IS THIS THE SWAN SONG?

While I don’t downplay that race plays a role for some in the evaluation of Dr. Joseph’s performance, I also believe that he has continually used race to deflect from his policy implementation shortcomings and leadership deficiencies. Shortcomings and deficiencies that are highlighted in the board evaluations and led to a composite score of 1.7 when it comes to closing the achievement gap among minority students. As board member Rachael Elrod notes,

We continue to see small differences in achievement. Both our Bl ack and Hispanic students are scoring

the lowest, below the 25% percentile in both Reading and Mathematics achievement. According to the State Report Card, our Black students got a 16.9% and Hispanic students got a 24.5% achievement rate in Mathematics in comparison to our district average of 33%. Black students got an 18% and Hispanic students got a 22.1% achievement rate in English Language Arts in comparison to our district average of 32.8%.

I very much appreciate the thoughtfulness of board members, Walker, Eldrod, Frogge, Bush, Speering, and Shepherd put into their evaluations. All of their conclusions do not align with mine and I would encourage them to look deeper into the data and not just accept what was given them by the MNPS leadership team, but it is clear that they took their responsibility very seriously and that they spent a great deal of time crafting their evaluations.

One area that I would offer caution on is teacher dissatisfaction. The majority of the board member’s reduced that dissatisfaction to a compensation issue. With Pinkston attempting to dismiss widespread dissatisfaction outright,

I appreciate the input by employee groups including MNEA and SEIU, which have repeatedly confirmed that there is no systemic dissatisfaction but rather there are isolated problems that need to be dealt with. I fully believe that much of the current discontent is entangled with understandable employee unhappiness and concern about economic pressures stemming from historically low compensation and the rapidly rising cost of living in Nashville.

When you do the math, a 3% raise for a teacher making 50k a year translates into about $57 a paycheck before taxes. Let’s hope insurance costs don’t go up again because if they do, it becomes a wash.

Returning to the evaluations, through all of them the specter of MNPS as an underfunded district is raised. The argument presented is that if Dr. Joseph had greater resources, the district would see greater gains and he would receive a better evaluation. In other words, the district is currently letting Dr. Joseph down, not the other way around.

In some ways, that is a fair argument, but it’s worth noting that teachers have been under-resourced for decades and we’ve never accepted that as an excuse for a lack of meaningful progress by students for them. Administrators need to be held to the same standards.

Which brings me to yesterday’s budget release. Coming on the heels of the just-released performance review, I expected that a budget would be released that strengthened the argument that Dr. Joseph was leading an underfunded district. I anticipated a budget that hovered around a billion dollars and included funds to fix the pay schedule, address lack of supports in schools in order to strengthen the discipline policy, substantial investment in the HR department in order to improve processes, further investment in SEL, as well as a substantial raise – 5% would be a starting point – for employees.

Sure people would have blanched at the thought of a billion dollar budget, but they shouldn’t be surprised because the message delivered all year-long has been that of a dramatically underfunded district. Such an ask would shift the conversation away from the director’s performance and on to the shoulders of the citizen’s of Nashville. Such a budget would also send a message of commitment to Nashville students and attacking the systematic problems that hinder their performance. The argument becomes, that at the current level of funding, no director could be successful and therefore Nashville has to decide if THEY are ready to step up to the plate or not. A billion dollar budget would signify a much-needed commitment to a theme of exceeding expectations and systematic excellence.

All in all, not a bad strategy. But that’s not what we got. Instead, the Director delivered what can only be described as a “status quo” budget, or worse. A budget that asks for only an additional $31 million from last year. In looking at the proposed budget, the first question that comes to mind is how does this budget ensure that next years outcomes will be any different than this year’s outcomes?

A 3% raise for teachers is going to change the conversation? A raise for bus drivers of one dollar an hour while certainly needed is not exactly bold.  $2.75 million for textbooks is going be a difference maker? $1.4 million for pre-k continuation is going to drastically change things? $1.49 million for an HR systems upgrade…wait a minute…I thought this was already being implemented. Are we once again implementing first and then looking for financing?

Equally interesting is what’s being cut from the budget. Two EDSSI principal positions are being done away with in this year’s budget proposal. You have to remember that initially there was supposed to be a EDSSI for every cluster, with the priority schools moving back under their cluster umbrella and being called L5 schools. The state said not so fast, those are state-designated “priority schools” and as such need to be under their own umbrella, thus necessitating 13 EDSSIs. There was not enough funding for the 13th, so MNPS made the priority school director a defacto EDSSI and kept the number at 12. Now we are going to 10.

Also on the chopping block is the position of Executive Director of Equity and Diversity.  A position held by Maritza Gonzales, aka Sito Narcisse’s wife. Gonzales’s position and salary have long been a bone of contention throughout the district, with Dr. Joseph refusing to budge on it. So why now in the last year of his contract? Has he found outside funding for the department of equity and diversity like for the charter school department? And where is Gonzales going? Very peculiar.

It’ll be interesting to see how board members receive this budget and if it influences their vote on a contract extension for Joseph later this month. In an op-ed published in the Tennessean yesterday, board member Will Pinkston writes,

I’ve worked in or around federal, state and local government for 25 years. One thing I’ve learned, with certainty: In big bureaucracies, the mark of leadership is not if problems happen. They always do. Rather, the mark of leadership is whether problems are confronted when they arise.

In my experience as a Nashville School Board member, Dr. Shawn Joseph does not shy away from problems. Unlike the previous director of Metro Nashville Public Schools, Joseph is accepting of scrutiny and he invites it.

I challenge Mr. Pinkston to show me where in next years proposed budget Dr. Joseph is facing problems head-on? Where is he inviting scrutiny? All year long we hear how MNPS is crippled by being under-resourced, yet when it comes time to have that conversation in earnest, the best that can be offered is a shortcoming of 3%.

If a director is failing to score a minimum of a 3 on their evaluation and offering a lack of resources as an excuse, I would expect that a budget showing an increase of at minimum 15% could be expected. Why would you proceed into another year with the same resources when you already know that it’s not enough? Do you think that if the Patriots don’t give Tom Brady the receivers he needs, he never says anything? That he just heads into the next season hoping for a miracle.

And perhaps the city can’t afford such a required budget, but you better at least be able to justify why you are continually crying chronic underfunding. Now is the time to force the city into at least having the conversation, but they won’t if you can’t lay out a clear picture of what’s needed. Pinkston likes to label opponents as intellectually dishonest, based on this budget, and the fact that he is budget chair,  I would label him an intellectual coward.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention two other points from Pinkston’s sloppily written and factually challenged op-ed piece. Small wonder he is an ex-journalist. In it he says,

Joseph’s critics are intent on castigating him over issues like moving too slowly in costly efforts to remediate drinking-fountain water in a school system plagued by decades of crumbling infrastructure.

Is that really a counterpoint that Pinkston wants to make? That we should give Joseph a break because ceasing the poisoning of our kids is an old problem and costly. What’re a few more years of drinking lead infused water? So what if some of those same kids already have environment-related learning disabilities?

The other point is that Pinkston continually attempts to draw a line for Dr. Joseph from Montgomery County Public Schools to Nashville without going through Seaford, Delaware and Prince George County Schools. That’s a disingenuous narrative and intellectually dishonest.

PGCS and MCPS are completely different situations. MCPS is traditionally a much higher performing district. Joseph was in senior leadership at PGCS. In MCPS he oversaw just 32 of 206 schools. Big difference.

Principals also received their site budgets yesterday. Per pupil funding has dropped 39 dollars per student, from $5866 to $5827. Couple that with rising position costs and that translates to… if you like this years staff, you may not be able to keep this years staff.

For example on the position costs,

• $900 more per teacher
• $5800 more per AP
• $1300 more per secretary.

Keep in mind higher position costs work to the advantage of the district and not the individual schools.

That vaunted reallocation of Title 1 monies that Dr. J has spent the year bragging about? Not this year. If over 40% – a lower percentage then it was in previous years when the cutoff point was 50% before Dr. Joseph tried unsuccessfully to raise it to 70% – of your kids are certified as being economically disadvantaged you’re getting title 1 money under the same funding formula as last year. Keep in mind that by lowering the cut off number you put more people in a pool that hasn’t necessarily grown in dollars, which potentially could mean less money for certain schools.

The more I look at this proposed budget the more it looks like a place holder budget. A budget designed by people who know they are out the door and so they won’t have to deal with next years implications. It deals with none of the issues raised in the HR audit and it addresses none of the issues raised in the individual board evaluations. In fact, it completely undercuts the argument that MNPS is an underfunded district because it fails to offer specifics were increased funding would lead to better outcomes.

Now Dr. Joseph may argue that internally they are moving money around and shifting priorities to address those aforementioned issues, but if that is the case, then once again you are undercutting the underfunded school district argument. We weren’t underfunded this year, money was just allocated…incorrectly.

This budget is going to require more analyzation, hopefully, I’m missing something. As much as I am ready to see Dr. Joseph’s tenure come to an end, the students and teachers of MNPS deserve better. If we are truly a grossly underfunded district then we need a budget that addresses those inadequacies head-on. We don’t need a budget that just provides for more of the same outcomes. This is not the budget that Nashville needs right now unless next year is indeed going to be the year of leadership transition. If that’s the case, let’s get to it.