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Molalla I'm going to share nine systemic reforms by our board. We had to develop political support for each these 9 systemic reforms, but we would not have been able to make any of these reforms without having the leverage provided by full choice for our parents. 1. School-Based Hiring—Schools, particularly those with specialized programs and personalities, must be able to do their own selection. We eliminated seniority and made it clear that it is the superintendent's responsibility to hire and fire principals but it is the schools responsibility to hire teachers. The district got rid of 43 principals out of 170. Schools now hire without regard to seniority. 2. Equalization of Per Pupil Funding—Equity extends down to schools. With wide funding difference among schools previously hidden by weak budgeting practices, we created budget transparency that showed large disparities among schools. We then moved to a per student funding that funds all schools equally including specialty and magnet, charter, contract, and even voucher students. Everyone gets the full $8,000 per student. To counter building in an unhealthy incentive for low paid teachers, the schools' budgets are charged the average, not actual, salary for all teachers the school hires. 3. Teacher Termination—Schools must not be saddled with ineffective teachers if they are to improve, so we said, we have to make it possible for you to remove ineffective teachers and develop effective ones. We decided, why not offer a contract to the union to design a teacher run program? By putting the teachers at the site in charge, they developed a program that makes them defend the quality of their teachers to their public and gives them a powerful incentive to emphasize staff development. 4. Site-based Budget Control—We offered to let schools take over control of 95% of their operating budgets. It can be even more except that for some essential district services, site management doesn't make sense. For example, the district self-insures, and private providers can't effectively compete with the district for a school's business. Schools have the option of buying back up to 26% of central office services. As a result the district office has lost 473 positions while schools have added 600 more teachers. 5. Principal Training and Qualification—We changed principal qualifications from having to attend a formal course of training to establishing standards coupled with internship type on-the-job training. This change opened the door to minorities, particularly underrepresented people like Hispanic women who previously refused to buck the good-old-boy system of training. Now teachers are going to a colleague who is an instructional leader and saying, "You have do to this for us." When a school puts forward one of their own respected teachers to serve as principal, the district honors their request. For passive schools, we tell them, "We have a list of qualified people so either we can assign someone or you can find your own candidate you would like to have run your school. Which will it be?" 6. Replication
of Popular Programs—If a program is popular, why not
replicate it? Why try to create new, innovative programs when there are many proven specialty
programs that are needed? The Milwaukee district had one popular International Baccalaureate program. Now we
have 4. We had only one Montessori program, now we've got 7, more Montessori programs than any
other district. We feel that if there are 40 or more on a waiting list, then a new program should be
started within an existing 7. Multi-year Budgeting—We didn't want a short term fiscal horizon for schools so we instituted multi-year budgeting for schools. School can now carry over any surplus they end up with at the end of the year and also must assume any over spending they have by funding it in the following year. Carrying over surpluses and debt opens the door to long range capitalization of things like roof repair. A school can borrow against its future income, usually up to three years. In addition, if the school is trying fund capital improvements, the board will match the cost. The backlog of Milwaukee's unfunded building maintenance has dropped to zero. |
