Citizen Tom

This was a busy meeting, and at the end, the School Board approved the Fiscal Year 2009 budget.

Author’s note:  PWC School Division’s website is oddly integrated.  So a funny security message pops up when you link to the documents the School Board reviews at its meetings.  I will still link to those documents, but I do not expect you to trust an anonymous blog.  To find the document yourself, go here and look for the topic under the Electronic Agenda (May 7th).  The video of the School Board’s meetings is available here.

Blessing

Pastor Tim Hager of the Manassas Assembly of God provided the blessing.  He reminded us that the people of our nation have been asking for God’s blessings on our country and our leaders since its founding days. 

Consent Agenda

The School Board approved a number of interesting items without discussion.  These included:

• The award of a contract for the Enterprise Elementary School renewal to Sumter Contracting Corp. in the total amount of $2,936,000.00.
• The award of a contract for the Potomac View Elementary School addition to John L. Mattingly Construction Co., Inc. in the total amount of $2,491,000.00. 
• The acceptance of the Teaching American History Grant from the U. S. Department of Education.  The grant provides forty 5th grade and sixty 6th grade history teachers with a week-long summer colloquia, full-day professional development workshops, and regular study group and coaching sessions designed to raise student achievement.  (Here is a news article.) 

Social Studies Course Sequence Adjustment

To match up with the sequence recommended by the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE), the School Board approved the administrative staff’s proposal (see here) to rearrange the Social Studies course sequence.   The changes will begin to take affect next year. 

With one exception, the School Board was highly supportive of the changes.    Because he feared a possible reduction in rigor, Dr. Otaigbee expressed some concern.  What the changes do is add a Geography course in the 5th grade and push back or stretch out the existing courses.  The staff argued that the changes give students and parents more choices and allow teachers to cover the subject areas with greater rigor. 

Citizen Comments

As has become usual of late, those providing comments included citizens with something to say about the Math Investigations (MI) program. 

Steve Santee spoke first.  He noted that the textbook selection process is suppose to be unbiased.  He complained that Dr. Ruth Parker was the Keynote Speaker for the Kickoff Meeting of the 2005 Math Textbook Committee.  Because Dr. Parker has received many National Science Foundation (NSF) grants, Santee said she has a bias towards the TERC Investigations program and its MI textbook series.  He also reviewed some of Dr. Parker’s arguments for the MI program (Dr. Parker has been a speaker at some of the school division’s math sessions for parents.).

The bias certainly seems to be there.  TERC’s own website notes NSF’s sponsorship of the textbook series (see here) and cites Dr. Parker as an advocate (here).  Here is the website of Dr. Parker’s organization. 

(Author’s Note:  When I was looking into Dr. Parker’s background, I discovered the learning theory upon which TERC based the MI program, Constructivism.  It occurs to me that one might get too caught up the advocacy of a process, in this case a learning process, and lose sight of the end goal, learning mathematics.  I wonder whether we have such a problem with the MI program.

Consider the issue from the perspective of an education major, particularly someone with a doctorate.  The primary contribution that an educator makes to the education of children comes from their expertise in learning theory.  Since this expertise is not subject matter expertise, I am afraid educators occasionally need to be reminded that learning theory is a means to the end, not an end in and of itself. 

What is Constructivism?  Here is a Wikipedia article.  Here and here are websites that link to other sites on Constructivism.

Note that Constructivism is ideological.  That is, the merits of this theory are debatable.  Although the proponents of Constructivism claim that their technique is based upon proven research, the subject of learning theory falls into the realm of soft science.   While often useful, the subject areas we associate with the soft sciences, psychology, for example, are often based upon conjecture and consensus.  We call the soft sciences “soft” because these subject areas are so complex we do not yet have the capability to conduct rigorous, reproducible experiments. 

There is also an additional problem, expertise.  Traditional education techniques tend to be straight forward and easily implemented.  To use traditional teaching techniques, the primary requirement is subject matter expertise.  The more complex Constructivist approach requires both a good understanding of this learning theory and subject matter expertise.  That means greater skill and devotion is required from the instructor.  Without instructors who have the requisite skills and concern for the students, Constructivist teaching methods will most likely produce poorer results.

Consider the problem this way.  If you had the choice of being taught by someone with an education degree or subject matter expertise, which would you choose?)

Greg Barlow spoke next.  He mentioned that he had been sifting through the information that the PWC school division had provided as the result of the FOIA request.  He expressed frank amazement that the school division had selected the Investigations textbook series.  He noted that the school division had to waive school division regulations.  The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) reviews textbooks and grades them according to how well they satisfy the Standards of Learning (SOLs).  With respected to satisfying SOLs, VDOE rated the Investigations text unsatisfactory for the fifth grade.  Even more astounding, it appears that only one member of the textbook committee reviewed the fifth grade book.

The third commenter spoke favorably of the MI Program.   Unlike the first commenter, she was impressed by Dr. Parker.  She thought if she had been taught using the MI technique, she would be much more comfortable with math.  She has a third grader attending Antietam E.S.  She is happy with what he is learning.  She specifically noted that his instruction consists of a mix of the MI program and traditional math.  This speaker also commented on the International Baccalaureate (IB) program.  She lauded the goals of the program but she thinks the accreditation process (See here and here for more details.) is too expensive to justify when the school’s budget is so tight.

Revisions to the Code of Behavior for 2008-09

The revisions (see chart here) were fairly wide ranging and included references to electronic devices, bullying, harassment, student privacy issues, discrimination, school bus rules, weapons and prohibited objects, and so forth. 

The draft “Code of Behavior” is here.  The proposed changes did not seem to strike the board as controversial. 

The proposed changes will be considered for approval at the next meeting.
(Author’s note:  All in all, The “Code of Behavior” is the type of bureaucratic document one expects from a government monopoly.  I suppose the only thing worse than having a regime with too many rules is trying to live in bureaucracy that keeps the rules secret — or under a regime that makes up the rules to solely to suit itself.   Nonetheless, because the School Board must enforce the “Code of Behavior” so it must treat the document seriously.  While it may be a pain, I encourage the parents and students to read it.)
  
Budget Recommendations for FY 2009 Approved Budget
With the decline in county revenues, the school division to further reduce its budget by $25.7 million.  As the result Superintendent Walts has had to reduce the projected budget.  Thus Walts gave the School Board a briefing on the proposed “savings.”  Here are the slides he used. 

Board Matters

The board considered several subjects to be approved at their next meeting.

• Policy Updates — This time the School Board reviewed the final changes/updates related to the school division’s policies discrimination and equal opportunity in employ.  Once the changes are approved, next meeting, the school division intends to put its ”Policy and Regulations Manual” on the school website.  Effectively, the point of most of the changes seems to be a consolidation of existing policies into one place.
• Revisions to Policies and PWCS Education Foundation MOU– This got fairly legalistic.  The PWC school division had to update is policies for accepting funds from nonprofits and its Memorandum of Understanding with PWCS Education Foundation.  According  to the staff, the foundation has a history of providing seed money for useful projects.    The presentation included the SchoolFusion demo on this website.  Providing money for SchoolFusion for a three-year period is one of the foundation’s projects.  The goal is to consolidate the entire school division on the SchoolFusion interface.  Lattin has seen a more detailed demo, and he praised it.
• Traditional High School– The push continues for expanding the existing program to high school.  The object here is to approve a survey to be sent to parents and to start planning for a task force to setting up some kind of program.  The problem is money and time.  Initially, staff proposed just sending the survey to the parents of seventh and eighth graders at Porter and Pennington.  That did not go over well with some of the board members.  So Walts proposed extending the time line for the survey.  Johns did not seem happy with this development.  I expect we will have some behind the scenes dickering.

Two board members commented on the MI program.  Lucas said she had attended three school (seven classes) to see how the program is working.  She said she would reserve further comments for the board’s MI work session.  Otaigbe said he thinks the solution is to allow parents a choice, “that the war will not end until we provide parents a choice.”  He gave as an example the effort the school division is making to provide parents the choice of sending their children traditional schools.  Parents should also be able to choose whether they want their children taught traditional math or via the MI program.

Ramirez read a statement blaming the school’s budget woes on the Board of County Supervisors (BOC).   She said the budget has been cut $38 million and then she list all the reductions and what she fears will result.  In particular, she castigated the BOCS for their efforts with respect to illegal immigration.  She argued that the supposed savings the will result from ridding the school system of a certain population will not materialize.  She said that when the children leave, the money will leave too.  She then offered the observation that programs such as the traditional high school cannot be done because of the budget cuts.  As the result of budget cuts, the traditional high school cannot be defended because it only supports an exclusive group of students.   

(Author’s note:  Ramirez’s statement made little sense.  For example, her proposition that the children of illegal immigrants bring more money into our school system is nonsense.  Following this reasoning, we may as well invite all of the world’s poor into Prince William County.  Won’t we make a bundle?  Predicably, the news media has pick up this storyline (here) and is treating it as a serious concern.  

Yes, it is true that the state and Federal government fund our school system based upon the number of students enrolled in our schools.  However, I seriously doubt citizens in Prince William Count think this funding scheme provides sufficient justification to flood our county with illegal immigrants.  In fact, if this is going to be used as a lamebrain excuse to support illegal immigration, I suspect most people would prefer changing the funding scheme.)

Since the meeting there have been some news articles on school budget woes.  The Potomac News focused on salaries, “Teachers taken for granted.”  The Washington Post noted that school budget woes are an area wide problem (see here).

FY 2009 Approved School Budget 

The School Board:  

1. Approved the FY 2009 school budget in the total amount of $1,174,770,049 (see here).
2. Directed the Superintendent to forward the school budget by fund totals to appropriate staff to further prepare the budget by state category.

The approved FY 2008 budget was $1,104,415,824 (from here on page 64).

Note that the school division prefers to talk about the operating fund.  The FY 2008 the approved operating fund was $762,139,617 whereas the FY 2009 fund is $799,007,689.   These “budget cuts” were defined by what the school division wanted to spend.