Board of Education President Eric Sweeting’s Reply to the Petition

I thought it would be helpful to publish both the original email that launched the petition, along with Eric Sweeting’s response. It is not clear if he is speaking on behalf of the entire School Board. Both emails are in widespread circulation.

–Jane Cody

Sent: Sat, Jun 20, 2009 4:58 pm

Dear Jodi Hirschman:

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I know you have not written to me directly but many people have forwarded your petition email on to me with questions so I hope it is okay that I am writing to you.    I’d like to take a few minutes to clarify some things and give some perspective and context to Dr. Cohen’s appointment.  In the decade that I have been following Board and district politics and for the six years I have been on the Board, the following administrative changes have been made:

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1. Dr. Sharon Burkibyle was appointed to the position of Assistant Superintendent.  She was then promoted to Deputy Superintendent.   When she left these positions were eliminated.

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2. John Chow was promoted to Assistant Superintendent of Finance.   When he left Dr. Shaps replaced this position with that of a Treasurer–for considerable cost savings.

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3. Last year we eliminated the position of Director of Technology and reassigned the tasks involved to two existing positions and created the position of Data Manager.

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4. This past year we eliminated the postion of Food Service Director as a district employee and included this position in the RFP’s for the food program which also resulted in savings.

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5. This summer the current Assistant Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds will be retiring and will be replaced by someone in the position of Head of Facilities–also for considerable cost savings.

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I list these administrative changes for a number of reasons.   One, each of them were made with the best of intentions by various Boards and Superintendents in response to very specific situations confronting the district at the time.   Secondly, none of them involved public comment or input.   In each example the change to the organizational chart of the district was made by the Board and the Superintendent in response to specific needs and specific financial considerations.  I think the Board and the Superintendent have the responsibility to make changes to the organizational structure of the district based on current needs.  At the moment we are facing a school year with four of the six building administrators being brand new to the position.    And you will note that they support this decision, with one of them stating publicly they had little experience with curriculum design or implementation.  You may not think that these positions listed above are equal in scope or magnitude to the Dr. Cohen’s (although two refer to second highest ranking positions) but they are certainly as big or in some cases much bigger in terms of financial impact.  Secondly, you will see that the one thing all these positions have in common is that they do not have direct contact with students or parents and this is true of Dr. Cohen’s position as well.   Her position is focused on faculty and staff development.    Hastings has always employeed an extensive process for soliciting community input into decisions regarding positions with student and parent contact–such as Principals and Assistant Principals.  And certainly we will continue to do so.  You yourself say that the search for High School Principal was an exhaustive, inclusive and open process.  Positions that relate to the internal organization of the district can and should be made by the people closest to the issues and intimately aware of the needs and weaknesses.   This is why we hire competent and experienced Superintendents–so they can assemble their team and support the needs of the district.

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The Superintendent is (and should be) judged on the basis of the overall success of the district.  I think it is unfair to ask him to run a 43 million dollar operation  and then tell him that he cannot put key players into strategic positions and align the organizational structure of the district in a way that responds to his understanding of the needs of the district.

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Please be very careful about what message you want to send to the Superintendent and any future person in that position if that is how you regard his role.

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In your email you ask if Dr. Cohen has the expertise and experience for this position.   The answer is yes.   She, in fact,  has the legal and professsional qualifications to be a Superintendent.   You also question why she will be given disciplinary authority over Principals.   This is an overstatement of the role.   Dr. Cohen will not be hiring or firing Principals.  This authority, along with their formal evaluation, will remain with the Superintendent where it belongs.   Please also remember that the original idea for this position came from dissatisfaction in the community voiced during the drafting of the Strategic Plan.   The creation of this position came from the recommendations in that document.  And when Dr. Cohen was hired there was an interview committee composed of representatives from various constituency groups (despite being a position without direct student or parent contact!), a review of credientials and writing samples and interviews with the Board and with administrators.   Dr. Cohen has performed beautfully in this role and given the need for more curriculum development (change in NYS math structure, questions about continuing Elementary Spanish and what that does to World Language Dept at MS and HS, consideration to expanding block schedules to middle school, brand new Principals and AP’s, etc.) we feel it is important to enhance this position at this time.   You may or may not be aware of her work to create grade level teams of teachers at Hillside who all have common “prep periods” so unified curriculum work can be done.   Or her extensive work with all of the 6-12 Department Chairs to eliminate gaps in topics and content.   Or the unification of K-5 curriculum with the expectation of individual High School Departments.    Or the support for Hillside teachers as they master the new math curriculum.    If not, I encourage you to find out more about all of these things.    The point is that these things happen with teachers, not parents.   Hence the big difference in the process of appointment.

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You also question the cost of this position given the economic stress and the bugetary difficulties this year.    I know many people roll their eyes when I try to explain that our administrative costs as a percentage of the budget have dropped every year for the three years Dr. Shaps has been here.   They are also down by actual dollar amounts, due to some of the organizational changes mentioned in the first paragraph above and also due to the four new administrators all coming in a lower salaries than their senior level predecessors.   With Dr. Cohen’s increase starting on July 1st she will make $50 more than the current Middle School Principal (who does not have the doctoral degree or the national research and publication record).    If that administrator gets even a 1% increase she will be back above Dr. Cohen by the time Dr. Cohen starts the new position.     Please also acknowledge that Dr. Cohen has saved the district tens of thousands of dollars in previsouly budgeted curriculum consultants (Social Studies Dept, Science Dept, World Lang) and arranged for free staff development and library materials from textbook vendors, things we had never tapped into before.  We have made a determined effort to promote members of the staff and faculty into senior positions in the district (ie: Lou Adepietro, Brent Harrington, Laura Sullivan) because it makes sense for many reasons–financial, builds community, supports professional growth, models continuous improvement, etc.   And we want these people to stay for a long time.   It costs a lot of money to replace administrators (the advertisement cost alone is $10,000) so appropriately supporting our new adminstrators (developing professional growth plans, providing resources, expertise and broad knowledge of K-12 curriculum) is vital and strategic.

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I don’t know if the agenda is to drive this person away but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this were successful.   Who would want to work 12 hour days and have their role questioned so publicly on the front page of the local paper and public petitions?    I do know this: if she leaves we will be left with nobody in this critical position at a time when we need it desperately and it is inevitable that the replacement person, even if hired at the level of Director, will be hired at a salary higher than the $160,000 identified.    Please see salary for Dobbs Ferry’s Director of Curriculum (no doctoate) which is higher than $160,000.    Please also see salary organizational charts and salary structures for Briarcliff, Pleasantville, Bronxville, Ardsley and Irvington.

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Finally,  I’m sure you are aware that we have a reputation as a difficult district in which to work and for being a community resistant to change.   Along with other national and local reasons these things limit our applicant pool for senior level administrators.   If we were also to become known as the district that rescinded appointments (not under consideration) we would be in serious trouble.  If this were the case, in the future, when you are on the School Board, you will have much bigger problems on your hands.    There is no conspiracy here to trick the community.   We could have done the easy thing and made this appointment at the next meeting in July.   The Board chose not to do that so that people would be informed of the positive changes happening in the district.   The Board is composed of well intentioned people trying to do the right thing given lots of competing interests.  I guess no good deed goes unpunished.

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I hope you will go this week to speak to Dr. Cohen and hear from her about the work she has been doing and the ideas she has for our school district.  I will forward your petition and this response to her so she knows the extent of our conversation.   After that I look forward to continuing our discussion about this important topic.  Please share my thoughts with people on your circ list.  I only ask that if you do so you do so in its entirety.

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All Best,

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Eric Sweeting

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Please share your thoughts by commenting below.

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