Schools must be bold in downsizing

I sent the following edited message after the Sisters School District budget meeting last week. Parents need to be involved or risk losing programs important to their kids.

To: Chris Jones and Dennis Dempsey

I hope you take this e-mail message as constructive observation and comment.

Last night the message I heard from both of you was any more cuts will result in the elimination of programs and services that will horribly affect some of our children for the rest of their lives. This might be a good message when you're trying to get more funding from taxpayers but it's an awful message when you're trying to inspire and motivate teachers and staff to work a little harder and innovate new ways to increase productivity and performance. Putting a message of doom and gloom out to the people that have to educate our kids creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The reason I said you're doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is because you want to cut the minimum and then hope things will get better. That's what you did last year and it's not any better; it's worse. The nickel-and-dime approach to downsizing never works. You're going to have to do something bold to get through the next three years and come out

intact.

You should be looking at letting go the 10% least performing teachers and staff and giving a bonus to the 30% best performing teachers and staff. If you did nothing else the district would get through the next few years and the slight increase in class size would have very little negative effect because the average quality and performance of teachers and staff would be higher. Your customers, district parents, can help you identify winners and losers; you don't need new evaluation programs to judge

merit.

However, I'm suggesting you can do much more. There is no question that self-paced software and Web learning programs work. The district has lost students to these programs and that trend will accelerate. If you think outside the box, inspire and motivate our best and brightest educators, I think you will find you can reduce personnel and not lose any programs. If you embrace alternative methods of delivery you can make the delivery of some programs better than currently

possible.

Do you think Steve Jobs or Bill Gates have ever stood before their employees and said that because revenue will be down next year we have to cut product development programs? Not a chance! What they would say is revenue will be down next year so we've got to figure out how to get the same work done with less resources; we've got to innovate new ways to develop products that will allow us to stay in business. Our kids are the product you're charged with developing. If you want to survive you need to stop the negative messages and embrace change. Doing it the old way doesn't work very well any more. If school districts don't change they will go the way of the buggy whip and

typewriter.

A few days later I received a very positive response from Mr. Dempsey.

He said he and others have been working to create a "...new virtual education center that will be the start of a statewide option for students and school districts...as this program expands, local school districts and students will have opportunities to expand their education via this virtual medium...this will allow districts more creative options to provide opportunities to their students while facing a reduction in revenue...we hope this virtual education center will provide course work at a cost point that will be attractive for school districts to consider for adoption in the near future." He said this will be up and running by September 2010 and thanked me for my timely advice.

There is

hope!