James C. Liu's Weblog

Wednesday September 15, 2004

Foobar at the School District

Most of the folks living in Silicon Valley should count themselves lucky, or at least their kids lucky because the California STAR (Standard Testing And Reporting) scores have been published now at the end of the 2003-2004 academic year. At last night's school board meeting, the district administration had these test scores as one of the major agenda items for discussion.

I'm in the Cupertino/Sunnyvale School District ( http://cupertino.ca.campusgrid.net/home ), a pretty good school district and while my 2 and 4 year old kids aren't even enrolled yet, I thought I might attend these meetings to learn more about the public schools. And considering the dire news in the other districts in and around the Bay Area, I'm glad that our school board is at least competent.

I'll get to the STAR scores in the district later. But let me say that the popular news media doesn't quite capture what's going on in the schools that affects teaching quality and school education. In fact, I think most news reporting does a real disservice to the public. For example, the news often talks about class sizes in California and how it's really growing and reducing individual attention that teachers give to kids, and there's the complaint that schools aren't getting enough monies from local, state and federal gov'ts.

To some extent, district budget does affect how good the students are, but above a certain point, budget is no longer relevant; demographics are perhaps more important than anything else. Some school districts must be ripe with corruption. I have no proof, and it's hard to catch these district administrators in the act, but a few years ago, with the dotCOM boom bringing in extra Millions if not tens of Millions of dollars to budgets, some districts, like West Contra Costa (a.k.a. Richmond) and the Oakland School Districts continued to run large annual deficits. I talked with one relative who works in Sacramento state gov't and he joked that these crooks at the districts simply write checks to bogus companies for bogus work and cash the money. Millions disappear this way and since no technology is implemented to track the transactions, the money just simply disappears and the accountants simply can't tell you where the money went. That's how our tax dollars are spent.

Another issue that made headlines was the big California Teachers Layoff. Yes, many districts, faced with less budget, laid off teachers. But what the news media didn't tell you was how the selection was made. Some very good teachers lost there jobs. Why you ask? Because the school districts don't actually have the power to select who goes or stays. They cede that to the Teachers Union. In fact, if you can download or get a hold of the Union Arbitration docs that our school district hands out, it would scare you. Basically, it says that the California Teachers' Union is the SOLE negotiator of teachers contracts with the districts. Why you and I in the public may think our school boards have quite a bit of control over the district to review policies and set direction, in fact, it's all a sham. The Unions negotiate all aspects of Teachers and employees used as teachers. For example, the Union specifies business work hours. They specify tenure rules (which are not merit based) and they don't have the same accountability standards. During this last lay-off, it didn't matter which teaches they laid off. The Union rules protect the older (more expensive) teachers. So they laid off the Young, Idealistic, and More energetic teachers to meeat negotiated budget requirements. Somehow, the news media didn't quite explain that in the 30 second spot they devoted to this important issue. And I don't want to bash the Unions, but I will because their stupid rules are hurting a relative of mine. They have a special needs child with Autism. The child needs personal counselling and therapy which the District shall provide according to California Law. However, the District is withholding funding for a private therapist which they only co-fund. Why are they not paying their obligation? Because the teacher's Union says the Therapist is covered under their negotiation and arbitration contract and thus the employee must be subject to the Union, and follow Union rules. So instead of a tailored program in the interests of the child with a therapist that works just 4 hours from say 3 - 7pm, the Union allows them to only work until 5pm. No weekends. Stupid and mean spirited and unhelpful.

Another example in point is the lack of foresight of some districts. Mine included. Last year, they got an announcement that PBS, a major educational video supplier to the schools would cease subscriptions on VHS video tape. Instead, going forward, to reduce costs of production, they would burn the content on high quality DVD for classrooms. PBS is short for Public Broadcasting System, the gov't funded stations of which there are like 3 or 4 in the Bay Area. KQED, KTEH, KCSM and maybe one more. They have shows like Nova, Science, Nature, Scientific American Frontiers, and the News Hour with Jim Lehrer (formerly the McNeil/Lehrer News Hour). I would donate to them if they weren't such a Liberal, half-nonsense organization, but my taxes go to them anyway. But I digress. My kids' school district mentioned at a board meeting that they were short of DVD players in classrooms. They hadn't budgeted for this and so kids might be missing out on educational video content because some classrooms might be short of DVD players.

Wanting No Child to be Left Behind, I went out to Costco Wholesale the next week, and picked up 10 Toshiba players at $69/each. I didn't buy the cheaper Koss players for only $49/each because they have a poor reliability record. But suffice it to say, I left work half an hour early, picked them up on the way home, and hand delivered them to district offices in Cupertino. This solved partly, the DVD crisis. While I did the right thing for the public good, one has to wonder what the priorities of the district are? They have a total budget of almost $80Million spent to education 15K+ kindergarten and elementary school kids in the district. That's over $5K/student-year. And this does NOT include Bond measures for Capital and Infrastructure enhancements voted and passed by the public in prior years. So oodles of $$$$ are flowing into our school district and they couldn't have the foresight to migrate old VCR decks to DVD players at $60-$80each in the last 2 years. And, I can't understand why they don't have budget.

They spent nearly $1.75Million last year on health services. In a presentation at an earlier School Board meeting, we got to meet the 3 full time and 4 part time nurses and the programs they run. They serve 16 campuses with 5 full head count. So the truth from the kids' perspective is that nurses are rarely there on campus when someone gets hurt. They are paged and then drive over to the school if a real emergency. Often, one of the school admins just does some simple first aid and the nurse doesn't even show up. But if you're like me, you'd be wondering where does $1.75Million get spent? Surprisingly, none of it actually buys health insurance for needy kids or their families. None of it goes to immunizations or shots, only the arranging and scheduling at low cost clinics. Most of it is spent on marketing and communications with parents in the district. But what really got me peeved was when the nurses each came up and presented their roles in the district. 6 of the 7 nurses had to read the names of their schools that they supported off of slips of paper. That's amazing. I've been only attending school board meetings for a year now, and I can name more than half the schools in the district. That $1.75Million sure could have gone to better DVD players and maybe some cash in the pockets of low income folks so they can shop and buy their own health plan.

Note: I'm sure at this point, folks in Socialist countries are rolling their eyes and wondering about US health care and why we don't nationalize it. I would support nationalizing it if we re-architected the AMA and allowed all Universities to produce doctors like they produce engineers and in order to practice anywhere in the US, there would be a standardized test. But as it happens, the AMA has a monopoly and like the lawyers and their Bar Associations, part of setting a high level is to prevent qualified candidates from being useful practitioners thus limiting supply artificially so Doctors and Lawyers can drive around in their Beamers, Bimmers, Benzes, Acuras and Lexae. But even while US health care is such a mess, we still have the most kick ass system that actually -fixes- people (who can afford health care). When I broke my ankle and shredded all the ligaments in Tokyo in 1994, the Doctors looked at my ankle and made a deep sucking sound and said, "Anooo....chotto...Eien arukenai to omoimasu yo...." or something like that, I can't remember; I was in agony at the time. Shortly translated, it meant something like (deep sucking sound), "...I don't think you'll walk again..."

Needless to say, I walk and I can cycle. No impact sports, but I walk normally. I sometimes set off metal detectors at OAK and SFO airports, but surprisingly, not at SJC. But I walk and do so comfortably. That's because in under 36 hours after the accident, United Airlines had me back in the US and I was visiting an orthopedic surgeon with 3 pictures of ex-San Francisco 49'er football (American Tackle Football - not soccer) players.

In addition, it used to be that the greater metro Seattle area had more CT scan machines than all of Canada (one of the best socialized medicine systems...that's now going bankrupt...you see all these folks with -Health Care-before-Winter-Olympics- bumper stickers on cars in and around Vancouver). Now Canada has adequate supply of CT scan machines. But that was old technology. They now are short of MRI machines compared to Seattle.

So the point is we have pretty good health care in the US; only it isn't free unless you're really, really broke and go into a public hospital for something critical. But for the lower, middle class, health care is scarce and expensive. But at $1.75M/yr, our school district doesn't actually buy any health care insurance. Instead, it pays for health care "awareness," whatever that is. I think that's wasteful too.

Another waste is energy. They get Macs and PCs donated from various vendors like Apple and HPaq. And some of these run 40W - 80W processors in systems with monitors sucking 200Watts each. The district and the kids don't need such big honking iron desktops which eat maybe tens of thousands of dollars more in power each year, even if they are turned off at night. By going with lower-power chips and chipsets, they can greatly reduce power consumption and save money. And I would wish it'd be that easy, only now the district is looking at hiring a consulting company to teach the district about energy education. Most of it is common sense. But somehow, by paying $100+K/yr for 4 years, the district thinks it can save more than $100K/yr and the consulting company guarantees it. If you don't save more money that you would have spent without them, they'll cut a check. I'm not sure how they can figure out the savings. I'm sure they probably do save more for the district through their educational programs. But why can't the district save more energy and NOT pay these guys? Can't the district go to our Utility and have them come over and educate staff regularly on conservation? But I guess if it's free, some executive administrators think it has no value. Sound familiar in lots of technology companies too.

And I can't believe the type of employee recognition that goes on in the district. It seems like every other meeting, the School Board has to have some opening celebration to award some district employee-of-the-month. Don't get me wrong. I believe in employee recognition. But only if it goes to deserving employees and only if it was a true accomplishment for the district. In this case, they gave recognition to some clerk in the district for discovering how ISBN numbers work and using them to Order books on Amazon, thus saving the district money. Those award presentations are not open to the public really for criticisms, but any one in the Valley has to wonder how hard it was to figure out ISBN numbers on Amazon and to save 15% - 40% on cover price for all books and get free 2nd Day super-saver shipping. Amazon has been around for over 8 years folks. Don't tell me, the district just figured this out now. You mean they were wasting our money on books for nearly a decade before?

But I don't want to end sounding like our District sucks. Far from it. The Cupertino Union School District is nationally ranked near the top. And with all the dire predictions of bankruptcy and schools losing funding and having Republican Arnold "Terminator" Schwarzennegar as Govenor, our school district actually ended the year with $700K more than they had budgeted. Hooray. Good fudiciary responsibility. I almost want to ask for a refund on those DVD players I donated since they got cash in the bank now.

In addition, what's impressive is that all the schools in the CUSD scored quite high on the STAR scores. Out of a possible maximum of 1000 points, Faria Elementary School scored 1000! Yes, aggragate for the school. And Portal, an English/Mandarin experimental language immersion school scored 991 out of 1000 over the whole school. And in fact, the lowest scoring schools in the district, De Vargas and Nimitz, still scored in the low 900's and high 800's respectively. Clearly, 12 of the campuses are in California's top 90th percentile or higher. And even the bottom two are above the 75-percentile. And it's no wonder. Faria kids are mostly Indian and Chinese in origin; two cultures where families and education are strongly emphasized. Portal Elementary is mostly Chinese. And in all schools, many parents are well-to-do, higher socio-econ types with technology backgrounds. It's no surprise as well, that De Vargas and Nimitz scored the lowest. De Vargas borders San Jose, and is in a lower socio-econ class. Nimitz is in southwest Sunnyvale, bordering on Cupertino, in a high rental apartment location. Nimitz actually got the lowest score last academic year and was the only campus to see regression in test scores - i.e. the scores actually decreased last year.

Some parents and School Board members are concerned and ask what they can do to improve De Vargas and Nimitz test performance. I'm not so sure I care that much. The impact seems to be mostly demographics; not budget. My theory is that Nimitz fell in test scores simply because the economy has been bad and rentals have come down in the area. Some parents, have tried to migrate from lower socio-econ areas in San Jose to this part of Sunnyvale where it's now affordable. And it's easy to tell this is the case. The rental units down the street now have 3 or 4 new rice-rocket honda civics/integras parked out front. These are lowered econo-box Japanese cars that have wide, low-pro tires, grapefruit-sized exhaust pipes, addition farings attached, sometimes a big spoiler and new paint job, and some Hello Kitty/Bad Batz Maru/Nishimura Racing stickers on the back windshield. If you drive one of these street machines, you know who your are! :-) There's been quite a few new street cars like this in my area and the renters across the street from me smoke and sometimes park their cars on our side of the street, and leave little mounds of cigarette butts on the street and litter the base of my shrubs with cellophane cigarette box wrappers and silver chewing gum foil; nothing my blowers/garden vac can't handle.

I personally attended a California 36-percentile high school. If I weren't 100kgs and 187 cm tall at age 16, I would have gotten my butt kicked daily by the 140kgs+ steroid-taking, drug selling jocks in weightlifting class. We didn't have individual gangs at our school - the whole school was one gang with lots of undercover Narcs (police officers posing as teachers to watch for drugs) and we were just one step up from the local Junvenile Penitentiary High School. So having kids in a 76%-ile school is like a dream for me. And anyway, I have nothing to fear about teaching my kids academics in all the basics of Reading, Writing, Math and Science. I'll do as my Parents did and spend quality time to teach them at home. What I do worry about, though, are what the other kids teach of a non-academic nature. But exposure should be good right? Like Gov'nor Arnie said in his Conan movies, "What doesn't kill you should make you stronger." September 15, 2004 10:48 PM PDT Permalink