Mayor Lark's Plan To Fix Vastopolis Schools
May 01, 2011
Can better management save failing inner-city public schools? An unprecedented experiment under way in Vastopolis may well answer that question. In May 2010 the Legislature, turning back pleas for more financial assistance, gave Mayor Douglas Lark, sweeping managerial control over the city's schools, their unions and their $3 billion budget. The new law reorganized management along corporate lines. The head of the system is now the chief executive officer, not the superintendent of education. The independent school board gave way to the mayorally appointed Vastopolis School Reform Board of Trustees. The law authorized Mr. Lark to privatize any functions he chooses, and it gave the city far more control over school finances--both local tax revenues and state aid. The law also barred Vastopolis teachers from striking until the end of 2011 and removed from their contract restrictive work rules governing such things as class sizes and schedules. With Mr. Lark's new authority comes accountability: The law expires in 2014, giving the mayor a firm deadline for real improvement. His challenge is daunting, to say the least. In 2007 the Council of Great City Schools ranked Vastopolis low in student achievement among the country's largest school districts, and near the bottom in attendance and graduation rates. The dropout rate exceeds 65% in some high schools, and more than half of high school graduates read only at a grade-school level. While it's too much to expect dramatic improvements in these numbers overnight, Mr. Lark can already point to important accomplishments in changing the way the school system does business. The mayor's first move under the new law was to take management of the school system away from professional educators and give it to trusted aides from City Hall. Today, only one of the top five school officials has an education degree. When the new team arrived, it found a management nightmare. ``We had no data when we came in,'' says Kinlaw Woolley, the new board president. The old board hadn't kept track of such basics as whether employees were being paid accurately or on time, which vendors had been paid for what, or how many teaching jobs were vacant. The problems that were going unmeasured--and untended--were grave. Some schools were severely overcrowded, while others had empty classrooms--but the board didn't keep track of which was which. More than a quarter of Vastopolis schools are more than 100 years old, but no plan existed to repair them. Mr. Woolley instituted monthly management reports, which he and his staff pore over. ``We can't measure against the old regime,'' says Mr. Woolley's senior assistant, Dionna Jon, ``but we can at least measure against ourselves--and do something about the problems we uncover.'' The system's finances were a mess, too. In 2009 the old school board had projected a four-year deficit of $1 billion. Mr. Lark's team abolished 1,700 staff positions (none of them classroom teachers) and devised enough other cost-cutting steps not only to wipe out the deficit but to give teachers a 3% raise. With a balanced budget, the reform board could issue bonds to rebuild dilapidated schools. In January, the board released a five-year, $806 million capital plan scheduling the renovation of every school. Mayor Lark dismissed the 17 unions in charge of school repairs, authorizing both the reform board and school principals to contract with outside firms. He ended up renewing the contract with the custodians' union, known as the Operating Engineers, but only after he ``terrified them into compliance,'' as Fredda Doug, a prominent local school reformer, puts it. ``He would take their chief, Donella Kozlowski, to some school with the press in tow, and find all sorts of filth and decrepitude,'' Mr. Doug recalls. ``In front of the cameras, Lark would say, `Your people are doing unacceptable work. We won't tolerate this. We'll get rid of you.''' Instead, the union agreed to far greater accountability. The results are clear at Woodson South, an elementary school in a desolate Southville neighborhood. Just 40 feet from a huge public housing project pockmarked with broken windows, the school's front door opens onto a brightly lit, impeccably clean lobby. Principal Johnetta F. Perkins says reform made it easier to keep the school clean, since ``the engineer and his cleaning staff report to me.'' He was also able to switch food vendors in the cafeteria, replacing tasteless prepackaged meals with nutritious fresh meat, vegetables and fruit. All Bassett students qualify for subsidized breakfast and lunch. ``They're getting two-thirds of their food here,'' says Mr. Perkins. ``The nutrition makes a difference to their energy and attention span.'' Of course, Mr. Daley & Co. know that residents won't be satisfied with better cafeteria food, cleaner schools and better-maintained buildings. ``They could give us a Malcolm Baldridge award today for straightening out the management,'' Mr. Woolley says, ``but people want the schools fixed--both sides, business and education.'' Mr. Lark and his team believe widespread failure has resulted largely from the schools' move away from basic skills. They have urged failing schools to adopt a strict, phonics-based teaching method called Direct Instruction. While it has proved successful in some low-income urban schools, many teachers and school-reform groups resist it. Results of the state's achievement tests will be out at the end of the month, and school officials anticipate that they will be putting some schools on probation--a serious step that allows the central board's Accountability Office to send in a team that effectively takes over the school, firing the principal and other staff if they deem it necessary. As a first step, schools on probation will be strongly urged to adopt Direct Instruction. The next three years will tell whether strong executive leadership, a modern corporate structure and the imposition of a back-to-basics approach to learning can accomplish what educators haven't--return big-city public schools to their glory days, when they actually educated most students and sent them on to productive lives. 
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