[Speed Gibson,
Thursday November 6, 2008 at 8:45pm]
Starting my T.E.R.M. Paper
The elections are over. The District 281 Referendum passed, both questions. It's time to get back to what was my original intent in studying the District this past year. It's time to write my T.E.R.M. paper, where I will develop a Transparent Expenditure Reporting Model for making the District 281 financials more understandable by the general public.I will do this gradually, of course. The District's 2008-2009 budget is almost 200 pages. The T.E.R.M. paper should be more like a typical corporate annual report to shareholders, and no larger. That's a lot of cabbage to boil down.
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I begin with a story from my corporate youth, when I worked for the Northwest's Great Store: Dayton's. The management always had a clear dichotomy in its structure and operation: sales and sales supporting. That applied to people, expenses, capital, even square feet. This wasn't meant to snub the support aspects. It was to keep us all focused on the customer, who almost totally dealt with sales people on the floor. If a customer bought it, a salesperson sold it.
If you weren't on the front lines making sales, you were there to support those who were. We bought the goods, mopped the floors, manned the receiving dock, dipped the strawberries, designed the store windows, ran the computers, kept the books, and developed - Santa Bear!
Everything we did in sales support was to make the store a destination for our customers and give the salespeople what they needed to keep them coming to Dayton's.
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So it is with education, that most basic of human interactions that differentiates us from the animal kingdom: a teacher teaching a learning learner. Just as the salesperson was the focal point of Dayton's, so is the teacher the focal point of K-12 education. And if you're not a teacher, you're doing something to help that teacher.
Let me go further, for some may think they are directly serving the children, driving the school bus or preparing lunch for example. Not really, not in my T.E.R.M. view. The bus driver brings the students to the teacher. The luncheon cook satisfies primal hunger so the students can function better in the afternoon. Without a teacher, there is no point in a school organization driving children around or preparing meals for them. L'insegnante รจ tutto!
Now I know J., Speed, Gary and myself want to participate in helping define TERM. I assume the citizen's financial committee will be interested. Are there any other volunteers?
One reminder: we need to develop something that will not require a lot of time from Gary's dept to create or maintain. Rationale: legal reporting is required and must be maintained. Therefore this is a very valuable extra, for which there is no budgetted staff...
As I stated on Give's blog, I think we need to give priority to funding student learning. Transportation gives access, but in days of tight budgets, it probably can't be a high priority. I think we need to examine where the money is going to ensure that it benefit the most number of students.
Any thoughts on where to draw the line? Meaning: how important are history, social studies, art, theater, music, sports, etc. Also, are academic counseling, social service counseling, special education therapy, etc core value added activities or support activities.
In essence, is the goal for the school to deliver a child that meets "No Child Left Behind" criteria or something more? This is the critical question to answer before we start evaluating costs based on value added.
Thoughts?
My perception of your comment would then be that you define all Teachers and knowledge transfer as equal in importance. Be it math, band, writing, art, science, sports, reading, wood shop, foreign languages, gym, choir, history, sewing, etc. Just making I understand what "Sales" means in the case of a school.