Jan. 30, 2009
Les Fujitake, Bloomington Schools Superintendent:
Minnesota has one of the largest achievement gaps in the country. You can have a great school system, but if the playing field isn’t level because of poverty—when basic needs aren’t met—children can’t perform in school. Children aren’t ready because of the lack of early childhood programs, because of language differences at home, environment, segregation and mobility. These are challenges that all communities face.
Blue Ribbon School: Oak Grove Elementary School on the Bloomington’s east side won a National Blue Ribbon Award for closing the achievement gap. There are 90,000 public and private schools in the country, only 237 received a blue ribbon in 2007. Oak Grove was also recognized by the Department of Education as the highest scoring school where 50 percent of more of students come from low-income families. We are doing a good job. Bloomington still has an achievement gap.
We are able to do well because of a strong, supportive community. Examples of supportive institutions include Bridging, Companies to Classrooms, and Cornerstone, one of the top domestic violence centers in the metro area.
Fujitake offered several points of conventional wisdom, then debunked them.
Conventional Wisdom 1: Public education can’t be run like a private business.
We try to make a profit in the food service operation so we can help fund the classroom. Each school is a profit center. We look at portion controls. We run it just like a restaurant or any other kind of food service business. Over the last ten years, we have been able to make a profit of $1.5 million that we use to help the classroom. That saves teachers positions. We charge the lowest price of neighboring districts..
Conventional Wisdom 2: Outsourcing of any government agency is more efficient and more economical.
Conventional wisdom about outsourcing isn’t always true. In transportation, we went from a contracted business and brought it in house. There is no marginal cost to run a business. You should be able to outperform a private business if you don’t have to pay property taxes, corporate taxes or overhead, and if you already have insurance and accounting and payroll systems. (He showed a cost-per-student graph showing Bloomington is more efficient than other districts.)
(We have the only system in the state with GPS on all our buses. We can track where they go, if they are on route, on schedule. We can check if they are speeding. We can see if they slow down at crossings.)
Conventional Wisdom Number 3: With salary and benefits at 80 percent of the costs, you have limited opportunity to save money
(Fujitake showed charts on percent increases of Bloomington teacher contracts that kept costs down.) All of this is to protect the classroom. Most other districts offer multiple health insurance plans. We only offer one plan. That way, you don’t have adverse selection, with people who are sick going to the conventional plan and people who are young and healthy going to the high deductible plan. Everyone is in the same experience. It was hard to get there. It’s easier to manage.
Budget Challenge: Here’s the challenge in the next school budget. We get two forecasts a year, November and February. We have a $2.4 billion deficit each year. How good is that forecast? The November forecast uses data through October. The economy took a dive in November and December. That has to be factored in. The talk now is $6-$7 billion deficit in February. We have some major changes. K-12 is the biggest portion spending.
More poverty: We already have 15 percent more students qualifying for the F/R priced lunch program.
Community partnerships: We created this nonprofit, independent of the school district for community support. The We Believe Alliance.
(He shows aerial view of Kennedy campus.) We are going to be putting a free clinic at the early childhood center. We will be working with Fairview Health System to establish it, a first for Bloomington. We are developing a health science curriculum. We are working with the high school. Hopefully, students can do internship work at the clinic.
We can’t do the early childhood programming alone, there’s not enough funding. St. Luke’s Lutheran Church called. They have a declining congregation. They have a great preschool program. They want to offer free scholarships to families in poverty. They just want us to identify the kids for the program. Another church heard about it and they are responding. It is about getting the community to work together.
It is all about service. We are having a lot of people coming to volunteer in our schools. We have a two-week waiting list to volunteer. We have execs, leaders and managers. We are working with churches to set up programs. One church said it has a real interest in music. They are going to be offering fee music lessons to children in poverty. Near 494 and the Mall of America are the Georgetown Apartments, at one time a premier townhouse development. It is really deteriorating in the past few years, becoming a slum. Churches are doing missionary work, doing homework, tutoring and counseling.
Mobility: With this economy, many people losing their jobs. They are working part-time jobs. They can’t make ends meet. I think people are moving. I talked to the State Demographer. He is scratching his head. His data is slow in coming. I have been asking, Are people leaving town? He said he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if people are doubling up or moving to shelters. Something is going on. People moved here because of the economy. The economy goes down. Something is going to happen.
In many districts, enrollments have been sustained with people moving into the state. We are already seeing signs that ESL numbers are leveling off. I have talked to other districts, Shakopee and Prior Lake. Shakopee is a growth district. Their elementary schools would always have higher enrollments come January, because people were moving into their community. This is the first year that their enrollment counts are flat. Prior Lake, they usually send out 800 letters a year to potential kindergarteners. This year they are only sending out 675 letters. It is a growth district. Our kindergarten registration is down, largely on our east side. It’s early on, could be the weather, but something is going on.
Enrollment affects funding: It is going to affect all of us if the numbers change. I don’t have any hard data. We have to start gathering this information, otherwise people are going to be very surprised come September.
Poverty shift affects achievement gap: It is going to be real interesting on achievement gap. If more people qualify for free or reduced lunch, we are going to have former middle-income students moving into the free or reduced lunch category. They are going to be high flyers in a category that has traditionally been under performers. So people may say, “Well, the achievement gap is closing.”
Educational excellence: It is not only about closing the achievement gap, it is also about increasing excellence of education in Minnesota. We have hybrid classes, a combination of regular classes plus on-line learning. It is the future. And programs for profoundly gifted students, with IQs of scientists and researchers. It is the only one in Minnesota. We have 50 percent of the students coming from 15 neighboring districts. They come quite a distance. We need more of these programs
Hennepin Technical College has a new president. In California, she had an early college high school where kids could go to the community college for classes. She is going to start one at Kennedy High School—11th and 12th graders will go to Hennepin Technical. When they graduate, they should have 60 college credits. In the past, we wanted to keep the students in our school system; each one is $7,000 to $8,000 in revenue. We have to change our thinking. Otherwise we are going to lose our students if we don’t offer these programs. We are working with Normandale Community College to do the same.
Summary: This economy, we need to watch what is happening. School systems need a stable environment. It is going to be really tough to maintain that stable environment. And I am really concerned about enrollment. Something is happening.
Q & A
Q: Our children are becoming more and more obese. Are the lunches being provided healthy? What are you doing in your school?
A: We are feeding them more breakfast. On the east side, we offer a free breakfast to all students. We don’t want to differentiate the students; there is a stigma. It’s had a powerful impact on building team and helping with moral and student achievement. As far as obesity, we have a dietician we contract with. We work with the city public health department. We have a wellness committee, and a food service committee, with school and public members.
Q: Talk more about why Oak Grove is so successful in closing the achievement gap.
A: In five years it had five principals. So much for leadership—it is the teachers. They worked as a team. They had adversity. Leadership was turning over. The teachers coalesced and united. It all comes down to teachers and teacher leadership. The new principals, they were so afraid to touch anything. If they changed, it might fall apart. They relied on the teacher leadership. They were very data driven.
Q: An observation regarding enrollment trends. This was one of the first years of growth in the city. During an economic downturns, perhaps immigrants tend to go to cities where there are higher concentrations of immigrants.
A: We are working on a GIS study to track how people have moved. And we are going to have a think tank group, the state demographer, a sociologist, a real estate broker, a property manager and a city planner and the school district, to make some informed guesses about what is going on.
Q: You got a two-year grant to close the achievement gap in 2005, for full day K for disadvantaged children. What happened?
A: We offer free all day K to any child at risk. We look at their socio-economic status and test scores and offer free K only to those at risk. We have a good early childhood program. If we don’t sustain that with an all day kindergarten program, they regress. It is not for everyone. Not all families want it. Not all kids need it.
Q: With declining enrollment, have births been declining, too?
A: Richfield had the highest birth percentage increase of any metro community, Bloomington was right next to it, largely because of the Hispanic community. The question is how many do you capture? Our capture rate is 80 percent. Capture rate is higher in outlying areas; our community has more turnover. Things are changing with this economy. I think the capture rate will go down. At the same time, people are having a hard time selling their homes and moving. The rental market is getting tough. We have to get data.
Q: One of your kindergarten teachers told me about her success. One of the reasons she thought she was doing so well is because she went to visit each family. She said not all teachers to it. I asked why not and she said they don’t dare. How do you deal with teachers who don’t dare?
A: Through education. We have to change the culture in the schools. Many of them are great. You start from the top. I go out and talk to anybody. I can’t tell my teachers to go out if I am not going out. It starts from the top. It starts with building relationships. Relationships help solve problems.
Q: One of your pieces of the puzzle was segregation. Is the We Believe Alliance dealing with housing patterns?
A: We were the 12th whitest state in the country. Many of the constituents of the policy makers are white. That is a real challenge. In Bloomington, diversity is 16 percent among adults. Go down under 18 years old and it is 40 percent. It is changing. We need to get out there and inform the policy makers about this.
Q: Why are you so strongly in favor of having teachers go and meet parents? Why is that more effective than Reading Corps or other classroom things?
A: It is my value. Hopefully we hire people who share that value. It is all about relationships..
Q: (Follow up) You say you are data driven. What kind of numbers do you have on that?
A: I don’t have any data. It is just one of my beliefs that relationships drive so many things.
Q: (Comment: MPS teacher) I teach on the north side. There are a whole lot of people who are suspicious of the public schools. Once I have gone to their home and talked to them, two things happen. One is parents say if your teacher was willing to come all the way out here to talk to me, you better be good. That has a direct impact on classroom. And parents are more willing to come and visit me when there is a program or activity.
Q: Talk about the We Believe Alliance. What is your vision?
A: It is uniting the community. There are so many people who want to help out. It is community organizing. It is hard work, talking to people about getting engaged. You have to have perseverance and drive. You have to develop critical mass and start somewhere. You can engage the public and faith community. One reason we set up this nonprofit is that the school district can’t get that close to the faith community. As long as they are wiling to put community service before evangelism, that‘s great. And many of them want to do that.
Q: I hear you talk a lot about relationship building. Are there specific strategies that you are using with your staff and children and families in poverty as far as improving their emotional competencies, self esteem and soft skill development to meet your goals?
A: That is a hard question. It is working together, just moving forward. That is all you can do.
Q: (Comment from a Hispanic woman, commending the Bloomington School system and Fujtake) I have never seen my community so engaged in a very white community, they are empowered. These moms have a hockey team of Latinos—24 Latinos playing ice hockey. They (parents) could meet with him any time. His door is open.
Q: What can a group like ours do to close the achievement gap besides talking about it?
A: There are so many opportunities out there. We need someone working on the WE Believe Alliance full time. We will be hiring a leader for that program. We don’t need workers we need leaders. People who will come up and say, I will start a dance program or a computer class. They don’t need to know how to use computers. Some of those nerds don’t know how to organize, to raise money or schedule. If you get a manager, they can do it. We have people responding to do that.
Q: So what do you think will happen with K-12 in the budget?
A: Look at history, there was a comparable deficit in the early 1980s. They had five special sessions. We kept passing budgets and reconvening. I hope that doesn’t happen. How can school districts plan and move forward? That will be a really big challenge. This forecast is different from back then. One difference is that the outlook isn’t rosy. If you went back then, there was some hope the economy would improve in the next biennium. That is a really big difference. There is so much uncertainty. If we have special sessions, how do you settle contracts? How do you move forward? … Right now most school districts have to settle class sizes and land teacher contracts.
Q: (Comment) I’d like to go back to the question of what can we do here. Several meetings ago, the same thing came up. It’s overwhelming to think about. Maybe we have a meeting, talk about how we organize, what we bring to the table and network with some end goals in mind. If we are all spinning around doing our own thing, I don’t think we are getting the push and the movement we need. We have been talking about closing the achievement gap since I became a teacher 32 years ago. We are still talking about it. We have many other gaps all around us. Not because teachers aren’t well intentioned or don’t care. It is so much our children need. I would love to have a meeting in which we talk about what do we bring to the table.
A: Someone always steps forward. A lady heard me speak and said she lives next to the Georgetown complex. She said she wanted to open up her house and her Internet to those children. We hooked her up with the church and they are on their way—the power of communicating and getting people involved and giving them an opportunity.
Q: I’m impressed with teacher salary numbers, (that Bloomington kept the raises low.) How does the pay scale compare and do you have problems with retention?
A: We keep our pay at a reasonable level. Are we still competitive in recruiting? The answer is, we don’t have a problem attracting candidates. We have low class sizes. We are data driven. We have good training programs and we are stable. We try not to cut. I will do anything to protect the classroom. Hopefully the word gets out. Our pay is still competitive.
Q: After the food service and transportation changes, what is your next enterprise to save money?
A: Shared services. We should share services with the city and neighboring school districts. It is hard to organize. That is where I see the next frontier….
thank you big
Posted by: markedone | 03/21/2009 at 08:25 AM