Summary of January 25, 2017 Meeting

Lincoln Public Schools Superintendent Update

LPS Superintendent Steve Joel started the meeting with a school district update for the Teacher Advisory Council.

District Update

Presentation Slides

  • The district now has 41,000 students. Joel said, “We’ve grown close to 6,000 students in seven years. That’s pretty phenomenal growth when you think about it. We’re expecting another 800 to 1,000 next year. Our businesses are busting for people and they are bringing them in from all over the world.”
  • “We brought in 426 new teachers this last year. We’ve added 426, 400 and 350 in the last three years and we haven’t skipped a beat academically. We have got a pretty good way to attract the best and keep the best.”
  • Number of students on free and reduced lunch increased from 43 percent to 46 percent. Joel added, “In a district that people look at us and a lot of people say ‘Lincoln has everything,’ we hear that in the Legislature almost five times a day, the truth is our demographics are changing as we speak. More kids are coming to your classrooms in poverty.”
  • There are people who think we have a lot of waste in education. “We are in the bottom one-fourth of state spending per pupil. As these issues boil up over the next couple of months, point that out to people as you are visiting with them. We are very cost efficient and very cost effective, but that is a very difficult thing to get across.”
Accomplishments
  • Graduation rate increased to 86 percent. “The work that is happening throughout the system – students as individuals – is nothing short of impressive.”
  • “Chromebooks have been a big deal. Our plan is to have them in grades 2 through 12 next year. This is not a passing fad, this is something we think is making a difference and we want to thank you for your efforts on this.”
  • “We created an innovative funds account and I want you to take this information back to your school. These are grants, one-time funds, and there is plenty left. If there is something you want to do for kids that is above and beyond what you are doing, and you think it’s going to make a difference in student achievement, give us some ideas. Our Board of Education is really interested right now in trying to determine how can we funnel additional resources at the school level. If you’ve been in a team meeting and someone says ‘if we only had’ now is a chance to sit down with your principal and create a proposal.” Examples include after-school clubs that deal with content, field trips, summer proposals for summer learning, and partnering with a city agency or group.
  • One of the things that gets lost is LPS is nationally acknowledged. “It’s what happens in classrooms every single day that drives our success.”
Challenges
  • “We have some challenges, there isn’t any getting around it. Seven years ago, when I started as superintendent, we didn’t have any money. When we embarked on the strategic plan, we knew we didn’t have any money to do our strategic plan because the funding formula had not caught up with our growth. Fortunately a couple years later, the funding formula caught up. We were able then to fund technology, staff development, all those things you have to do to be a good school system. It’s difficult to do if you don’t have the resources. Class sizes were a bit higher, we didn’t have behavior programs. By the way, that idea emerged from this group a few years ago.”
  • “State aid is simply this: your needs (which is your budget for the year), minus your resources (a $1.05 tax levy which we are capped at), equals state aid. The needs of our district continue to go up dramatically and our $1.05 is a cap. That can’t go up. So our state aid for Lincoln has gone up, in some cases double digits.”
  • Today we are facing a state budget shortfall of $900 million. The governor has said no new taxes and we are going to cut taxes and we don’t know how that is going to occur. “Property taxes are too high in Lincoln. Why? That’s all schools get in the state. We are 49th in the country for state support of public education. It’s all local. I would say to you we’d like to see a different mix. Throw in some sales, throw in some income – like other states do around the country, so it’s not all that people see on their tax statement in December and it’s like wow.”
  • If state aid caps growth at 2.7 percent. “That’s a penalty for LPS. Here’s why. If we are capped at 2.7 percent, and we need six to accommodate 1,000 new students, think how many new teachers that will be. Divide 22 into 1,000. Multiply it by $60,000 on average. That doesn’t even come close. So over the next six years we are going to have what we had five years ago. It’s going to feel a lot leaner here. Our Board is really concerned about this.”
  • “There’s a push in our state for tax credits for private or charter schools. It’s a national movement, but Nebraska doesn’t have it yet. The argument we are making is that may seem innocuous on the surface, but truly it’s pulling money from the general fund. So over time, people are taking tax credit to go to a private school, home school or charter school, then more and more dollars will be eroded away from public schools.”
  • “At the end of the day you have to help us. You have to help us in the conversations you are having in your social circles. We’re not against private schools. Private schools play an important role in our city, and our country. But what we have to be opposed to is taking public dollars and moving it to a different source, pulling it away from public schools. Especially in a district like ours where the expectations are so high and the resources aren’t.”
  • “What part of being a one, two or three state in all academic measures are you willing to risk if all of a sudden class sizes are going to 25 and 30 like they did in Kansas?  That’s the risk. We are not a corporation. How good could we be with 10 percent less of a budget? If everybody made 10 percent less, and class sizes went up 10 percent, and we have 10 percent less staff development, how do we know that graduation rates would go down? Who wants to experiment with that? We don’t want to be over funded, we want to be fairly funded.”
  • “If you follow the unicameral, we have a change in delegation. I encourage you to know who your senator is. Let them know how important education funding is. To cut that deficit, education is going to have to take a hit. A haircut. But it can’t be a big haircut or we are going to have to cut programs that we think are value adds.”
  • How do we accommodate student growth? “We are going to run out of room, we are not going to be able to do a bond issue for a couple of years because of bonding capacity.”
  • “Maintaining early childhood. There is a political movement to do away with early childhood because they see it as an extra. Fortunately in Lincoln we have a group called First Five, and they look at one simple graph. It says, ‘How much do we spend on corrections vs. early childhood.’ And if we could forward think, could we reverse that?”
  • “Career Tech, we are proud of our Career Academy. Not a cheap endeavor. How do we plan for that in the future?”
  • CLCs are full service Community Learning Centers that provide before and after school activities for kids. “How do you fund CLC’s unless you have grants?
  • “The key to not so good times – maintain, persevere and eventually through a couple of challenging years the good times will come back.”
  • “We will continue to work as a school system to identify the most important pieces of our work where we can get the best impact, and we know it has to start with teachers. We know that we have to continue to invest in teachers.”

Questions

How many people leave LPS?
Nationally, the teacher attrition rate can range from 10-17 percent of teachers in the first five years depending on a variety of published studies.  The best place to access this information is the National Center for Education Statistics. Our average rate of LPS teachers resigning or retiring in the past 5 years is approximately 7.87 percent.  Human Resources will include the attrition rate of all employee groups for the 2015-16 school year in the upcoming District Annual Report.

Are there any studies on kids going to college and if it’s worth it to go into education?
When the economy is really good, there are fewer students wanting to become teachers in college. But when the stock market crashes, and the economy starts to teeter, then some of these people go back and get their certification. Community colleges are partnering more aggressively with four-year schools. One thing we also do when we talk to college students is tell them when they are looking at Texas because of the hiring bonuses, we have title schools here and you can apply for and have your tuition waived.

As the community moves forward looking at the options of charter schools, what can we specifically do to advocate?
Joel said, “Your voice carries more weight than mine does.” Pick up the phone and call your state senator. Grab a group of people and go visit your state senator. Write a letter to your state senator and have a group sign it. Write a letter to the editor. Talk to those in your social circles. Nothing is clearly defined yet for charter schools, but this could be a real threat to public education. Do it across the fence, out on the street when you go for a walk. Never apologize for what it costs, and never apologize for what you make, because at the end of the day you are doing the one thing that this community needs more than anything else – education.

What is going on with Moore Middle School and Goodrich Middle School with the innovation grants?
We have an opportunity to open up a brand new school and it’s going to be an innovative school. It will be centered around technology, creativity, critical thinking, collaborative work, but not get too far from the core. We decided to do Moore Middle School and then we looked for a school and asked principals. Goodrich came forward. It’s not going to look a whole lot different other than the space will be used differently. You’re going to see more project-based learning, more personalized learning.

Sharing from Staff

Has the district considered a four-day week? Students attend Monday – Thursday, and teachers plan on Fridays?
We have talked about it. It would be tough in Lincoln because we are so business centered. States that are doing the four-day work week are doing it to save money because they are going through tough times. What I’m hearing you say is you want the Friday to plan so we don’t do early releases. I think there is a little bit of merit in that, but I don’t think we are in a place right now to do that.

With more schools being identified as title schools, is there a conversation to moving to year round schools?
If you would go back to your faculty and principal and say to them there’s money to pilot something like that, and your school writes up a proposal, I would love to see that and the Board would be delighted. That’s not something we are going to impose on a school at this point. Year round is shorter breaks, less time for brain lag. If your school is interested, I would love to have a pilot in the city. If you do a year round in elementary, you almost have to include a middle school because parents have problems with schedules and child care.

What is the district doing to increase the number of teachers of color?
That was one of our priorities from the last strategic plan. Nationally it’s 6 percent that are hired in education. Eleven percent of LPS new hires this last year were teachers of color. We work with Thomas Christie who gets in early with students at LPS, we reach out to them in college, we grow those connections. That’s key, once we can get them back into classrooms either as a para or mentor. It’s good to have diversity where students can see people like them. We go to career fairs and all we see are what we already have. The best thing is the home grown. Talking to those kids and getting them interested in education. We are open to ideas, it’s the connections we have with current teachers that drives the success. Students at The Career Academy who are following the K-12 pathway, we told them if they follow through and get a degree, they are guaranteed a job at LPS. When we bring people from outside the region, unless they meet somebody and settle, they will leave in a couple years to go home. Our Board of Education is committed to this goal.

Is there a plan or has a dual language program been discussed?
There’s a group in town that are really encouraging us to create some schools where dual language learning is taking place. We are very interested in it. What we don’t have figured out is 1) how do we pay for it, 2) how do we find the staff. We learned from Omaha it’s really hard to staff. When you see the push for that, it will be well thought out.

With the increase of students living in poverty, and those in traumatic events, what are we doing to support not only the students but the teachers who deal with them on a daily basis?
We working to have more special education support, more counselors, partnerships with city groups. That’s an area that is hard to wrap our hands around and how do we get the resources there. We are seeing some great successes with our behavior centers.

Has there been discussion on having high schools start an hour later?
We have discussed it, and there is research on it. Again, this is a tough city to see change. I think you are going to see some creative things and solutions. We have a Board member who is interested in that. The problem is many parents have to be at work at 7:30, and who is going to supervise kids. We want to see data. Is attendance going up and are scores going up? We want to look at what other schools are seeing in the data.

Are there businesses in Lincoln that have wanted to partner with schools either financially or volunteering?
Back in the old days we had adopt a school. It lost energy because it’s costly to businesses. We have a lot of companies that encourage their employees to serve as mentors, tutors, or help in Junior Achievement. Prosper Lincoln has a goal for early childhood. We don’t have any more room, we are at capacity. You are going to see some plans where companies are going to say we are going to sponsor an early child education center. We staff it, they provide the resources.

Wrapping up

Joel concluded: “What I want you to leave here with, you are in the most important profession in America by far. And at the end of the day, regardless of what we deal with in Lincoln, this community is going to rally behind Lincoln Public Schools. If there is a community and a state that can weather what is coming, it’s Lincoln and Nebraska.”