Looking to the past

I found this while surfing the other day; it is a journal with photos written by Mark Hertzberg, photojournalist with the Journal Times. It documents the good ol’ days of Racine Unified (pre-Hicks era) when they used to go to referendum every spring for money (wait, that hasn’t changed).

But was has changed it the way our local businesses view our schools; there was once a time that our business community did not look too highly on our school system. The following excerpt shows how volatile the situation was back in 1999 when RUSD was seeking a $12M referendum:

The president of SC Johnson Wax threw gallons of gasoline on a simmering fire a month ago when he made major speech to the chamber of commerce saying he would reluctantly vote against the proposal because he thought it would be just throwing more money into a bottomless pit.

Which is worse, having the local business community not supporting the schools or having these businesses controlling our schools?

You tell me…

The truth behind the lies

Every time the administrators of RUSD release test scores, we are subjected to the same excuses over and over as why our test scores are below the state average.

One of the most popular excuses is this:

The district test scores are below average because of the low-income and inner city students and the challenges of teaching them; many of these students are also minorities.

I am offended by this allegation. I think it is extremely racist to suggest that only white suburban children can learn. But I digress, this post will not be about the minority children of RUSD - it will be about the white children.

I have been told again and again, that the white children of this district are doing very well. I understand that this may be a matter of perception, but I find it disturbing that only 68% of our WHITE 10th graders can read at a 10th grade level!! This does not suggest to me that the white children are doing “very well” at all.

So the next time someone tries to blame the district's poor results on those disadvantaged minority children, try to keep in mind this following thought:

The districts results are bad because our current (and past) administration is under serving ALL of the children in this district, not just the children of color.

Linking with the community

As implausible as it sounds, I think the City of Racine officials could teach the administration in RUSD a thing or two about “linking” with the community.

According to a recent Journal Times article, the mayor and aldermen (alderpeople?) are holding public listening sessions regarding the upcoming budget process. City revenues are expected to grow by $1MM and the mayor has directed all the departments to keep their spending at 2006 levels so it would seem the city will have “extra money” to spend. The listening sessions are to assist city officials “determine what the public thinks are the priorities and what departments and programs should receive this additional funding.”

While I know that RUSD will never hold a listening session for public input on how to spend “extra money”, they should be holding listening sessions to help educate the public on their budget process and explain which program/services/positions cannot be cut and why. They might even discover that some community members have money-saving ideas that had not been explored by administration, the board or their team of consultants.

Linking with the community has never been one of this administration’s strengths, and it is definitely time for that to change.

Unified goes portable

So, the latest solution to solve the RUSD building crisis is to lease a couple of portable trailers. The need for the trailers was facilitated by the expansion of all day regular kindergarten and 4 year kindergarten. I think that leasing these “trailers” is a great short-term solution. With that said, I do question why now?

We have been told for years that our high schools are dangerously overcrowded and that the district should consider returning to the junior high configuration (K-6, 7-9 and 10-12), but that it could not be done because of space constraints. Why is it okay to lease portable classrooms to expand preschool, but not to alleviate the overcrowding where the district is losing the most students?

I have a funny feeling the decision has nothing with student engagement, but everything to do with the extra educational tax dollars these 4 and 5 year olds will bring to the coffers of RUSD.

Divided We Stand, United We Fall

Recently, our local paper published 2 separate commentaries from RUSD board members. One of the commentaries was written by Dey and Bangs, the other piece was written by Kutz, Carlsen, Baumgardt, Nielsen and Warner. For any one familiar with the politics of Racine’s educational system, it would not be surprising to learn these commentaries are of opposing views. There is one side satisfied with the performance of the district (the conformists), while the other side (the dissenters) are questioning the practices and results of the current administration.

Dey and Bangs are considered, by some of the local citizens of Racine, harbingers of evil because of their public dissent. But isn’t dissent a good thing? Without dissent or questioning, will the truth ever be revealed? Consider some of our history’s more famous dissenters: Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. What would our world be like without people like them?

Challengers of the status quo create change; conformists only follow others and silence themselves.

Differences in opinion

"Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth; and that, I am sure, is the ultimate and sincere object of us both. We both value too much the freedom of opinion sanctioned by our Constitution, not to cherish its exercise even where in opposition to ourselves." --Thomas Jefferson to P. H. Wendover, 1815. ME 14:283


I ran across the quote on the web while doing reseach for a class project. It reminded me of important dissenting opinions are; perhaps this could be the topic of the next "Kumbaya" session the RUSD board has with the Aspen Group.

Customer service falls short in our schools

Facts taken from Racine Unified’s Annual Report; these are the overall results of the Customer Satisfaction Survey given to the parents of children enrolled in RUSD:


- 88% of elementary schools are performing at or above minimum expectations

- 46% of middle schools are performing at or above minimum expectations

- 44% of high schools are performing at or above minimum expectations


This data should be of no surprise to any parent of a RUSD student. For the most part, we are all quite satisfied with the elementary schools in the district. We love the teachers, the building administrators and staff! Our elementary schools clearly work, why don’t the middle and high schools yield the same results?

I’m sure there are many mitigating circumstances, but I would guess one of the biggest reasons why our middle and high schools do not function as well as the elementary schools is the fact we have too many children in these buildings for those schools to function effectively.

Putting 2200-2300 students in a building designed for 1400 is a recipe for disaster, yet we have dealt with this major overcrowding since the 1983-1984 school year (the year we moved 9th grade to HS).

Everyone knows the simplest solution would be to move the 9th graders back to junior high, which in turn would push the 6th graders back to elementary. Of course this move would entail building new elementary schools, but elementary schools are relatively inexpensive to build (compared with high schools). While I do not believe the public would support another referendum for operational expenses, I think a capital referendum to build new schools would pass overwhelmingly.

But do we have any action on this? No, the board and administration have decided to defer the decision to reconfigure the grades (again!!). Maybe if they spent less time talking about trees, they could focus on some real improvements for the district.

Good news from RUSD

Finally, some good news to come out of RUSD; Gilmore Middle School is implementing a rather strict dress code starting this fall. Of course the irony of it is that the good idea did not come from Central Office, a consultant, or one of our many “business partners”, but from the school’s principal.

If the dress code is a success, and I certainly hope it will be, I certainly hope we will see more principals taking a leadership role and less interference from Central Office!

The Edu-Speak Lexicon

A tip of the hat to Denis of Free Racine, who recently highlighted the absurdity of the language currently used by the Educrats of our school system; for the uninitiated, his piece is NOT an exaggeration, this is truly how they talk.

In the same vein, I will attempt to help the “ignorant” who do not understand Edu-Speak and publish a lexicon of sorts. Hopefully Mr. Racine Report Card and others will read this and keep it as a handy resource…

External Stakeholders – Parents and other tax-paying members of the community.

Internal Stakeholder – Teachers, staff and students of the school district.

Industry Standard Interface Evaluation Techniques – An example of this would be the test commonly known as MAP (Measure of Academic Progress). This test is widely used by school districts all over the country because it gives them nearly instant data, unlike the WCKE, which the results are not available for months. See systematic internal progress monitoring.

Primary Service Provider – Teacher

Random Implementation of Strategies – Currently this is the excuse of why Continuous Progress is not working in our elementary schools. In other words, it’s the teachers’ fault.

Systematic internal progress monitoring - Testing done throughout the year.

Transparent Benchmarks – Publicly stating the goals of the district.

Hopefully, this will help the “Edu-Speak challenged” understand if they should find themselves at a board meeting or presentation by Hicks and Co. Check back for more soon as I continue my quest to “break the code” of Edu-Speak.

A Tale of Two Districts

In today’s The Journal-Times, there was a sort of point/counterpoint discussion of the recent RUSD annual report in the Opinion-Commentary section of the paper. The “pro-RUSD” side consisted of Kutz, Carlsen, Baumgardt, Nielsen and Warner; the other side was represented by Dey (the once lone maverick) and Bangs, who once was a very public supporter of RUSD’s administration. These separate commentaries paint two very different pictures of our district.

Frankly, I think any public commentary of the issues is beneficial to all. It promotes (hopefully) honest discussions of the very real problems our district faces. However, I do have concerns that this extremely public airing of ideas will have possible negative ramifications of the district and for its board, especially considering its recent track record. I suspect these separate commentaries were written shortly after Monday’s contentious meeting; the meeting included (yet another!!) very awkward and heated exchange between Bangs and Carlsen.

I found the “pro-RUSD” commentary ironic in their statement stating “…it is our individual differences that can make us effective in guiding our public schools” .This is a very different message than the one a few weeks ago when a board member was going to be disciplined in closed session for “expressing his individual differences”.

I also found it somewhat amusing that this same group is now claiming that the “annual report” was never intended to be comprehensive study of the district. Only last week the school board president publicly stated the report will give the “board and community the data and tools to measure whether progress was being made and what steps were being taken to reach the district's objectives.” It certainly sounds (to me at least) that she and the other board members were expecting a “comprehensive report”; they even invited all the local elected leaders in for a special presentation (which included food and drink for all!!).

I cannot help feeling that if this is the “line in the sand” Kutz expected the annual report to be, it is no wonder that our district has not kept pace with the other districts in the state.

Tidbits from Monday – Part 2

One of the last things on Monday’s agenda was the approval of the minutes from the executive session of both the April 3rd and April 10th board meetings. Normally these minutes are approved without any discussion, but not Monday evening.

It would seem that no one actually took the minutes from those meetings (but did take notes). It was also explained at the meeting, by Dr. Hicks, that notes are not necessarily the same as minutes…

Now our administration is retroactively trying to “cover it’s a** and manufacture minutes from a meeting 4 months ago. Both Hicks and our financial consultant thought that this might actually fly.

After many questions and concerns about open meeting violations, missing information from the “minutes” of the meeting, our board actually did do the right thing and did NOT approve the minutes.

What was missing from the minutes, you might ask - all the discussion of the controversial “Betsy Kipper clause”; the clause that allows the REA president to be compensated from the district while performing union duties.

But what the takes the cake though is the arrogance of Hicks and Co, as proven in the following statement from the April 3rd document:

Dr. Hicks reviewed the bargaining authority granted by the Board and explained that a tentative agreement had been reached with the teachers’ contingent on the Board acceptance of Dr. Hicks’ interpretation of bargaining authority.

What concerns me about the preceding statement is:

1. Dr. Hicks came to a tentative agreement with the REA even though it seemed that the board had not yet accepted Dr. Hicks’s “interpretation of bargaining authority”.

2. If there truly was a tentative agreement, should they (the board and administration) be meeting in closed session and discussing it? It would seem that once a tentative agreement is signed, all discussions should be done in an open session. I was told (by reliable sources) that this is the law. Do we have any legal experts that would like to weigh in?

For some reason, I feel this issue will rear its ugly head again...

Tidbits from Monday's RUSD meeting - Part 1

Tidbits from Monday’s board meeting:

1. It has not been formally announced, but the district is moving to a cluster management style. The district will be divided into 3 (geographical?) clusters and there will be 3 area superintendents: Dr. Martinez, Dr. Laing and a yet to be announced 3rd superintendent. Hopefully this will be formally announced with all the supporting details soon.

2. Russ Carlsen and Randy Bangs just don’t play together well in the sandbox. We were subjected to yet another childish and boorish outburst from Dr. Carlsen simply because he did not like what Randy had to say….

3. We have a new administrator; Dr. Betty Webb. She comes to the district from the Panasonic Foundation. While normally I am suspect of hiring former consultants, I really have a good feeling about this one. She is on loan to the district for a few months, but if tonight was any indication of how effective she could be, I hope the administration does every thing in its collective power to hire her on permanently. She is passionate about education, very articulate and seems to have the know-how to actually get things done. The one fear I have is that the idea she implements will work, and Dr. Hicks will get all the credit.

New poll may suggest our nation's schools are not working

- 75% of Americans can identify 2 out of the 7 dwarfs from Disney’s dwarfs from Disney’s Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs

- 25% of Americans can name 2 out of the 9 U.S. Supreme Court Justices

Scary statistic, isn’t it?. There are even more frightening facts that came out of a poll administered by Zogby International that was released earlier this week.

It would seem that our nation’s public educational system is not working, wouldn’t you say?

Rate the RUSD school board

The following is the opening paragraph of GP-3 found in the RUSD Board’s Governance Policy handbook:


The job of the Board is to represent the citizens and to lead the Racine Unified School District by determining and demanding appropriate and excellent organizational performance.

I am quick to blame administration for most of RUSD’s ills, since their new governing style leaves the board out of most of the decision-making, but the board (collectively) is responsible for demanding excellence.

Are they (our current board members) doing a good job? Are they any in particular that do a better job than others? Which ones, and why?

Consider this your assignment; rate the effectiveness of our school board or post whatever you feel…

(Remember, I do allow anonymous comments, so feel free to let loose!)

The latest (?) wrinkle in RUSD's new Wellness Policy

The Journal Times recently reported that the proposed soda ban, part of the district’s new Wellness Policy, is placed on hold due to an outstanding 10-year contract with Pepsi.

What the news article failed to mention is that there is a federal mandate that all schools must have written wellness policies in place by July 1st of this year.I guess the decision to still sell soda in the vending machines must be okay, even with the federal mandates.

The federal mandates states all school districts must have a written wellness policy, but does that mean we have to follow those written policies?

It would appear, by the decision of RUSD to keep selling soda in the vending machines, that it must be enough to simply have a policy ( even if the policy is not enforced)!

Energy Education Inc (yes, another consultant!)

I promised last week to weigh in on the proposed Energy Education Inc contract. For the uninitiated, Energy Education Inc is a consulting group out of Texas that has made a proposal to RUSD that will help cut our energy expenses. Actually the proposed deal is not a bad one; we will be (unfortuntately) adding 2 more administrative positions and paying a hefty consulting fee but the savings in energy costs ARE guaranteed.

For example, the 1st year projected savings will be approximately $700,000; after paying the 2 Energy Manager salaries (2 positions @ approx $75-80K) and the consulting fee of $170K, we would still net about $300,000 in savings. In the unlikely event that our savings did not cover our expenses, Energy Education would pay us the difference. It does sound like a win/win situation, so why should I have a problem with it?

I have a problem with how the deal was made, not the deal itself…

First off, according to Mr. Alioto, the consultant acting as our COO, Energy Education Inc contacted US (not the other way around). If this is true (and I would imagine that it is, since he said this in an open meeting last Monday), why are we paying Mr. Alioto and company a bonus on the projected savings? It’s not like they discovered the savings, or even sought out the expertise of Energy Education, Inc.

Secondly, when the information was presented to administration last spring, Frank Johnson (former legal counsel to RUSD) noted that because it was an energy contract, there are laws that state that the deal has to bid out in an open bidding process. This is, of course, after the fact. I imagine there was some dissent because the district sought another legal opinion. There was finally a decision to bid the job out.

It was explained to me that RUSD sent an RFP to companies that deal with energy saving at the “facility” level, Energy Education deals with energy savings at the “people” level (which is what the Finance team is urging the district to do).To no one’s surprise, Energy Education Inc came through as the desired vendor.

Somewhere, sometime, and some how this administration needs to learn to do their homework and research before (and not after) making a commitment (even a tentative one).

How long will we continue to let decisions be made without any real financial analysis?

The seeds of change need to be sown

I know I’ve been neglecting this site – but I do have an excuse. I have been out of town pretty much continually since the 3rd week of July. When I am home, there are too many tasks to accomplish before leaving again. I have to admit though, even if I had been home I don’t know if I would be posting anyway; my heart just isn’t into criticizing Unified anymore. It has become too easy and not much “fun” at all.

Maybe it’s a temporary phenomenon, but kicking an organization when they are already down just seems plain mean. Maybe I liked it better when I was in the minority and most everyone else thought RUSD was on the right track…I think it’s kind of like having a favorite underground band, and then having that band make it to the mainstream.

Unlike some other critics of RUSD, I really do want to see them succeed but I know that will not happen anytime soon. I believe RUSD is simply spinning it proverbial wheels, and will not make any kind of true progress until there is a complete change in administration. We need to completely deconstruct the district and start over!

We cannot and will not change for the better when just about every decision that is made is lining the pocket of some consultant.

We need to plant the seeds of change now....

Too much news and so little time...

There has been a bit of news regarding the lastest RUSD snafus. It seems that these stories always hit when I am the on vacation, or unavailable (due to school commitments).

I promise to weigh in on the recent RUSD topics soon:

1. Proposed Energy Education Inc. contract

2. Pepsi contract

3. Delayed redistricting plan

Unified fails to plan adequately (again!)

According to the DPI website, there is at least a 2 year time-frame on opening a charter school. Why then did the administration of RUSD think they could start the proposed charter school, in the abandoned Caddy Vista elementary building, in less than 6 months?

Is it any wonder that Bright Horizons backed out of the deal?

It would seem that this proposed early childhood center, operated by non-Unified personnel, may have been the nudge RUSD needed. I was intrigued by the partnership of government and private business. I know this program could have failed miserably, but we will never know now.

Perhaps the next time Unified gets a good idea (like changing the start times for our middle and high schools or contracting out for services), they will do a little research and planning beforehand and make sure they are compliant with the law.

After all, isn’t that what we are paying them for?

At least we ain't Chicago...

The decisions of the administration of RUSD may be questionable at times, but at least they do not require blind students to take Driver’s Ed! Passing a driver education course is a requirement for graduation in Chicago’s public schools, and although parents of blind students can request a variance in their children’s schedules, this is a little known option and is rarely used. And I thought our school system was in trouble…

Bright Horizons backs out...

It was announced today that Bright Horizons will be backing out of its proposed partnership with Racine Unified. Bright Horizons, a nationally known and accredited early childhood educational institution, was recommended to run a preschool/daycare operation at the site of the former Caddy Vista elementary school.

It would seem that the REA (and others) were not happy with the outsourcing project. I don’t really blame Bright Horizons for backing out; what company in their right mind would want RUSD as a client? Oh yeah, that would be the Public Business Consulting Group, the consulting group that handles RUSD’s financial operations.

Ironically (?), this same group originally gave thought to submitting their own plan for the Caddy Vista site, but did not do so to avoid concerns about conflicts of interest.

Why do I feel that this is not a dead issue?