School Board’s Response to Issues Raised in Petition

Second Letter from the School Board (6/29), reproduced below.
The Hastings Alliance for Affordable Taxes doesn’t endorse the thinking set forth in the School Board’s letter. This letter is published because we want to give community members all relevant information, even when we don’t agree with the perspective. (I removed the cell phone numbers of Board members because I don’t want to distribute them on the web.)

Dear Hastings Community Member,

As we stated in our earlier email from this afternoon, we want to give the community information on why we support the promotion from Director to Assistant Superintendent. We have organized this information to address the four basic categories of questions that appeared in the petition’s comments: Why make this change now? Why wasn’t a search conducted? How can our District afford this? Why the short tenure track?

1. Why make this change now?
We had to make a number of very important management decisions in the past few weeks and this promotion was made in the context of those decisions. We now have a new administrative team that includes two new principals and two new assistant principals (one still to be hired). We have assembled a strong team and recognize that they will need help in aspects of their new roles where they have less experience. We now have the opportunity to move the District forward in tackling the curriculum and instruction issues that cut across grades and buildings. By elevating the curriculum position to the Assistant Superintendent level as the new team begins its work, we can ensure that these issues are not neglected, that the solutions reflect the need for continuity across the grades K-12, and that the administrators will have a strong mentor and coach to lead them in these efforts.

Raising this position to the Assistant Superintendent level does not mean that we will also have to hire a new Director. This position will cover the duties of the Director position as well – working with teachers on curriculum and instruction. Also, the Assistant Superintendent is not automatically next in line for the Superintendent’s position.

2. Why wasn’t a search conducted?
The primary reason we did not conduct a search was that we were not looking for a new outside candidate. We’ve had two years to observe Dr. Cohen in the Director of Curriculum role and feel she is very well qualified for this expanded position. She has moved the District forward on major curriculum changes that had previously seemed impossible and worked with all the teachers involved to include them in the decision-making and implementation process. The Assistant Superintendent role calls upon these same skills and experience, but also includes the responsibility of mentoring and training the four new administrators as well as working with all the administrators to drive improvements in curriculum and instruction K-12. This does not mean that this position will have hiring, firing, or disciplinary authority over the principals. That authority, along with their formal evaluation, will remain with the Superintendent.

Some examples of her work: At Hillside Dr. Cohen has succeeded in creating curriculum review processes that involve and engage all the teachers, general and special education, as well as the aides and other support staff. She has designed and led grade-specific training programs and a multi-year training model. Due to her efforts and leadership and the hard work of the grade teams she’s worked with, Hillside had a virtually seamless transition from a weak math program (Trailblazers) to Everyday Math, a program that the Hillside teachers feel meets their needs as it challenges and supports students.

While Dr. Cohen has spent much of her initial two years working on major efforts at Hillside, she has also been guiding the teachers and staff K-12 in making sound and economical curriculum decisions, including revamping the K-8 literacy programs, and redesigning our K-12 professional development days so they are more focused on crucial department-specific work.

3. How can the District afford this?
We realize in this time of economic hardship that any increase in expenditure must be subject to scrutiny. Over the past three years we have decreased administrative personnel costs in the support areas (finance, technology, facilities, and food service), so that we can focus our resources on curriculum and instruction. For example, by replacing our Assistant Superintendent for Finance with a District Treasurer we saved over $50,000/year. Even with expected salary changes, the total administrator salary budget will be lower next year than this year. Just as we looked at how to apply the $600K in restored NY State aid to the budget and decided to apply $139K to program and the other $461K to tax savings, we feel it is important now to apply some of the administrator cost savings from this year to ensuring we have strong curriculum and instruction leadership.

We feel this expenditure is offset by Dr. Cohen’s track record of ensuring quality and cost management in the areas of curriculum implementation, professional development, and vendor relations. In the past, committees of teachers and administrators worked over several years with consultants on how to write curriculum documents. In our Strategic Planning discussions we learned that both faculty and administrators had major issues with this process. There was no support for implementation, little department-specific professional development to improve instruction, and very little cost management. Dr. Cohen’s work over the past two years has given the District a collaborative model for analyzing curriculum, smooth implementations of large multi-grade projects, and fine-tuned professional development. On top of that, she has saved the District thousands of dollars by managing the costs of all these efforts. For example, in the Everyday Math implementation, she negotiated for free math materials and 30% discounts on teacher kits, pre-screened Everyday Math instructors to select the best and then obtained five free days of professional development, and secured the exchange of $7K in Trailblazer math materials for elementary science equipment.

4. Why the short tenure track?
State law requires that for a district of our size, all administrative and supervisory positions, other than the superintendent, must be eligible for tenure. In addition, the law states that when the responsibilities of the current position constitute a majority of those under a different title the person changing from one position to the other continues in their existing tenure track.

In this letter, we have tried to be open and answer the questions raised about this promotion. As we mentioned in our previous email we will be meeting on Monday, June 29th, at 8 p.m. in the Farragut Complex Cafeteria to review all the points made and discuss your concerns and questions. For those who cannot join us and have specific questions you want the Board to respond to at the meeting, please forward them to either Gabrielle Lesser or Eileen Baecher so that we can include them in our public discussion (see contact info below).

For the coming year we are also considering changes to our meeting structure that would allow for question and answer time rather than just a hearing period.  We welcome any thoughts on how that might be structured, as well as any other ideas people have for improving the functioning of the Board. Please remember that though we may be Board members we are also members of the community and share its challenges and concerns. We work hard and put in the time to understand the issues facing the District. While some may disagree with individual decisions, we hope that our work is judged in the total context of what we are doing to improve cost effectiveness while improving the quality of education.

Thank you,

Hastings-on-Hudson Board of Education

Eric Sweeting, President
Gabrielle Lesser, Vice President – gablesser@mac.com
Eileen Baecher – ebboard@verizon.net
Caryn Campbell
Lindsey Hicks
Donna Laing
Jodie Meyer

Posted by Jane Cody