Potential Primary Process Change...Survey Results

As near as I can tell, 14 folks participated in my recent survey on the primary process.  While certainly not a scientific sampling, here are the results:

It was nice, but not really surprising, that visitors were almost all aware of the issue.  I suspect the general population is less so.  The legislation is still pending in Harrisburg, so we'll all have to watch and see how this goes.  PSBA held a similar survey of it's membership, too.  If they publish anything, I'll pass it along.

Depending upon one's perspective, it can either be good or bad to have to define one's views on national issues when being evaluated for directing local school matters, though I admit there is probably some correlation between the two on some matters.  The resolution may have cost and time implications related to effectively running two campaigns, especially given the considerable time it takes to campaign while also sitting on an active board, though it is easy to argue that being visible to the community on a regular basis in an authoritative position has its unfair advantages, too.  And finally, there is the obvious benefit of having two votes on the decision, especially if it's a close race on some key issues.

In the end, as I've already stated, board members and prospective board members have an obligation to be in contact with the community.  Whether it's forced through campaigning or as a matter of responsible boardsmanship, getting and staying in touch with the community is part of the job.

What do you think?

I've posted a new survey and welcome any help to get input.  It's rather timely.

Knowledge Sharing...Two Great Examples

I've written and spoken before about the importance of sharing knowledge.  I encourage it in my work and wherever I'm able, but I was reminded of its value in two events this week so I thought I'd at least note them -- for my own benefit if not for others.

I've begun reading Dr. Myron Lieberman's most recent (2007) book entitled "The Educational Morass", in which he reviews a wide range of recent and still very "hot" issues in K-12 education.  He provides a tour of much of the research and commentary on the topics, but perhaps as importantly, he also provides his opinion.  He noted in the introduction that he does so not because he believes that his opinion is the only opinion to have, but because unless we share our opinions, openly and honestly, we cannot fully explore the key ideas surrounding a topic or objective.  Dr. Lieberman shares his knowledge and insights not to direct others but to shed light and allow others a basis upon which to explore their own ideas.  He does so as a way to measure progress in the debate and the resultant activities.  While his opinions are controversial to many, he's making an attempt to encourage what I've also discussed elsewhere as a listening rhetoric -- one in which the objective is not winning arguments, but building clarity and collective insight.  What a mature perspective and approach to demonstrate, and one that I'm still learning how to do with any consistency.

In the other event, big news actually, a friend and fellow board member, though we've never met, has announced that he will seek election as the state representative for his legislative district.  Though we haven't known each other long, Dr. Fred Baldwin, longtime School Director for the Carlisle Area School District, has shared his knowledge and insights on being a good board member with me and he regularly shares his experienced opinions with everyone on his blog, School Board Transparency.  Dr. Baldwin is no slouch in the commitment category either, having 16 years on the school board, 12 as board president, and he willingly shares his experiences, resources, and encouragement with wit and great style reflective of his skills as a writer and historian.  He has built up a strong reputation in support of education and his opinion on transparency is refreshing and challenging to the secrecy by and resulting distrust of government.  His knowledge is definitely worth sharing across the state.  We NEED more good eggs like Fred in public office and I look forward to listening to his rhetoric as he explores the new challenges of seeking, and soon executing, a legislative position for Pennsylvania.

Here's hoping I can be as rhetorically mature as Myron Lieberman and as committed to excellence and openness for Pennsylvania as Fred Baldwin.

News from PA Board of Education

PSBA provides members with valuable weekly updates on relevant legislation and educational activities in Pennsylvania.  Given the abysmally organized, uninformative, confusing, and virtually unnavigable state of the new PDE website, I'm extremely grateful for PSBA's efforts to inform the public by participating in the uncalendared, unannounced, unreported state events and dedicating resources to reporting out in a timely and responsible way.

This week PSBA provided the following news item on topics that I and many of our residents monitor closely:

State Board of Education discusses various initiatives

The State Board of Education held its first meeting of the year, hearing updates on various initiatives of the board and the Department of Education, and discussing activities for the year. The board heard reports regarding PDE's Race to the Top application and the recent report of the Virtual High School Study Commission.

This year the State Board will continue its work on the priorities identified last year. They are: teacher effectiveness; high school reform; and student safety, health and wellness.  The board also will be discussing issues related to the structure of school systems and school governance.

The board has a three-pronged plan to address student safety, health and wellness. One area the board will work on is to draft new regulations regarding physical education and activity. State Secretary of Health Everett James presented information to the board on childhood obesity rates in Pennsylvania, and current state initiatives in select schools, including the Active Schools Grant program. He noted that while there is a national recommendation for all students to have 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity a day, he suggested that 30 minutes may be feasible.

Another initiative the board is working on is to examine issues related to school climate/school safety.  The board discussed the ongoing research and work of its School Climate Committee and also heard presentations from the National School Climate Council. The board intends to create regulations incorporating school climate standards. The regulations would focus on systems that the education community can provide to promote a safe school environment for students, and also to assist students with interpersonal decision-making skills.

Finally, the board is working on developing regulations for student nutrition. The board is currently working on a draft that will be issued for public comment later this year.

Overcoming a Weakness...Engaging with Our Community

One possible benefit of having been appointed is not having to campaign for my position on the school board, but in fact, I consider this a weakness.  While campaigning can be tiresome and time-consuming, I feel a real loss for not having had the opportunity to meet more members of the community and to collect and share ideas.  While I came from our United Parents Group, certainly a group with many diverse perspectives, it is still only a limited perspective, leaving out many community members who either can't participate, due to time or priorities, or don't participate, because they don't have children attending school in the district.  Whatever the reason, I know I'm missing a significant portion of the community.

This blog is about sharing ideas and, while it's helpful if not cathartic to send out my thoughts, it's still a largely one-way dialog and I won't be a fully effective board member until I have had more opportunities to meet with the community.  Because schools are critical to strong communities, public engagement is essential to determining strategic direction and figuring out how to do this is part of my job.

In looking around for information, I found a good summary on the Oregon School Board Association's website based on a good book published by the National School Board Association, called "Communities Count: A School Board Guide to Public Engagement."  (This book is available on the NSBA website and a companion case study guide is available for free on ERIC.)

The article, and presumably the book, asks some good questions to stimulate public discussions.  From these, I've adopted and derived some of my own:

• How should we determine what the public expects of our schools?
• How should we involve the public in strategic planning?
• What are the proper goals and desired outcomes for community engagement activities?
• When should public engagement be advisory and when or how should the public share in decisions?
• With whom, in what forums, and how often should we engage the public?

Of note in these reports is the essential element of building trust between the community and the board.  This is certainly a key element for me and I hope you will share your thoughts on the subject.

Read My Tweets...No New News Here

As I'm learning how to use this blog effectively, I'm also learning how to use other forms of communication, too.

Twitter, despite its initial reputation for the "what I had for breakfast" kinds of communication, is actually becoming the world's best and fastest real-time communications system.  Twitter has moved FAR beyond most people's imagination for what a continual, personal form of communication can do.  (I say "most", because Star Trek fans know this concept well from the Borg episodes.  Tweeters are certainly seeking to be "one with the collective", though we are far from that.)

From it's big jump into the spotlight with horrors following the Iranian presidential election to the continuing story today of the Haitian earthquake, Twitter has, almost overnight, taken over the world of instantaneous news alerts (all in 140 characters or less).

So, as some may have seen, I plan to use this blog to comment on things that are important to me, to my goal of sharing my learning regarding becoming a quality board member, and toward building community around issues of importance in our schools and our children in a less timely or more timeless way; and I will use Twitter to share news items of immediate importance or relevance, but for which I'm only learning about or have not formed a full opinion regarding.

And further, in many cases, outside news I repeat here will have been shared via a tweet some time prior,  in real time.

I encourage you to follow both this blog and my Twitter account.  Retweet what you feel others will appreciate, and send me respectful "directs" on anything I need to know.  I'll be watching...and Tweeting!

Standards...Not Just for Academics

I want to echo here my comments this evening regarding the passage by our Board of a resolution adopting the Pennsylvania School Board Association's Standards for Effective School Governance.

I am proud to be on the board and to have the chance to vote, for the first time, in favor of this resolution.  I believe these standards reflect years of collected knowledge and insight by multitudes of current and past board members, and I believe they are a clear statement of what it takes to be an effective board and an effective board member.

However, these standards are not just for our Board.  I take them personally and, because we represent the community, the adoption of these standards reflects the community's support for quality leadership of the district and for providing a quality education in Cheltenham.

To be sure, these standards are hard to meet and no board can meet them without community support.  I encourage everyone to review these standards, to understand them, to participate in good school governance, and, working together, to support quality throughout our district.

Seeing the Forest... in a Perfect Storm

With a nod to fellow PA board blogger at Pride & Promise and his recent post on this same subject, I saved this post until our board had passed our preliminary budget.

With that passage, we have entered what is now officially budget season for Cheltenham as it is for school districts throughout America and, if you search for news on the subject, you won't have to look far to see that districts everywhere are going to be facing the same challenges that we will be here in Pennsylvania.  Tax revenues are down and clearly the growth of the past two or more decades is over.

While I certainly believe we will see a time when budgets can again support the kinds of growth in technology, facilities, and other teaching development and practices that we've seen in the recent past; clearly we have our work cut out for us to just keep afloat as we enter the perfect storm of declining revenues, increasing retirement and benefits costs, and increasing demands for high performance from our students as they move into an increasingly competitive global marketplace for skills and talents.

As we move into this period of difficult, even scary, budget times, I don't want us to forget that America was born out of education, and that our challenge is to review our fundamental principles for democracy.  We should reach back and relearn the guidance of our founding fathers that the only way America will survive and thrive will be through an educated populace -- one that continually seeks ways to advance knowledge and skills, and one that retains a deep philosophical understanding of the complexities of sustaining a great nation and system of government.

America must fight to keep our government working, learning, evolving, and always maintaining a clear eye on what has been such an essential element of our progress -- that element being the continual focus on a high quality, free and appropriate education for ALL of our residents.

These funding challenges are large and ever-present, but our real challenge is to see beyond these tough times to the world that awaits our children and their children, and to know that a quality education is the path we must follow to get there.

EASTERN Center for Arts & Technology - A Shining Star for Our Region

Part of this new position includes not only preparing for and participating in our almost weekly meetings, but each member often participates in educational leadership activities outside of the board.  In my case, I have the pleasure of sitting on the Joint Operating Committee of the EASTERN Center for Arts and Technology, our area's career and technical center.

I've already spoken about it earlier, but I wanted to share a recent re-accreditation report that reflects the strength and quality of this part of our district's educational offerings.  EASTERN was recently reviewed by the Middle States Association of Schools and Colleges, under their Commission on Secondary Schools, as part of EASTERN's self-initiated effort to build and maintain national and international accreditation for their programs.

This initiative was the direct result of an intense strategic planning process fully documented on their website and the most recent evidence of their success is provided in the 2009 Middle States Report, which I encourage you to review.

In supporting EASTERN’s continued accreditation, the review team noted a number of supporting factors, which I summarize below:

• EASTERN’s strong culture of collaboration with the business community yielding strong, meaningful advice to the school regarding career and technical areas of interest.
• EASTERN’s strong focus on data-driven planning focused on improved student performance.
• EASTERN’s long-standing commitment to strategic planning involving all of their stakeholders, which supports a high degree of financial stability, evidenced by the consistent unanimous approval of their budgets by constituent school districts.
• EASTERN’s commitment to and, indeed, guarantee of quality student skill development through their student warranty program.
• EASTERN’s parents and community member support built, in part, through the strong relationships developed between students and teachers.
• EASTERN’s excellent transition to their new Administrative Director derived from a proactive succession planning process.

 
I'm proud to have the opportunity to send our students to this fine school.  This is NOT your father's Vo-Tech school.  EASTERN goes way beyond that whole concept of skill development, including college-level coursework through Penn State on accounting, finance, information science, and engineering in their offerings.

My continued congratulations to EASTERN for their efforts to maintain such a high quality program and for their highly successful re-accreditation.  I'm lucky to be a small part of it.

A Comment On...The Battle of Educational Technology

This article (written by a teacher and submitted by a new, faithful reader) does a great job of outlining the topic of deciding how to approach the incorporation of new technology into schools and school board members would benefit from the perspective described as they develop their prioritization strategies.

We all see and perhaps own the wonderful individual technologies (those little time wasters we carry on our hips and in our bags), but until those technologies actually show a benefit to learning, I agree it would be better to focus on infrastructure that supports distribution of and collaboration around learning.

Do we really need our students worried about the perfectly formatted MS Office paper or are we focused on the content, developed through research, thought, and collaboration?

Obviously, the later, so let's make the technology support the goals and let the Droids serve their rightful business purposes.  They are not quite learning tools, today.

Act I Exceptions...Shared Knowledge

I knew it would happen.  I've left some information out of my previous discussion on Act I.  Specifically, there are exceptions to the rule (or why else would it be a rule, right?).

Here's what I believe I know.  (And please don't shoot me if I'm still wrong on some of this.  I'm learning and the legislative language can be rather dense.  Helpers are welcome to comment.)

First, start here at the PSBA website.  This site was written before the passage of Act I, so ignore the link to PDE and head to the "new" PDE website on Act I Exceptions.  Don't bother searching for our base index value, it's 2.9% in 2010-2011.  (For succeeding years, look here.)

Based on my own read, districts may apply for exceptions to Act I (and thus do not have to seek a referendum) when expenses rise significantly for the following purposes:

1. Debt service related to school construction
2. Special education
3. School improvement programs related to the Federal No Child Left Behind program
4. Fast growing student populations
5. Failure of the sum of certain local and state revenues to keep pace with the base index
6. Health care expenses for contracts in place when Act I was adopted (no longer applies)
7. Retirement expenses (e.g., gigantic PSERS rate increases that are already starting to come)

Districts are NOT required to utilize all of the value of the approved exceptions so please don't be shocked by news reports that say taxes ARE going up by some huge amount -- they may not be and I will certainly work hard to avoid it.  Provided a district fills out their paperwork correctly, I would expect approval of the exception requests since the criteria are pretty straight forward.  The application forms are even online at the PDE site above.

One gotcha...If a district requests exceptions and also requires a referendum, and then that referendum is turned down at the May primary, the district loses the exceptions AND must stay within the base index.  Thus, it should be obvious that a district will stay within its approved exceptions and avoid a referendum at the very least, unless there are truly dire circumstances. 

Again, districts do not have to use all of the value of their exceptions, so the work of boards is not done simply by applying for exceptions.  Because budgets are rarely finalized when the exception applications are due, districts are derelict if they don't at least apply for valid exceptions, even if they don't ultimately use them.

So, I just wanted to make sure I was doing my best to share my learning, to be open about having left out a point, and to make this an opportunity for others to comment if they believe they have a better handle on this complicated mess than I do.

One other thing I've learned...to LISTEN carefully to our district business manager.  They know this stuff really well and will guide us.  On this, you will just need to trust me.

Getting Involved...Through Committees

I was lucky.  I knew this before I was appointed to the school board, but still there are many who don't know, so I'm going to do my best to help remedy things based on what I know and have learned.  In Cheltenham, deliberation and discussion largely happens in our committee meetings where recommendations are made to the formal legislative meeting (the televised one) where formal decisions are adopted.  The major committees are: Business Affairs (major contracts and financial management), Facilities (construction and maintenance), Policy, and, generally the most popular, Educational Affairs.  Dates, times, and agendas are posted on the District website.

I want you to know this because I want members of our community to know how our board operates.  This practice is not unique or even unusual.  It is how an effective board works.  It also allows board members that additional moment to consider their position, seek wisdom or higher authority, or to allow for additional information to be prepared.

I also want you to know so that you are not surprised that our legislative meetings, aside from the benefit of making certain announcements for the community over a more widely viewed medium, can be rather boring or brief at times.  The brevity is not an attempt to avoid the Sunshine Law.  The sun has already shone, sometimes brightly, on these discussions -- in the committees.

The Board has made it clear that the path to a board agenda is through multiple routes starting with school staff and administration or through the board secretary, but in almost all circumstances, discussion and deliberation take place outside of the main legislative meeting, and this is where community involvement can have its most significant impact.

Committee meetings are open to the public and are publicized.  The public is invited to speak, responsibly and respectfully, by the committee chairs, questions are discussed, and minutes are taken.  As required, recommendations are made to the full legislative meeting.

These are "committees of the whole", meaning all board members are members of all committees, so there is rarely need for further discussion at the legislative meetings and, on occasion, straw polls are taken to ascertain the "mind" of the board (see my previous post on this one).  These are not the formal decisions, but help the chairs to understand and lead discussions effectively.

I encourage and invite the community to attend these meetings, to listen to deliberations, and to make their voices heard.  It's the best and most effective route toward participation in the process of making our district the best it can be.

Why Share My Learning

In my application for this Board position, I noted that I had a strong interest in a topic called, broadly, Knowledge Management. While we may have entered a "digital" or "Internet" age, what we really have entered is a "knowledge sharing" age facilitated by our new digital suite of tools.  Though having enjoyed many years of learning, most of what I know I learned from others who were willing to share, without much compensation, just for the love of it.

As a result, unless one happens to be in a field where researching new ideas in deep technical subjects is part of the job, most of us have a thin shell of individually unique knowledge wrapped around a large volume of core knowledge built with the help of our genetic background, our parents, teachers, friends, and coworkers, not to mention the many authors and speakers whom we'll never know, followed in a long succession of folks behind them.

This is not some incredibly new insight.  It is not original and what follows isn't either, but it will explain at bit more why I am writing this blog.

We cannot assume that what we know is somehow ours alone to have and hold.  Because we have largely built our lives and ourselves on the shoulders of those who came before us, we have an obligation to be a foundation for others in their process of building on the collective knowledge of society.

This is not to say that we cannot profit from our efforts to leverage knowledge, as many do, but when the subject IS knowledge and, in this case, education, I feel a strong obligation to share with others so that they can learn from what I learn.

Knowledge Management is about collecting, organizing, sharing, and otherwise making more broadly useful the knowledge that each of us has and that we can contribute to a larger goal.  Digital technologies, such as blogs, only facilitate the process; they are not the process.

The curious part of this is that we often do not share our knowledge because we believe it's somehow our secret sauce, our legacy, our stock in trade, whatever -- but some of the most influential people freely share their knowledge with others in the hope that they can raise the level of discussion and progress.  I'd bet few Nobel Prize winners are millionaires, yet collectively they have contributed monumentally to the knowledge and wealth of society, and they have enabled much of the world we know now or will know.  They may not be wealthy, but they DO share their wealth with all of us.

I will never be a Nobel Prize winner, but I hope I am doing my part in building them and other leaders who may someday come to the same realization -- that knowledge is most valuable when shared.

So that's a bit more about why I write this blog.  To close I'll note that EduBlog Awards publishes an annual list of top-rated bloggers in multiple categories of educational blogging, but guess which category of blogging is missing?  Visit and see.

A Board As... A Tree

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It is rare to see board members speak publicly and even rarer that they put their words on paper (electronic even), but when I saw this article, one idea (among many, it's a good article) tickled my philosophers bone, so forgive me for waxing a bit here.  I freely disclaim being an gray-haired egg-head, so every now and then I just have to show my stripes a bit.

In getting my arms around this job, I've been thinking a lot about what a board is and I've come to the rough conclusion that a school board is more of an idea than a thing.  A board is not its individual members and it is certainly not an unchanging thing.  Indeed, the board is only what it is at the moment that it acts or makes a formal decision on a particular matter and can be very different both before and after that moment, since the make-up of the "mind" of the board can change over time.  This is a fascinating idea and one, I suppose, that is true of any policy body made up of more than one individual.

About all I can say is that a board is what a board does (Thankyou, Forest Gump!) and, more specifically, that a board is strategic if it acts strategically, that it is concerned if it acts concerned, and so on.  Further, since a board is not what its individual members are, we have to think as a community about what we want our board to be, based on what we want it to do.  This is a very functional approach, but I can't think of a better alternative approach.

Here's one implication.  While a board may be made up of nine members, it is wrong to feel that any individual represents the board or, when being addressed, that the comments are being addressed to any individual.  This may be a hard concept for most who see the board as having a set of faces, but one way to avoid feeling overly passionate about a board's actions (or lack thereof) is to simply talk about what a board IS doing and what it OUGHT to do, based on some rationale.  To me, this is why it is so incumbent on a public board to be as transparent and communicative as possible, i.e., so that others can know what is in the mind of the board, however fleetingly or fickle.

Perhaps this idea of a board could being something like an object, a gavel perhaps, or a small tree, sitting in the middle of the room and that everyone can see and discuss, but it is not a thing that can express its opinions or be seen to be affected by any discussions until it acts in a particular way.

An interesting idea...or maybe not.  They are my stripes.

Whence the School Board?

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This one is way out of left field, but it didn't take me long to realize that there's a significant change coming.  You don't have to watch the actions of Secretary Arne Duncan for long to start to wonder this question.

With all of the external pressures and increasing controls, fully ranging from inputs to outputs, revenues to graduation testing, is there a need for the local, lay school board anymore?  So much of what a school board used to manage and maintain has been removed by states and, vicariously through states, the federal government via direct legislation or other mandates tied to revenues.  Are we living under a false sense that boards ARE in control today?  Could the consolidation of boards be a good thing as the pool of volunteer, educationally-minded, business-experienced, and politically-interested community leaders shrinks further. 

Could boards be replaced with a new system implementing a national standard using national taxes funneled through states (a la ARRA) guarantee equality of access (like the new health care system) better than today's system of thousands of quasi-independent bodies each interpreting the rules differently. 

But what of states rights or the opinions of local communities?  How will communities exercise their freedoms, if there ever were any?

Hard questions, but technology fully supports a more unified system.  And yet, because we can, do we -- should we?

[This is a repost from an entry on School Board 2.0.]

Welcome PSBA...to the Blogosphere!

With little or no fanfare, the Pennsylvania School Board Association has launched a blog to share news and thoughts related to their mission of exploring leadership issues in Pennsylvania's public schools.

They are currently tracking progress on their recently proposed legislation regarding the Public School Employees Retirement System (PSERS).  I encourage everyone to track this important issue, as well, and I want to make sure you see a specific statement from their December 22nd post:

"The key for all interested parties is to get a phone call or a letter in to your local legislator and encourage him or her to co-sponsor the PSBA bill and to champion the bill through its process in order that we can save both Pennsylvania taxpayers and school board members from a formidable task – figuring out a way to pay for the astronomical employer contribution increases that will plague the pension plan over the next two decades if long-term restructuring of the PSERS system is not enacted."

A hearty welcome and thanks to PSBA for their courage and initiative in setting up their new blog.  May they enjoy many years of collaborative and productive communication with Pennsylvania's community of leaders and taxpayers.

Act 1 Limits Start to Bite...And It's Only the Beginning

When I applied for my position on the board, I responded to the single question on the application, a question about the single biggest challenge with education, with a short discussion of the vise that school boards have been placed within.  On one side are the increasing demands to meet state- and federally-mandated standards (and as an engineer I support standards) along with the knowledge that I lived in a community that had a demonstrated passion for a rich, rigorous, diverse education. 

On the other side was the Act 1 limitation on funding to support the programs that these requirements demanded.  I noted that these conditions placed lay-controlled boards in the inappropriate position of defining educational programs based on fiscal limits rather than the good practices and experiences of our hired, professional administrators.  I noted that this position was unsustainable.  Little did I know how serious the situation would become.

I don't plan to get too upset on this blog very often, but I do want to make sure you know the facts I'm working from.  Sometimes these facts are angering.  If I have misinterpreted any of this, please set me straight.

Based on published Act I Index information from the Pennsylvania Department of Education, I created the image below that depicts the budget growth indices for Pennsylvania counties for the 2010-2011 fiscal year:

It's a little rough, but if it doesn't make you scratch your head, I'm not sure how to make this clearer.  Counties around Philadelphia are being limited to under 3% spending growth, while most of the rest of the state enjoys growth rates of over 3%.

This situation is based on a somewhat complicated set of calculations based, per the web site, around "the average of the percentage increase in the Statewide average weekly wage and the Employment Cost Index."  The data used to calculate these two values is from 2008, two years ago relative to the year, 2010, when we are applying the values.

For the fiscal year of 2010-2011, the base index is 2.9%.  This base index is the lowest rate possible, but counties with lower incomes relative to their collective market values are given an allowance to grow their school spending by more than the base rate, some nearly 1.5% more (for a total of nearly 4.4%).  Because the underlying indices used to calculate are two years old, we can expect the base index to continue to decline in future years depending on how long the ongoing recession lasts.  This is only the beginning, I fear.

I understand most of this, but I have two comments.  First, Montgomery County is not, I suspect, average with respect to the wage increases or the rise in the cost of living across the state.  Instead, I suspect we are probably enough above the average that 2.9% would be a deflationary value for our area.  Limiting our area to such low growth would appear to be a limit on our ability to provide effective educational programs.

What is also frustrating is that most districts spend upwards of 80% of their tax revenue on labor, generally paid through long-term collective bargaining agreements, and most of these agreements have preset increases of more than 3%.  These salary increases, however warranted, could be a problem for districts, such as those in these ring counties around Philadelphia, who have contracts requiring increases greater than 2.9%.  Unless the residents of these districts approve Act 1-mandated referenda permitting greater revenues (yes, taxes) for the district, severe limits on non-labor expenditures will have to make up the difference in staying under the index, and this is no small feat.

The math is not too hard, so here's an example.  Keeping this to round numbers and assuming labor costs make up 80% of a district's expenses, if labor costs go up by 3.5%, then other costs can only rise by 1% to stay under a 3% index.  For every additional 1/10th of 1% that labor goes up, other costs may have to go down by roughly 1/2 of 1%.  These seem like small numbers, but when applied to a district budget, they are not and they are real dollars, real programs.

What will be cut to achieve these budget limits?  Stay tuned.  Labor isn't the only thing rising, either.

[And as I was preparing this post, our local paper published a nice article on the topic.]

Open Letter on PSERS Reform

Dear Legislators:

At its meeting on Dec. 11, the Board of Trustees of the Pennsylvania School Employees Retirement System released its latest projection of increases in the employer contribution rate paid by school districts and the commonwealth. The rate will increase dramatically from now to 2016 and remain high until 2032.

In the past, the General Assembly has taken action to help school districts and the state to avoid unaffordable increases in the employer contribution rate by changing PSERS valuation methodologies. This has been done mainly by re-amortizing PSERS liabilities over longer periods of time and adjusting other factors. While this remains an option for short-term relief, such actions typically lose their effectiveness once the amortization date approaches. This is because the system has never been fixed to deal with long term increases in cost.

Senator Gene Yaw and Representative Glen Grell will be introducing legislation that would transform the PSERS system from a 100% defined benefit system to one that is a hybrid defined benefits/defined contribution system. Because the defined benefit characteristics under this hybrid plan are reduced under the current plan, the proposal would cut the benefit costs to employers. At the same time, the defined contribution characteristics of the proposal would allow members of the system to invest a portion of their contributions in a manner they see fit. 

The proposed system would continue to provide a viable pension benefit to school employees. An individual retiring after 30 years of service would receive anywhere from 53% to 63% of the final salary, depending on the performance of their investments and how much they contribute to those investments.

The bill would also reduce the projected increases in the school district portion of the employer contribution by capping those increases at the Act 1 index. The commonwealth would pay for the remainder of the increases over the cap.

A long-term solution to the pension issues that face Pennsylvania's taxpayers and school districts is the one piece that has been missing from all other pension reform measures. Please join Senator Yaw and Representative Grell in supporting this legislation, which would reduce pension system costs for our future generations.

Senator Yaw can be contacted at (717) 787-3280 and Representative Grell can be contacted at (717) 783-2063. If you have further questions about the proposal, please call the Governmental and Member Relations Department at the Pennsylvania School Boards Association at (717) 506-2460, ext. 3325.

Sincerely,

James Butt

School Director

Cheltenham Township

[This letter was sent to Senator Leanna Washington and Representative Lawrence Curry and was originally prepared by the Pennsylvania School Board Association.  For additional information, visit their pension reform site.]

PSA: Workshop on Cyberbullying, January 7th

I would be derelict in my duty as a former co-president if I did not pass this on.  I encourage you to share this with your friends across the community and around the area, as well.  We are truly luck to have the opportunity for events such as these each year.

Our district's United Parents group in collaboration with the School District of Cheltenham Township will be presenting a workshop on Cyberbullying on Thursday, January 7th at 7pm at the Cedarbrook Middle School Auditorium, Longfellow Ave, Wyncote.  The featured keynote speaker is Tina Meier, Founder of the Megan Meier Foundation.  The mission of the foundation is to bring awareness, education and promote positive change to children, parents, and education in response to the ongoing bullying and cyberbullying in our children’s daily environment.  Ms. Meier will share the tragic story of her daughter’s response to being bullied online. 

At the event, you will be able to increase your understanding of cyberbullying and its impact, to explore strategies to prevent and respond to cyberbullying, and to learn about key legal and criminal issues.  As an added bonus, during the day on that Thursday, Tina Meier will be at Cedarbrook Middle School to talk to our 7^th & 8^th graders.  UPG invites and encourages all families with children from kindergarten to 12^th grade to join the community for the evening workshop.  For more information, visit the UPG website.

National Principal Certification?

In a complementary fashion with metrics are standards.  Similar issues, for sure.

Here's a recent EdWeek article on standards for principals:

Plans Set for National Certification of Principals

Your thoughts? 

By the way, PSBA has a set of standards for board members, too, and I would want to be completely fair in any evaluation strategy.  What's good for the goose, as the say...

Under Review: Teacher Evaluation Strategies

Just saw this article on EdWeek:

New Teacher-Evaluation Systems Face Obstacles

While I am employed in the large-scale manufacturing business where production is relatively easy to measure and employee performance can be tied to some fairly clear metrics, I can fully appreciate that children are not widgets, even big ones, and the skills to create great students, our future leaders, are not easily discerned or measured.

While I am, indeed, a fan of metrics and I have almost never met a spreadsheet I didn't like, there are some fundamental questions I need to understand and research, and I'll be interested in the opinions of others in wrapping my arms around this topic.  Most importantly, perhaps, are the questions of basic humanity and of the key goals sought in establishing metrics.  After all, these are people teaching people and the range of skills and issues that are both effective and challenging are very broad.  This is undoubtedly a very complex issue that, based on the article, has yet to be resolved in favor of any one plan of attack.

I'm interested in learning more, so please share your thoughts, if you care to.

The Original PA School Board Blogger

It's been a busy week, and there is much to share, but I cannot go further without correcting an omission -- that of highlighting a key individual in my progress of becoming an effective board blogger.

It is difficult to overstate the impact of a pioneer. Turning on a light in a dark room brings new understanding, but once shown the light can we ever really appreciate the emptiness and lack of awareness from the darkness that preceded? Can we unring a bell?  In this case, the room is the world of responsible communication on school board activities and the light is a mere blog, but make no mistake, the bell has certainly been rung.

And the pioneer here is Fred Baldwin, toiling and tolling quietly on his lone state blog, bravely expressing his views on the subject of school transparency, marking out and lighting a path in the hope that someday others would follow.

I've known Fred only virtually, only briefly, and while I cannot speak for his stance on all issues, from our very first communications, I knew we owed him a debt.  I hope you will visit his blog, but I hope you will also learn from his efforts and enjoy knowing that there are board members willing to stick their necks out in a public way and who take the time to share their wisdom and experience with others across the community.

In addition to his blog commentary on numerous public transparency issues in Pennsylvania, I want to note his efforts to populate the Pennsylvania page on a national wiki dedicated to Sunshine Law information, the Sunshine Review.  This wiki is filled with numerous links to resources within Pennsylvania that are of common interest to residents and the press when researching issues.  This is a great site and would benefit from the efforts of others to provide links to lots of other relevant information.

It is through Fred that I found Paul Fisher and became more confident that a blog, carefully prepared, can be a source of light in the otherwise dark, mysterious world of school board participation.  I encourage other school board members to join the discussion by sharing their insights and experiences for the benefit of all.

Thanks, Fred!  Keep up the great work for Pennsylvania and school board bloggers everywhere!

Fellow Director Blog Found

It is darn difficult to find school board members publishing online, so when I find one, I want to share the news.

Pride and Promise, a blog by Northwestern Lehigh School District Director, Paul C. Fisher, Jr., gets high marks from me on looks and already he's publishing some great information for the public.  So refreshing...and brave, considering the numerous fine lines that must be walked.

His most recent entry is a nice piece on the generalities of School Directorship in PA with a review of the materials on the PSBA website, of which I have written and applaud.

Paul is already working to document key decisions he's made, which is precisely the kind knowledge and experience sharing that will yield substantial learning and insight by all stakeholders to any school district.  I already know that these decisions can be gut-wrenching, especially when, for privacy and other reasons, certain details must remain closed.  All I can say is that individuals with a deep interest need to get involved with the process and, if desired, seek a position.

Regardless, I hope you'll welcome his efforts, as I do with great warmth and encouragement, and support other board members willing to brave public scrutiny in the hope of building our communities and the lives of our children for the future through open, honest discussion of complex and difficult issues.

Are You Using a safe Doman Name Service?

Our District has recommended OpenDNS as a tool for parents (or anyone) to use in protecting users of the Internet in their homes from unsafe and inappropriate materials.  OpenDNS recently posted Some thoughts on Google DNS in response to the mighty company's announcement on Wednesday that they were establishing their own DNS.  If you support a free and open Internet, uncontrolled by large advertising-motivated organzations, it's worth a read and, more importantly, it's worth learning how to implement an alternative DNS like OpenDNS on your home network, especially if you have young children using the Internet.

If you are not sure what all this means, contact me with a comment (I won't publish it) and I'll try to help.  It's not that hard.

If you are experienced enough to help others figure this out, let me know this, too.  It may be a great way to help the community.

Some Topics I'm Researching

Here are some topics that have my eye on right now:

• The Common Core State Standards Initiative, discussed in this recent article (just one example I've seen).

• Pennsylvania Public School Employees' Retirement System (PSERS) -- The Board received an excellent presentation by Jeff Clay, Executive Director of PSERS, on December 1st.

• Cyber Charter Schools -- Reported on today in the article: Enrollment in cyber charter schools booming in Pennsylvania despite friction with school districts
• PSBA's White Paper on Charter Schools
• PSBA's Presentation on Charter Schools, with specific info on cyber charters.
  

If you have thoughts or resources to share, please do.  Please note, I don't endorse sites.

School taxes in Pennsylvania may soar to pay for pension promises - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

As I've known, but am now much more sensitive to, budget planning is not always within the control of local school boards. This article describes just one of the many pressures on districts that communities need to be aware of.

School taxes in Pennsylvania may soar to pay for pension promises - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

As this is a news report, I welcome alternative perspectives.

How I Stay Informed as a Board Member

This is the second of my two-part discussion of foundational stuff...

I'm sure I'll update this over time, but here is a short list of ways I stay informed (obviously, in addition to listening to the community, which I will discuss later on).

1. Research (online and good old fashion books)
2. Talking to other board members (in and outside of our District)
3. News Media

The first is pretty obvious.  I've mentioned some of the books I've been reading in the previous post.  I'm building a list of online resources and will post that when ready.  Suggestions are most welcome though.  I'm happy to add things to the list at the right, provided they are focused on public education (or my other interests).

For the second, in addition to some great conversations I get to have with our other members, I am also a member of the Joint Operating Committee (or "board") of the Eastern Center for Arts and Technology, our local area Career and Technical Center in Willow Grove, where I get the chance to talk to members of other area boards.  Eastern is an incredible school made largely possible by the work of the current leadership, including my predecessor on the Board (who was then President of their JOC).  Eastern's focus on strategic planning is nothing short of remarkable and it shows in their performance and that of their students.  (I'm sure I'll have many more praises for Eastern over time.)  The chance to talk to the other members has already been educational and energizing, so I know this will be a valuable resource in the future.

In addition to their training courses and materials, PSBA offers board members a large set of online discussion boards to share news and ideas, as well.  Their boards are not too old and participation is building amongst the "online community", but the opportunity for sharing good ideas is quite large and I look forward to being a part.

Finally, yes, there is the news media.  My professional experience has not given me a great love for this resource.  I have come to place news reports along a continuum of credibility ranging from direct, open, and non-hostile, non-political source reporting (this is rare, since nearly everyone is selling something) to pure investigative reporting where there are little more than a few events (not always facts) being "interpreted" by the reporter (this is fairly rare, too, amongst any source with some longevity).  I firmly believe in a free press and see items on both ends of the spectrum; nevertheless, I pretty much read everything I can find or have sent to me as a way to maintain a pulse of the zeitgeist.  Because I use news reports as part of my ongoing educational process, I will be sharing items I believe are relevant to others in understanding the complexities of the board position and I hope you will share, too.

For reference, I read all of the District's public email and am pleased by the increasing efforts of our administration to make more information available to the community.  Anyone can sign up from the District homepage.  Cheltenham Township has also created its own list, so get that one, too.  Our school libraries also do an incredible job communicating.  Since they have provided me with some incredible knowledge over the years, I want to make a special push for their website and communications.  Libraries aren't just for books, they're for learning!

PS: Yes, knowledge can be power and it often costs money, but information about education and leading good schools is surprisingly easy to find.  Because of the Sunshine Laws (and just good practice, for goodness sakes), there is nothing secret about meaningful deliberation on issues, so knowledge can be shared between districts and leaders quite easily.  Research on legislative measures, leadership issues at the various levels, and educational issues at all age and ability levels is quite easy to find in this digital age

If there is power, it is in having the experience needed to lead organizations and communities through tough situations with sound strategies and good communications.  The money, as I have seen it thus far, is in the implementation of research in ways that help our schools to be effective through the training and development of good teachers, the provisioning of our schools and learning facilities, and in the tools and practices of our administrations and boards.  The rest we can, and should, share.  After all, we are a nation built on education.  We must practice what we preach.

How I Am Becoming an Informed Board Member

This is the first of a two-part discussion of some foundational material that will allow me to discuss other ideas later on...

A few folks were present my first evening as a new Board member.  What was placed in front of me was a stack of books about 10 inches high of materials I needed to know quickly.  In the stack were the School Code, a book on the Sunshine, Right to Know, and Newspaper Laws, one on School Law, one on School Finance, and one that I have thoroughly enjoyed, a compendium of lessons learned articles by other board members, school administrators, and leaders within the Pennsylvania School Board Association (PSBA).

I'm still working through all of them and I'm grateful to those that helped to select them.  Since most of the material was put together by PSBA, I want to note here that I have been fairly impressed by the careful way they approach the challenge of training new board members.  As they will tell you on their website (www.psba.org), there are an increasing number of new board members as a percentage of the board population, which makes it essential and highly valuable that they produce and maintain these materials as a way to retain good knowledge and best practices, and to help new members get "up to speed" quickly.

Their publications are available to everyone and there are more books of interest, so I suspect I'll be reading for a while.

I'll close this with also noting that PSBA and our Montgomery County Intermediate Unit provide specific training conferences for new members and I'll be attending some of them as well, time permitting.  If the conferences are like the books, I'm certain they will be worth the small expense required.

FAQ: What's it like being on the board?

I've already gotten this question enough, so I'll post a note now and update it as I learn more.

Answer: It's fascinating, fun, scary, exhausting, frustrating, angering, confusing (already!), and I wouldn't miss a minute. I'm very proud to serve our community in this way. Although I've only been in the job for a little over month and I'm spending lots and lots of time reading and learning the job, I already know that what I saw as a member of the public was roughly 20% of what goes on. Part of that 80% is what I hope to make more visible here or through my actions as a board member, but a significant portion of the job can never be explained or shared because being part of the Board is being part of a team, with our administration, and the relationships, protocols, etc., that one learns simply can't be shared easily in words.

I will add that many folks work in jobs or businesses that are far more homogeneous than they realize. We often share common skills, training, goals, etc., with our coworkers, but Boards are less like that. Members come from a much wider range of backgrounds and experiences and, like our community, this diversity can be both good and bad at times. It's good when we bring different points of view and creative solutions to problems. It's bad when we aren't communicating because we work in different vocabularies. Good communication takes time and careful listening.

Certainly, my experience in volunteer leadership positions in the community has given me lots of practice in working in such groups, so while this group is unique, in many ways it is not. Time will tell and I hope to share the ride with you.

Keep asking the question and I suspect my answer might change.

[For more on communicating and consensus, see my post on "listening rhetoric".]

A Good Old Idea

You could easily argue that our system of schools is old, but here's one idea that I have been introduced to, more formally, as a new board member.  Boards are policy bodies, not execution bodies, and the policies they produce need the careful consideration and buy-in of the administration to have any hope of being successfully implemented in accordance with the intent of the board.  This seems obvious, but what I've seen too often over the years is that policy bodies spend very little time asking for input from those who will actually carry out the policies.  What I've witnessed early on is that there is a fairly formal process for drafting policies, providing time for review, and THEN formalizing them.  As they say, "what a concept!"

This seems pretty obvious, but at the moment, this is a truly refreshing idea and I'm glad to "re"-learn it.

Boarding is FUN

Hey, I know this will get harder at times, much harder I'm sure, but I don't think I could have found a job that, at this time of my life, could have brought together so much of my personal volunteer experiences with my professional development and managerial/leadership experiences.  Being a school director draws on all my faculties and causes me to really think hard about what I thought I knew and to relearn some things that I forgot.  For me, this is an electric time of meeting new people and getting to know some great organizations and issues.

I'm sure I'll say this many times -- I hope I do -- I'm proud to have this opportunity to serve our children and our community.  I mean that very sincerely and, if you're reading this, I hope you continue to join in the journey.

And when it isn't or stops being fun, I'll let you know.

One First Impression

Still on the honeymoon. While it is fun getting to participate in and observe board activities from this vantage point, I know the sense of euphoria will not last too long. While I hope I will always have a great relationship with my fellow board members, I'm not so naïve to think we won't disagree. As I've stated to other members already, we may not always agree, but it's not personal. I hope we'll always know why there is disagreement and, hopefully, what steps we can take together to resolve the conflict. We're about truth, not just right, and I hope I'm mature enough to be wrong sometimes. There is no time other than now when I'm likely to be more wrong about some topic or other, and I'm open to being squashed, privately I hope, for having an ill-developed or downright stupid idea from time to time.

The reason it can't be a personal disagreement is that I have already learned that being on the Board takes lots of time.  Anyone willing to do this and do it well gives many hours to the job, hours often unseen by the public.  I have to respect that.  This unseen time commitment is certainly true of many volunteer activities I've had in my life, but never before with such purpose or, frankly, impact and risk.  I have not yet met a Board member (in Cheltenham or elsewhere) that doesn't feel the weight of their position.  They never forget the honor of it, nor do they forget the responsibility to dedicate time and effort toward doing a good job.

Why a Blog and Why Blog?

Two different questions, obviously.

On the first, my first alternative might have been to start building some email distribution list, so that people could feel like they were "in the know", but I want everyone to have equal access. I also want information to be available 24x7 and fully searchable. In the world of Knowledge Management (Google that and you'll be reading for days), a topic I enjoying knowing and learning about separately, this combination of open access and searchability leads to what is called "findability". Other than knowing the address of this blog, everything on it is findable.

I could have set up a website, too. They are open, and searchable, but I also wanted to interact and allow others to interact. Websites are typically seen as one-way communication, but a community is two-way, three-way, and much more. I want our District website to be the best one-way source it can be for our community (what do you think?), but for many reasons, interaction is not possible. So, we'll let the District teach our kids, and you and I can talk about issues and what it means to be a board member here. Are you game?

And what about Facebook or MySpace or Orkut (name your social website)? Well, they have their purpose and I use them, but frankly, they are not a forum for individual expression in the way that blogs are and they tend to be more about connections than issues. Connections are great, but let's focus on issues here. Connections will come, I'm sure

And why keep a log or journal online?  I want to learn from others in an open forum and for others to learn from me if they choose.  I'm comfortable enough in my skin to not fear commentary and in these first days, I've found precious little personal, public commentary on what it means to be a school board member.  For many reasons, including fear I suspect, other members may not want to or can't open up, but my experience leading other volunteer groups suggests that open, honest communications that are respectful and constructive can be very helpful in building a sense of community and helping to maintain cohesiveness and focus.  I blog because I believe I have something to share with others and I hope others will share back.


In the lexicon of "Ishmael", let's be leavers, together, not takers.

My First Days on the Board

Wow, what a shock!  One minute, I'm just another interested, involved citizen, and the next, I'm on the Board of the Cheltenham Township School District.  There's only one picture I know of for the exact moment of the transition (brownie points to anyone who can find it), but it was quite an evening and I'll never forget it.

With the tremendous support of other Board members and the Administration over the next days, I received a very quick review of ongoing issues, a crash course in the Sunshine and Right to Know Laws, and a large stack of books and documents to read.  (I'm almost through and will be taking more courses in the job in the coming weeks and months.)

With this note, I'm opening up what I hope is a window into the making of a board member and a promise to share openly and honestly with the community my struggles and concerns in learning what is arguably a very significant role in our nation's education system.

I hope you'll follow along, join the discussion, and support me in learning to represent our community effectively for the benefit of our children and our nation's future.

I welcome your respectful and constructive comments.  This blog is about me, my ideas, and my concerns.  I have no plans or intent to breach the privacy or trust of my fellow Board members or those of our district, in general.

May the Mash-ups Continue

Dan Ariely has opened my eyes to a fascinating area of study called Behavioral Economics (BE). His book, Predictably Irrational, is a great read (or listen, in my case) and it is full of idea-generating studies and discussions. He may not be the only or even the first or best BE out there, but kudos for bringing this topic to the world in such an enjoyable way.

Of the many ideas I could remark on and may add later, here are two:

• The mash-up of two separate areas of study has brought some really powerful new ideas forward. It makes me wonder what other areas could be brought together and to what result.
• The obvious conclusion of his book is that we really need to use this area of research to alter how we structure problems, programs, and plans that involve decisions by humans. This is a broad area of impact, to be sure, and it will be interesting to see what happens in coming years. It all does smack of manipulation, though, so we need to beware of unfair uses of this research, too.

Listening Rhetoric, A New Old Idea?

In one of my many Teaching Company lectures, enjoyed on my daily commutes, I enjoyed a survey of rhetoric, but one of the referenced works was equally powerful in explaining some important concepts.

The Rhetoric of Rhetoric, by Wayne C. Booth, presents the many types and forms of rhetoric and focuses heavily on a form of rhetoric that he believes are extremely important in moving along the path toward a productive rhetorical and, indeed, intellectual future.

Listening rhetoric, the practice of speaking and, far more importantly, listening with the intent of finding a core, collective truth, is, he believes, the truest and best use of language and rhetoric. This is a fascinating concept and speaks to the many years of experience of Professor Booth, an author on the subject rhetoric since at least 1961.  While it may seem obvious that "getting to the truth" should be the object of any discussion, clearly the way most of us use words and see them used by others and "the media," we have clearly forgotten this point.  Professor Booth breaks down the subject and provides a great set of reasons to return to this form of communication structure.

There is much more to say, but I encourage anyone to read this book.  It will change the way you think about discourse.

Note to Self: Read This Book

For 2009-2010, Va Tech selected Daniel Goldman's Ecological Intelligence for their 10-year old Common Book Program. Goldman is the author of Emotional Intelligence.

After visiting Rachel Carson's home near Pittsburgh, I'm interested in seeing where else this topic has led.

Sure, but What's the Spend-Out?

I'm a fan of listening to lectures in my car, so recently I listened to Wake Forest Professor Robert Whaples' lectures on Modern Economic Issues from the Teaching Company.  Good stuff and I recommend the lectures to anyone wanting to get a great perspective on a number of everyday issues.

[As an aside, the lectures were produced just prior to the current economic challenges, so it's downright humorous to hear the glowing discussion of our American economy.  I have no doubt it WAS and may still be a marvel, but I believe some revision to the mantra is in order -- certainly the first lecture should be taken with a good dose of salt.]

Professor Whaples made reference to Harvard Professor Greg Mankiw's blog, so I started reading it.  Also good stuff and it's nice to see what another professor thinks about day-to-day issues.

His current post shows how the unemployment rate has actually played out since early 2009 as compared to Government predictions, and I just wanted to ask one more question about that graph.  In a previous post, Professor Mankiw references some discussions with a government source indicating that they would not only be interested in the multipliers used to predict the effect on the economy, but also in the spend-out rate, which I presume is the rate that stimulus funds were "actually" spent, not how they were planned to be spent in early 2009.  I'm hoping someone or Professor Mankiw can also get that information, since I would hypothesize that the spend-out rate will look significantly different from the projections, as well.

This stimulus has been an interesting experiment to test many of the basic assumptions that I've read about and learned about for years, and I'm sure many folks will be watching as we see whether reality matches our theories.

Slow Down

Note to self:  Situations are rarely simple.  Slow down and understand things before determining a solution or acting.

A Thought on Basic Laws

The book, Ishmael, which my son had to read over the summer for school, pointed out that there are certain laws that we are trying to avoid through our implementation of civilization, but that we are doomed to follow.  One of those laws is that life and death are natural events and that both provide the opportunity for growth through evolution.  HBR, in "Downsizing Lost Its Bad Rap", October 2009, suggests the possible conclusion that layoffs this year, while large in scale, aren't viewed as negatively as before.  Perhaps we're learning that these events are more natural and that we can grow out of them.

Thoughts on Risk

Reading "The Six Mistakes Executives Make in Risk Management", HBR, October 2009:

The risks of not succeeding in the mundane tasks that are part of our operating plan are far more significant than what might happen in some outlying situation.  Things happen and we need to do what we can to insure for the consequences, but we can't insure against them.

I like the point about listening more to the "don'ts" than the "do's".  More of a balance seems worth the time.

There is a good, though well worn, reminder that HOW you phrase a risk influences how it's perceived and whether it's acted on appropriately.

I love the point on redundancy and, to take the metaphor in the article further, sometimes it's healthy to divide a function between two or more structural elements to reduce the risk that a single thread might bring down the house.  Human's are single-threaded in some ways, and not in others.  Organizations, because they can adapt, could also bring internal competition and experimentation if the potential for failure can be spread.  The loss of efficiency might be more than offset by the gain in creativity.

Thoughts on Performance Management

Reading "The Five Traps of Performance Management", HBR, October 2009:

Great article.  Highly recommended.

1. Metrics should be derived from external sources whenever possible to avoid the bathwater and self-serving/self-replication problems.  When no external standard exists, ask your customer -- and everyone has a customer.

2. Measure against your future, not your past.

3. Check back on your decisions.  You can't learn unless you examine the results of past decisions, objectively, I presume, which is very difficult.  Be honest.

4. Use numerical metrics when the outcome is numerical and don't shy from non-numeric metrics

5. Use multiple metrics to measure different aspects of the same goal and to reduce the potential for gaming the system.  There is probably a tree-structure of metrics.  It's rarely one thing.

6. Keep your metrics a moving target.  They don't need to be the same every year.  Add, subtract, multiply, and divide.