The Quandry that is Coming.... Hiring Teachers

This summer I joined the "High Quality Teaching" sub-group in the school district redesign planning sessions.  Now that the district consolidation is underway, I've stuck with that group as much as I can, working on the teacher qualifications we will use to hire all of the district's teachers.

Based on the recent superintendent debacle, here is my biggest concern going forward:

The unified school board has three members from the old boards and will have both superintendents from the old districts.  I fear that old loyalties will hamper a rigorous hiring process.  I suspect that we will see a goodly number of teachers hired because they've been around for years, they're known, maybe they're even comfortable to work with.  While I do believe loyalty and history matter, they could lead us to hire back teachers who are not prepared or willing to teach according to the values of the district.  Teachers on our subgroup tell me that many of the things we are asking for will be scary and new, particularly for veteran teachers.  I've decided that we do them a disservice to hire them back into an environmnet where they don't fit.  I'm okay with supporting those who are willing to try, but they need a defined period to prove progress or they need to be moved out.  If we can't do that, we will get our teachers but lose the vision.

The Wheels on the Bus...

The process of consolidating two small school districts is not an easy thing.  My dearest hope is that it will be like sausage when we are all done -- no one will want to see the process but an amazing result will come out of it.

The recent moves to find a superintendent for the district went poorly:  Instead of an open search, the board opted to privilege internal candidates.  This pitted the two supers of the old districts against each other and against a well-qualified and extremely well-supported HR director from one of the districts.  The school board put all three through a public interviewing process only to retreat to the position that they felt they needed to the two current supers because, by their contracts, we have to pay them anyway. Perhaps to mitigate the unrest keeping them would cause (there is great displeasure with one super in particular), the board intends to contract with the intermediate school district for a superintendent who then will hire the two current supers as associate supers...

I could say many things about this, but I'm going to restrict myself to three conculsions:

1) The unified school board screwed up in the process of making this decision but I don't think it was because they are evil.  In some ways they were set up to fail by the WISD (Washtenaw Intermediate School District) board who chose the school board for the new unified district.  The WISD put three members of the old school boards on this new board.  These people all had good working relationships with their superintendents and probably felt some loyalty toward them.  They certainly relied heavily on these two supers and firing someone on whom you have counted must suck.  FWIW, both superintendents did work hard for this consolidation.  Never once did they moan in public about it being the end of their jobs, though talk all along has been that there would be only one super for the new district...

2) The board should make a sincere and public apology to the three internal candidates.  They need to say that they went about this all wrong.  That they made a mistake in opening a search at all.  They should beg the HR candidate to stay and then accept it with grace (and guilt) when she does not.  The board should support our two current supers (as much as their individual record as administrators merits) in their search for the next job, because we all need to be clear that they are serving out their contracts and nothing more.  The bold, fresh leadership we were promised with this merger will have to come from WISD's Scott Menzel for now (I actually think he'll have some in him) but must come in a full and thorough OPEN search in 2014 or 2015.  And for what it is worth, I favor 2015, when we have an elected school board to run the search and make the choice.

3) There is lesson to be learned here and I hope the board and administration(s) show that they learned it with their actions.  I want to see a clear, detailed, and transparent plan for what decisions will be made when (and how) over the next six months, at least.  The plan the board voted on last night should have been proposed with the proposal to vote on consolidation back in August or in the moments following the November vote.  What has to be decided now?  What can wait?  How can we position ourselves to do the big things.  In other words, what do we need to do to take care of business for now but not tie us down so that we can't make the substantial changes we want once we have them planned out.  I suspect this will be particularly important to plan as we hire teachers for the coming year.  If we think the superintendent decision was painful, I can hardly imagine how hard the teacher decisions will be.

More on that soon...

End of an Era

Today, I quit my gym.  The last 8+ years has been a good run.  This gym saw me through my post-babies body reclamation project and recovery from two surgeries.  There are friendly folks I have enjoyed seeing a couple of times a week for years on end, even if I was not always sure of their names.  There are a couple of good teachers who manage to kick my ass once in a while.

But the time has come.  The circles I travel don't take me that way anymore and a destination gym doesn't fit well with my life for the next few years.  It took me a long time to decide this, I paid a bunch up front to have a forever cheap monthly rate and that has tied me to this gym, but even $21/month is too much if you find yourself struggling to get there even once a week.  And I've been cheating on my old gym by taking classes at a place in Ypsi for over a year...

I'm not giving up gym-ing, of course, but I'm throwing in with the local folk, putting some more money into my workouts and looking forward to the sweating more with friendly folks and actual friends in a hometown establishment.  Ypsi Studio, here I come!

Food Positive

At O's request, we all watched Food, Inc last night.  I know we are behind the times but as a vegetarian household that shops mostly at the coop, frequents the farmers market, grows a few things in our own yard, avoids fast food restaurants, and has a CSA, I wasn't really thinking that we needed this film.

The problem, of course, is that while my foodways/values are well-established and deeply held, my kids do encounter other people and have been rather exposed of late to the wider world of crappy food and manipulative advertising.  And they're kids.  O in particular is struggling against a mighty, mighty sweet tooth and low, low impulse control.  I think he knows this and that is part of why he asked to watch the film. 

Seeing a few of their junk food weakneses (Reeses and Pringles) show up on the GMO list and hearing how this food plays to evolutionary elements that are hard for us to resist seemed to strengthen both kids' resolve to eat 'real' food.  They also got a good understanding of why our household actually spends a fair amount on our food and why doing so is a good thing. 

I'm glad they know real food, but I've struggled a bit in the last year to make it happen.  What I need, what we need, is for them to help more.  I've been saying this to them for much of the last year, but with little effect.  I'm still the one who shops, plans, prepares, serves, and (I am embarassed to admit) cleans up.  When I have time, I don't mind these tasks, but getting them all to happen (and not eating dinner at 9:30pm) has been quite the challenge of late. 

So today begins a new attempt to loop the kids into the project of awesome food (some of which needs to be readily available for those who can't yet plan for when they will want it).  At the kids' request, we will drop by the farm where we have a CSA (okay, some of the motivation here is see the goats, but we will play with the veggies too).  And because we have some errands to do, we will likely eat our dinner out tonight, but we will discuss where we choose to spend our restaurant dollars and why that matters.

Hiking Adventures



My parent's cottage is on a truly lovely stretch of Lake Michigan in the Upper Peninsula, but the call of Lake Superior is strong. Adventure buddies and I headed out for hike along its amazing cliffs. With all the spur trails to scenic vistas and the exploring of sandstone rock ledges in the water, this nearly twelve mile hike took us seven hours. This is now my favorite Pictured Rocks adventure: Mosquito River/Falls, along Grand Portal, then back Chapel Falls trail.

The hike begins...

Time

My kids have a fairly loose relationship with time.  All are in agreement that we should go swimming on this hot ass late afternoon, but they are chilling in the AC doing this (Geometry) and that (pillow fort in the basement) and not pulling on swimsuits...  While they are engaged in worthy pursuits, the pool is only open at certain times and soon we will be at the point where it no longer makes sense to spend the money to go to the pool.  And, inevitably, that will be when they are ready to go.  And then they will be mad at me as if I somehow conspired to keep them from the water.  It is the same thing with dinner.  They aren't hungry, don't want dinner, want to be doing other things, then *poof* they are hungry and they're annoyed to find no food is ready to eat.  So.... I guess I will go get myself ready in the hopes that they will soon decide that on a 93 degree day, it is a good time to go for a dip.

Summer List - 2012

In no particular order, here are my goals for this summer:

-recover my home office

-get a password management system up and running

-get tap shoes and use them (for clogging)

-ride at least three 50+ mile road adventures

-tromp or ride in the woods once a week

-put a ceiling in the basement

-read books everyday

-put new edging around front beds

-grow out my hair or chop it all off (decide before Sept 4)

-draft 3 chapters of my book

-write 2-3 new urban history lectures

-sort all my teaching files

-ride to AA to work once a week (when not traveling)

-take kids on an overnight backpacking adventure

-donate or trash at least one bag/box of stuff for every week of Jun, July, and August

-paint Emma's door to look like the Tardis (I could use help with this)

-teach Emma to cook

-help Owen find a sporty activity he loves

-develop a workable chore schedule for the kiddos

-avoid all contact with poison ivy