Reflections on Single School Plans and District "Providers"

Hello, all!!!

So i spent all last Thursday at a meeting with a hundred + district people so they could tell us what we are supposed to do with this High Priority Schools Plan at our school. The district has already assigned us a provider, MGT of America. (I met the actual guy assigned to our school – he will be traveling back and forth from Roanoke City, VA for the 9 days that he will be spending with us at Los Angeles High School).

The meeting was stuffed full of talking head presentations that went on for hours. Unfortunately, one of the things that came out clearly was about the “needs assessment” associated with the HPSP. It became VERY clear that the “needs assessment” they were putting forward was not a needs assessment, It was rather, a compliance checklist to see how far along we are in our implementation of Superintendent Brewer’s plan. There was no discussion of what would happen to the school if we were found to be “far below basic” in reaching the benchmarks set by the district toward reaching goals set by the district using tactics created by the district. The most obvious example was the Curriculum Section: the “needs assessment’ asks how far LAHS has come in terms of implementation of pacing plans, content lessons, mandated assessments and ‘reducing’ the number of non-standards aligned materials. Based on how far we are, we are supposed to come up with a remedy and an action plan

This action plan is then to form part of our High Priority Schools Plan for LAHS and any monetary requirements are to be attached to the single school plan (so we can allocate the necessary funds – and if the funds are not there, we are supposed to go to the Local District, and if they are not there we are supposed to go to the Superintendent.) In a budget crisis this looks ridiculous and one of the district spokespeople on this issue even said so herself.

The Provider, in our case MGT of America, is supposed to facilitate the collaboration of our staff in
· conducting the “needs assessment”,

· selecting one key accountability or goal within each of the seven Plan Strategies (Curriculum, Instruction, Leadership, Parent/Community, Safety, Organizational and Support, Accountability) that we are going to be working on for the next school year Our goal must be related to their menu of potential overarching goals - see attached Accountabilities Sheet)

· and in in converting the information gathered in the “needs assessment” into an action plan around that goal, complete with benchmarks, responsible persons, expenditures and a timeline.
The district people were clear in saying that we had to choose a few goals to move on, and that they were not expecting us to achieve everything by the end of the 2009 school year (thank you very much).

At the meeting, many of the chapter chairs present pushed back on the plan (see the attached UTLA response that came out of the UTLA High Priority Schools Task Force: UTLA Position on High Priority Schools plan). We spoke from the podium and got our words in edgewise with our local district folks.

So what are the potential bad things that could come out of this and how can we counteract them? What are the things we might be able to push for in this process that might benefit our school in the long run?

Their needs assessment could potentially be used like a Stull Evaluation, especially around curriculum and instruction. If we are assessed to NOT be complying with district mandates (remember, these are not just for the 34 High Priority Schools, but for all LAUSD schools), this could be used against us as individuals and as a school.

If their needs assessment’s key findings become action steps that cost money and end up attached to our Single School Plan for Student Achievement then our money could be used for what Brewer and the Local District think are important, as opposed to what we might prioritize based on a REAL needs assessment.

What can we do within this process to get something for ourselves?

a) Use this as a way to jump start an actual collaborative process between the faculty to build common goals and a few things we might work on as a staff.

b) Using the process we discussed at the Starbucks on Wednesday, participate in the School Site Plan subcommittee to build into the SSP the key things we have gotten from the faculty that they want to see our school do. These are the things we believe the faculty wants to focus on, that we could get buy in on, etc.

c) Heavily promote/advertise/’brand’ those few key areas or goals to the faculty so that all instructional leaders (slc, depts, all of us) and other folks are very familiar with the main things we all feel our school should be working on.

d) Use that revised plan to guide our budget creations and hold administrators accountable in spending, as well as use the plan to guide policy decisions in all areas including SSC, SBM, etc.
Some thoughts on what do we have to do now:

Get ourselves familiar with whatever the hell the Single Plan is

Create our goals in each of the key areas (it seems like we have already said at least one of the goals is reorganizing Professional Development/Collaboration. That fits in in the Instruction area. It is also linked to the Curriculum section, as we are saying that a big reason to do this is to develop meaningful locally developed (rigorous, blah blah) curriculum that we can implement.
Make sure that we speak up and push that these goals are reflected even in a false needs assessment.

Make sure that we set up a subcommittee of SSC where we have a formal route to get input into the Single Plan

Push to have the Provider do a real needs assessment that uses existing structures like SLCs and departments, as opposed to creating anything new or artificial (or, even worse, temporary). We can start with what we have already done when we collected data from parents, teachers, and students last year. We even gave this to LD3 in October (see attached Information passed on at the OCT3 )

What is missing here? What is over the top? What is good? What is weak? Please reply all so we can dialogue.