The quotation marks are not mine - I assume that 1. Three-year academic plan - Brooks wants to develop the plan with measurable targets by the end of the 2010-11 school year. He wants to focus on improving student achievement, narrowing achievement gaps, increasing graduation rates and improving attendance. Administrators will work out the plan and present it by the end of September. 2. Build confidence in APS - Brooks wants the administration to improve relations between the school district and the community, media, other organizations, business and government. The plan for that is due by mid-October. 3 (tie). Create a communication plan - Brooks wants the administration to develop a communication and evaluation plan between the district and the community, media, school board and others. The plan for that is due by mid-October. 3 (tie). Schedule board training workshops - Brooks wants to train the school board on the role and responsibilities of a school board, creating a more student-focused organization. The first workshop is due for mid-November. 5. Review and enhance facility upgrades - Brooks wants plans for facility upgrades to be completed and publicized by mid-October. 6. Improve the district's money management - Brooks wants a "transparent, sound and effective financial stewardship plan" with well-documented processes in place, with reports due every quarter starting with the 2008-09 school year. 7. Transition APS from site-based management to district-based management - Brooks wants the plan to include fair distribution of resources. The plan is due in the spring. 8. Enhance school crisis plans - Brooks wants a template for crisis management provided to all school and non-school sites, and wants those sites' administrators to create and file a crisis plan based on that to the district offices.
Winston Brooks has added them.
The story has shown up on KRQE link, but in less I missed
it, not in the Journal.
It is obvious that they will be the next set of goals for the
APS simply because Winston Brooks has the power to say
that they are; as opposed to being the next set of goals
because the best interests of students and taxpayers
influence APS goal setting.
At the risk on being accused of not giving Winston Brooks
"a chance", there are a least a few issues that are on the
table by Brooks choice and are therefore, fair game.
According to KRQE the goals are;
I am compelled to take issue with at least three;
- build confidence in the APS.
- create a communication plan
- transition from site based management to Uptown based management.
Is your confidence built? Do you feel that there is real
communication with the people who spend a billion of your
tax dollars every year, about how they are being spent?
The transition from management by among others,
more than 6,000 teachers, who between them have 70,000
years of teaching current experience, expertise, and education;
to decision making by a handful of administrators with no
current teaching experience, no objective justification for
their promotions to the positions they hold, who bear the
manifest mistrust of employees and stakeholders; and
who refuse to answer any legitimate questions about their
public service, and
who are exactly the same people that were driving the train
when it left the track in the first place.
No public input will be sought on any of the goals.
Because Winston Brooks has the "power" to ignore stakeholders.
But hey, let's give the poor guy a chance? ??
5 comments:
The info trickling down to teachers from Winston Brook's office is that he wants to standardize all the classrooms in APS.
This stndardization process sounds good when you say it fast, but what I intend to show in this short passage is that it is simply at the convenience of Admin and liabilitiy and detriments the student.
Standardization means that every 8th grade math class in APS will be teaching the exact same thing every day in every school, or every Chemestry class in APS will be on "the same page" every day.
Sounds good? What about fire drills? What about school assemblies that shorten the class times? What about college and career days, or 2-hour mandatory testing? What about students that have questions during class on the content? What about book shortages every school faces? What about super-smart kids that want to move ahead, or have enriched curriculum?
I don't know how they did it in Oz Winston, but what Modern Man thinks of things like this?
Yes, I understand you want to make it easy on yourself and your admin, but what about serving the kids' needs?
We will be chasing our tails with you Winston Brooks! Then you will leave soon, and we'll chase our tails with another supe caught in the 19th century.
WHERE DOES IT END SCHOOL BOARD? WHEN WILL YOU MAKE THE RIGHT DECISIONS ?!?!
--An APS Instructor
Thank you sir or ma'am,
I could not have said it better myself!
So Individualized Education Plans are still facilitated, right? I thought was Federal, they don't want that kind of heat.
I like Brooks' goals, I of course support the adaptation of current school emergency plans, not properly updated for a decade. The rest, I think I will let the teachers comment on.
But on this one point - 22 per cent raise for school cops, not the supervisors just the field, and a goal to keep kids safe with soem recent emergency thought and best practices? I like that a lot.
On that last comment, school safety was abhorrent for the last many years because it was left up to "Site Management" (aka principals) to create and maintain these emergency safety measures.
Principals aren't police, many of them have never been in a war or trauma, or emergency situation...these plans should have been created by professionals a log time ago.
Winston is not all bad, but I fear his basic vision for APS is very narrow and not modernized.
and to answe your other question, the programs being considered for English and MAth remediation are all canned ("scripted") prgrams that are quite expensive. Somewhere along the line, it is rumored that winston likes this style of "scripted" classroom instruction, which is a day-to-day, do-not deviate type of education.
That is what I think is detrimental to students, but easy on admin.
Here I go - this is my area of specialty, I have to say something.
I wrote the response section of the APS emergency plan in the late 1990s, I was a school cop sergeant at the time.
I wanted to have the manpower to go to every school and do the plan for them, but with the input of stakeholders. But how to fit that into a school day? I had trouble finding an hour of instruction time with all staff to introduce the emergency plan (critical incident plan), much less experience a typical schol day and tailor specific security and safety maeasures into the plan, making it truly unique and directly responsive to particular, extant issues.
Each administrator will most likely be asked to be the resident "ten minute emergency expert", just needing to hold it together until the cops and a mass of aps security get there.
There is a metric tonne of free emergency management materials and school specific trainings in response to terrorist bombings and such on the FEMA website, but until it becomes a part of someones job description and they are evaluated on emergency plans, this effort will stall too.
1997 the plan was written, look at it, over ten years later, the same manual with different pictures, different names on the commitee that half-assedly updated it.
I hope they make this one a living document, one that can keep kids safe for real, not just a dusty notebook that the rookie principal never looked at...somewhere.
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