• Governance Restructuring Report • Expectations for Learning

MSC GOVERNANCE RESTRUCTURING
A Proposal from the Leadership Team Study Group
November 18, 1999

Last year, Chancellor Rudy Crew mandated that all New York City Public Schools create governance Leadership Teams, composed of teaching staff and parents, by October 1, 1999. While the Manhattan School for Children is slightly behind this target, our great advantage is a root history of considerate leadership, committed staff, and parent involvement. For the last 6 weeks, a 12-person Study Group consisting of the school principal, the lower and upper school coordinators, teachers, and parents selected from among volunteers to reflect the diversity and experience of our community, has been meeting on this matter. Their task has been to forge a recommendation to the MSC community on how to sensibly and effectively mesh the Chancellor's demand with MSC's own history and spirit. In doing so the Study Group has also necessarily incorporated other structural changes MSC has recently undergone, including our growth from a "program" to a full-fledged school and the teaching staff's decision last year to adopt the United Federation of Teachers "School-Based Option" plan as MSC's mechanism for selecting teachers. Following are the Study Group's recommendations.

We recommend a system of government consisting of three interrelated paths of responsibility and leadership advising the school principal who takes executive action. While each of the three leadership paths has specific and discrete functions, all three include staff, teachers, and parents.

The three structures are Leadership Team, School-Based Option Teacher Selection (Personnel) Committee, and Parent/Teacher Association including its officers and committees. Each member of each group has a responsibility to bring to the table the views of his or her constituents and to inform them of the work in which the group is engaged.

In this system, MSC's two traditional standing monthly meetings -- of the PTA Steering Committee and the Family Meeting -- will be combined into one to strengthen the link between the PTA and the entire parent body. The Family Meeting should gain new prominence. The Steering Committee's past involvement in the establishment of overall educational strategy will be subsumed by the Leadership Team and be strengthened by the partnership of teachers, staff, and parents sitting at the same table and working together for that purpose.

The fundamental purpose of the Leadership Team is to determine the school's educational direction as outlined in the Comprehensive Educational Plan (CEP)--that is, the school's overall educational vision, its goals and priorities, the strategies that will be used to achieve that vision, and the alignment of resources to accomplish those strategies. This generally means educational planning, budgeting, and overall student achievement. The Leadership Team is a forward-looking body, working toward continuing improvements and specifically on the year ahead. It conducts its business by research, review, and discussion. Its meetings should provide the most thoughtful examination of the school's philosophy and practice using the first-person experience of its members...the teachers, the staff, and the parents.

In addition, the Leadership Team will foster a school culture in which there is a shared goal that all children achieve high levels of learning and foster a spirit of partnership among all constituencies to achieve this goal. The Leadership Team may also consider the work of other groups and committees to ensure that all school activity is consistent with the school's articulated goals and values.

The Leadership Team would not be involved in the day-to-day operations of the Manhattan School for Children and should be careful not to become involved in any issue that detracts from its ability to plan for the future and keep the big picture in view.

The Work of the Committee

The Leadership Team will:

• articulate clear standards for student learning
• identify educational strategies for all students to meet these standards;
• align all resources, policies, and practices to carry out these strategies;
• track results; and
• use the data to drive continuous improvement and hold the entire school accountable for student performance.

• the creation of the school's Comprehensive Educational Plan (CEP), which is submitted to the District Superintendent each spring, and
• the development of a school-based budget and staffing plan aligned with the CEP.

With respect to school finances, the movement within the Board of Education toward school-based management indicates that within four to five years schools that demonstrate the desire and ability to administer responsibly their own city-funded budgets will likely be able to do so. MSC is working toward this goal. In the meantime, MSC's only source of discretionary funds are the moneys raised by the Parent/Teacher Association. The Leadership Team, by virtue of its policy-setting responsibilities based on the CEP, will determine the budget needs for MSC's private fundraising program and turn those priorities over to the PTA as its fundraising goals. The close link between the Leadership Team and the PTA will ensure that this process works smoothly. If and when the time comes that MSC is able to establish its own overall budget priorities, the Leadership Team will generate a comprehensive budget including those funds as well as funds generated by the PTA.

No PTA committees will report directly or solely to the Leadership Team. Although the Team will have responsibility for funding priorities and ultimately for the city-provided school moneys, the fundraising and grant-writing committees of the PTA will report through the PTA to the Chairperson/s and the Principal to the Leadership Team. The Leadership Team may, as it sees the need, create ad-hoc committees to assist in or study specific tasks. Leadership team members may or may not serve as members of these committees. Committees will include staff and may inclue "outsiders" with special knowledge. The Team will reach out to the PTA membership at large to fulfill these functions as well. Examples of such committees may be an individual task of self-assessment; the need to conduct research into a particular teaching method; the resources and/or approach required to teach a particular subject, such as a second language, or to field athletic teams, etc.

The Leadership Team will not be responsible for the hiring or firing of school staff. [See School Based Option Personnel Committee, below] It may, however, recommend staffing additions or changes if they arise from a change in academic course, expansion of the school's curriculum, or by a perceived need to supplement non-classroom personnel (i.e. school psychologist, nurse, etc.).

With respect to assessment, the Leadership Team will consider those mechanisms by which it measures the outcomes of MSC's educational strategies (test scores, student attendance, discipline incidents, parent feedback, teacher retention, etc.) to judge the success of its past practices, and examine ways to improve them.

The Leadership Team will engage in a consensus-based decision-making process. Consensus is a way of synthesizing different points of view after all of them have been heard. It is a way of finding creative solutions that are acceptable to all or most team members. At the end of the process, each team member should feel that his or her position on the matter under review was understood and given a proper hearing. And because the team consists of teachers, parents, and staff, it is a way of ensuring that the interests of each of these groups are included.

The Leadership Team must take as a key responsibility the fostering of communication throughout the school community. Each team member must reflect the views of his or her constituency to the team and report back to the constituency regarding the team's work.

The Chancellor's Plan for School Leadership Teams establishes that teams must include the school principal, the PTA chairman, and the United Federation of Teachers chapter representative and that it have an equal number of representatives from the staff and parent constituencies.

• Principal (1)
• PTA Chairman (1)
• UFT chapter representative (1)
• Parent representatives: one each from the K/1 grades combined, 2/3 grades combined, from the 4th grade, from the 5th grade, from the 6/7 grades combined, and the PTA treasurer. This composition provides for 3 representatives each from the lower and upper schools. (6)
• Teacher representatives: two from the K-4 grades (lower school), two from the 5-7 grades (upper school), one from the educational support staff, and one from the arts cluster teachers. (6)

Our thought for the subsequent years would be the same except for the parent members. When the school is a complete K-8 program and in one building, parent representatives should be as follows: One each from grades K/1 combined, grades 2/3 combined, grades 4/5 combined, grades 6/7 combined, grade 8, and the PTA treasurer.

Elections

For the first Leadership Team which will serve until June 2000, teacher members will be determined by consensus within the group of teachers the person would represent and affirmed at the relevant staff meeting. For parent representatives, we recommend that candidates be nominated at the December 1999 Family Meeting. Those nominated would provide brief statements of candidacy which would be published in the newsletter.

If the positions are uncontested, the candidates would be voted in by voice acclimation at the January Family Meeting. In the event of a contested election, voting will be by secret ballot. Elections would be held at the January Family Meeting with provisions for absentee balloting prior to that meeting. Families will receive one vote per child. The balloting procedure will be more carefully described at the December Family meeting but all ballots must be received by the end of the January Family Meeting.

The task of this first group of Leadership Team members will be to review the school's Comprehensive Educational Plan and budget priorities for the 2000-2001 school year and other duties outlined above. But it is also expected that they will continue to refine and clarify those duties so that formal By-Laws can be accepted as soon as possible but before the next election in June 2000. The by-laws must describe:

• expectations for team members
• professional development expectations for team members
• role & responsibilities of the chairperson
• team composition
• methods of election of members
• method of selection of chairs
• a process for communicating with constituencies including sharing of team recommendations and decisions
• procedures for removing chair or members
• length of terms for members and chair
• methods of decision-making that the team will use (i.e. what happens if there's an impasse)
• specific procedures for determining the need for conflict resolution.

The Leadership Team will meet once each month.

Team meetings, as are all meetings of the Manhattan School for Children, will be open to all members of the MSC community, with their time and place of convening and their agenda made public in a regular and predictable manner (through the MSC Newsletter, bulletin boards, notices outside each classroom, for example). To the extent possible, anyone present at a Leadership Team meeting may participate in the discussion at hand. However, the pressures of the agenda may require that the chairperson/s limit the participation of non-team members by setting aside a particular time period within the meeting or by restricting the length of time that non-team members may comment on the leadership team's business. In any case, when decisions are before the Leadership Team, it will be exclusively the members of the team who will be polled to determine consensus.

The School Based Option Team, a teacher search body, comprised of teachers, staff, and parents, lists vacancies, interviews candidates, and makes recommendations to the principal for filling those vacancies. It is expected that an SBO Teacher Search Committee will be formed in February 2000 to prepare for the 2000-2001 school year.

All members of the Manhattan School for Children are de-facto members of the Parent/Teacher Association. At its monthly Family Meetings, any member of our community, especially parents and guardians, will be informed of the work of all the PTA committees, the Leadership Team, and the School-Based Option Personnel Committee when it is active. Here, too, members can ask questions or raise issues. We believe that if the meetings are run efficiently and respectfully, we can accomplish this work and still provide opportunities for speakers or presentations on topics of interest to families (reading, child psychology, etc.).

The PTA Committees are the muscle of the MSC community. It is through these committees that the parent body supports and strengthens the school. The work of these committees will be overseen by the PTA Chairperson/s and through them by the Principal.

The Leadership Team Study Group recommends that the PTA review its committee structure and amend its by-laws in light of the Leadership Team's addition to school governance. Among other necessary changes, the Chancellor's Plan requires that the tasks formerly undertaken by the Curriculum Enhancement and Internal Assessment Committees of the PTA must now become the responsibility of the Leadership Team. Also, the function of the PTA Teacher Search Committee is now to be replaced by the School Based Option Teacher Search Committee. The Study Group further believes that the PTA officers should be clearly required to activate and manage the many committees that animate and support the MSC community in vital ways. The PTA leadership may decide to keep the Steering Committee structure in place, meeting as it deems necessary, to coordinate committee activity.

The Study Group welcomes the opportunity provided by the Chancellor's mandate to create a Leadership Team. We believe that this process clarifies the ways in which voices can be heard and provides that those voices be heard on a wider and more substantive range of issues. This will happen because the Leadership Team structure provides for constituent representation and because it requires that teachers, staff, and parents meet together with the principal to work together toward the school's ultimate goals. If our own experience in coming together in this manner is any indicator, we can look forward to an informative, constructive, and positive future.

Submitted November 18, 1999 by the Leadership Team Study Group --Susan Rappaport, Alysa Essenfeld, Anna Chan Rekate, Claudine Jellison, Wendy Smith, Isaac Brooks, Polly Runyon Wittrock, Tatiana Hoover, Brian Toomey, Dan Arshack, Rene Adams, and Karen Mooney.