I left off "scratch Project GRAD."

They estimate the cuts will save over $45 million, presumably between now and FY 2019-20 (also page 10), to cover in part the implementation of other strategies they don't explain particularly well (page 12).

They're looking for an additional $9 million in funding in the budget year under discussion now and projecting a need for an additional $77 million annually by FY 2019-20 (page 7).

Of this $77 million, Parthenon maintains that $42 million would be needed by then even if KCS were not to adopt any changes the firm recommends (page 8).

Really?

I loathe them with every fiber of my being. Larger class sizes. Lower pay. No field trips. Really? No, really? That's the best they could come up with?

It isn't at all clear to me from that presentation how they'd replace it...

(Did the file open okay for you? Everybody's having problems with it?)

and it would rain slimy MBA jargon.

The first 8 pages say absolutely nothing.

And I’m not real clear on what was left.

From my page 12, “Key Initiative” # 2 – “New Elementary Intervention Model” states as part of the goal; “Leverages technology to allow classroom teachers to deliver interventions”

As I’m not even sure what to ask, I’ll just hope somebody can clarify what this means for me.

Sorry, driving and dictating, clearly we aren't being loud enough. Is each person on this blog angry enough about this to grab 10-20 friends and show up at a rally/press conference at the end of this week? I believe one is about to be scheduled as soon as I get off the road! Hope to see you there.

If this makes you as angry as it does me, are you willing to stand with us this Friday afternoon and bring 10 friends? Looks like it's time for a little less talk and a lot more action. Details coming as soon as I get off the road. Please stand with us for public education!

Tamara has been on top of this from the get-go. Kudos!

It's time to mobilize to stop this craziness and (hopefully) present another vision for Knox county schools. I know my harping about having something positive to put forth hasn't made me any friends around these parts, but it is absolutely necessary to offer an alternative vision to the Gate juggernaut. The voters of Knox county have been inundated with visions of lazy, unionized teachers destroying public schools for over 30 years. Without something to positive to offer, it will be even harder to stop these proposals from becoming a reality.

Until we are all barefoot back in Butcher Holler slopping the hogs and making moonshine for a little pocket money.

Ok, there's a lot of B.S. in that presentation, but the page with the meat is pretty appalling.

I know some of the other things (class size, salaries, etc.) are much more important, but the one that really gets me mad is cutting waivers for kids to go on field trips. Maybe that doesn't mean what it sounds like, but it sounds like kids who can pay still get to go; kids who can't, don't. How that heck can that improve education?

For that matter, if it means cutting out field trips, period, how does that improve education?

BTW, isn't the Chamber a big supporter of Project Grad? Hmmmm.

The two-month old Students Parents Educators Across Knox County (SPEAK) Facebook page passed 800, then 900 members just this weekend and our "small group" meeting Friday afternoon wasn't.

I will be there, Gloria, with 50 of my closest friends.

Meanwhile, take a deep breath and read these inspirational, POWERFUL words from John Kuhn, a superintendent of schools in Texas, who predicted an Education Spring at last week's Network for Public Education Conference.

Excerpt:

WE are the reformers. We're here to shake up the educational world and our movement is only growing. This is our spring. This is our opportunity to go toe-to-toe with the people who have turned our kids' education into a sandbox for the rich and famous, with hedge funders desperate for a new investment bubble and who give no thought to what their investments actually do to the nation. This is our chance to call out the Enrons of education, to go on record for democracy and against corporate malfeasance so that when these scams crumble--and they will--we can say "We told you so" and know that we were on the right side of history.

Why can't we hire this man for Knox County Schools?!

I cannot believe what I have seen tonight. This school board is insane.

If you go on Twitter, @mykidmyschool gives a pretty good representation of what's going on at the meeting what is being said by who.

Right this minute, Joan Grim is tickling my fancy.

She's reading and translating that 2009 Parthenon PowerPoint I linked here last year ("Where can investors play?!") and punctuating her every translation with a long, drawled "okaaay?"

Like her audience is comprised of five year-olds.

(link...)

1. Recommendations are to lower KCS to "benchmark" rural school classroom sizes. KCS board smart enough not to bite.

2. Study shows not much waste (at least not in the classrooms), which we already knew.

THANK YOU KNOX COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD FOR PISSING AWAY $300,000 OF TAXPAYER FUNDS TO TELL US WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW.

Slam the door on these morons and never EVER let them darken our doorstep again. Ever.

Just watch how things unfold. This Parthenon malarkey will be a distraction and allow McIntyre and the BOE a place to say "we're not like that!" When in fact, McIntyre and the BOE will do everything to incrementally impose it.

Kincannon is a lost cause.

"The timing is wrong? This will not be well received?" Huh.What about right or wrong? Or does that just not fit anywhere when deciding policy?

Besides such gems as "The timing is wrong," which is what Putin probably told his Generals when they asked if they should invade during the Sochi Games, the bigger plan is what has happened in the past.

DC, Chicago, Philadelphia ,et al claimed budget shortfalls to close schools and hand them over to Charter schools/private companies. Then the funds for the budget shortfall are "found" for other uses.

Knox County Schools Strategic Finance Plan 2015-2020
Executive Summary – DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION
March 2013

I said just before 3 pm today:

The two-month old Students Parents Educators Across Knox County (SPEAK) Facebook page passed 800, then 900 members just this weekend and our "small group" meeting Friday afternoon wasn't.

Whoa. At 10 pm tonight, that member count had swollen to over 1200.

Dunno if that number possibly includes invitations outstanding (but not yet accepted) or it's all folks who've accepted their invites...but either way, it's indicative of growing interest and concern.

•In KCS, investments in class size have resulted in the creation of nearly 300 incremental teaching positions
•Teacher effectiveness data in KCS (measured by TVAAS) indicates that there is a similar number of teachers identified as Level 1 or Level 2
•While this does not suggest that the investment has caused schools to hire less effective teachers, it does mean that the investment has not resulted in the desired student learning improvements

I call BS on this. TVAAS is not reliable, based on the examples I have heard of great teachers getting low scores because their students are excellent...

JustWatching (and Reform4), KCS isn't paying Parthenon.

The Gates Foundation paid $800-something K and another $300-something K was covered in some split between the Chamber and the Great School Partnership, for a total of $1.2 million.

KCS is just the conduit for Gates' dabbling in governance models, namely those based on "free market" principles.

(EDIT: Just looked in the KCS news archives for the docs relating to this and all I find is a letter from the GSP pledging $180K of the $360K not covered by the Gates grant. Can't immediately recall if I previously knew where that other $180K came from...)

(Double-post deleted.)

Let's see, both Fugate and Kincannon indicated that they weren't gonna support the Parthenon recommendations and you guys are complaining about the way they said it?

Sheesh.

Steve and JustWatching, agreed that the pledge from the Great Schools Partnership (which is documented at the KCS site's "News" tab by a letter contained in archived docs there) and from the Chamber (which I recalled, but can't document) really is taxpayer money, too.

I do wish the BOE would simply object to this root problem of school systems being used as conduits for billionaires' idle dabbling in public policy, that's all.

Rachel, I think the concern raised with Indya's and Lynn's comments last night as to why they'll reject Parthenon's recommendations NOW is that together their responses caused us to wonder if they'd still be rejecting them if they weren't currently in the hot seat. Lots of us would have preferred knowing they rejected the proposals because they were bad proposals, period.

Donzilla weighs in...

(link...)

WATE:

Board member Indya Kincannon called the suggestions "very disturbing."

(link...)

The Parthenon is a temple dedicated to the greek goddess Athena. Athena is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, just warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill which was not demonstrated last night.

I find it awkwardly interesting that a group proposing cuts on one side of their mouth, also suggests increasing central office staff. If you don'y know how much they make, well thank the County for that Central office pay

For every one of the central office employees, except a few, you could have about three teachers.

Suggesting to not pay teachers for higher degrees is well counterintuitive, after all do we not want the best and smartest teachers? Teachers are required to attend staff development in order to maintain their certification. What the county has to offer is at times mediocre at best.

As for field trips, well I've been on a lot of them, and the school has never payed for one. It is state law that if you go on a field trip during school hours and a student will miss instructional time and cannot pay for the field trip and/or their lunch, the TEACHER is required to pay for the field trip, but you don't hear anyone complaining.

As for class size student ratio, your electives solve that problem. There are no mandated ratios for elective teachers, it's all in the scheduling.

To quote Mrs. Shepherd's earlier post: :WE are the reformers. We're here to shake up the educational world and our movement is only growing. This is our spring. This is our opportunity to go toe-to-toe with the people who have turned our kids' education into a sandbox for the rich and famous, with hedge funders desperate for a new investment bubble and who give no thought to what their investments actually do to the nation."

Go out and find someone running for the school board and vote the ones currently in place OUT!

Next will come McIntyre's proposal to bridge the budget gap by cutting positions. This will be his payback to teachers for challenging his authority and outing his misuse of money to the county commission. Not too long ago he threatened to release 90 some teachers or freeze teacher pay, screaming that the money was just not there. KCEA, who had bargaining rights at the time, said "Find the money elsewhere," and magically, he did. He paid them back with support of the state's efforts to end bargaining rights and trash the salary schedule. I hope the public doesn't buy the act.

I'm inclined to be in the belief that how do you know they are telling the truth when they are talking. Someone commented earlier on the "why" it matters. It's all about the motive behind what is being done. The politics of education are dirty, and the people who make the rules, don't play by them. Question everything. You won't get any of them to admit they are lying, that would take are real leader to own up to his mistakes. Mac needed a PR team in place of his PR team, there's obviously a lot of problems internally. The best way to catch them in a lie, public records requests. Request emails, documents, get it all, any document when the board meets, even a little piece of paper passed to another member is public record.

I'm inclined to be in the belief that how do you know they are telling the truth when they are talking. Someone commented earlier on the "why" it matters. It's all about the motive behind what is being done. The politics of education are dirty, and the people who make the rules, don't play by them. Question everything. You won't get any of them to admit they are lying, that would take are real leader to own up to his mistakes. Mac needed a PR team in place of his PR team, there's obviously a lot of problems internally. The best way to catch them in a lie, public records requests. Request emails, documents, get it all, any document when the board meets, even a little piece of paper passed to another member is public record.

So if the BOE members imply they may have supported Parthenon, if some political heat hadn't been recently sent their way, that's ok!?

Because you know, if we retain Kincannon and Fugate, at some point "the timing" will no longer be wrong, and the BOE can adopt the Parthenon's advice, without it being the final nails being driven into their political coffins.

I hate to use this phrase, but words do indeed have meaning for public officials. The seismic shift is growing to be greater than the consequences of Black Wednesday.

Rather than taking a principled stand, one way or another, the BOE has basically said the Parthenon groups advice is bad politics...right now. We can assume those who didn't speak are just wishing It.Will.All.Go.Away. But it won't.

And as far as using this group in the first place, I find it hard to believe UT can't do something like this at a fraction of the cost. But then that wouldn't have allowed Parthenon to get their foot officially in our door, would it?

Where in the Parthenon presentation does it say anything about what's best for the children? Isn't that the responsibility of a school system? Where do the kids fit into this? Larger class size, computer teaching, losing Project Grad, lower income kids being left at school during field trips, raising the Central Office staff, increase principal pay, eliminate some 300 teaching positions, reallocating teachers aides to computer labs, not recognizing higher level teaching degrees? Do any of these sound child centered?
As for adding Recruitment Officers and 4 HR positions? Wouldn't that money be more useful adding positions that directly deal with children on a daily basis?
I am appalled that the children in Knox County have taken a backseat to the money! Shame on McIntyre for single handedly changing the face of Knox County Schools!
Let's put the focus back on the kids! What's best for THEM, what's going to help THEM succeed should be our goal!!

FYI: KCS has already been cutting out field trips.

Surely what applies to affordable health care applies here:
Children should just stop being poor!
Problem solved...

When did school systems begin entering into consulting contracts that require them to actually hire and put on their payrolls the consultants themselves?

Since I find no such obligation previewed in this school system's April 2013 Proposal to Maximize Resources for Student Success, would one of you paid super sleuths please tell us by what device Morgan Camu, delivered to KCS via The Parthenon Group's subcontractor Education Resource Strategies (ERS), came to be added directly to the KCS Central Office payroll?

My original understanding was that she would perform this work as an employee of ERS, not KCS?

And for how long might we anticipate being stuck with her?

I find her in the News-Sentinel's database of KCS employee salaries here.

If McIntyre had any past relationship with Parthenon or ERS, isn't that a conflict-of-interest?

As I'm sure you know, in politics, perception is reality.

Of course, lots of times, if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, etc, it's probably a duck.

In a short time, Dr. McIntyre's supporters will explain why it's not a duck. I'm sure they will have ample opportunity to do so. I am eagerly awaiting an explanation.

A KCS teacher writes this morning to report that s/he has been told by the school principal that fee waivers are no longer available for Economically Disadvantaged students to participate in field trips? That the families of such students must "find the money" to participate?

Also, at this week's March 31 school board work session, I wondered at the presentation by Green Magnet Principal Beth Lackey, who has completed Dr. McIntyre's Leadership Academy. Where did she find the money to take her teachers from a 200 day contract to a 221 day contract? She said the move cost $160K and cited "staffing changes" enabling the change? Does this possibly mean larger classroom sizes, aides rather than teachers, or TFA recruits are part of her implementation plan?

I don't know, but together these two incidents caused me to wonder if some of The Parthenon Group's proposals not requiring BOE approval might already be underway???