Is it Management or Education? | Eastern North Carolina Now

Is it Management or Education?

BY:  HOOD RICHARDSON

Beaufort County Schools are a case study in what not to do in running a school system. I am talking about the entire time I have been able to observe the school system from my perch as a commissioner (28 years).

Our school system is mis-designed, under-populated, without a plan (of any kind) to provide a good education to our students and wallowing in cheap, personal, and selfish politics. There has not been a single professionally prepared and managed study by/of the system. One example of incompetence is the so-called financial report of the money savings in closing Snowden School. Another is the sham report justifying the building of the undersized 900 student new school buildings on the Eastern Elementary campus. Every meaningful initiative proposed during my 28 years has been beaten down and placed on the trash pile of failure.

The 32-million-dollar building program started over 20 years ago wound up as a 42-million-dollar program. That fiasco followed closely on the heels of the construction of Southside High School which has never achieved capacity. There was no professional thought about the long-term future of education in Beaufort County. The drum beat from the public and the Board of County Commissioners was to let the educators do everything because they are the experts. We now have a very low performing system that is hemorrhaging students to other learning institutions. Half of the seats in our buildings are empty.

Worse, there is no evidence that we will ever turn around the flight of students from our school system and the simple fact is that the closing of Snowden, John Cotton Tayloe and the current Eastern facility is proof that Beaufort has done a poor job of managing the declining student population for the last 20 plus years. The fact is: The current planning is making it worse, not better.

Yet, we are building another consolidated school for 900 students aged 5 years to about 9 years of age that looks like it will be undersized when complete. We have closed one school, Snowden, forcing students to leave home before sunrise and get home after dark. Both of these projects were done with minimum to no compliance with the laws. The major cheerleaders are the School Board Members and the County Commissioners. The one thing I have learned out of this is the last people to manage important projects around schools are these people.

Since the last bond issue there has been no authentic long range facility plan produced by competent organizations or experts.

The proof of the poor planning is obvious in the management of student demographics. The current student assignment plan for most of the schools is a relic of the court ordered desegregation of the formerly dual system. The proof of that statement is evidenced principally in the Washington Attendance Area but just as badly in the Chocowinity Attendance area. Chocowinity has been the only growth area in the county since the bond issue, yet nothing has been done to upgrade Chocowinity Primary and Chocowinity Middle schools. And again, this fact should dispel any illusions of sound planning. When Southside High School opened it was the most expensive school on a per-student/per-square foot basis ever built in the state up to that time. This was documented by the ECU Rural Education Institute.

The worst example of the poor facilities planning is the Washington Attendance Area. For its size, student population wise, we have continued an archaic student assignment plan that was designed to eliminate the previous racially dual system. Fact: not one of the students in Washington who have suffered from this cross-town busing ever attended a dual (all black or all white) school. But Beaufort County continued the terrible busing pattern in the Washington Attendance Area that resulted in an attendance wide busing pattern for every elementary grade student being bused from one side of Washington to the other and back and forth for years. The construction of the P. S. Jones and John Small schools was a wasted opportunity to go to neighborhood schools in a K-8, 9-12 configuration, which would have substantially reduced the transportation cost, both in dollars and student time-riding a bus, as well as allowed a realistic response to declining enrollments.

The loss of small neighborhood schools, where parents are deeply involved, is a loss we can no longer tolerate.

There is something wrong with the way we have been selecting school leadership. Do we need an educator or a manager to run a school system? We definitely need trained educators in the classrooms and we need trained educators (the principals) to manage those teachers. Do we need a person with an education degree and classroom teaching experience to run our more than 70 million dollars per year school business?  Running a school system is no different than managing a business. The manager buys things, hires people, manages people, plans programs, runs the largest restaurant business in the county and operates the most expensive transportation system in the county. Is there anything in this work that the Superintendent would have experienced while he was teaching a class?

I submit that the way we manage the second largest business in the county is not the way we should be doing it.

Now I will acknowledge that if we hired a person as a superintendent who was both an exemplary educator/teacher and an exceptional business manager we would be better off. But the fact is, Beaufort County has had some good educators as superintendent (all of whom have departed) but none that have been exceptional managers. Does anybody see a problem here?

I am not saying a teacher cannot become a good superintendent. I am saying it is very difficult for a teacher to become a business manager. Focusing on a manager running the school system leaves us with professional teachers in the classrooms, an elected school board to set policy and a Board of County Commissioners to watch the tax money.

All education systems in North Carolina have been unattended by the public for far too long. The public has been served the Kool Aid of education by educators who dance with the abstractions of liberalism and are unconcerned about the science of management.

I took a look at what the recipe is for becoming a superintendent in North Carolina. The liberals in Raleigh   work very hard to be in control. The requirements presented on the “licensing web site” are intimidating.  The first thing is that the superintendent must be verified by the State Board of Education prior to the election by the local board of education. They go on to say one must hold a North Carolina principal’s and superintendent’s license from them. Translation, “We are only going to allow our liberal buddies to have these jobs. We do not care about their management ability; we want to be sure their politics are right”. Then they add another slap, one must also have an advanced graduate level (sixth year) or doctorial license in school administration. Wow, that lets everyone out but their approved buddies.

Not to be too personal but ask the current superintendent how much training and real-world experience has he had in building a 50-million-dollar building. If you get a good answer, follow the question with: “Where did they teach you to build a school in a gully?”

To show that these standards for superintendents are “inclusive”, they say “OR at least a bachelor’s degree from a regionally accredited college or university and five years of leadership or managerial experience considered relevant by the employing local board of education”. There are plenty of people who can qualify as managers. Among these are business executives, and retired military. These people have good qualifications to run a school system. The schools are full of educators and there is an elected board to set policy. We do not want the superintendent to teach or set policy, we want him to efficiently manage one of the largest businesses in the county.

Having a person who is not an educator running the business part of schooling separates the three powers in the system. Educators educate, business managers manage the business issues, and the boards set policy. The present system has evolved into a one man show centered around the least qualified individual in the system, the superintendent. At present he is chief politician, handing out favors and jobs to educators, board members and their families in return for their loyalty and vote. One way to break this up is to put a professional manager in the superintendent’s job, one who has not been compromised by his experiences in the education system. Have him hire the educators and other professionals they need to manage teaching and learning.

And while we are at it, toss the idea of hiring someone who is a Rhodes Scholar…looking to hit the road as soon as he can find a bigger system to hire him.

The other way is to elect honorable individuals with strong Christian ethics to the Boards (school and county commissioners) and to hire the same kind of person for superintendents. In order to accomplish this, the public must take more interest in education and be involved in the education of their children. The concept we have been fed by the education propagandizers to “leave it up to the education experts” has not worked. Every one of us has the ability to use common sense about what is good and bad for education and to vote accordingly.

We really need a new paradigm in organizing public education, especially here in Beaufort County.