ISD

About That ReOrg at DPI And What The Hell Is a Deputy Superintendent of Innovation?

/ caffeinatedrage / 3 Comments

As reported yesterday by many outlets, Mark Johnson announced a reorganization at the Department of Public Instruction, one of the many results of a recent court case that took over a year to settle and an audit that cost over a million dollars which said that DPI was underfunded.

Alex Granados of EdNC.org published the actual email sent out by Johnson to staff at DPI.

Dear Colleagues:
As most of you know, since becoming state superintendent, I have advocated a strategy of bold innovation and true urgency at the N.C. Department of Public Instruction to support our state’s educators and students.
Today, we are taking major steps toward those goals by changing the way DPI is organized. To provide better support to the field, we need more efficiency and fewer silos in our organizational structure. (You can see the new structure here.)
To that end, I am creating a new deputy superintendent structure to drive innovation, collaboration, and operational efficiency. All deputy superintendents will now have a more effective number of directors reporting to them, which allows us to flatten the org chart and break down silos in the department. More division directors will be closer to leadership in this flatter structure.
Dr. Maria Pitre-Martin, who has been invaluable to me and to the department, will remain in her position as Deputy Superintendent for District Support. Dr. Eric Hall will become the Deputy Superintendent of Innovation. The new Deputy Superintendent of Operations position will relieve the other deputies from dealing with the department’s procurement, contracts, IT, HR, and other operational matters. This will allow Maria and Eric to focus on better supporting educators, students, and parents while the department can now make long-overdue improvements to our internal processes.
Eric’s group will house divisions including Charter Schools, the ISD, Career and Technical Education, Curriculum and Instruction, Accountability, and Federal Programs – all areas that will focus on generating, implementing, evaluating, and scaling successful strategies across the state to improve student outcomes.
Maria’s district support group will include the new Regional District Support, the new Educator Recruitment and Support, and other divisions that assist school districts and educators. The vision for this group will be to begin the shift to a data-driven support model through regional support teams. Teams will utilize a central data repository to improve local decision-making in partnership with schools and districts.
Maria will play the key role in driving collaboration as the Regional District Support team will need to work across the entire department. In fact, you may notice that there doesn’t seem to be a perfect break between the Innovation and District Support groups; that is by design. Overall, the changes are intended to foster more cooperation and collaboration among directors for the ultimate benefit of our educators and students.
Today, Maria, Eric, and I met with division directors to begin the work to develop plans for the transition to the new structure. I will begin to meet weekly with my DPI leadership team and regularly with division directors to drive our vision for transforming K-12 education in North Carolina. Also, all DPI staff will have an opportunity soon to discuss this new structure with us.
Thank you for your patience as we move to implement these changes. I know there has been a significant amount of change at DPI over the past 18 months. I appreciate all the work staff and local districts have done while these shifts, sometimes painful and sometimes merely distracting, have played out around us. I sincerely hope that we are at a point where we can begin to focus on urgently driving the innovation our system needs to truly fulfill the educational aspirations of educators, parents, and students.
In the coming weeks, we will be communicating more with you and the field about how these changes will be implemented and what changes districts and charter schools can expect.
Thank you for all you do for North Carolina’s public schools. North Carolina is fortunate to have you.
Mark
Important contact information:
  • Dr. Maria Pitre-Martin will be the Deputy Superintendent for District Support.
    • When local district officials or superintendents have questions or concerns for DPI, Maria is your best point of contact as she will reach across the department to drive collaboration and customer service for schools.
  • Dr. Eric Hall will be the Deputy Superintendent of Innovation.
  • Dr. Pamela Shue will remain the lead for early childhood education as the Deputy Superintendent for Early Education.
  • The Deputy Superintendent for Operations has not been announced yet.
  • Alexis Schauss will fill a new position as the Chief School Business Officer for NC public schools.
  • Stacy Wilson-Norman will be the division director for Curriculum and Instruction. Thank you to Christie Lynch-Ebert for serving as the interim director.
  • There are no other changes in division directors.
  • Regularly scheduled webinars will continue for now as Eric, Maria, Alexis, Stacy, and other division directors formulate best practices going forward (https://www.ednc.org/2018/07/24/superintendent-mark-johnson-announces-new-organizational-changes-at-dpi/).

Forget that Stacy Wilson-Norman actually spells her name “Stacey” and that “true urgency” took over 18 months to happen, there are some things worth noting about the new organizational chart.

Below is what it was prior to the new reorganization.

chart1

This is what it looks like now.

orgchart

The first thing to notice is that on the older chart some positions were titled with ALL CAPS and had a thicker border surrounding them. That meant that these people were Dual-Report Positions. In short, they answered to both the state board and to Johnson. However, that went away on July 1 with this:

“With the 8 June 2018 North Carolina Supreme Court ruling upholding the constitutionality of Session Law 2016-126, I am now exercising my authority under that Act to manage administrative and supervisory personnel of the Department. Accordingly, I am changing your position appointment from “dual report” to reporting [only to the Superintendent directly] or [to the Superintendent through the Deputy State Superintendent]. The change in your appointment is effective immediately,” Johnson wrote (https://www.ednc.org/2018/07/17/state-board-of-education-loses-power-over-dpi-leadership/).

What that means is that those people who held those positions not only answer to Johnson now alone, but he has total control over what they do. A man with less than two calendar years of teacher training and classroom experience combined along with an unfinished term on a local school board now “calls” the shots for all of those veterans in a DPI whose budget is being slashed by the very people who prop up Johnson.

Also in the older chart, Johnson reports to the state board. In the new one, the state board of education does not even really have any ties to DPI except through an internal auditor. It’s like they do not exist, which is just what the powers that run the NCGA wanted.

Another change is that there are now FOUR Deputy State Superintendents: Operations, District Support, Early Education, and Innovation.

Innovation? One can see the concreteness of operations, support, and focus on early education, but “Innovation” sounds rather nebulous.

Or maybe not if you have followed Johnson’s track record these past eighteen months in office.

If you look under the Dept. Supt. of Innovation’s duties you will see the following:

  • Innovative School District
  • Charter Schools
  • Federal Programs
  • Career and Technical Education
  • Accountability
  • Curriculum and Instruction

That job is being filled by Dr. Eric Hall who until recently was only the superintendent of the Innovative School District. So now the super of an ISD that has only one school in its district which is many miles away from DPI and has yet to be opened as an ISD school much less proven its effectiveness but also has almost unlimited funds to ensure success – now breathe – will take over five other branches of DPI functionality?

If giving that many hats to one person who has yet to show results in the state as far as his previous post begs is innovative, then it is appropriately named.

If someone is going to be able to spin SB514, diversity problems, and a lack of accountability for the charter school industry here in NC with a positive light, then yes, that would be innovation. And it could happen because Dr. Hall oversees accountability.

Yet will he have the objectivity to be able to show how accountable or unaccountable charters and the ISD prove to be?

And believe it or not, innovation within curriculum and instruction is more teacher driven, but Johnson seems to not like teachers in any of his posts. Their experience and insight would prove him wrong.

Of course, any new state superintendent will want to put his mark on DPI, but this organizational change is just another way of placing people loyal to Johnson and ultimately loyal to Berger and Moore in positions to carry out other people’s wishes. Right now they are bent on privatizing as much of the public education system as they can. They need “YES” people in DPI. And no one is a bigger “YES” person than Johnson.

Maybe they forgot one crucial part to the new organization flowchart that would lend more clarity.

orgchart2

That’s more like it.

More Proof That the Incestuous School District (ISD) of NC is a Pay-to-Play Scheme

/ caffeinatedrage

Read this only if you want need further evidence that the Innovative School District here in North Carolina is a pay-to-play ploy by privatizers in North Carolina.

Innovative-School-District-DMID1-5eboarxdm-400x267

“An ex-North Carolina lawmaker received financial benefits for his work with a nonprofit that stands to win a state contract with the public school takeover program he helped create, documents obtained by Policy Watch show.

A state disclosure form shows Rob Bryan, a former Charlotte legislator who now sits on the UNC Board of Governors, received at least $5,000 in 2017 as a “stipend” for his work with Achievement for All Children, Inc. (AAC), a Forest City-based nonprofit that’s in the final stages of negotiating a school takeover contract with the State Board of Education (http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2018/04/25/school-takeover-groups-payment-to-ex-lawmaker-raises-ethics-questions/). 

NC Policy Watch’s Billy Ball reported today that Rob Bryan received money for his work from the very “nonprofit” for which he works that is profiting from a bill he actually ramrodded through the NC General Assembly in 2016.

That means that Rob Bryan is profiting from working for an outfit that is profiting from taxpayer money for a venture that Rob Bryan put together with taxpayer money two years ago without taxpayer input.

What? Yes, that’s what happened. Again:

  • Rob Bryan literally created the bill that enabled the ISD to come to NC.
  • As a legislator, Rob Bryan received campaign funds from John Bryan, the founder of TeamCFA which is connected to AAC for which Rob Bryan now works.
  • AAC was chosen to operate NC’s ISD by Eric Hall, ISD superintendent.
  • Eric Hall is to report straight to Mark Johnson, NC State Superintendent.
  • Rob Bryan and Mark Johnson are both TFA alums.
  • On the board of AAC is also Darrell Allison, who was recently leader of PEFNC, a school choice advocacy group.
  • Rob Bryan and Darrell Allison also serve on the UNC Board of Governors.

And the funny part is what Eric Hall said in Ball’s article.

Eric Hall, superintendent of the Innovative School District, indicated he wasn’t aware of the payment when contacted by Policy Watch this week, although he said no state dollars disbursed to Achievement for All Children would be used to compensate board members like Bryan.

That’s weak. Money is money. AAC got money from the state. Rob Bryan got money from AAC.

 

Just further proof that ISD really stands for the Incestuous School District.

For more on Rob Bryan and the ISD, please refer to this posting: https://caffeinatedrage.com/2018/04/08/the-incestuous-school-district-isd-of-nc-follow-the-money-to-see-the-pay-to-play/.

The Incestuous School District (ISD) of NC – Follow the Money to See the Pay-to-Play

/ caffeinatedrage / 1 Comment

In 2016, then Rep. Rob Bryan and the House Committee on Education, pushed through a bill that would establish an ASD (Achievement School District) in North Carolina allowing the control of some of the state’s low-performing schools to be outsourced to out-of-state entities.

That ASD was renamed the Innovative School District (ISD) in 2017 in an attempt to “relabel” it under a more favorable light.

After a rather contentious selection process that saw communities galvanize to keep their “under-preforming” schools from being put into the ISD, one school was then selected and marked to be taken over by an outside entity – Southside Ashpole Elementary School in Robeson County.

This week, Dr. Eric Hall, the superintendent of the ISD, formally presented to the NC State Board of Education his recommendation for an operator for Southside Ashpole.

From Alex Granados of EdNC.org on April 4th,

Innovative School District (ISD) Superintendent Eric Hall received a less-than-enthusiastic response from some State Board of Education members today when he presented his recommendation for an inaugural ISD school operator. 

Under the Innovative School District, five schools will be selected to be taken over by operators which could include for-profit charter or education management organizations. The schools will no longer be run by their traditional school districts during the five years they are under ISD authority. 

Southside Ashpole will be the first school and is slated to operate under the ISD starting this coming fall. However, having an operator in place before is a crucial first step before that can happen. 

Hall’s recommendation, Charlotte-based Achievement for All Children(AAC) includes former Rep. Rob Bryan, R-Mecklenburg, on its leadership team. Bryan was the lawmaker who spearheaded the legislation that became the Innovative School District (https://www.ednc.org/2018/04/04/innovative-school-district-operator-selection-hits-possible-roadblock/ ). 

Rob Bryan is part of AAC. He joined them after he was defeated in a reelection bid later in 2016.

AAC is contracted to TeamCFA.

Who is TeamCFA?

Per Lynn Bonner and T. Keung Hui of the News & Observer last October:

A company tied to a wealthy Libertarian donor who helped pass a state law allowing takeover of low-performing North Carolina schools is trying to win approval to operate those schools.

Achievement For All Children was among the groups who applied for state approval to run struggling schools that will be chosen for the Innovative School District. Achievement For All Children is heavily connected to Oregon resident John Bryan, who is a generous contributor to political campaigns and school-choice causes in North Carolina.

The company was formed in February and registered by Tony Helton, the chief executive officer of TeamCFA, a charter network that Bryan founded. The board of directors for Achievement for All Children includes former Rep. Rob Bryan, a Republican from Mecklenburg County who introduced the bill creating the new district, and Darrell Allison, who heads the pro-school choice group Parents For Educational Freedom in North Carolina (http://amp.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article178169451.html) .

You might want to see whom all has received political contributions from John Bryan. All one has to do is look at FollowtheMoney.org (https://www.followthemoney.org/entity-details?eid=2181444) .

Below is just a screenshot, but it lists both Rob Bryan and Lt. Gov. Dan Forest as receiving funds for one election cycle. Be remembered that there is a limit that can be donated to a candidate, but that is per election; primaries and general elections are separate. Bryan can donate to each. And he has.

Bryan1

Among the other North Carolinians John Bryan has donated to include:

  • Pat McCrory
  • Chad Barefoot
  • Phil Berger
  • Tim Moore
  • Ralph Hise
  • Jason Saine
  • David Curtis
  • Jerry Tillman

That’s quite the list of privatizers.

Another article by the N&O (Bonner, Stancill, and Raynor) last October 9th chronicled even more of John Bryan’s “philanthropy.”

Bryan has contributed about $600,000 to legislative candidates in North Carolina, most of them Republican, and GOP political committees from 2011 to 2016. Included is a $100,000 contribution to a group supporting GOP candidates for the state Supreme Court. He contributed $50,000 to a political action committee called Truth & Prosperity, set up to support Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest.

A vocal charter-school champion, Forest has a seat on the State Board of Education. Forest’s general counsel and policy adviser, Steve Walker, is vice chairman of the state Charter School Advisory Board (http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article177836091.html).

Of course, Dan Forest downplays this. But do not forget that as a member of the state board of education, he has the power to help give the ISD resources and “OK” whomever might be slated to take over the school – Like TeamCFA.

Back to the other Bryan:

Rob Bryan created a bill in 2015-2016 and with the help of a loaded committee became willing to siphon money to charter schools run by out-of-state private entities for which he now works and may potentially profit from.

That is a pile of manure of the most putrid stench.

To further add to the incestuous nature of the proposal by Achievement for All Children, it includes on its board of directors Darrell Allison of PEFNC who is about to work for the high-profile American Federation of Children, founded by Betsy DeVos. He is the megaphone for “school choice” advocates in the state and a strong proponent of the Opportunity Grants.

If this becomes a reality, Allison will literally be taking money away from public education through multiple avenues: vouchers for private schools and money to finance an ISD district that will be paying his company to run a school that is probably unwilling to be taken over. And Allison, like Bryan has cloaked himself with ambiguity: Bryan hasn’t spoken to the press yet and when Allison speaks he seems to not be clear. Consider this post on the use of vouchers – https://caffeinatedrage.com/2017/07/31/a-third-person-open-letter-to-darrell-allison-and-the-pefnc-why-hide-behind-the-ambiguity/.

In that post, the work of Lindsay Wagner is referenced and shows how a great journalist can ask the very question that deserves an open answer. It also shows that a “non-answer” screams louder than one that is straightforwardly given.

Rob Bryan’s background in education was outlined on his website while he was in office , http://www.friendsofrob.com/about. It stated,

“Raised by a teacher and an engineer, Rob spent his first two years after college participating in the Teach for America program. In a low-income school in inner-city Los Angeles, he saw firsthand the problems created by non-innovative, bureaucratic districts unwilling or unable to change. Red tape and politics prevented teachers, principals, and parents from choosing the creative solutions that would work for their students.”

There is a lot of information there. Bryan’s tenure in the classroom, while admirable, was not long at all. Most teachers in NC went through more time training to become a teacher than he spent in the actual classroom. He worked in a poverty-stricken inner-city school, the same kind of schools he helped label as failing with a Jeb Bush style grading system that he helped create. Furthermore, while in office, he actually helped foster an environment that still keeps those poverty-stricken schools under the foot of government by lowering per pupil expenditures and vilifying veteran educators.

He said in that statement, “Red tape and politics prevented teachers, principals, and parents from choosing the creative solutions that would work for their students.” Bryan is exactly right. But if one sees the actions that Bryan as a legislator participated in while crafting the current educational landscape here in NC, one would label him as part of that “red tape and politics.”

Again, that is a pile of manure of the most putrid stench created with hypocrisy.

And it is manifested in this ISD – this Incestuous School District.