The Value of Collaboration

A bit ago I had an encouraging visit to Montgomery Middle School with Principal Hurlbert.  It was great to be back to the school that I went to as a young teen.  I even got out my yearbook for my kids to peruse (and laugh).  Principal Hurlbert and I spent most of our time discussing authentic parent engagement and the redevelopment of the Multi-Tiered System of Supports at MMS.

The first area where significant parent engagement has occurred is in discipline, character education, and school culture.  In addition to home visits to every incoming sixth grader, the team at Montgomery has strengthened character education with a new Advisory curriculum called Positivity Project which includes parent resources available on Parent Square.  The administration has also elicited parent feedback on what behaviors to really focus on with students in order to garner family support for the District Expectations.  To foster a consistent partnership, parents receive behavior updates in the new family-influenced redesign of student planners as students reflect and create their own goals communicated to parents on a weekly basis.  The result of these changes has been a stronger community and improved incident data, meaning the work was well worth the effort!

Although not as common at the middle school level, parents have also been included in student academic growth at MMS.  Recently, Montgomery has been eligible for Comprehensive Support and Improvement and underwent a curriculum assessment with the County Office of Education that incorporated honest staff feedback.  Parents now receive information on the ICAN academic standards as well weekly updates from their own children on their academic advancement, such as assessments, as well as their progress in their specific classes, including missing assignments.  While these improvements are new this school year, I am sure time will prove their value.

Collaborating with parents on both behavior and academics is essential to student achievement.  While I pursued this site visit to learn about MTSS advancements, I was impressed and inspired by the efforts of Principal Hurlbert and his staff to grow and improve alongside our parents for the sake of our students.

Unfortunately, our Board does not thrive on feedback and engagement in the same manner.  Government Code 54954.2 (a)(2)(E)(3) states that "Furthermore, a member of a legislative body, or the body itself, subject to rules and procedures of the legislative body, may provide a reference to staff or other resources for factual information, request staff to report back to the body at a subsequent meeting concerning any matter, or take action to direct staff to place a matter of business on a future agenda."  While our board has an elected board president with responsibilities outlined in Board Bylaw 9121, when we request items during the "Future Agenda" portion of our meetings, the rest of us individual board members are often told later to bring our requests to "Agenda Setting." Despite each of us other four board members rotating monthly as the second board member to set the agenda (to comply with the Brown Act), my experience over the past two and a half years has seen this process largely ineffective at actually getting most, if any, issues agendized.  We are often told that a particular meeting is too full, or that the board must be consulted as a whole to agree on a workshop date, or simply that we are waiting on another occurrence first.  Keeping detailed records and sending monthly reminders seems to be of little use.  While BB 9121 assigns the board president to the task of "carrying out the will of the Board," I recognize I am not the Board.  However, it should not take a majority of the Board to request information or ask that an item to be on the agenda to make it so.  That's certainly not how other districts operate - if a single board member makes a request, it is brought before the board as a whole.  The Board's ability and responsibility to discuss, deliberate, and take action depend on both receiving sufficient and timely information and that subject being agendized at a public meeting.  That's where the feedback and engagement come in.  Each of us board members have individual strengths and passions in regards to the roles and responsibilities of the Board, even though we are to be knowledgeable in all the issues we preside over.  It is only in honoring the requests of individual board members to bring matter before the Board that our Board will begin to function at a higher level and truly fulfil the intended role to which we were elected.