Recap of School Board Meeting on 7/10/2012

Resolution Passes!!!

I could not be more proud of our School Board’s work during Tuesday’s board meeting.  After many weeks of conversation, discussion, debate and even a little dissension we as a school board unanimously approved a Resolution expressing our concerns of the overemphasis of high-stakes testing.  (Click here to read the Resolution passed on July 10^th, 2012.)  I want to thank all of you that have on this issue attended a board meeting, shared with us, written letters and emails to us and the newspaper and who have shared your concerns about high stakes testing with the school board.

I want to take time to share with you what a great honor it was to be a part of yesterday’s vote. This was an item that while in general it was always supported by the school board the detailed language was important to each of us.  We are all strong minded individuals and we all had strong views about what is important to us regarding high stakes testing.  I cannot express well enough the appreciation I have for each of my fellow board members. The thing that few people get a chance to witness is how our meetings are often a conversation with one another, with the Superintendent and Assistant Superintendents and the district staff.  We talk through issues collectively.  If you watch or attend a meeting you will quickly see that we each have different views and approaches but we work with one another for the betterment of our students, schools and district.

During the meeting, in addition to other business that was addressed, we also had an award presentation for the “Aspiring Teacher Scholarship” by the Suncoast Schools Credit Union and the Citrus County Educational Foundation.  The Board had a public hearing and approved revisions to Policy 4.71, “Participation of Home Education and Private School Students in Extracurricular Activates”.  These changes were required due to expansion of the laws during the last legislative session.

Also during the meeting I was most excited about the Board’s consent to my recommendation of live internet streaming of our school board meetings in addition to revamping the video archiving and playback features in order for the meetings can be more widely accessible to the public.  This will not happen overnight but I am encouraged that in the very near future you will be able to tune into our school board meetings on your computers and/or electronic devices.

Lastly, I want to share what School Board Member Ginger Bryant shared with us at the end of the meeting.  Ms. Bryant who was a long time reading and english teacher at Crystal River Middle School had the opportunity to hear author, Jamie Robert Vollmer speak during the Florida School Board Association Conference last month. She purchased his book, “Schools Cannot Do It Alone” and ever the teacher, she read to us an excerpt from the book that has become more popularly know in education as, “The Blueberry Story”.

The Blueberry Story: The teacher gives the businessman a lesson

“If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn’t be in business very long!”

I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of inservice. Their initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.

I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that had become famous in the middle1980s when People magazine chose our blueberry as the “Best Ice Cream in America.”

I was convinced of two things. First, public schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging “knowledge society.” Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure, and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly. They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! TQM! Continuous improvement!

In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced — equal parts ignorance and arrogance.

As soon as I finished, a woman’s hand shot up. She appeared polite, pleasant. She was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload.

She began quietly, “We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream.”

I smugly replied, “Best ice cream in America, Ma’am.”

“How nice,” she said. “Is it rich and smooth?”

“Sixteen percent butterfat,” I crowed.

“Premium ingredients?” she inquired.

“Super-premium! Nothing but triple A.” I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.

“Mr. Vollmer,” she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, “when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?”

In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap…. I was dead meat, but I wasn’t going to lie.

“I send them back.”

She jumped to her feet. “That’s right!” she barked, “and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them with ADHD, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English as their second language. We take them all! Every one! And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it’s not a business. It’s school!”

In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides, custodians, and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, “Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!”

And so began my long transformation.

Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.

None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when, and how we teach to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a post-industrial society. But educators cannot do this alone; these changes can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission, and active support of the surrounding community. For the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve, and therefore, to improve public education means more than changing our schools, it means changing America.

VISIT Jamie Robert Vollmer Web site: www.jamievollmer.com

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