If You Ask Me / By Martha Knight

Used to be, every five years the Long Rangers rode again. They were a somewhat diverse group of community members who met maybe six to eight times to develop a Long-Range Plan for School Improvement.

Sometimes they were led in this process by an IU9 staff person who spoke and wrote Education Planningese like a native. That is a dialect of Planningese.

The IU9 person who was our guide was exceedingly laid back. His eyelids were at half staff most of the time, it seemed to me. If he seemed to be bored, there could have been a reason. As I collected Long Range Plans from various school districts I found that they bore a startling resemblance to one another.

In point of fact, they had all been produced using a single template. Customizations were few enough that many “different” Long Range Plans could be prepared for printing using a process similar to mail-merge, using each school district’s place names and such to fill the appropriate fields.

The individual districts could have some of the same goals and some different goals, but many were virtually identical. The first meeting the group held we learned that the IU9 guide had forecast the goals we would arrive at.

The students in the definable categories had been asked to fill out fairly detailed questionnaires. Later I learned that whole groups of these children had larked around with this assignment, because it wouldn’t count in their grades, and they suspected the system was using them as grist for some mill or was just being nosy.

Those kids in Roulette and Pleasant Valley Townships! What savages their families must be! Still, we knew going in that the schools must plan to do better at instilling self esteem, and improve the curriculum as to the humanities, for all students.

Five years later long-range planning had to be done anew. Long range is not necessarily longer than half a decade. Always the formation of the planning group had to be undertaken with an effort to get a cross section of the community. It would never do to have only professional educators represented, lest it might be suspected that their plans were self-serving, their goals the most convenient for them to achieve.

The next five-year plans were called Strategic Plans. They, too, were to be prepared by a good assortment of community members, even if they had to be chosen blindfolded from the pages of the phone book.

Another five-year cycle or so and the approach to public school education in Pennsylvania was turned on its head. Along came Act 5 and Outcomes Based education. Tests and numerical grades were downplayed. Portfolios were the thing. Students must demonstrate that they could do something with what they were learning.

Never mind that vocational education and shop and consumer ed and the arts had been outcomes-based right along. Traditionalists rose up in wrath. Peg Luksic ran for governor on a platform consisting almost entirely of getting rid of Outcomes-Based education. She didn’t make it, but the public school bureaucracy got the message, and the legislature saw its duty as clearly as St. Joan saw that sword. Act 5 died an early death and was replaced by Act 4. Not Act 6, as we might have expected.

So, pursuant to Act 4 all 500 school districts in Pennsylvania have been creating what now are termed Comprehensive Plans. Approximately one third of the districts did their plan in each of the past three years. Our district is a third-phase one.

This time there were 30 planners in the group. It was required that these be from various sectors. Planning must include the thinking of unlike stakeholders, to use a term that has become popular with planners. Do not confuse stakeholders of this kind with the people who do battle with vampires, nor with those who have custody of the money in informal wagering.

Let us see what is in the aggregate of the latest planning committee.

I see four elementary school teacher, three secondary school teachers (one is a special education teacher), a middle school teacher (who knew we had a middle school?), five ed specialists (two school nurses and three counselors), seven administrators (one an assistant principal who has left, and another her replacement), an instructional coach/mentor librarian.

Now we should be down to some lay persons, right? People who are not professional educators. We are supposed to have a “board of lay school directors,” in this state. So school board members would be just such community representatives. There are two board members among the planners. Well, one is Dave Mensch, but he is no longer a teacher.

There are two community representatives, a category that is supposed to be included. Well, now I look at the names, it seems one of them holds an important position at a contractor of the district, the other is a high school teacher.

There are two business representatives. Hold on—one’s a school board member. His business is a dental practice. The other is also a school board member; this one has a furniture store.

Parents! One of the district’s stated beliefs is that parents are essential, and actually are important teachers of their children. Of course parents are included in the planning! Three of them! As for their being important teachers of their children, well, they are teachers employed by our schools as well.

This time there was no IU9 mentor but there was a template, found online. You can find the guides and forms the planning committee used, online. The draft indicates they followed the online forms closely.

Comprehensive and comprehensible are not necessarily the same thing. But you are welcome to read the draft or proposed plan at the public library or on the district website, www.pasdedu.org, or in a paper copy that you may request. in fact, if there is to be truly public-at-large input, it might have to come from you, during this review period.

The comprehensive plan is to be acted upon at the November 24 board meeting, then sent on to the Pennsylvania Department of Education for its review.

Peace.