Do you have any idea how many processes there are? From changing bus routes for road work to turning in hours for home teaching staff—both done on paper. What is your obsession with names? There are around 800 people in central office. Many have been working there decades. They are unfamiliar with the processes used by outside institutions including other school systems. Humans fear change.
You don’t change processes by bullying. It takes time and energy. You
commit to the work to make it happen. You can’t pass a resolution if you
don’t have the votes. You don’t get the votes if staff don’t trust your
idea and aren’t supportive to your colleagues. I started to write a
response to your other question I can’t find now, but my phone died.
There are two ways to get questions answered. One, board members ask
follow-up questions at the board table, if staff don’t answer it at the
table, board staff record it and eventually you get a staff response.
Two, board members submit questions to the chief of staff of the board
office, that person “bucks the question”to the appropriate department.
You may or may not get an answer eventually to your question as it was
asked.
I recommended that we have a tracking system like other school
systems use where all board members questions are openly recorded so
that all board members can see what questions their colleagues are
asking, and ensure that those questions were answered. Our chief of
staff did not implement that process while he was serving our office as
they had other processes I guess he preferred.
Also, as I have posted
here previously, I requested for years that all of those answers to
board questions be posted online so constituents could see the answers.
Apparently it was a very laborious process for staff to figure out how
to do that. There were questions around keeping the documents secure so
that people could not manipulate them (which I couldn’t understand), And
I also requested that they be searchable so constituents would not have
to know the title of the response to be able to find it. Apparently
this was another big challenge.
Some of the staff answers were quite
substantive and detailed to commonly asked questions. I believe that
constituents would benefit by seeing these comprehensive answers. Some
answers opened up the doors to more questions, and I thought
constituents should be able to see those responses as well. They were
able to post all the memos back to June of this year. But there are
likely hundreds more responses that would give excellent historical
context to a lot of issues if they were able to post them. I hope that
happens eventually.
Why didn't Ms. Ortman-Fouse mention any of this when she was a BOE member?
ReplyDeleteNow that I'm reading this other entry with a "byline" from Jill, I would be curious as to the context. this is clearly a selected excerpt, complete with boldface which is not available on social media and so it is your own emphasis without any acknowledgement of that, from a much longer and more involved conversation on social media. As a reader, I would find this much more informative with some context, not posted as if it were a submission by Jill, or at least the acknowledgement that it is from a longer conversation about...?
ReplyDeleteWhy don't you go to Ms. Ortman-Fouse's FB page and find the context yourself. In fact it sounds from what you are saying that you have already seen the context. Why not cut and paste it all here. Obviously she posted this on FB. Parents' Coalition often takes articles from social media, MSM, and other sources and reprints them on this blog. They all have some larger context. People are encouraged to do their own research.
DeleteI did eventually, but given that no date or larger context was shared as a citation, it was difficult to find. Public Facebook posts have their own URL's; it would have been a simple matter, not to mention a service to your readers, to have copy-pasted the selection you found relevant and then the link to the larger conversation below it, as many other blogs and MSM sites do. In my own blogging, I always share a link or citation for this purpose.
DeleteNot only did I do that but well over 24 hours ago I left a comment about it that you didn't publish (while comments on other articles made around the same time DID get published). While that's certainly your prerogative, it seems a little disingenuous to be selective about what comments you will and won't publish while being outraged about perceived censorship of your own. I'm just saying.
ReplyDeleteFYI - There is no staff here. Our comment box clearly says if your comment does not appear, send us an e-mail because this site has a very strong spam filter. You did not send an e-mail about any missing comments so we can only assume that all of your comments have been posted.
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