…teachers versus district…

Now that Vail VS PCMR is settled, with the only loser being a coffee company (and perhaps a community), we thought we might chime in on the next big Park City battle. It’s funny how one test, in this case the SAGE test, can upset the apple cart. As Rahm Emanuel says, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.”

SAGE is the latest Utah standardized test that attempts to gauge student understanding of key concepts and labels students as proficient (or not) in those subjects. The results were not what most parents expected. Overall in the district, 57% were proficient in language, 52% proficient in mathematics, and 55% proficient in in science.

So, the school district set goals of increasing each student group’s (i.e. 3rd grade Hispanic kids) proficiency by about 6%. So, for instance, “By May 2015, 3rd grade Hispanic students will increase proficiency from 17% to 23% in English Language Arts.” The next SAGE test is spring 2015 and there isn’t much time to actually do anything other than set goals. So, that’s what has been done.

Yet, the process for long-term change is what interests us. It’s shaping up as school administration versus teacher. The School District is pushing for Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) as a solution to low test scores. PLCs have been called “the most powerful professional professional development and change strategy available.” Yet, the PLC concept requires that teachers work together to find the optimal education path for each student. That sounds great, but can you and your husband completely agree on the best path for your own kid? How are 5 teachers, who have different backgrounds, opinions, and strategies going to come together to prescribe the optimal strategy for every child? They likely can’t but that’s not the point of this piece.

The point is to say that many teachers are going to hate this. They, much like they’ve forced their students to do, will begrudgingly work together because of edicts from above. Many teachers are artists, they find the right mix of paints to put on the canvas in order to create a “Bob Ross.” Artists create masterpieces but 5 artists rarely enjoy coming together to make a masterpiece (with the exception of We are the World, of course).

Will multiple teachers be able to work together to find the best solution for each child? Will they have time for the additional meetings that this will require? Will they feel this takes away from “learning”? Will each teacher feel they own the process or will they feel they are forced into this experiment? Will teachers compete against each other rather than work together?

Will a group of teachers be able to come together and provide a better educational experience than each individual teacher did alone? In some ways it’s a challenge to teachers. Park City has some of the highest paid teachers in the state but SAGE test results were sub-par. In many industries the highest paid can adapt and make success out of about any situation. Teachers are being told “from above” that they will work together and children will get better test scores. Can they achieve that? What does that pressure feel like? Does salary equate to success when the direction is provided from above?

If it’s like most industries where management tells the employee what to do, we can anticipate the results. It’s not going to be pretty. You won’t read about it in the Park Record. You may hear a simple question that alludes to it on KCPW and not much more. However, you’ll really hear about it at dinner parties and at Hugo Coffee on weekends.

One of Bob Dylan’s songs is “The times they are a changing.” That seems pretty apropos for the Park City School District. The district feels test scores need to rise TODAY. The only people that can influence that are students and teachers. So, the district devises a plan for the teachers. Was it well thought out? Did it get teacher buy-in? Will it ultimately be successful?

The process may be more entertaining that HBO boxing on Friday nights. It should be interesting to watch.

This week, the Park City School District discusses which of our schools will be “open” for enrollment next year. Open for enrollment means that students from other districts can apply to go to a Park City School. This year Parley’s Park and Trailside were closed.

While things could change based on school board discussions, given the data it looks like Trailside will remain closed, Parley’s Park will be open again, and the high school will become closed.

The high school being “closed” presents an interesting situation. Park City School District Policy states that any out-of-district student who starts elementary school can complete elementary school, but has to re-apply for middle school. The same rule applies for each transition between classes of school (elementary school, middle school, junior high, high school). So, that could mean that current district students at Treasure Mountain may not be able to continue at the high school.

The other interesting thing to note, given current calculations, there is room for over 500 out-of-district students in Park City schools. If you recall, our last property tax increase was partly due to 200 extra students. So, it looks like there is plenty of room for our costs to escalate even further.

On Tuesday, the Park City School Board discussed class sizes of Park City Schools. Before this discussion, Superintendent Conley spoke about a vision for where the schools were going and how that impacts class size. We found the honesty, focus, insight, and willingness to address hard topics refreshing. Not everyone will like what she has to say, but the path our school system is on is unsustainable. The status quo is not an option.

Here are Dr Conley’s comments:

“I think we are taking the focus away from what we need to be focused on which is what careers and college expectations do we need to prepare our students for. Take class sizes out of it. We are looking at our specific courses. Just because we’ve always done it, doesn’t mean we are going to continue doing it the same way next year. I’m just going to throwing [an example] out. Just because we’ve offered weight training, 3 sections, does not mean we are going to continue that. We also have a growing demand for computer science, programming, coding. So, I think rather than getting hyper focused on class sizes. We have the information. It goes to what is the absolute requirement that we have to have our students be prepared for and have the opportunity to learn in our schools.”

A school board member then says that the items they hear about all the time from citizens and teachers is about class size. He says “so we’ve got a little bit of a disconnect.” Dr. Conley responds:

“See, I think they are completely connected. As we go through this refinement, this is going to be a difficult time and I’m preparing you because there is going to be some disappointment and there is going to be some shifts in what we’ve always done to be able to prepare for the future. And so there is going to be shifts in staffing. There’s going to be shifts in what we’ve always offered. And those are going to be some very hard conversations because it does affect staffing. This is where you have to say, If I free up staffing in this area that really is very fluffy or not needed to prepare our students for that data we just saw, we have more staffing to be able to put in to class sizes that are high … and that is the whole conversation [we’ve been having].”

It’s really hard to argue with what Dr Conley said above. The overall goal of school is to prepare students for the future and the more focused everyone stays on that issue, the better the outcomes for our students. It would be a nice luxury if our students could spend all day in Plato’s Academy, discussing topics like what is good and shadows on the wall, but that’s not tomorrow’s world. Tomorrow’s world poses a myriad of challenges and we owe it to our students to prepare them as best we can. We give them the most opportunity by offering those courses that prepare them the best, even if that does upset parents, teachers, and students at times.

We wish Dr Conley and her administrators luck. We’re sure it’s not going to be easy, but we think you may be on the right path.

It should be an interesting few years for the Park City School District. The school district is running up against a taxation limit and therefore funds will be limited and the school board will have to make hard choices. Parents appear to want smaller class sizes, lots of class options, and programs like early release. Smaller classes, more options, and early release all end up costing the district more money. In the past increased taxes have been the answer to avoid confrontations between the school district and parents. Yet, unless Utah tax laws change, the district won’t have that option and the answer will either be lower teacher salaries, increased class sizes, and/or fewer programs. As they say, “the math doesn’t lie.”

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the current classes at Park City High School and see what you think should be cut. The course catalog reads like something out of Salt Lake Community College. 3D modeling. Yep. Entrepreneurship for Business. Sure. Jewelry. Uhh..Check.  The high school lists 210 courses in its catalog. So, let’s get ready to  pretend we need to cut programs in order to maintain current student/teacher ratios. You’ll likely need to cut at least 10% of the classes to even make a dent in the budget. Which 21 classes would you cut?  We know… For every class there is someone that “could not live without it.” Even if the district tried to cut a class like “Underwater Basket Weaving” someone would be devastated (believe it or not… that is a class at Reed College). So take a shot. Which 21 would you remove? It’s both easier and harder than you may think.