Van Wijk Blog

This is an opinion piece. I will refer back to the title of the blog: Rants, Raves and Reality Checks. This is a little of each of those.

Fact: The town needs to urgently address the high school facility issue.

Fact: The town’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen (BMA) made a mistake.

“They” always say – don’t ask a question in open court when you don’t know what the answer will be. I’d like to modify that: Don’t ask a poorly phrased question that proposes an unfavorable suggestion with not enough context around it for the casual respondent to make a good decision.

According to the Commercial Appeal, the town’s administrator recommended that the ‘poll’ not be conducted until after the public meeting to inform the local citizenry. That would have made a lot of sense. And I would again add – you could have used a much better way to phrase the question.

And mailing a 1-question survey is not a (scientific) poll. It is amateur hour. It shows that our elected leaders are not that good at politics. Which is your silver lining right there.

A scientific poll asks well-constructed questions of a representative sample of the population. It should also take into account the status of the respondents: tax payer? voter? general demographics of the respondent?

Now the town finds itself in a pickle. The high school facility issue still needs to be addressed. Urgently. But now there is a degree of controversy about a poorly worded survey that was asked at the wrong time. And I bet the local media will eat it up!

I guess things are about to get interesting… No public vote is required for the BMA to act and raise the property tax rate ‘up to 38 cents.’ So what will they do? Act boldly? Something HAS to be done.

And I’d like to point out too: “a 38 cent increase in property taxes” is a meaningless and scary sounding phrase with no context. The median home price in Collierville is around $250,000. Those homeowners, to the best of my understanding, will pay approximately $200 per year (!) more in taxes. That’s less than $20 per month. And it would still leave Collierville taxes the lowest of all towns/cities in the county.

I don’t have all the answers… But I trust my elected school board and my elected Board of Mayor and Aldermen to make bold decisions that look at the long range benefit of the school system and my town. I have three children in elementary school. I own a ‘median-ish’ house in town. I have a lot at stake here. I’d hate for misinformation to get in the way of the right thing to do.

Today’s school board meeting started with three special presentations:

• Bailey Station Elementary had two choruses perform
• Iyonia Boyce from Collierville Middle School was the Tennessee honoree for middle school receiving the Prudential Spirit of Community Awards.
• Collierville’s inaugural STEM Scholars were presented – 25 for each middle school, selected from over 200 applicants based on aptitude and an interview.

Having these celebrations brought a record crowd to town hall, with all standing room taken up.

Agenda – Based on not having been able to complete all preparations, moving the OPEB trust membership recommendation to another meeting.

Minutes and Monthly Financial Statements approved. Nutrition (underuse of offerings) seems to be the biggest challenge area.

Chairman’s report –

• Tennessee School Board Association (TSBA) legislative update in conjunction with the legislative session in Nashville.
  BEP funding major topic. Has not been fully funded by state in years.
  Current session sees various bills on different aspects of education – voucher bill; school funding reallocation bill; charges for record requests under FOI over 1 hour and over 25 copies; home school student athletic participation; searching of electronic devices – search warrant required; lobbying expenses – go from prohibition to line item disclosure; dismissal of support staff bill – due process rights; election of superintendents; local school board to assess fees to charter operators (going from $500 to 5000 for new, and 500 to 1000 for annual renewal); parental demand bill for turn around plan.
• STEM night presentation at CMS last week was very well attended

Superintendent’s report

• OPEB trust update – actuary meeting with CFO to review scenarios. Next month expecting update on this plus an update on health benefits. Numbers looked encouraging.
• All-day assessment training in Jackson on TN Ready Assessment.
• On schedule to have public meeting for high school 3/31 at Harrell Theater, 6pm. Survey forthcoming of all public. Town website has informational videos, and questionnaire to public about the associated tax increase from the town coming soon.
• Working on annual budget.

Policy update – Sales of surplus items – minor updates to allow for online auctions and to allow for multiple times a year events rather than end of year only.

Recommended Actions:

Textbook Committee recommendations. State required process. Blanket adoption option – to allow any books that meet state approved list. Current math books through 2017. Approved.

5 year strategic plan. Broad goals from the board turned into specific actions, with responsible parties assigned, progress indicators, etc. Input from all key stakeholders. Approved. (will be posted on Collierville Schools Website soon)

Middle School Rezoning Recommendation. Tight at SFMS, but would be OK for this year. Reviewed moving whole neighborhood/subdivision, which would flip capacity issues to CMS, looked at phased changes, looked at elementary school expansion to 6^th grade but that would require rezoning there. Proposal out of the rezoning committee to stand pat for one year, and start public process next school year and use the current high school site as the third middle school starting in 2016-2017.
Note: open enrollment count at SFMS – 33 total this year which will reduce some as 8^th graders move out. Most non-resident MS students are at CMS.
Kevin Vaughan pointed out: prefer single rezoning event, not doing this twice with CHS campus conversion. Approved.

Approval of Special Courses. State has to approve annually.

New: abnormal psychology at CHS

Returning courses: ACT Prep math; honors etymology, calculus III, facing history in ourselves, ACT prep English (this will be the third annual approval – after which they are ‘vested.’

Meeting Adjourned.

Today’s meeting was moved up a day and hosted at the Collierville Schools Central Office. Public attendance was high at the start of the meeting due to the Collierville Middle School presentations on the agenda.

There were no comments from the public.

The first special presentation was by the Collierville Arts Council. In the spring they organized a special event around the Suessical musical, and had a competition of Cat in the Hat art among the many classes that participated. Two winning works of art were framed and presented to the Board for display in the central office. For next spring, a similar event will be held for the Wizard of Oz.

The second special presentation had Principal Jones from CMS introduce several members of the pom squad to the board. Mr Jones highlighted some of the recent accomplishments of the squad, which is going to the state competition this coming weekend, and already has a bid to nationals in Orlando later in the year. The second part of the presentation was where Mr Jones had three award winning student artists present their work to the board for review. These all won prizes at the recent competition at Briarcrest, and most also won prizes at the fair.

The first item on the formal agenda is the approval of the monthly financial statements. Up for review and approval at this meeting are the September financials. In response to Mr. Hansen’s question on how the district is doing financially, Mr Aitken stated Collierville Schools are doing well financially. They have not yet needed to take the town up on the line of credit that was made available. This was helped by the fact that some property and sales tax revenues came in early. The state’s BEP adjustment for attendance numbers was delayed a little and will use November 15 attendance numbers. No major adjustment is expected. Overall, startup costs were a major concern, but it has all gone well.

The financial statement for Septermber is approved, and will be posted online soon, in the same location where the previous months are posted.

The chairman’s report touches upon the recent opportunities the board has had to attend school functions, and the positive experiences those visits afford. Also, various state rankings, including for ACT scores, are showing Collierville near the top of state rankings. Seniors are reporting a lot of scholarship offers and feel very well prepared for college life.

The superintendent’s report is extensive:

1. The TSBA convention in Nashville is this weekend and will be attended by board members
2. On December 1, at the Harrell Theater, reelected board members Messerly and Chism will be sworn in. This will be following the Collierville Elementary spelling bee in that location.
3. In accordance with State Law, the process which will lead to adoption of a mathematics text book has begun. This process will start in December with the presentation of selected teacher and parent members for the Local Textbook Selection Committee to the board for approval. In January through March, the state prescribed process will lead the committee through the steps for selection, and in March the board will formally adopt a textbook for mathematics.
   In response to a question from Mr Hansen about the possibility of state educational standards being in flux, Mr Aitken deferred to Dr Crafford, who affirmed the state requirement to go through the process even though standards may change. Ms Claney added that while a text book has to be adopted, it does not have to be purchased.
   Part of the comments on state standards included some comments by Mr Aitken. The name ‘common core’ is likely to end with the next legislative session, but a Tennessee State Standard will be in place. Mr Hansen added that he hopes the legislature will come to a decision on this early in the next session.
   Also of note: the governor has opened up a website to collect public feedback on educational standards.
4. An update on transportation is next.
   In light of recent news about issues with SCS bus drivers the following points are made:
   - Ms Rike meets with Durham at least weekly
   - There are a lot of positives about the transportation arrangements for the municipalities, and those need some highlighting also. A lot of drivers in the municipalities are the same drivers who have been driving the routes for many years.
   - Most of the assurances made to SCS by Durham were either already in place for the municipal transportation contract, or are being extended to the municipalities, including the rescreening of existing drivers.
   - The 6 municipal superintendents are meeting with Durham executives this week.
   - Main areas of concern are recruitment and retention of drivers. Of 139 routes, only 11 currently have out of town drivers. This compares to 68 out of town drivers at the start of the school year.
   - The transportation department is looking into the future and exploring options to bring transportation in-house. This will come with significant start up cost. For example a single new bus will cost upwards of $104,000.
   - In reference to the Andy Wise reporting on WMCTV5, the comment was made that ‘not all information provided finds itself on air.’
   - Finally in response to a question from Mr. Vaughan, Ms Rike stated that in the time after the first two weeks of operation, there have been no significant issues or complaints about transportation in Collierville. There has been one accident, which involved a resident at fault.
5. Thanks for the various veterans’ day events board members attended across town.
6. The capital planning process is under way, and the December board meeting should include an update of the plans. Mr Hansen adds that he has had some informational talks with the town Mayor and administrator, and they are very receptive to the needs of the school district and have faith in the board and administration in place.
7. The board self-evaluation process is beginning.
8. Finally, a district emergency response plan is being provided to the state. Due to the sensitive nature of some of the information, the board will meet in executive session, probably at the start of the next meeting.

In other agenda items, a memorandum of agreement for evaluation of the superintendent was approved.

The final item on the agenda is a capital improvement agreement with Shelby County and Shelby County Schools. This will allow for $1M in reroofing for Collierville High School. These are 2013-2014 funds. The current year funds are being determined, and an average daily attendance (ADA) share will be made available to all municipal districts.

Summary of the working session of the Collierville Schools board of education. This is from my notes and observations.

All Board members present. Attendance by a handful of the public, several central office staff, and Chip Blanchard from CHS.

First item is a preview of the proposed changes to the employment application policy to include the prospective employees’ agreement to notify the school system of any criminal activity that took place after start of employment, as well as any state sexual predator registrations.

Second item is the proposed policy on school attendance zones, and specifically the process to be followed to change them. The key items to note here are that necessary changes will be carefully weighed and planned, and will go through a public comment process prior to any vote. The basics:

• intended to address any overcrowding, long-term capacity planning, feeder patterns and transportation concerns
• when zoning changes are to be considered, a committee will be formed that includes representatives from all stakeholders, including the central office, the town, the schools, parent representative, etc.
• school zone changes will be communicated in the spring prior to the school year they would go into effect
• ample communication of any proposed changes will allow the public to provide input to the board before any vote
• generally, the process would start in Oct/Nov in order to allow for a board vote in February or March
• changes in attendance zones will have an impact on the ability to allow open enrollment of students as space at schools has a limit

Mr Hansen expressed the board’s desire to plan carefully and deliberately for school zone changes, as these are likely to attract passionate responses from the parents.

Mr Vaughan asked about grade restructuring – which Mr Aitken said would follow a similar process if considered.

The next agenda item is a presentation by Ms Claney and Ms Robbins on school district test results. At the time of the writing of this report, the presentation could be found at this link. Key statistics in these results show that Collierville Schools outperform the state averages across the board, generally by a very significant margin. Rather than averaging the Collierville schools’ scores, the presentation includes the range of scores, showing that EVERY Collierville school exceeds the averages.

It should be noted that usually, this data is in the principals’ hands by June, but was not made available by the state until the start of the school year this year. Ms Claney’s office estimated a predicted set of results, which turned out to be right in line with the actual results. This allowed Collierville Schools to plan and implement measures to address achievement gaps immediately.

The board discussed that it is very hard to improve performance when performance is already at a high level.

In essence, three Collierville Schools were identified as eligible for targeted assistance schools based on the highest % of economically disadvantaged students attending. These are, in order, Collierville Elementary, Bailey Station Elementary and Sycamore Elementary. Each of these schools was assigned an additional teacher and teachers’ aide to target any and all underperforming students, regardless of their economic status. This is expected to have a positive effect on the overall performance of the school, and the underperforming students specifically. These are paid for through (Federal) Title I funds. Federal monitors visited the district this week, and were impressed with the program already in effect for this school year.

After this update, the superintendent talked about the need to have a half-day board retreat scheduled in the near future to complete several required processes, including a self-evaluation, as well as establishing a formal mission and vision statement.

Mr Aitken also announced that 7887 students were enrolled in Collierville Schools by school day 11. This is 98.1% of the projected attendance, and expected to be stable. Schilling Farms Middle is at 1051 students, and Collierville High has 2179 students, 632 of which are freshmen. These numbers are high but in line with expectation. As a result of these enrollment numbers, the State Department of Education has agreed to start a true-up of funding after day 40 enrollment numbers are reported. The first regular payment from the state has already been received.

Mr Aitken said transportation is stabilizing, after experiencing some initial startup challenges. The transportation department is using ridership numbers to determine whether any routes need to be consolidated or even eliminated.

Other quick updates:

• Parental responsibility zones will be a topic of discussion for the board retreat
• The school district and individual school websites will be updated soon. The new look and feel will be consistent throughout and is being tested right now.
• In Nutrition, meals at schools are very well received. Some challenges exist with the software to run the registers, but the vendor is fully engaged and this is expected to be resolved soon.
• Powerschool is expected to be up for parent access by September 8.
• Payroll is doing very well, with minimal issues reported.
• 600 laptops were provided to the teachers, who were very pleased to have their obsolete equipment replaced.
• Starting in September, each school board business meeting will celebrate a school in the district.

Finally, in the chairman’s report, Mr. Hansen touched upon the need to address some items at the upcoming board retreat. He also stressed the need to have board members be made available to address local civic events as invited. One great benefit of local control of the schools is local visibility and accessibility of school board and central office personnel. Mr Hansen has been on touch with various parents over the past couple of weeks, discussing how easily issues were getting resolved.

Summary of the June 10 Board Meeting, from my notes and observations.

Board member Cox was not in attendance. Low attendance from the public, but approximately a dozen Collierville Schools staff were present.

There were no public comments.

At the request of Mr. Vaughan, the proposed policy on Interscholastic Athletics was removed from the agenda for further discussion at a later time.

In the Chairman’s report, Mr. Hansen touched upon the June 9 Board of Mayor and Aldermen meeting where they reviewed the town budget with the school budget included. The inclusion of the school system doubled the overall town budget. The BMA responded favorably to the budget, and also notified the school system that $5M in an advance has been made available to allow for seamless transition until the August 15 first payment from the State. Mr. Hansen also discussed the move into the Central Office. While there are some minor logistical items to address, the move has been completed successfully, and the Board expresses its gratitude to all the Town personnel that have made the past 6 months as smooth as possible.

The Superintendent’s update covered the hiring of Mr. Roger Jones at Collierville Middle, the logistics of the move into the central office and the fact that the agreement with Durham Transportation should be finalized any day now.
Mr Aitken also performed the reading into the record of certain federal funding details, as required by federal law. This essentially covered the Title I funding for Collierville Elementary and Sycamore Elementary ($606k), the Title IIA funding for all 8 schools ($285k) and the Title III funding ($25k) for English Language Learners (ESL).

Mr. Hansen asked about the Request for Qualifications for architects and engineers, and was informed that a list of qualified firms is being compiled from which the school district will be able to choose.

Mr. Simpson’s consultant update – he highlighted the central office hours of operation (7-5 daily).The other update revolved around the work that has been put into motion to create a 5-year capital improvement plan. This is a plan that is taking inputs from all areas of the school district, and reviewing the state and utilization of each facility. The plan will be presented to the board when finished, and will be updated annually after that. A committee with representatives from all major departments of the school district, as well as the town, parental representation and a board member will be involved in this plan.

Mr. Hansen asked if the transportation contract delays are holding things up from a planning and preparation perspective. Mr. Simpson replied that the routing and planning activities are progressing, and are independent from the selection of the provider. Mr Hansen also asked if the facility handoffs were smooth – which they were, with nothing extraordinary as exceptions. Finally, Mr Hansen wanted to know if there were any significant repairs to be completed at this time, and there were no major ones to discuss. The high school roof will not be done until the end of the next school year. Mr Vaughan asked about high school parking lot paving – and was informed by Mr. Aitken that something is being worked out with the town in that area.

The next agenda item covered the updates to the policy items that were covered as first reading at the May 27 working session. All updates were cosmetic to reflect typos and minor textual refinements, and one legislative update that needed to be made. Following a quick walkthrough of the changes only, the board suspended the rules and approved all the policy items up for discussion.

Mr. Vaughan made a statement that these policies may seem strange at times, but are almost exclusively mandated to be put in place by state law. “Check the cross references for the laws that govern this”

The next agenda item is the budget. It has had minor adjustments since the last presentation, and these were to address an adjustment in the state enrollment estimate (up a little) and the reduction in staffing estimates from 711 to 704. The total budget is in excess of $61M, and is a balanced budget. The total budget calls for 443 teachers, which is an increase of 17 over the count for last year. (Ms Chism pointed out that in addition of these 17 new teacher positions, approximately 15 teachers either retired or resigned, and will be replaced).

Mr Aitken mentioned that in an exception, the state has agreed to perform a review of enrollment and make any funding adjustments for the new municipal districts in October, which is normally done at the end of the school year.

Mr Vaughan asked if the transportation vendor (Durham) has any local competitors, and if the contract details to be worked out include pricing. Mr. Aitken clarified that the details are about contract language and stipulations, not pricing.

In the special revenue fund budget (funding from other sources, mostly federal programs), the nutrition budget for Collierville Schools is $2.26M, and the IDEA special education budget is $1.37M.

In a unanimous vote, the budget was passed, which was followed by applause from those in attendance.

The board then moved on the approval of the agreement with the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement fund, which passed.

The final two agenda items covered technology contracts:

• Blackboard Connect – the tool used to robocall and mass text parents about school closures, early dismissals and special messages – $12k
• Microsoft software, including the OS, Office, and the Office 365 online email service. Teachers will have many Gb of space in their cloud storage. Teachers will also be allowed to purchase a full MS Office license for home use for $10. – $32k.

Both of these contracts were approved, and the meeting was adjourned.