Community to Help Pick Next Superintendent

Students, parents, staff and community members will all be involved in the selection of the next superintendent to lead the Rapid City Area Schools under a plan outlined by the Board of Education today. Beginning this week, the District will post an online survey that asks respondents to identify the most important characteristics of a good superintendent.

The Board will also establish seven stakeholder committees to provide input to the Board and meet with finalists. According to Board President Wes Storm separate committees will be created for each of the following groups: community, parents, business, teachers, principals, classified staff, and CSAC executive staff.

People interested in serving on the community committee are invited to submit their names to Shirley Fletcher in the Superintendent’s Office at Shirley.Fletcher@k12.sd.us or by calling 394-4031. Committee members must be available to meet on January 7 for an orientation and conversation about what the District is looking for in a new superintendent. They must also be available from March 9-16 to interview candidates.

Dr. Richard Christie from Ray and Associates, the search consultants hired to work with the Board, presented a timeline for the search process. Highlights include:

• January 7 – Meetings with constituent and stakeholder committees.
• January 18 – Finalize job announcement to reflect the District’s desires and priorities.
• January 19 – Consultants begin active recruitment.
• February 11 – American Assoc. of School Administrators convention, Phoenix, AZ.
• February 16 – Deadline for all application materials.
• March 6 – Consultant presents semi-finalists to the Board. Board selects finalists for interviews.
• March 9-16 – Board and committees interview candidates.
• Mid-March – Selection of top candidate and offer.

After collecting advice from the community at large and from the stakeholder committees, the ultimate hiring decision will be made by the seven members of the Board of Education. Storm said that the Board hopes to have a new superintendent chosen by the end of March. Responding to a question by Board Member Suzan Nolan, Dr. Christie said that if the applicant pool does not satisfy the Board, Ray and Associates will continue the search process.

Superintendent’s Salary Likely to Increase

After emerging from an executive session to discuss compensation issues, Storm provided an overview of the consultant’s recommendations regarding the superintendent’s salary. He noted that district’s in the northern Great Plains with comparable student populations and staffs are paying between $162,000 and $202,000 plus fringe benefits to their superintendents. Given Rapid City’s size, the Board believes it will have to advertise the superintendent’s job to start at $173,000 plus fringe benefits. This salary represents an approximately 35 percent increase over the salary paid to current superintendent Dr. Peter Wharton. For more on the salary issue, see Kayla Gahagan’s article in the Rapid City Journal.

Board to Set Schedule for Superintendent Search

The search for a new superintendent for the Rapid City Area Schools gets underway tomorrow (Saturday, 12/19) at 8:00 a.m. The Board will meet with representatives of the search firm to discuss the recruiting process; ways to solicit citizen input; the establishment of committees of staff, parents, administrators and community members; and the overall schedule for screening candidates and interviews.

The consulting team has already prepared a survey designed to elicit some sense of the skills and qualities that the District and the community are looking for in a superintendent. The public may also be asked to comment on which qualities are most important right now given the many issues facing the District.

Framing the Search Process

In selecting a new superintendent, school districts are often faced with a chicken and egg question when it comes to strategic planning. Should the Board develop a strategic plan and then hire a superintendent with specific skills that fit with the District’s priorities? Or, should the Board hire a new superintendent with the skills needed to lead the strategic planning process and then hope that this person will also have what it takes to implement the plan once its developed? The Board in Rapid City will benefit from a number of long-range planning efforts that have been completed in recent years under Superintendent Peter Wharton, including a facilities plan, a strategic plan for Native American education, and a well-developed District Improvement Plan. But the existing overarching strategic plan is out-of-date and is not likely to provide guidance to candidates for the position.

When it gets down to recruiting and selecting candidates, the Board will also have to think about whether they want to promote from within or hire from outside the District. Often this kind of decision is influenced by the current challenges facing a school district or any organization. If a board feels that the organizational culture is strong, the vision is sharp and trust levels are high, it makes sense to promote from within to keep the plan on track. If there are problems in the culture, trust levels are low and change is needed, many organizations will look for a fresh face to lead the process of change.

At tomorrow’s meeting the Board will attempt to wrestle with these issues and more.  A copy of the agenda for the meeting is here: Board agenda 121909. Read Kayla Gahagan’s story in the Rapid City Journal.  The meeting will be held in the Community Room at CSAC at 300 Sixth Street.

District Improvement Plan Provides Road Map

School districts that have not met the student achievement goals articulated by the state under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) are required to submit a plan detailing their strategies for improvement. The Rapid City Area Schools Board of Education will be asked to approve the District Improvement Plan at tonight’s meeting which will be held at Western Dakota Tech. The plan could have far-reaching consequences for students, educators and parents.

NCLB’s Goals: Transparency and Accountability

Transparency and accountability were intended to be the keys to No Child Left Behind’s strategy for improving education. By requiring districts to test students every year and publish the results of those tests, policymakers hoped that parents and community members would hold school boards, administrators and educators responsible for student achievement. The law also sought to force failing schools and districts to publicly outline a strategy for improvement. If schools do not improve, districts and states are required to give students and parents alternative ways to get the effective instruction they need and, ultimately, if the schools continue to fall short of the state standards, the state can even take control.

Although Rapid City made some significant gains in 2008-2009, student achievement, as measured by test scores still fell short of the state’s goals. In reading and math, an insufficient percentage of American Indian students and students with disabilities scored proficient or better on the annual Dakota STEP test last spring. Economically disadvantaged students in middle school also fell short of the state’s target in reading and elementary and middle school math. In fact, for all students, the percentages scoring proficient or better were either flat or declined from the spring 2008 test.

Plan Emphasizes Data Analysis, Teacher Training and Tutoring

The District Improvement Plan on the agenda tonight reflects a further revision of the plan the District has been working on for a number of years, and despite the fact that the Board is considering the plan tonight, implementation actually began when teachers returned to work last August. It starts with data analysis. Building Leadership Teams throughout the District pore over the Dakota STEP scores to identify patterns of weakness so that teachers and principals can strengthen curriculum and instruction to address those weaknesses. By the time students start class, these new strategies are already in the works.

Research overwhelmingly shows that the key to student achievement is effective teaching. Ongoing research in education also identifies new strategies for teaching specific curriculum and ways to meet the different learning styles of a variety of students. The District Improvement Plan highlights a variety of ways in which Rapid City will provide professional development to help teachers continually sharpen their skills. It also provides an overview of the District’s strategies for recruiting, mentoring and retaining highly qualified teachers and administrators.

To protect students and parents, No Child Left Behind mandates that when schools are not making the grade, students must be able to transfer to successful schools or receive additional tutoring at District expense. The District sends a letter to parents at the beginning of the school year letting them know how their school is doing and what options they have. Although Rapid City has been on school improvement for a number of years, the number of families taking advantage of the tutoring option has been minimal. This year, however, the District is making a major effort to reach out to parents and has increased the budget for tutoring services from $100,000 to nearly $900,000.

Student Achievement Goals for 2009-2010

The major elements in the District Improvement Plan that should drive spending and planning are the student achievement goals for 2009-2010.  With the specter of NCLB’s goal to have 100 percent of all students scoring proficient or better in both reading and math by 2014, this year’s goals for spring 2010 testing in Rapid City are ambitious, but also confusing because of differences between the way scores are reported and the way the State asks for goals:

• Reading K-8 – 86% of all students will score proficient or better (Actual in 2009: 74% for elementary; 71% for middle school);
• Math K-8 – 72% of all students will score proficient or better (Actual in 2009: 72% for elementary; 68% for middle school);
• Reading 9-12 – 77% of all students will score proficient or better (Actual in 2009: 71% ;
• Math 9-12 – 63% of all students will score proficient or better (Actual in 2009: 61%);
• Graduation rate – 80% (Actual in 2009: 84.65%);
• Attendance rate – 94% (Actual in 2008-2009: 94.55%).

For a copy of the draft District Improvement Plan click here: 09-10 DRAFT RCAS District Improvement Plan.

Tonight’s Board of Education meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. at Western Dakota Tech. A copy of the agenda is available here: Board agenda 121909

Borders and Foundation Team to Help Students

Readers and holiday shoppers can turn a page for themselves and benefit Rapid City students and teachers this weekend. Borders Books and the Rapid City Public School Foundation have teamed up to raise money to fund grants to teachers for innovative and effective classroom projects and curriculum. When shoppers present a coupon at check-out (see below), Borders will donate 15% of the purchase to the Foundation.

The Rapid City Public School Foundation is a private, non-profit organization.  It’s mission is to enhance and enrich the educational experience of students, to motivate and recognize those who guide learning, and to increase community support of K-12 public education. The Foundation is supported through the generosity of public and private donations.

The backbone of the Foundation is awarding grants to teachers in the Rapid City School district who present innovative and creative ideas that help enrich their students’ educational experience.  The Foundation also hosts two very special events each year to recognize teacher and student achievement;  The Teacher of the Year and Teachers of Distinction community reception and An Evening of Excellence banquet in honor of the top 5% of graduating seniors and their most influential teachers.

The Foundation is also a member of Partnership Rapid City, along with Rapid City Public Schools and the Rapid City Chamber of Commerce, supporting students in broadening their education by offering a variety of opportunities for students to apply classroom learning in real-world situations.

RCPubSchoolBookfair Coupon (Print this coupon and take it with you to Borders on November 20, 21 or 22)

Board to Consider Options for Central HS Fiasco

State law does not permit the construction of schools in land designated for parks, except by permission of the voters. School and city officials, consulting engineers and architects all missed this issue for months while plans were being developed for the expansion of Central High School. Now the District apparently has four options:

• ask the Legislature to change the law to add schools to the list of facilities allowed in park land;
• ask the voters of Rapid City to approve the construction;
• redesign the planned renovation to build on the North side of the campus; or
• abandon the expansion altogether and redirect the investment to a new high school.

The Board of Education will meet Wednesday, November 19 at 4:30 p.m. to consider these and perhaps other options. For the moment, the District has asked the architects to stop work on the project until a decision is made. Already the District has invested $400,000 – $500,000 in the current plan. The money came from the District’s capital outlay budget, and not from the general fund which covers salaries and operations. Capital outlay money is used for building construction and repair, equipment and computer purchases as well as durable items like text books and even band uniforms.

Resolution of the land issue is already heating up with Friends of Rapid City Parks who organized several years ago to resist the continued loss of park land to construction projects. If the issue is brought to the voters in Rapid City, they are talking about opposing the measure. But avoiding the voters in Rapid City by going to the Legislature to seek a special change in the law could also be difficult. The Board is likely to consider these issues and more in its discussion.

Kayla Gahagan has tracked this issue since it became public last Friday in a series of stories in the Rapid City Journal:

• Wednesday, 11/18 – Central expansion plot both flood zone and park land
• Monday, 11/16 – Board faces tough choice with Central expansion options
• Saturday, 11/14 – Land oversight could derail Central High Project

The Board meeting will be held at 4:30 p.m. in the Council Chambers at the City/School Administration Center at 300 Sixth Street. The public discussion of Central may be delayed, however, as the Board will meet first in Executive Session to consider a student suspension and then hear a presentation from the District’s attorneys on the legal options related to the Central issue.

To read the Rapid City Journal’s editorial on the issue, click here: RCJ editorial.

Partnership Rapid City Marks Third Anniversary

Science and technology had a future in the Black Hills in 2006. Efforts to win the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL) were gaining momentum. The community was engaged in a growing conversation about 21st century work skills. The Rapid City Area Schools wanted to hear from business and the community about how to prepare our youth for the high-tech future to come.

“Make it real” the community responded in a series of workshops. “Help students apply what they learn in school to real-life situations. Connect the community to the classroom.” The business community also made it clear that it was willing to help if the District would create a one-stop shop for a host of real-life opportunities, including internships, apprenticeships, mentors, speakers, field trips and projects. In response, the District launched Partnership Rapid City that fall.

Partnership Rapid City will celebrate its third anniversary on November 18 at 7:30 a.m. at a breakfast summit at the Dahl Fine Arts Center. Participants will include many of the folks who participated in the original community forums. They will be introduced to the many real life learning opportunities that are now available to students and offer ideas for Partnership Rapid City’s future.

The program will highlight Partnership RC’s accomplishments and ongoing initiatives including:

• Learn and Service America Program – places students with businesses and non-profits to work with professionals and get on-the-job experience;
• Apprenticeship Program - students with a strong interest in a particular field spend 150 hours or more on the job, complete a related independent study curriculum and develop their work portfolio;
• Career Launch Workshops – skills training for health care, collision repair, construction, animal science, culinary arts and other fields provided to high school students through various institutions of higher education in Rapid City;
• Treasure Chest Program – business sponsorships that provide supplies and student incentives directly to classrooms;
• Career Daze - a variety of exciting opportunities for students and parents to explore opportunities in today’s economy;
• Building Partnership Coordinators – designated staff at each school to facilitate interaction with the community and business to provide real life learning opportunities tied to the curriculum.

Partnership Rapid City’s efforts have been supported by the District, the Chamber of Commerce, and the John T. Vucurevich Foundation along with many businesses and individuals in the community and the Rapid City Public School Foundation. For more information about Partnership Rapid City or to offer a real life learning opportunity to a student, contact Julie Ward or Liz Hamburg at 394-6986.

PRIME Grant Report to Board Looks At Strategies for Teaching Math to Indian Students

Seven years ago, the National Science Foundation (NSF) provided funding for a new approach to teaching math to Indian students in Rapid City. Tonight, Dr. Ben Sayler of Black Hills State University and Dr. Suzie Roth from the Rapid City Area Schools will report to the Board on the successes and disappointments of this project and what researchers learned in the process.

A Gatekeeper Curriculum

Math is sometimes described as a “gatekeeper” curriculum. Whether you like it or not, if you get math in high school it’s a sign that you will probably graduate. As a group, Indian students in Rapid City in 2002 were not succeeding in math. As a result, many were not graduating.

To turn this situation around, the Rapid City Area Schools formed a partnership with Black Hills State University and TIE to launch a five-year Mathematics and Science Partnership aimed at reducing the achievement gap between Native American and non-Native students. Project PRIME (Promoting Reflective Inquiry in Mathematics Education) received grants funds from the NSF to provide professional development for teachers, support alternative testing for students and finance data analysis to evaluate the program.

Research has shown that the greatest single factor affecting student achievement across the board is the quality of the teacher. A teacher’s ability is in part shaped by the training they receive. For this reason, the Rapid City Area Schools and many districts across the country have increased their investment in professional development. Assessing the value of these professional development efforts, however, is often challenging because so many factors affect student achievement — especially when its measured on a single, high-stakes test like the Dakota STEP.

With the PRIME grant, however, NSF provided additional funding at the end of the five-year grant so that the project leaders could do a deeper analysis of the data they collected from students and teachers in the project. As a result, PRIME has the potential to offer District leaders an extraordinary analysis of what works and why in math education. Sayler has intimated that the data that he and Roth will share tonight will offer provocative insights.

Tonight’s Rapid City Area Schools Board of Education meeting will begin at 7:30 p.m. tonight to allow board members to attend Parent/Teacher conferences. The meeting will be held in the Council Chambers at the City/School Administration Center at 300 Sixth Street. A copy of the agenda is here: Board Agenda 11509

Readers interested in background on the PRIME grant can read Ben Sayler and June Apaza’s 2006 report here: PRIME – paper by SaylerApaza. A comprehensive analysis of the issues in math education for Indian students was developed by Inverness Research in September 2007:   PRIME – getting numbers dance Inverness Res 2007.

Forum Focuses on Early Childhood Education

“By the time they are three years old, most children have already developed 85 percent of their core brain capacity,” Dr. Gera Jacobs told attendees at the Leadership Forum on Early Childhood Education today. Jacobs, a researcher at the University of South Dakota, said that children living in poverty are much more likely to enter kindergarten developmentally far behind their peers who come from middle class families. Many never catch up, and as a adults they are more likely to end up in prison or dependent on one form of social service or another.

The forum, which was organized by the South Dakota and Rapid City Chambers of Commerce along with South Dakota Voices for Children highlighted the economic and social benefits of investing in early childhood education. Keynote speaker, Art Rolnick, from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, told the audience that high-quality early childhood education programs, targeted for children in poverty, can produce a 16 percent inflation-adjusted return on investment. In other words, for every $1 spent in the pre-K classroom, taxpayers save $1.16 on prisons, unemployment, and other social service programs.

Taking a Market-Based Approach

Rolnick and Raven Industries CEO Ron Moquist emphasized a voluntary, market-based approach to pre-K education that empowers parents to choose a program that fits their family and their values. The programs they described in Minnesota and Sioux Falls provide incentives for non-profit and for-profit providers to offer a curriculum that prepares children to enter school at age five. “Our program rewards outcomes,” Rolnick said of the privately-funded Minnesota Early Learning Foundation. If children leave a program and pass the Minnesota Readiness Test, then the program is eligible to continue receive funding from the Foundation.

“Society pays in many ways when children fail,” says Ron Moquist, CEO of Raven Industries.

Several speakers emphasized that market-based, pre-K funding focused on children in poverty should not be a threat to private childcare providers. “Most of these children are not currently in a pre-K program,” said Moquist. Instead, “they are often footballed around between boyfriends, neighbors and friends.” Moquist underscored the need for pre-K education by reminding the audience that 80 percent of women with children under the age of six in South Dakota are employed.

State Senator Tom Dempster of Minnehaha County is working with private pre-K programs to draft a bill for the Legislature that will support a market-based approach to meeting the state’s early childhood educational needs. Several of the legislators who will debate this bill were in the audience today, along with members of the Rapid City Area Schools Board of Education.

A copy of the 2003 study of economic benefits of early childhood education prepared by Rob Grunewald and Arthur Rolnick at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve is available here. Read Barbara Soderlin’s story in the Rapid City Journal here.

Board Meets to Finalize 2009-2010 Goals

The Rapid City Board of Education will meet tonight to discuss and finalize its goals for the 2009-2010 academic year. Once adopted, the goals are supposed to drive the goal-setting process for the superintendent, the administrative team and building principals so that the entire staff is focused on the same outcomes and working together. The goals are also supposed to serve as a framework for the board’s self-evaluation and the evaluation of the superintendent.

In practice, the Board’s goal-setting process rarely works as it’s supposed to. For the last four years at least, the Board has failed to adopt its goals until well into the school year — sometimes it is as late as January. Once adopted, the goals are rarely referred to again. They are not posted on the District’s website, and there is no end-of-the-year evaluation by the Board of how well the District did. The process also provides no consequences if the District and the Board fail to meet their goals.

District Improvement Plan Provides Alternative Process

In some ways, the Board’s goal setting has been replaced by the development of the District Improvement Plan. Required by the State of South Dakota under No Child Left Behind, the District Improvement Plan articulates goals for student achievement based on the annual Dakota STEP test. The plan is developed by the staff in the fall after a deep analysis of the previous year’s Dakota STEP scores. It identifies strategies for raising student scores in reading and math. The draft plan is reviewed by a committee of staff and community members and approved by the Board in January.

In reality, however, the District is already far along in its implementation of the District Improvement Plan by January. When the Dakota STEP scores first become available in late August, principals and teachers pore over the data to discern strengths and weaknesses in the educational program. Building teams then develop strategies to address areas where students seem to be struggling. The Board is generally not involved and often unaware of the results of this process until January.

Different Approaches to Board Goal Setting

Over the years, the Board of Education has wrestled with its approach to goal setting. In 2001-2002, for example, the Board’s goals were broad and progress generally unmeasurable: “expand upon past efforts and increase connections” with the community or “continue to emphasize improvements in student learning/achievement.” Sometimes, the Board’s goals have included “to do” list items. In 2003-2004, the Board resolved to “Implement the RCAS multi-year strategic plan.” In 2004-2005, the Board established a goal to “Conduct a study and develop an updated inventory of all District real estate holdings to determine present and future District needs.”

In recent years, the Board’s goals have been lifted from the District Improvement Plan, identifying specific targets for student achievement on the Dakota STEP test. By relying solely on the District Improvement Plan process to develop District goals, however, the Board tends to define success in education too narrowly, measuring student achievement only in terms of reading and math on a single high-stakes test. Moreover, the benefits of the specificity of the goals are lost because the budgeting process rarely looks at how resources will be shifted to accomplish the District’s goals. As a result, at the Board level, the goals represent little more than good intentions, and not the basis upon which to plan.

Tonight will hardly offer the opportunity for the Board to fix a process that has lost its focus, but as the Board continues to address its planning and budgeting processes, timely goal-setting should become an integral part of a more coherent process of strategic planning.

Editorial by Eric Abrahamson

Tonight’s special Board Study Session begins at 5:00 p.m. in the East Conference room on the Third Floor of the City/School Administration Center at 300 Sixth Street in Rapid City. The meeting is open to the public.

Search for a New Schools Superintendent Begins

The search for a new superintendent for the Rapid City Area Schools got underway this month. The Board of Education invited executive search firms to submit proposals to manage the recruitment and interview process that will lead to hiring a new leader for the District by next spring.

Hiring a superintendent is the most important decision a school board makes, according to the National School Boards Association. A search firm will serve as an outside, professional administrator of the search process. The firm will work with the Board to hold meetings to solicit community input, track applications and ensure that the process is not biased by insiders or compromised by breeches of confidentiality.

“No single decision is more critical than the hiring of a new superintendent for the school district.”                                                                                     Thomas Hutton,  National School Board Association

Proposals from search firms are due by the end of October, and the Board is expected to select a firm early in November. On behalf of the Board, the search firm will then develop a timeline for the process and a strategy for advertising the position. Before interviews take place, the Board anticipates that it will hold meetings with the public and various stakeholder groups to identify the attributes and qualities that the community is looking for in a new superintendent. A summary of this community input will be presented to the Board before the interview process begins.

After candidates submit their applications, the search firm will work with the Board to identify individuals the Board would like to interview. The interviews will take place early in 2010, and the Board hopes to make a final decision by April.

If you’re interested in reading what the National School Boards Association has to say about recruiting and hiring a new superintendent, read the special insert to their newsletter: NSBA supt search suggestions. For background on the District’s search for a superintendent in 1998 and comments on Dr. Peter Wharton’s tenure in Rapid City, see Kayla Gahagan’s June 26, 2009 article in the Rapid City Journal.