision (the more you invest in the success of others, the more likely you are to succeed). What perfect positions we are in as educators to invest in the success of others!

So I ask you AND ME not to give in to the narrative of negativity and instead be the shining light for your students, and for the person that lives across the hallway from you. Because remember: You matter and will make a difference! I challenge us all to be the people who push one another forward! 

So then. Last spring I had the good fortune of being exposed to the work of Jennifer Gonzalez. Jennifer is a Nationally Board Certified Teacher and the Editor in Chief of the Cult of Pedagogy. 

She is also the author of ‘Find Your Marigold: The One Essential Rule for New Teachers’. For those of you who are gardeners, you know why marigolds are generally planted. They are a companion plant that keeps pests away and allows other plants and vegetables to flourish. But as Gonzalez describes in her essay, there are marigolds in our schools as well. Here is what she says about them:

“Marigolds exist in our schools—encouraging supporting and nurturing growing teachers on their way to maturity. If you can find at least one marigold in your school and stay close to them you will grow. Find more than one and you will positively thrive.” (Jennifer Gonzalez, Find Your Marigold)

Albeit sage advice for the newest to our profession, perhaps there is a lesson in here for each of us? Consider those with whom you work on a daily basis. Your teammates, confidants, administrators, custodians, paraprofessionals, school secretary, hot lunch staff, or bus drivers: do they lift you up, encourage you, and help you to grow? Do they push you forward? If they don’t; if we don’t—then now is the time to do so. The work we do—the work you do is extremely difficult. If we don’t seek out, or be marigolds for one another we are doomed to complacency. Or worse yet, if left unchecked we can become walnut trees. Here is what Jennifer says about walnut trees:

“Successful gardeners avoid planting vegetables anywhere near walnut trees because they give off a toxic substance that can inhibit growth, wilt, and ultimately kill nearby vegetable plants. And sadly, if your school is like most, walnut trees will be abundant. They may not seem dangerous at first. In fact, some may appear to be good teachers—happy, social, well organized. But here are some signs you should keep your distance: Their take on kids is negative. Their take on administration is negative. Being around them makes you feel insecure, discouraged, overwhelmed, or embarrassed. Walnut trees are poison.” (Jennifer Gonzalez, Find Your Marigold)

Again, we look to the newest of our faculty and staff. They are excited and full of energy to begin working with our young people. The whole world is out in front of them!  What they—what you need most in this sea of unfamiliarity and stress is someone to smile at you and welcome you to the school. To remind you what a great career you had chosen and how amazing the kids are in our school. Someone to give you a pep talk before open house and to let you know your room looks great. That critical friend and colleague who, at the sunset of that first day can give you a pat on the back and proclaim, ‘You did it’!

To successfully do this important work that is in front of us, we must resist the lure of the walnut tree. I know that sometimes this is difficult. It is difficult for me! I have been a walnut tree! For many of us, we have seen some things. We have lived through challenges. Yet I submit that what we all need most in this abundance of challenge and uncertainty is someone to smile at you and let you know that everything is going to be okay. You need a marigold; to pick you up, dust you off, and remind you of all the good work you have done, all the good work you have yet to do, and someone to help push you forward.

Again, I’ll ask you to look around this auditorium. There are marigolds among us. But watch out for the walnut trees because they are out there as well. The fact is there may be a little bit of marigold and walnut in many of us. It may be tricky at times, but we need to do our best to grow marigolds in our school and weed out the walnuts. My promise and commitment is to work hard to be your marigold this year.

These next three days are among the most important in our school year. Professional learning and setting up your classroom aside, the interactions you have with colleagues on the eve of the return of students will set a tone that will determine the fate of the year.

Have a great start to the school year and thank you for being here. Please come up to the front of the stage and find your marigold.

Public Schools Exist for All Children

The Hudson School Board believes that expanded educational opportunities should be made available in order to meet the learning needs of all our students. Indeed, our core purpose states as much: We create effective learning environments that result in success for ALL students. However, this idea of expanded educational opportunities come with one very important caveat: any legislation that seeks to expand school choice programs needs to remain under the authority of the local school board. Your local school board, and all public school boards around the state represent the taxpayer when it comes to the education of youth in Iowa. This governance structure ensures your public school provides a free and appropriate education to all students, regardless of socio-economic status, disability, or any other protected class of citizenry. For these primary reasons, we resist any attempts to expand choice programs through the introduction of voucher programs.  

School voucher programs that were proposed during the last legislative session were the antithesis of the ideals enshrined in our public school system. Not only do these programs take the 'public' out of public school accountability; they also create a caste system of education, allowing schools who would be the recipient of such a voucher the choice to deny enrollment to a student that may subscribe to a different value system, religion, or even more sinister: they may choose to deny students with disabilities under the pretense they can't meet the needs of a particular group of students.

First consider this idea of accountability. Every school district in Iowa is required by law to have an annual audit of their financial records. This gives transparency to the general public in order to ensure the public dollar is wisely invested. Furthermore, we publish an accounting of the checks we write each month. The public is able to see with their own eyes to whom bills are being paid. And I know my readers out there look at the bills! From time to time I'll get a phone call or see someone at a game that will wonder why we spent $1,012.50 with A-Line Striping and Sweeping (by the way that was annual parking lot maintenance that included painting new lines in the high school parking lot). The meetings of our public school are in fact public meetings. That means anyone who wants to attend a school board meeting can do so. If the school board wants to go into closed session there is a very narrow range of topics that permit the board to do so, and that can only happen by giving advance notice and the reason the board is taking such action. Those schools who would benefit from vouchers have no such requirements because they are not subject to the Open Meetings Law. Perhaps to some this is a minor nuisance. But consider a world where decisions made with the public dollar are done so behind closed doors without public accountability. What if you didn't know, or if we wouldn't tell you why we spent $26 with the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation? (employee background check)

Now envision a scenario where your child is denied enrollment at a school because they have a learning disability or exhibit behaviors that don't fit within the mold of the average child. What if you subscribe to a different religion than the one aligned with the school that accepts the voucher? In the examples described here, the school choice legislation previously proposed would give those institutions the authority to do exactly that, and exclude even more students than those examples given here. In fact, page 6 of HSB 651, which was a real bill from last year that actually passed out of a subcommittee stated the following beginning on line 9:

This section shall not be construed to authorize the state or any political subdivision of the state to exercise any authority over any nonpublic school or construed to require a nonpublic school to modify its academic standards for admission or educational program in order to receive payment from a parent or guardian using the funds from a pupil's account in the educational savings fund. 

And here is the real kicker, beginning on line 18 of the same section:

Rules adopted by the department to implement this section that impose an undue burden on the nonpublic school are invalid.

Public schools exist to educate all students regardless of where they come from, whatever learning challenges they may or may not have, whoever their parents are, and no matter what they believe. 

All Day Preschool?

When I began my career as an educator, kindergarten that was all day long, five days a week was a bit of an anomaly. In fact, my first teaching position was in a school where kindergarten students attended on alternating days, with the exception of Friday when they all came together (in one room mind you). If you are ever interested, sometime ask me about my experience teaching music to thirty-five five year old[s] on Friday afternoons! Nonetheless, what was once a rarity is now commonplace across the state. But here is another interesting fact: were you aware that students are not even required to attend kindergarten? By law, kindergarten remains the one 'grade level' that is exempt according to Iowa's compulsory attendance law. But in spite of that, almost all students who are five years old by September 15th attend kindergarten in Iowa.

The statewide voluntary preschool program that began in the fall of 2007 was set up as a competitive grant program. With a limited number of dollars available, school districts wishing to start preschool programs had to compete for the funds, and as such preschool in Iowa began in what I like to refer to as a 'slow roll'. But in the intervening decade, preschool is now about as common as every other day kindergarten was when I began my career. During those early years, just over 5,000 children were served statewide. Now, the statewide voluntary preschool program has grown exponentially and is expected to serve more than 25,000 students in 2018-2019. Beginning this school year, of the 330 school districts in Iowa, there are only seven remaining who do not have a statewide voluntary preschool program.

From a sheer numbers standpoint, the statewide voluntary preschool program has been a huge success. Coupled with what scholarly research tells us about the impact of early intervention, schools can leverage these benefits in a way that pays dividends later in the child's academic development. Because of the fact a child's brain is 90% developed by the age of five (Iowa Department of Education Fact Sheet), it makes clear that early intervention makes tremendous difference. Prior to preschool programming, struggling students were typically identified in need of special education services and planned educational interventions toward the end of kindergarten. This was done only after following a rigorous process of problem solving, intervention, and finally implementation. On the other hand, what happens if we are able to identify and intervene before the student enters kindergarten? The intervention could then act as a preventative measure, minimizing or mitigating services needed. The fact is that at Hudson, students who are identified early in their academic careers are more likely to be 'aged out' of special education programming. Quite simply stated, that means a student who is in a special education program during their primary years may very well not be in a special education program by the time they get to junior high.

But the benefits of preschool programming aren't limited to just those students who may be eligible for special education. According to a 2017 study by the Brooking Institute and the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy, (Phillips, D. A., Lipsey, M. W., Dodge, K. A., Haskins, R., Bassok, D., Burchinal, M. R., Duncan, G. J., Dynarski, M., Magnuson, K. A., & Weiland, C.) for every dollar invested in early learning programs, there is a return on investment between $7-$10.

So the decisions the Iowa Legislature have made since 2007 are wise investments. Further, the decisions made by this body that streamlined the process for schools to begin programs were very well done. Yet work remains. Currently, the law requires schools implementing the program to provide ten hours of developmentally appropriate instruction. That works out to a half day program, four days a week. Our school board would advocate all day everyday preschool. Of course this would require a greater infusion of capital since currently preschool students are weighted at .5. We believe a full day program would require a weighting of 1.0. A heavy lift indeed! Yet if we remember the research: for every dollar spent....

Adequate and Timely School Funding Remains High on the List of Priorities

If extending the one cent sales tax beyond 2029 is the highest priority for the school board, then ensuring timely and adequate supplemental state aid is a close second. Supplemental state aid is the percentage by which the state cost per pupil increases from one year to the next. For the fiscal year that began on July 1, 2018 the state cost per pupil rose by 1% or $67. Base funding for school districts is calculated by multiplying the number of students by the cost per pupil. Considering Hudson Schools is currently experiencing enrollment growth, a 1% increase in basic funding makes it very challenging to adequately staff our facilities. Even after giving our largest employee group a meager raise, our expenses for this new fiscal year are expected to rise in excess of 3.5%. This, primarily due to the fact that in a period of growth we need to add staff in order to keep class sizes comfortable. 

Setting the growth in the per pupil rate used to be among the easiest, least controversial, and first orders of business when the legislature would convene each January. That has changed dramatically over the course of the last [approximate] decade. State law actually dictates that this growth rate must be set within 30 days of the governor releasing budget targets during the Condition of the State address. Interestingly enough, prior to just a few short years ago, that 30 day target applied to the fiscal year set to begin 18 months in advance. This way school districts would have time for planning if budget adjustments needed to be made. For example, a school district would have 18 months advance warning to contemplate a budget cut if the growth rate was too low. In a scenario such as this, the school would have ample time to mitigate the budget reduction, perhaps through a retirement incentive designed to spur natural attrition.

But instead of following the law as originally intended, the legislature just decided to change it. Now instead of 18 months of lead time, schools are left to make major budget decisions with less than 6 months notice. And that is only if they meet the new deadline, which is to set the rate of growth within 30 days of the governor's budget targets being released during the annual Condition of the State address.

Now, you can imagine with split party control over state government it would be difficult to come together with an agreement in 30 days. Yet interestingly enough, the legislature has proven it can't even meet the deadline when only one party is in power. The last time the legislature met that deadline was in 2011 (split control). Further, the last time it could be classified as adequate was 2015 when it grew by 4%. Now, we have been lucky in Hudson because our reserves are healthy enough right now that we can add staff without too much difficulty. (This is due largely to strict budgeting discipline and philosophy on the part of the board.) Nevertheless, at some point low per pupil budget growth will catch up to us. The only way to combat this is to go through a budget reduction, which inevitably would mean larger class sizes.  

Arguably K-12 schools are in better shape than other sectors of [government] that rely on the state general fund for resources. Indeed, K-12 was one of the only areas that didn't see a cut during the last legislative session. However, a strong argument might be made that the number and quantity of tax credits in the budget have exacerbated the problem to a point where revenue is simply being choked off. Yet I digress. That is a topic for another day.

The solution would seem to rather simple, and in many ways would force bipartisan cooperation that not only sets the growth rate adequately, but in a manner that makes it untenable to ignore the 30 day deadline. Consider a mechanism that automatically sets the growth rate if the deadline isn't met. It would seem this is an idea with merit. Further, I would suggest the automatic rate be set at a level that simply can't be ignored. It would certainly ensure and honest and open dialogue about the cost per pupil rate that holds people accountable, while at the same time ensures we don't just put the growth rate on autopilot.