We will
base decisions on what is best for students.
Richmond Public Schools Strategic Plan
Richmond Public Schools (RPS) Interim Superintendent
Jonathan Lewis used the first day of the school year as a setting in which to
inform the School Board that RPS is not performing well and to ask the board to
approve a plan that will fix things. Wait; take that back. Actually, Mr. Lewis
informed the board that there will be no “fix”. As reported in the Richmond
Times Dispatch 1 Lewis said, “What we’re
talking about really is not a fix, but a transformation.” Lewis went on to say,
“Like all transformations, it’s a very complex process... To arrive [at] a
place where we’ll be comfortable is several years away.” Lewis asked the board
to support a multifaceted, multiyear approach that he admitted would not produce
immediate results.
So,
what is this maven to make of all this? For most of the time I have been a
citizen of this almost tier one city on the James, I have been troubled and
perplexed by the performance of Richmond Public Schools. If you ignore my
multi-year fixation with our former mayor, I have probably written more about
RPS then any other subject. I even had the audacity to think that my neighbors
would elect me to the school board so I could transform things. I have praised
RPS; I have criticized RPS. I have allowed myself to participate in a multitude
of endeavors aimed at making RPS better. I have come away from all of them
disappointed.
But,
regardless of what I have said or done and regardless of how well our students
have been doing, RPS has always had a multitude of plans to fix things. Back in
the last decade, we had “New Directions.” Since I served as a facilitator at
public meetings presenting “New Directions” to the public, I should be able to
tell you what it was. But, I can't remember any of it. I suppose that what is not
memorable is usually forgotten.
Then,
with a new superintendent and new school board members we produced a five-year
strategic plan. As it says on the RPS website, “Overall, more than 500 committed, passionate individuals contributed
to this effort. They devoted more than 3,000 hours of their time in meeting,
researching, deliberating, and coming to agreement on the action plans.” I was one of those “500 committed” and some
of those 3,000 hours came out of the dwindling supply of hours left in my life.
As I remember it, we did meet, research and deliberate, but I am not sure we
had total agreement on the action plans. In any event the school board approved
the strategic plan on June 6, 2011. If you have the time and nothing better to
do, you can read the strategic plan here 2.
Now we have a
new superintendent (even if only “interim”) and almost entirely new school
board members, and it appears that we have a new plan (the Times-Dispatch
article sometimes refers to it as an approach rather than a plan). So, what is
in this plan or approach? The TD says it is a 12-point plan. A few of the
points are set forth in the TD article. These are:
1- Attendance:
We have to get our children to spend more time in school;
2- Teachers: We
need to get more outstanding teachers to supplement the ones we already have;
3- Curriculum:
We need to teach the entirety of our curricula, now just part of it;
4- Staff:
Everyone needs a more-defined role and decision-making needs to be decentralized.
I understand
that there are eight other points in Superintendent Lewis’s new approach that
TD reporter Zach Reid didn’t have space for in his story. However, this maven is
wondering exactly why we need a new plan (or approach if you prefer). After
investing 500 people and 3,000 hours (not counting the enormous amount of RPS
staff and consultant time and effort) in a strategic plan, wouldn’t you think
we had planned enough? Wouldn’t it also make sense to take a look at how that
strategic plan is working before going back to the proverbial drawing board?
Some of you readers may be skeptical and think that Richmond
Public Schools has done nothing to implement the five year strategic plan.
Well, you are wrong. RPS staff has spent a great deal of time implementing and
(alas) re-planning the five year plan. Just take a look at the links on the RPS
website page I cited above. In December 2011 and June and August 2012, RPS
staff reported to the school board their efforts in implementing many of the
strategic plan’s myriad action plans. RPS has even extended the planning
process, with three elementary and three high schools submitting their own
strategic plans. 3
However, with all this emphasis on the action plans, I
wonder if RPS staff have lost sight of the objectives that the strategic plan
was designed to accomplish. As stated in the report, these objectives represent
“An uncompromising commitment to
achieve specific, measurable, observable or demonstrable results that exceed
present capability and lead to accomplishing [RPS’s] mission.” These are those
four objectives:
1.
Each student will graduate ready for college
and career as a thoughtful reader, an effective writer, a critical thinker, and
a creative problem solver.
2.
Each student will achieve personal excellence
by discovering and developing extraordinary potential based on unique interests
and talents.
3.
Each student will be a socially responsible
citizen who leads the building of a sustainable global community.
4.
Each student will have the undeniable audacity
to fulfill dreams with integrity, passion, and confidence to positively impact
the world.
Some of you skeptics may think that these objectives were
just flowery language and that nobody really expected our students to meet them.
Well, as one of those glorious 500 who prepared the strategic plan, let me tell
you that you are wrong. We looked at these four objectives as being the core of
the strategic plan. We fully expected that the action plans that we formulated
would bring RPS to achieving those four objectives.
We must not forget these objectives. We must not forget that
RPS is not about SOL scores or about accreditation or about graduation rates.
RPS is about students. These students are people, not statistics. When our
scores drop, we must not forget that individual students are not receiving the
quality education that we promised them. When our graduation rates are low,
again we must remember that individual students are being deprived. So, instead
of a new plan or approach, which based on the four points mentioned in the TD
article seem to be nothing new, why don’t we hold our RPS employees, from the
Superintendent down, accountable for making our current strategic plan work.
When I ran for the school board, almost every candidate, in
every city district, included the word “accountability” in their campaigns. The
same is probably true of those who ran in last year’s election. Yet, I believe
that not many people employed by RPS are ever really held accountable for their
performances. Too many people at RPS headquarters have worked there so long
that they are tainted by the “this-is-good-enough-for-these-students” attitude
that prevails. Yet they still keep their jobs year after year. Too many school principals
are ineffective in moving their schools to excellence, yet they are there year
after year. Too many teachers are not adequate, yet they teach our children
every day year after year. (My HUGE apology to those administrators, principals
and teachers who excel at their jobs. I am not talking about you).
In a 2007 post on this blog, Fix Our Schools Now,
I set forth five items which had to be addressed “now” if Richmond Public
Schools were to succeed. These were 1- Attitude (We must consider every student
in RPS to be our own biological children or grandchildren); 2- Demand
Excellence (At the beginning of every school year we must expect that every one
of our students will achieve A’s and not C’s); 3- Teachers (We must hold all
teachers accountable for their students’ achievements); 4- Budget (Every
department head must establish the necessity for each taxpayer dollar of
funding they request each year); and Accountability (Every person entrusted
with the safety and future of our children must be held strictly accountable
for their performance).
The last item, accountability, is so significant that I need
to quote from it:
If members of the City Council are irresponsible in their oversight and funding of the schools, we as citizens should vote them out at the next election. If members of the School Board are not demanding excellence from students, teachers and administrators, or if they are not adequately controlling the school budget, we citizens should vote them out at the next election. If the Superintendent of Schools is not effectively and rapidly steering Richmond Public Schools toward greatness, we should insist that the School Board replace her. If teachers are not teaching their students, we should demand that their performance improve or that they be replaced.
When I wrote this I was young and naïve about how RPS
functions. (Well, at least I was naïve). I left out some of the most important
people who affect the performance of our children. These are the various
administrators that serve in RPS headquarters and the principals and other
administrators at our schools. We must have a similar standard of
accountability for all these RPS staff. Our students must succeed or you need
to find a new job.
To Superintendent Lewis I say, to the extent that your new
approach does not produce immediate results and we have to wait “several years”
to get to where we want to be, hundreds of Richmond children will go out into
the world unprepared to face business, college or the military. Superintendent
Lewis, the children of Richmond have been waiting more than “several years” for
the first-class education we owe them. We need no more plans; we need results.
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