Boe President Comments_june 2008

BOARD OF EDUCATION Brendan Walsh, President Alice Kosinski, Vice President Angela Kennedy, Secretary Fred Minturn, Treasurer Joan Dindoffer, Trustee Ahmed Ismail, Trustee John Steininger, Trustee

End of 2007-2008 Academic Year Comments Brendan Walsh, Board of Education President, June 30, 2008 Educating nearly 9,000 culturally, academically, and emotionally diverse students is a monumental undertaking. An infinite permutation of elements impacts the task. Like the elementary math lesson of the common denominator, each of these element can be fit into one of three discrete, yet interdependent categories: academic, financial, and learning environment. Defining the process to assess and measure the district’s performance in each category is the primary function of the Board of Education. The ability to isolate focus on elements within the three categories is important, but more valuable is an understanding of how a change in one will affect the others. Change can be sudden or gradual. It can come from within as a means to improve our performance or it can be in response to an external force, such as the state’s financial condition, healthcare and retirement cost increases, or new graduation standards. In all cases, the ability to project and compensate for the impact of change, knowing the interdependent nature of the elements comprising our organization, is the critical skill. No element is free standing, change is constant, and our obligation to our students and community never changes. These are our circumstances. To visualize this interdependence, consider the architectural structure of the arch. The arch revolutionized the construction of bridges, public works, cathedrals, and monuments enabling nations to grow, prosper, and celebrate accomplishments. Arches capitalize on the principle that the compressive stress among its elements yields greater strength than structures where stresses pull away from one another. The centerpiece of the arch is the keystone. The keystone simultaneously relies completely on the support of its flanking elements while also providing the counterbalancing support the entire structure needs, creating a state of equilibrium. Three core elements comprise our enterprise. The keystone of the arch of the Grosse Pointe Public School system is academics, flanked on one side by our financial condition and a positive learning environment on the other. None of the three, nor their sub-elements, exists for any purpose other than what they do to contribute to the structural integrity, strength, and function of the arch. Each element’s value is measured by what it does to support the keystone of academic achievement which in turn is measured by its ability to reciprocate the support it receives. Our community has inherited a great arch – both its benefit and its burden, for we are each subelements as well. Our administration is tasked with operational responsibilities for the arch while the Board of Education provides the oversight and the overall assessment of its structural integrity. The Board and administration must work from common blueprints and agree on the instruments and terms of evaluation to ensure a shared vision - ever vigilant of the interdependent nature of the arch’s three core elements: academic, financial, and learning environment. In previous years the financial stone had been weakened and the impact was decidedly negative, making it less capable of supporting our academic goals and compromising our learning environment. Now, with proper attention, our financial position has been refortified. Early in the year we approved a new contract with our teachers that demonstrated a spirit of cooperation resulting in a fair and equitable solution, the true winner of which was the entire community. We re-allocated over one million dollars from less weight bearing elements to those which contribute Excellence in Education – Learning and Leading for Today and Tomorrow 1

more. We maintained class sizes at present levels for the second consecutive year. Our administrative and operating costs are trending down on a per pupil basis while other districts across the state are seeing increases. We can claim a State of Michigan leadership position in proportion of revenues allocated to instructional expenditures. There is not a school district in this state that has a more complete view of its financial position than the Grosse Pointe Public School System. We have developed a battery of reports that provide a continuous, multi-dimensional measurement of our performance to help us implement best practices and identify opportunities for improvement. The community should take note that again this year absent from our budget planning was any discussion of reducing classroom or extracurricular options, raising class sizes, participation fees, changing class schedules or outsourcing staff. The exact opposite occurred as we focused on improvement and reinvestment. This is what financial equilibrium looks and feels like. Let us never forget it or what it takes to achieve it. We cannot lend the support needed to academics or our learning environment without financial equilibrium, but those equally important core elements require equal attention. A safe and nurturing physical and emotional learning environment is essential to our success. Progress continues on the physical envelope of our learning environment as Bond and Sinking Fund projects continue. The middle school science labs are now completed. The pool and gymnasium at South High School has proceeded flawlessly and we anticipate it will open on time and on budget in the fall. We are finalizing plans for multi-purpose rooms at South and Brownell. We are investigating new instructional technologies to create digitally interactive classrooms for our millennial aged students. These improvements demonstrate a commitment to a learning environment that develops the whole student. We realized a return on these investments in a year of unprecedented achievement in athletic, performing arts, and academically oriented competition. The true benefit is not trophies or accolades, but in how these accomplishments enhance our sense community, which undoubtedly contributes to our learning environment and makes us a stronger, more attractive district. That same sense of community must translate into model behavior in our hallways and classrooms. School staff focused more on delivering instruction rather than enforcing discipline will lend greater support to out academic objectives. We surveyed the community on ways to improve our learning environment and as a result revised our Student Code of Conduct that will be put into effect this fall. Proactive and positive intervention is our strategy and our improved financial condition has allowed us to invest in the additional resources required to chart this course. Our learning environment does not lend itself as easily to the type of measurement we have instituted in our finances, but we must be just as progressive in assessing its health. One of the primary goals of this Board before the end of 2008 will be to establish a recurring, reliable, and constructive means to do so. We will not allow this critical structural element to be left unattended or unmeasured. Doing so will pay dividends by lending greater support to our academic objectives. Excellence in Education – Learning and Leading for Today and Tomorrow 2

Our academic keystone has not gone unattended. Broad-based assessments such as the Michigan Merit Exam, MEAP, SAT, and Advanced Placement show we continue to perform among the best in the state. But we cannot be satisfied when we acknowledge our commitment to the success of each and every student. This year we revised our academic assessment program by implementing the more individually oriented NWEA battery for grades 1 through 8. This will help inform a differentiated instruction strategy for students of all abilities. We added resources for support classes in both middle and high school. Development of common assessments continue as we seek to ensure that our course level curriculum is delivered consistently and effectively at all schools. We revised our Social Studies and Science curriculum and invested nearly one million dollars in new textbooks in Social Studies, Science, and Math. We approved four progressive, yet practical, new courses in Mandarin Chinese, Applied Medical Research, Robotics, and Digital Seminars. The keystone of our arch may have been set over 80 years ago, but we continue to adapt to remain relevant to new generations competing in a smaller world. This focus remains as work continues on our High Schools 2.0 initiative and as we engage in further analysis of the International AP Diploma program and components from the International Baccalaureate program. Volumes of data are generated from the many academic assessment tools at our disposal. Too much data can sometimes confuse analysis when not properly refined. Progress must be made to synthesize this data into meaningful information, to aid in instructional improvements and serve as a selling point for the district. Ultimately the Board of Education needs to evaluate the effectiveness of our academic program to verify that we are realizing an appropriate return on our investment. Improved academic assessment reports correlated to financial investments will help us achieve that objective and will be another goal of the Board for the coming year. Using the analogy of the arch, we all must accept the counter-intuitive notion that tension, typically a source of discomfort, is actually a source of strength. All of us shoulder a portion of the burden. The tension we feel reminds us of our contribution to support the overall structure from which the community and all its members derive great benefit. The aggregate weight we bear will never get any lighter and will very likely increase. Proportional distribution of the burden will lead to success just as unbalanced distribution will result in failure. Perhaps your load may be made to feel lighter by the comfort of knowing that your own weight quite likely is borne by someone or something quite close to you. The Board’s assessment is that our arch indeed has structural integrity, and for this our community should be proud. We acknowledge further inspection, measurement, and improvements are required, as will always be the case. We have already identified many of them, but undoubtedly more challenges will come our way. Our raw materials can change, aging components will need repair, inclement weather will rage from above, while the earth can shift below. But like other great arches across the world, ours too will endure with proper planning, cooperation, execution and reverence.

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