Editor's note: Hard times

When I was a boy I had to walk five miles to school and back every day in snow up to my knees. OK, I’m exaggerating. It wasn’t every day—the snow only lasts six months out of the year in the foothills of Appalachia where I grew up, after all. That left me four months to wade through floodwater and mud and two months off school to work in the fields.

My parents had a harder slog, they assured me: The snow was up to their lunch buckets, and it was uphill each way. The point is, we gritted our teeth and got’er done, as the youngsters say.

We’ve come a long way. Now, between the chronic underfunding that plagues public education and the economic crisis that broke out this fall, the hard-luck stories belong to the schools themselves.

“By the time you read this, several interesting developments may have occurred that will have us once again gearing up for a political fight to preserve and protect the resources that have been allocated for schools—a fight made even more critical by its timing, with the school year already well under way,” CSBA Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin writes ominously in his column on page 5. Halloween was still ahead of us as this issue of California Schools was being readied for the press, so neither Mr. Plotkin nor I can know what toil and trouble will have bubbled up in Sacramento recently, but don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Regular California Schools contributor Scott LaFee got the memo. His feature, “Running on Empty,” gathers stories from more than a dozen California school districts and other sources to find out how schools are coping with the twin scourges of cost run-ups and budget let-downs.

“These are some of the most trying times we have faced,” Matthew Belasco, food services director for Tracy Unified School District in the Central Valley, told LaFee. “I have been in the food service industry for 20 years, and we have never seen a crisis such as this. Fuel, food prices, wholesale costs are all trending upward at a record pace, with no end it sight.”

Like the thousands of other dedicated staffers throughout the state who make our schools work, Belasco and his team have found ways to cut corners without cutting quality, striving to improve efficiency and reduce waste. Find out how on page 24.

When it comes to innovation in another field, though, no one outdoes Fred Tempes.

“We’re building the plane while we’re flying it,” Tempes, director of the Comprehensive School Assistance Program at the Regional Educational Laboratory West, told staff writer Carol Brydolf for her story “DAITs with Destiny” (page 32).

Tempes supervises five District Assistance and Intervention Teams—DAITs, get it?—that the State Board of Education has authorized to work with some school districts and county offices of education requiring Corrective Action under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Local educational agencies that fall short of adequate yearly progress for three years enter Program Improvement under NCLB, subjecting them to a range of possible interventions intended to improve student performance—a goal that everyone can agree on, even if reasonable people may disagree on the best way to get there.

Working with DAITs is among those intervention options. DAITs grew out of a 2004 state law that was itself developed in consultation with members of the education community, including CSBA, Brydolf writes, but they remain a work in progress, as Tempes suggested with his analogy of building a plane while flying it. Begun as a pilot project to help 15 districts boost student achievement, the DAIT approach has posted significant progress by focusing on seven key operational aspects: governance; alignment of curriculum, instruction and assessment to state standards; fiscal operations; human resources; data systems and achievement monitoring; and professional development.

“It was difficult and took strong leadership at all levels, but we needed to get everyone on the same page,” Red Bluff Union Elementary School District Superintendent Charles Allen, whose district was in on the pilot project, told Brydolf. “Working with a DAIT allowed a small district like ours to add expertise and get some vital support. The team provided some structures that helped us work collaboratively with our teachers to move the school improvement effort forward.”

But not everyone is sold on the approach in all its details. Oxnard Elementary School District Superintendent Rick Miller, for example, says the concept raises serious questions about who’s in charge, who foots the bill and other concerns.

“We have nothing against DAITs or the State Board sanctions,” Miller says. “But we object to the provision that says we must do whatever the DAIT tells us to do. … What if the recommendation costs a lot?”

CSBA Assistant Executive Director Holly Jacobson was involved in developing the DAIT concept, and she is enthusiastic about its potential, but she also shares Miller’s concerns.

“It’s not enough to say that the DAIT work is more important and must come first,” before local governance teams’ own hard-thought remedies. Jacobson told Brydolf. “DAITs need to help districts work through these crises and also complete their DAIT work.”

“DAITs need to help districts,” Jacobson told Brydolf. “The State Board’s plan raises significant governance issues.”

Similar concerns arise about at least one approach to remedying the growing shortage of qualified math and science teachers, as Margaret Gaston told staff writer Marsha Boutelle in “Solving for X” (page 44). Gaston, president and executive director of the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning in Santa Cruz, supports exploring signing bonuses and paid professional development as part of locally based hiring and retention incentives, and she recognizes the state also plays a crucial role in that.

“But we have to be careful here,” Gaston cautions, “not to overregulate the incentives idea. Local control is very important and needs to be bargained locally. What the state can do is to provide incentives with grants or loans to teacher candidates to finish their credentials.”

“What we’re looking at here is an old habit from the policy community writ large—Legislature, state agencies, et cetera—to present initiatives absent a thorough examination of what it actually takes to implement those initiatives,” Gaston continued. “Everything gets more complex with the budget crisis.”

It’s almost enough—almost—to make me pine for the good old days back in the snowdrifts.

Thanks for reading.

Brian Taylor (btaylor@csba.org) is the managing editor of California Schools.