Tom Brennan School Board Newsletter

2010-05-25T15:44:00.001-07:00

Friends and Neighbors,

I hope you enjoyed the winter holidays, and with Easter behind us, that we can look forward to nicer weather (although in Rochester we can never be sure). This is my final informal newsletter report to you. My service on the city school board ended at the end of the year. I am a repeat offender, I served (without salary) on two other Rochester area elected public school boards, going back 26 years. Thank you for the opportunity to do this difficult but important work for the city and children we love. I look forward to working along side you, perhaps following the leadership of others now, as we strive for a more open and honorable civic and political culture.

The current school year is ending. A new budget cycle is upon us, and government at every level facing historic fiscal challenges. It is also a time of great ferment about the efficacy of elected school boards in cities (the so called 'Mayoral Control" debate). Some parting reflections are in order. Citizen school board service is important, but often misunderstood. In an era of lower standards and greater bias in media, from the D&C to Fox News, one has to make more of an effort to communicate. Seldom did I see a report in the D&C, about something I had first hand understanding of, which was accurate!

Thank You and Goodbye For Now

2010-05-25T15:37:00.000-07:00

If I could leave just one thought behind, it would be that there are no short cuts. We share frustration and a sense of urgency about urban public schools, across the nation. Rochester is no different. The problems did not develop overnight. Neither will solutions. We know what works, and it is not fads, political power grabs, scapegoating, or personalizing issues. And the solutions are as much a matter of will as wallet, as much a matter of common sense as of drama. There are few votes, and few headlines in this. But mature, sustained, purposeful action does improve things. That was my focus. I came to city school board service with plenty of prior board service, and political credentials. I did not need the line on my resume. I did not feel I had anything to prove. I tried to put first things first.

Schools exist for children, not adults. So I voted against budgets that put bureaucracy ahead of in-the-classroom resources. Kids need to finish school, so I chaired the policy committee that raised the age at which kids could drop out, and I wrote a new athletic eligibility policy that encouraged kids to stay in school, and improve their performance, and enlisted adults in that effort. Input from parents is vital. So I insisted that parental involvement institutions be comprised of people who actually are parents, and who actually live in the city, no matter who that displeased. Kids can't learn if they come to school sick, hungry, or terrorized -- and so I have supported wrap-around services for disadvantaged youth, and consider the failure to better establish such services here, due to adult turf battles, to be a scandal. Audits, and the horror stories of countless parents dealing with district bureaucracy, have underscored long standing failures of proper board policy and fiscal oversight. So I fought for repeal of a ridiculous David Gantt sponsored law (written just for Rochester to protect a crony superintendent in 1997) which cut the bureaucracy loose from such oversight. Notice I say proper board oversight. School boards do great harm when they micromanage, grind personal axes, or jump through hoops for special interests. That is why I supported abolishing "liaison" assignments, and a Rube Goldberg contraption of a board committee system, both of which I think encourage the wrong board focus.

I addressed many of these issues in more detail, in prior newsletters, which are excerpted online at www.tom-brennan.com

One thing I know I got right was making Dr. William Cala school superintendent. No Rochester public official is as highly regarded, or widely trusted on education issues. I was the fourth and deciding vote to bring him here. Had I not been there, he may never have come here. My only regret is that he did not apply for the permanent appointment. I have no doubt he would have received it. Dr. Cala was up front about his temporary availability, of course, and the political/media circus about this, where folks who opposed his appointment acted as if it was now their idea, is a tribute to the quality of his work.

I point this out now, because people should pay close attention to Bill Cala's outspoken opposition to so called "Mayoral Control" of city schools (which is code for substituting public voting rights with a political patronage appointment model of school board selection or governance).

You Can Like Mayor Duffy, and Still Agree With Dr. Cala That the School Board Should Be Elected, Not Politically Appointed

2010-05-25T15:31:00.002-07:00

You can like the Mayor personally, wish him well, and still agree with Dr. Bill Cala that "Mayoral Control Does Not Work and is Wrong" (as an essay by Cala in the January 14th online edition of City News is titled).

After all, Mayor Duffy shared Cala's position when he ran for Mayor. He actually signed a pledge against Mayoral Control, and was reelected last year scoffing at evidence he had changed. I well recall, just last summer, how many well intentioned friends were annoyed with me for raising the issue. “ 'Geez, Tom, how many times does the Mayor have to say he is not for this?" I heard it a million times. Naturally, those people feel betrayed now.

The elected school board may be the office most urgently meaningful to city residents struggling to improve their live, and their childrens' prospects. Tell them replacing elections with appointment isn't an attack on their voting rights. With 85% of the city student body of color, and with lost lives a painful living memory of the struggle for voting rights, you can hardly blame people for noting that nobody is suggesting elections be abolished in, say, Greece (not a very well governed suburb last time I checked). Had candidates for office at least been candid with city voters about this, the public outcry might not be so great now. Not only was the Mayor evasive, not one of the 14 city council primary candidates, when asked, stated support for Mayoral Control (one, Carolee Conklin, who had strongly leaned that way in a prior newspaper interview, went almost crazy with rage when it was pointed out).

To this day, no substantive plan has been advanced by the Mayor. Forums that allow meaningful public exchanges between both sides of the issue are avoided. Business, political, and media elites -- now safely past city elections, seek to abolish a democratic process by way of an Albany fix, while shushing critics, rather than cultivating informed public consent. This is hardly the "political courage" Mayoral Control advocates congratulate themselves for having a monopoly on. Assemblyman Gantt boasts that elected school boards will be abolished whether the public likes it or not, and greets a wheelchair bound constituent who seeks to talk about it with obscenities. Assemblyman Morelle tried to pin vandalism at the local Democratic Headquarters on Mayoral Control opponents, even when it was national news that the vandalism was instigated by anti-health care reform extremists, who claimed "credit." This conduct should the concern of every thoughtful citizen of Rochester.

Sadly, expressions of contempt invite the same thing in return, and lead nowhere. We need to get the conversation on a higher road.

For my part, I do wish the Mayor had kept his word, but I understand his frustration. I suspect he has just been taking some very bad advice.Long before Bob ever became Mayor, entrenched corporate City Hall, and Albany based interests have had patronage, private profit, and political designs on school resources -- designs which have nothing to do with helping children. The Mayor is a beloved son of my own Tenth Ward neighborhood, but he will not be Mayor forever. Who would a future Mayor appoint to the school board? Who would City Council appoint? Council members now indicate they want in on this too.

Bill Cala is equally highly regarded, and on education issues, I'd follow Bill's lead. When he says all elected officials come and go, good or bad, and the public should decide who and when, I listen.Beyond that, the science is in on this. Mayoral Control has been tried various places, various ways, and the plain fact is it has NEVER proved to improve student performance, and THAT is what we should be looking at.

Didn't Mayoral Control "Work" in New York City?

2010-05-25T15:31:00.001-07:00

No. Some of its strongest advocates in NYC now oppose it. Others, who support it in NYC, caution against it in mid-sized cities with strong traditions of elected school board, which NYC does not have (prior to Mayoral Control in NYC, Borough Presidents appointed boards -- its a ridiculous comparison). Dr. Cala's essay easily debunks the assertion about NYC, pointing out how special "exit codes" were established to count "disappeared" NYC students off the books, and pad "Graduation Rates." If you can't access a copy of Cala's essay on line, contact me, and I will get you a copy.

The plain fact of the matter is that urban school districts with best graduation rates are NOT Mayoral Control districts. For Rochester's track record with politically appointed boards like proposed, you need look no further than recent Water Authority scandals and the MCC leadership search gong show.

2010-05-25T15:29:00.000-07:00

Nobody is more trusted in this community, about schools, than Dr. Bill Cala. Yet Gannett, in their anti-voting rights bias, hardly reports Cala's strong stand against Mayoral Control. Typical of the lack of fair play. To read the D&C, you would think only teachers were concerned. The truth is, the people are against this.

But Don't More People Actually Vote For the Mayor Than School Board?

2010-05-25T15:28:00.000-07:00

Wrong again. Mayoral candidates are far better funded and publicized than school board candidate, true. And state and federal elections draw larger turnouts than local ones. Perhaps state and federal officials should appoint local officials? All that aside, EVERY time a school board primary and Mayoral primary were held the same day in Rochester (1989, 1993, 2005) the leading school board candidate drew more votes than the leading Mayoral candidate. Look it up. So much for yet another lame political argument advanced by people who can't make the case for Mayoral Control on educational grounds, and can't get their facts straight in any case.

But What About All That Money the City "Forks Over" to the Schools?

2010-05-25T15:26:00.000-07:00

83% of city school funds do NOT come from the local property tax levy.

That said, the city collects the taxes from you, it is not their money. The schools have no independent taxing authority. The City Council ALREADY has veto power over the city school budget. School budgets dwarf city budgets in most cities because of the nature of the services, Rochester is not unique there. City Hall failures in their areas of responsibility (crime, jobs) burden the schools. City Council members who want to run the schools are free to take the personal cut, and the personal staff cut, and RUN for school board.

2010-05-25T15:25:00.000-07:00

Only 17% of city school funds even derive indirectly from the local tax levy. The school budget is already subject to City Council approval. City Hall used your tax dollars to mail out misleading pie charts, with last year’s water bills. The truth is shown above.

Won't Mayoral Control Accomplish Useful Consolidations and Information Sharing?

2010-05-25T15:04:00.000-07:00

Hostile takeovers and undemocratic process seldom leads to such transparency or cooperation. The fact is Mayoral Control is not needed to accomplish any of these things, and the schools have proposed these things, only to be resisted by City Hall. It’s another phony argument by people who don't trust public voting rights in governance of public schools

Who favors Mayoral Control?

2010-05-25T15:03:00.001-07:00

Not the public, by every trustworthy measure. Politicians who want it now, hid their positions in last year’s elections. What does that tell you? Polls from institutions on both sides of the issue (Gannett, RTA) show the public against it by lopsided margins, but the samples of city residents have been small. On the lighter side, a survey done by a "research" organization with well established bias against voting rights did a survey with a highly questionable "mail back" methodology that showed support, only to have a participant in the poll attend a forum on the issue, and identify himself as a nonresident of the city.

Support appears mostly to come from political bosses who want fewer elections, kneejerk privatization, supporters who dismiss the fundamental obligation of public schools to serve the entire community, and those "opinion leaders" who mistrust the outcomes of democratic inquiry and competition and trust the dictates of "the people who know best," and always assume they are among those people.

2010-05-25T15:01:00.000-07:00

It was national news that far Right extremists did vandalism to Democratic offices, in reaction the new health care law. They even claimed "credit" for it. So why did Assemblyman Morelle try to blame Mayoral Control opponents? Please.

There is a better way: More Honorable Politics All Around (...and City Council members who want to run schools are free to take the pay cut and run)

2010-05-25T14:43:00.001-07:00

It is fashionable to deride school boards as "dysfunctional." But compared to whom? To Albany? That does not even require further comment.
To City Hall? The record on crime, jobs, and neighborhoods is plain enough. Rochester City Council members, in recent years, have had run-ins with the law, failed to use the authority they have on the budget, and practiced blatant nepotism. Even a serious criminal record (hard time) seems no bar to appointment to council staff, so long as you are related to a council member. A court had to prevent council insiders from removing an elected council member, whose only sin was independent thought and inquiry.

If a school board had this kind of a track record, you could only imagine the outrage! There is one notorious School Commissioner, Ms. Elliott, whose public and repeated bursts of profanity, directed at colleagues and media, prompted 61% of the voter last November to decline to vote for her, despite the lack of any major party opposition on the ballot. That is not only evidence of good judgment from voters, it is a sad commentary about that of Elliott's bitter end supporters -- City Hall, David Gantt, Joe Morelle -- the very people who want to substitute appointments for your vote.

The truth is we need better politics all around. Elected officials, mayors, school boards, councils, state legislatures -- wise and foolish -- come and go.
The people should decide! Elections are the remedy, not the problem! Rochester needs a new era of civic and political reform, and as I leave the board,
I am encouraged to see signs of it. These things take time. Success does not come with rushing speed. But we had a record number of primary challenges last year. People are developing new institutions to address new realities about media in the new century. After years of a rancid culture in Albany, not a single state assembly district in Rochester will have uncontested primaries this year. That is historic. I even see signs of hope in the desperate and lame arguments advanced by Mayoral Control advocates.

At this writing, the legislative fate of effort to roll back your voting rights (when people thought you were not looking) is unclear. The question of public support for this might easily be resolved by an advisory referendum. Mayoral Control would never have legitimacy here without it. To close, I go back to Bill Cala. One suggestion he had, a real reform, would be nonpartisan election of school boards. Bill was elected to such a board in the suburbs himself (an experience I share with him). Fewer people know that the city had such nonpartisan board elections in the 1970s. Not only did more people take part in them than in the primaries that decide things now, the elections were contested about education issues, not internal party power struggles.

You have to wonder about politicians who say they love the reforms of Superintendents Cala and Brizard, but want to abolish the elected boards that made those appointments. The public is smarter than this. After decades of decline, and starting with Dr. Cala, Rochester saw the sharpest increase in the graduation rate in the state. That is not good enough. But it is progress needs to be able to take root. Let’s settle adult political differences without hurting children.

TO LEAVE YOU LAUGHING:

2010-05-25T14:41:00.000-07:00

Heartfelt thanks to colleagues and citizens who advanced my name as a write-in for the school board I wanted to retire from. I know the record breaking write-in vote I received was not about me. It was about your standards, and my name was just a handy way to make the point.

2010-05-25T14:35:00.000-07:00

The Smugtown Beacon, a feisty little political blog, made light of the write-in and the heated nature of school issues. They compared our 1208 write-in votes with the high write-in total for NYC Mayor (27 votes for Mr. Burns of The Simpsons). Around the same time, City Council Vice President William Pritchard left a threatening and abusive voice mail at my home, in reply to mailer that made the same points about Mayoral Control I make here-- so much for school board dysfunction. Mr. Pritchard now lives in Penfield. I'm just sayin’…

From Back Issues (for those of you with trouble sleeping):

2010-05-25T14:31:00.000-07:00

Summer 2009: Council School Budget Performance Shows Lack of Seriousness On Their Part

2010-05-25T14:29:00.000-07:00

City Council has veto power over the school budget. They had the power to send this budget back to the school board and tell them to do it right. The Board, by a 4-3 vote, passed a budget that threatened to do great harm to art and music programs that are proven winners for the RCSD, and increased class size, while not sharing the sacrifice at the top. We have too much of this. I voted against this budget, and based on conversations with board colleagues who know more now than they did earlier, I think adjustment would have been made if council had acted in good faith. City Hall and the school board work for the same people. Here was a chance for the two entities to put aside pride, to put aside one-upmanship, and cooperate for the good of kids and taxpayers. What did city council do? After a display of crankiness about rare public scrutiny of their role in the budget process (the Council does not want the public to understand that the school budget is subject to their approval -- it gets in the way of their posturing about the school spending and priorities) -- they approved the budget. Some them said they had no choice, suggesting that their only role was to see whether the budget was balanced or not. Several other colleagues voted no, for a variety of reasons having nothing to do with whether it was balanced. These people can't even keep their lies straight!

Carla Palumbo threatened that future efforts to bring the Council's role in the budget process to public light might result in her favoring abolishment of the public right to elect the school board. Council VP Pritchard, already a voting rights foe, derided the parenting skills of those parents who supported their children in a plea to save good educational programs. It isn't clear what makes Pritchard, of all people, an expert on parenting. All in all it was a pathetic performance by an elected body that has had far too little scrutiny or electoral competition.

Van White bid for City/School cooperation rebuffed in Conklin flip flop

You may recall the harrumphing from City Hall when a joint meeting of the school board and City Council made a rather obvious inquiry into efforts by the city to abolish elected school boards. Some denied supporting that. Others confirmed their support for such. The City had many weeks of advance warning this would come up. The board went through a lengthy public deliberation to decide whether to raise it. The city had also media inquiries in advance. Beyond that, how could it NOT come up? Two elected bodies sit down to forge a better working relationship, and the effort of one body to abolish the other can not be talked about? Give me a break! But City Hall acted like they were blindsided, which is a lie.

It developed that the heart of city discontent was a mandate from Albany that set a floor beneath which city funding for the schools could not fall. Only 17% of city school funds derives from the local tax levy, and is routed through City Hall, but this mandate has given rise to calls for control of the district by City Hall appointments rather than an elected board. City Council already has the power reject school budgets, and never has.

In an effort to be constructive, Commissioner Van White advanced a proposal where Council would establish an education committee, and a board member would have a vote on that, and Council would have two votes on the school board finance committee. Cooperation is advanced. Information is shared. Public voting rights are protected. But City Hall stonewalls.
In fact, Councilmember Carolee Conklin, who won Democratic Committee designation for reelection by promising to support election of the school board, now, in an August 17th interview with the D&C, dismisses White's proposal and suggests that "Mayoral Control" (abolishment of elected school boards) is a better avenue. It is difficult to forge good relationships with other elected officials who simply do not keep their word. At some point voters have to take out the trash, as it were.

Spring 2009: Why not YOU? Run for the School Board!

2010-05-25T14:28:00.000-07:00

You won't win popularity contests. Sweet faced mothers will question your ancestry. Fellow elected officials will not consider you quite legitimate, and will blame you for their failures. Still, in a city, there is no better way to do more good than to serve on a board of education. This is an office the average citizen can reach, the last true "citizen legislature," and people from all walks of life, at different seasons of life, are needed for this important work. To get started, in the city, contact your local party designating committee. These are nice people, who will put you through your paces. Also contact your local Board of Elections, for information about primary election petitions. Each year, in April, the Monroe County School Boards Association hosts a seminar for new school board candidates. It is worth attending. Call them at 585-328-1972.

Summer 2008: Cala is Right, Abolish Committees!

2010-05-25T14:27:00.000-07:00

From very early in my service on the city school board, I have felt that the board committee system was unworkable. For this reason I was happy to see that Dr. Cala, in his parting report to the public, after a brief but very highly regarded tenure as interim superintendent, felt the same way. It is a little strange for a board as small as seven people to establish logjams in the completion of its work, by routing it through numerous committees of three people. The work now done by board committees would better be done by the entire board, and by study sessions of the entire board. This would prompt more timely engagement by all board members, in all of the boards business, and eliminate the situation we have now, which Dr. Cala described to me as each committee functioning much like a separate board. Turf considerations, I believe, are the main reason there is resistance to abolishing this system.

I would add that we should also abolish board liaison assignments. In this system, board members are assigned by the president, willy-nilly, to look after various schools, and "advocate" for them. First, the board, and all members, are elected by the entire city, and have no business "advocating" for anything other than the general welfare of the entire district. Beyond that, this system invites micromanaging. It invites board members, in the name of constituent service, to stick their noses into day by day administration of schools, and all kinds of unfair and unethical ways. The liaison system is a dream for special interests.

The board has two core missions: Policy and fiscal oversight. Special interests, and above all, school bureaucrats like nothing better than to distract boards with side ventures (committee chairmanships that puff up their egos, liaison work that allows board members to play hero to people with axes to grind). But school boards best fulfill their obligations to ALL the people when they focus on policy and fiscal oversight, which is their proper job, and a role they should guard jealously. But boards should resist the sideshows. There is an old expression from the business world, that describes how some bureaucracies like to deal with boards. They call it "the mushroom treatment." How do you cultivate mushrooms? Keep them in the dark, and surround tem with ... fertilizer. Alert boards should resist this.

Winter 2008: Best Way to Appreciate Cala is to Continue His Work

2010-05-25T14:24:00.000-07:00

It is no accident that Bill Cala urged board members, unhappy that he would not seek the permanent appointment as superintendent, to make the vote for Mr. Brizard unanimous. Few people have made as favorable an impression
in difficult public office as has Bill Cala. His service should be treated with more respect than to be exploited for cheap political advantage, often by people and institutions who were skeptics about his appointment, and whose only agenda is to manufacture tension between Cala and the board that appointed him, without any concern for better schools or the well being of kids.

The conduct of some politicians in this city – Assembly members Gantt and Morelle, Commissioner Elliott, and the Democrat and Chronicle as well -- has been disgusting.

You would never know it to read Gannett, but the facts are plain. Bill Cala made clear from the very start, told the board he was available on a temporary basis only. He was gracious enough to agree to extend his stay, when the search for a permanent superintendent took more time than expected.

The board had an obligation to conduct the search in an ethical way. That meant accepting applications across the country in good faith. To invite people from across the nation to apply, to subject the finalist to public forums (which I favored) -- and then appoint somebody who did not go through that process would have been unethical, unprofessional, and harmful to the long term interests of Rochester. What quality candidate would ever apply in Rochester again, had we done that?

That said, Dr. Cala was not available. He said that from the start. He was invited to apply, and declined to. Had he applied, I think he would have been appointed. But absent that, the board had to move forward with a selection.

Politicians and media outlets, who care more about the political axes they have to grind with the school board, propagated the idea that Dr. Cala's temporary availability was the somehow the board's doing. Rather than credit the board with making a wise selection in Cala, and respect Cala's wish to move on, Gannett and the politicians named above sought to manufacture a difference between Cala and the board that did not exist.

Many of these people --Gannett, Gantt, Morelle -- have an agenda of abolishing the elected school board. Hardly an agenda that strengthens the public voice in the public schools, which is what Bill Cala was all about. These people should be ashamed of themselves.