The Business of School

Today I wanted to circle back to my reflections of the work that I have been sharing as part of Jamie Vollmer's 'Schools Cannot Do it Alone' network. Originally tapped to lead a business roundtable tasked to come up with ideas and strategies to improve the status of public schools, Jamie was a harsh critic of the system. After becoming immersed in the work, Jamie was transformed into one of the most vocal of public school advocates. In the beginning, his philosophy was one that focused on this idea that if schools were simply run like a business, it would 'fix' the problem. His famous 'Blueberry Story' experience was a turning point in his view of public schooling. In this video, Jamie debunks several myths and misconceptions about public schools, among them the idea that schools should be run as a business. 

At the same time, he acknowledges there are some areas where a business approach in education makes sense. Where applicable, I believe many schools apply those business lessons where appropriate to do so. We do here at Hudson.

Yet, I have spoke of the distinctions that make businesses and the enterprise of public schools distinctly different. The point I have most commonly made is the fact we have no control of our 'raw material'. In October of 2015, I wrote this about the raw material that is our students:

....To accept this premise would, I believe remove the individuality and humanness of the students we work with daily in our schools. Consider this: in a factory or manufacturing industry we can set quotas for production. Certainly General Motors has a certain number of cars that are expected to come off the assembly line in a given day. John Deere most likely utilizes a quota system to produce a certain amount of tractors. This system works well for manufacturing industries because cars and tractors are not people. Those industries are dealing with a raw material that is fixed, stable, uniform, rigid, and orderly. This enables those assembly lines to operate in a systematic and efficient manner. What happens when that raw material isn't uniform? It's imperfection makes it unusable and therefore it is discarded (hence the quality control department). From: Cars and Tractors are not People, October 6, 2015

I expanded on this theme in April of this year when reflecting on Vollmer's Blueberry Story in the column, 'We Take then All. No Matter What'. Indeed, I think the raw material argument is relatively easy to make and provides a relatively simple illustrations to emphasize the point. But Vollmer doesn't stop there in his contrast between the world of business and education. He offers several other reasons why the traditional business model isn't easily transferrable to school systems: publicly elected governance, politically charged funding, and competing stakeholders.

Let's think about the stakeholders for a moment. In business, stakeholders are pretty much united in their focus: how the company performs and creates profit. What is the interest of stakeholders in the school district? Well, quite frankly it depends on the stakeholder. The retiree on a fixed income with children long since graduated and moved away is interested in low property taxes. The parents of kindergarten children are interested in small class sizes. Those whose children are in high school want to ensure the district has a robust catalog of curricular and extra-curricular activities. Those are but a few examples! What is maddening about all of this is that stakeholder groups are rarely static. They tend to change and morph depending on the issue of debate. 

Then there is the funding issue. Of course we have spent (and will do so again when the legislature reconvenes) ample time lamenting the nature of supplemental state aid and how schools are funded. But as one of the largest line items in the school budget, it is a very politically charged discussion that is not easily resolved, and is only done so annually when a political solution is reached. If a business were to run into a problem with capital, they can raise their prices or cut overhead. While a school district can't raise their prices, we can cut our overhead. Except wait: remember those stakeholders who wanted smaller class sizes?

That's really the beauty of the system and why, quite frankly it would be a mistake to apply a business model wholesale to the operation of a school district. And indeed, why publicly elected governance is so important to our mission. They are elected to represent the vast scope of stakeholders and all their interests, providing a conduit from their neighborhoods to the board table, while at the same time working for the good of the entire community. Sometimes a difficult task indeed!

There will be no column next week but we'll return soon and I'll begin to outline for you the board's priorities for the next legislative session. 

 

The American Recovery Plan

On March 11, 2021 President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan into law. Included in this plan was $123 billion to be used for school districts to safely reopen schools. The K-12 public school version of this funding has been referred to as the Elementary and Secondary School Relief Fund or ESSER III, (following of course ESSER I and II which were signed into law during the Trump administration). For the Hudson Community School District, the appropriation is $419,085. Of that, the law requires we reserve 20% or $83,817 to address learning loss as a result of the pandemic.

Since the onset of the pandemic, our district has received over $660,000 in federal stimulus funds. For the most part, these funds can be used for a broad range of purposes, provided of course there is a connection to the pandemic or activities that can be used to mitigate a future pandemic. The guidance states in part that; the funds are authorized to "...sustain the safe operation of schools, and address the impact of the coronavirus on students."

As of yet, our focus on the allocation of these funds have been used for such things as PPE and the purchase of equipment that was used for disinfecting our buildings and instructional spaces. We also made the decision to hire an additional first shift custodian to help with cleaning and disinfecting during the day. For the immediate future, we'll continue to employ the position through this funding stream. During the last school year, we also made an additional investment in our online learning platforms, using an online curriculum known as Pathways for the elementary, and expanding the use of a platform that had traditionally been used for credit recovery for grades 7-12. Since we won't be providing a voluntary virtual option this year, we will discontinue the Pathways platform and scale back the 7-12 program to its pre-pandemic application. We also have a dedicated fund to help us provide internet connectivity to those families who need assistance. In our case, we have an inventory of devices that are assigned as needed. I'll also point out that we still have plenty of capacity in this fund to meet additional needs. If we can help in any way, please reach out to Mr. Bell. Finally, the first four weeks of June included a summer school program that was designed with the specific intent of addressing learning loss and was open to students in grades 1-11. 

Obviously the examples mentioned above do not represent an exhaustive or comprehensive accounting of our utilization of these resources. We have been deliberate in our approach and worked hard to ensure that the funds are spent wisely and in a manner that provides maximum benefit to our school district. Luckily we don't need to be in a hurry to make these investments since the latest guidance seems to suggest we have until September of 2024 to take advantage of these resources. Yet one substantial and costly project that rises to the surface for us is the ventilation and HVAC system in the high school. Lucky for us, that is exactly the type of project that would be permitted under the legislation:

"Inspection, testing, maintenance, repair, replacement, and upgrade projects to improve the indoor air quality in school facilities, including mechanical and non-mechanical heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems, filtering, purification and other air cleaning, fans, control systems, and window and door repair and replacement."

But before we move forward with this or any other large scale project we would like you to have an opportunity to provide some input and feedback into how some of these funds are used. Next week the board will meet to do several things that are designed to set the stage for our new school year and provide an opportunity for you to weigh in on our investment strategy. As a start, the board will be updating our Return to Learn plan. Part of that update will include a very brief, two question survey on our plans for these resources. 

Be on the lookout for this communication next week. 

The Open Enrollment Factor

Recently, the governor of Iowa signed into law a bill banning school districts from implementing what were known as voluntary diversity plans. Since the Waterloo Community School District had previously implemented a voluntary diversity plan, there are implications for Hudson that will result in enrollment growth. Generally speaking, if a student chose to open enroll into an Iowa public school district by the deadline of March 1, both the receiving and resident district had to grant that request. In the majority of cases, the receiving district could take action unilaterally to approve or deny that enrollment without regard to the resident district. Except that wasn't the case in school districts with voluntary diversity plans. Prior to this law being enacted, students from Waterloo were essentially blocked from open enrolling in Hudson Schools. Instead of the receiving district (Hudson) being allowed to take action, we had to wait until the resident district (Waterloo) approved the request. Most of the time those requests were denied. The idea behind these voluntary diversity plans was to maintain racial and socio-economic equilibrium in the district. 

Since I started tracking the data, the number of students open enrolling out of Waterloo into Hudson has dropped dramatically. My data set looks back to the 2006-2007 school year when we had almost 80 students open enrolling into Hudson from Waterloo. For the school year that just ended, we had 39 from Waterloo. By observing the chart, you can also see there are numerous school districts that contribute to our open enrollment 'in' number. When viewed in total, we number approximately 100. It is worth pointing out that we also had 46 students that open enrolled out of Hudson into other school districts. With an approximate 2:1 net gain, it is clear that Hudson is a beneficiary of the open enrollment laws.

Now that the law has changed and students are permitted to open enroll, the question becomes: how many can we expect? Well, at this point it is difficult to know exactly. To date, we have taken action on, and approved some 30+ requests to open enroll into our district. However enrollment is almost always a moving target and frankly we won't really know for sure until the first day of school. Even then we won't take an official tally until October 1st, which will solidify the number we use for our budget projections and five year enrollment forecast. 

Considering all of that, I think it would be premature to suggest a significant enrollment boom: at least in the immediacy. I do believe the growth will be steady, controlled, and manageable.

Keep in mind when we started the 2020-2021 school year, we experienced a decrease in enrollment of roughly 20. This was due largely to the pandemic. Some families elected to delay the start of school for their children or went the homeschool route. Some of those students we expect to return, others probably will not. Nevertheless, that prior year enrollment was used to model our current projection. As a reminder, my standard representation is based on the cohort methodology, which I would classify as a pretty rudimentary strategy. That illustration suggested enrollment of 726 for the 2021-2022 school year. The good news is that we are most certainly going to be above our original projection. How much remains an open question. 

When factoring in all the other known variables, at this point I can estimate that number somewhere in the vicinity of 757. To put that in perspective, it is just a handful of students above the 2019-2020 school year (which was an enrollment 'high water mark' over the last decade). Keep in mind that will change. We will certainly have some move ins, move outs, open enrollees who decide to stay where they are, and others that will still need to be approved or denied. After all it is only the first week of July! 

All of this has led to questions from some folks about whether or not we have enough room. The simple answer is that, yes we do. Further, the board has the authority to control the flow of open enrollment. Even though we are currently projecting enrollment higher than it has been in almost 15 years, we have plenty of capacity at this point. 

Our construction strategy has been predicated on enrollment projections that would enable the district to move from what has traditionally been three sections per grade level to four sections per grade level. In the elementary and junior high building we have largely achieved creating that capacity with the completion of renovations in our K-8 building. This was based on what we have been seeing in regard to growth in our residential population, that being the third addition at Upper Ridges and the Twin Oaks development that is geographically located on and to the north of Ranchero Road. 

We'll move on to planning for renovations to the high school in the next 12-18 months, which has been in the planning stages all along. The pandemic has pushed some of this planning to the backburner and we are in the process of building the financial capacity we'll need when the time comes to move forward. Since the majority of our new students are concentrated in the elementary school this fits into our plans quite nicely.  

Bottom line: It's Good to Be a Pirate!