News-Record.com

What will voters remember most when they go to the polls on Tuesday: Former Gov. Jim Hunt vocalizing his support for the $457 million school bond package last week or a Monday press conference where black school board members essentially told Guilford County Schools show us the results before we show you the money.

Deena Hayes, Amos Quick and Walter Childs, as well as concerned citizens, are frustrated at the ongoing achievement gaps between black and white students as well as the low percentage of black contractor participation in school construction (however, Quick has said previously he was more concerned about the costs of the bond and the lack of work being proposed in urban areas). Find details of the rationale listed here. None of this is news as you can hear the board members complain about this frequently at board meetings.

As a matter of fact, the board is expecting a report soon from Gongshu Zhang, chief accountability officer, on the performance of minority students.

To the district's credit, it has tried to address the concerns stated above. Find here a presentation of what Guilford County Schools is doing to work with the minority contractors community. If you run a query at the Department of Public Instruction's Web site, you can see that the performance of black students on state exams has gone up some, but there is still clearly an achievement gap.

Kris Cooke, a school board member who supports the bonds, had a lot to say about the issue.

"I think they know that we're trying to address (the concerns)," Cooke said. "The minority contractors for sure aren't going to have any business if we don't have any construction going on."

Cooke said that frustrated board members and citizens should target the inadequate county, state and federal funds the district receives, not construction dollars, which don't cover curriculum and instruction.

"The gap was made over a long period of time and it's going to take time to close it," Cooke said.

What do you think? Are the aforementioned concerns reason enough to oppose the bonds?

I am reporting on the school board's 2008-09 budget line item review, which has been going on since 7:30 a.m. The board is on page 12 of 31 so this could be going on for a while longer.

A couple notable points that I am following up on today:
* Wanda Frazier, the district's risk manager, is reviewing two bids for new property insurance coverage. The financial services department has increased its budget for 2008-09 by 30 percent to about $798,000, and has increased the values of its facilities by 37 percent. The department took a deeper look at its property insurance coverage after Eastern Guilford High was destroyed by fire in November 2006. Frazier hopes to have a recommendation to the board within two weeks.

* The board is considering the budget impact of adopting a "living wage" of $12.40 an hour for its classified employees (estimated to cost about $5 million). The salary increases would benefit employees such as bus drivers, teaching assistants and cafeteria workers, some who are making about $10 an hour.

The board will discuss the budget more at its regular meeting on Thursday. Stay tuned for details from today's review.

I try not to make predictions to my editors about election results because I'm not that good at it. The at-large race somewhat threw me for a loop. I figured Michael McKinney would move on to November, but was surprised that Erik Huey did not crack the top three because of his long and strong online campaign. I didn't count on David Crawford getting as many votes as he did.

However, after polling voters on Tuesday I realized there is not necessarily any rhyme or reason to the numbers. Many voters go on name recognition, regardless of the candidates stance on the issues. Some of the people I talked to said they could not even remember what at-large candidate they selected. And this was five minutes walking out the door.

One gentleman I interviewed said he picked Sandra Alexander because a campaign volunteer handed him a card with her name on it on his way into Eastern Middle School. Another woman said she voted for David Crawford because her husband told her to (she couldn't remember why her husband was a supporter).

I talked to Michael McKinney last night and he said a woman voted for him because his name sounded right. Huh?

Clearly, there is no direct correlation between number of votes and support of the candidates' positions on educational issues.

There may, however, be a more direct correlation when it comes to funds spent. Both Sandra Alexander and McKinney spent more than $2,000 on their campaigns, according to the Guilford County Board of Elections. Alan Hawkes spent $456. No reports were filed by David Crawford and Erik Huey.

Update: I'm late posting this but I found out that Gov. Easley did not meet with GCS because he was presenting his budget to legislators; instead his staff met with school officials.

From Guilford County Schools:

"In recognition and affirmation of efforts to improve energy efficiency in school facilities, Guilford County Schools (GCS) will participate in a meeting with North Carolina's Governor Mike Easley.

"The meeting takes place today at 1 p.m. and will be held at the Governor's Office in the Governor's conference room. During the meeting, individuals will discuss increasing energy efficiency in public schools. Representatives from the State Energy Office, the North Carolina, Department of Public Instruction, local universities and other school districts will join GCS staff for the meeting....

"GCS is the first school district in the state to develop its own set of detailed green design specifications, known as the G3-Guilford Green Guide. Northern Middle, which opened in January of 2007, features comprehensive and well-integrated green design, including a daylighting system, an underfloor air distribution system and solar heating. Additionally, a holistic water cycle approach catches rainwater for toilet flushing and takes it to a living machine, through underground irrigation and to an aquifer."

This is my first time covering a school bond as it happens (I arrived at the N&R in 2006), so I will try to keep the updates coming on how the projects proceed. I checked in with Chief Operations Officer Leo Bobadilla about a week ago to get a timeline. What he gave me was not enough for a story, but fortunately for you, it's enough for a Chalkboard post!

Expect the next updates/stories around May 28 and June 3 when the construction advisory and architectural selection committees meet.

Following, my Q and A with Bobadilla:

Update: Story here.

Also, a response from Sharon Ozment, chief finance officer with GCS:

"Let me begin by saying that Guilford County Schools (GCS) is continually looking for ways to improve communication and information sharing. We will contact the John Locke Foundation and ask which districts are getting a grade of A and review their respective Web sites to determine what GCS might do differently with respect to online transparency.

"I will hasten to add that the 'Superintendents' Recommended 2008-09 Budget' is currently on our Web site. We will also add our financial audit for the year ended June 30, 2007 as well. With that said, it is important to note that we often have discussions about how best to communicate and share information and much like students with different learning styles, our citizens have different preferences as to how to receive information. It would be interesting to find out how many school districts in NC conduct a line-item review of their budget that is televised live and broadcast at least two other times after the fact. There are also some external measures by which we assess the quality of our financial documents and operations."

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The Johne Locke Foundation issued a report today that graded local governments on how transparent their budget and spending information is on their Web sites. Guilford County Schools scored a C minus. Scores ranged from C to F.

Go the the GCS Web site and you can easily find the superintendent's budget recommendations and brief annual report. Not so with the line item budget or the annual financial audit. Want to find out how much in federal dollars each Title 1 school gets? Good luck.

To GCS's credit, school officials do link many documents on the Board of Education's agenda, but it takes a saavy user to track those documents down, especially months or years after the fact.

Budget information can get tedious and complicated but that is no excuse not to provide more information online, particularly the final editions of the local, state and federal budgets. The district also should post quarterly cashflow bond forecasts, such as this one for the 2003 bond.

What would you want to see online?

By the way, the new district relations officer, Lekan Oguntoyinbo, started today. He replaces Sonya Conway, who left in March to work for American Express. Any questions for him?

A report released this week by the Center on Education Policy shows that many states have chosen to postpone raising the bar on NCLB profiency standards, resulting in dramatically higher—and potentially unreachable—achievement goals beginning with the 2008-09 schools year. Other states, including North Carolina, set incremental goals in an attempt to make steady progress toward the 100 percent profiency targets.

Read the full report here.

Taking incremental steps is not without its own challenges. North Carolina students have struggled in the past to meet the stricter standards the state has set. The Department of Public Instruction is still waiting to hear back from federal officials on a request to not count the reading scores for grades three through eight for Adequate Yearly Progress sanction purposes. You can read the state's rationale in the attached letter (page 3 of the letter).

I talked to Gongshu Zhang, GCS's chief accountability officer, about this a month ago, and he said that he expected fewer schools will make AYP if the federal government doesn't allow the exemption. Zhang, who used to work for DPI, said that the department did not properly prepare educators for the increase in standards (which occur every three years) and so teachers have been discouraged when students perform poorly on the exams. Zhang said he thinks the state should have piloted the increased standards before implementing them state-wide.

Zhang said the percentage point increases in targets, for example, increasing from 76.7 percent in reading to 84.4 percent, appears arbitrary. He suggested increasing by a smaller percentage.

"You must give us solid rationale as to why this amount is scientifically based," he said.

That of course begs the question, how do you meet the federal goal of 100 percent by 2014?