The two most impactful public processes in recent history aren’t judged as complete successes, but it’s hard to think of any citizen-driven processes that have yielded results with more impact.
One of the committees doesn’t get much respect, and it’s largely considered a failure, but it continues to influence public policy options – the Memphis and Shelby County Metro Government Charter Commission.
Finding something in common with the Charter Commission – unfortunately, it’s the kneejerk opposition of the town mayors – the other is unlikely to be completely successful because the town politicians again took their hard and fast positions without the benefit of the facts. And yet, despite interfering state politicians, recalcitrant partners in the form of the town mayors, and overheated local rhetoric by some politicians, the Transition Planning Commission has exceeded all expectations.
It would have been easy for the commission planning a unified school district for Memphis and Shelby County to do just the opposite, devolving into factionalized power bases and competing, unyielding agendas and delivering little more than warmed over ideas based on who has the political upper hand.
Management by Woman
That both commissioners were headed by women – Charter Commission’s Julie Ellis and Planning Commission’s Barbara Prescott – is worth mentioning, with all the talk these days about how women’s management and negotiation style is best-suited for success in a diverse world where crossing barriers demands patience, equanimity, and aplomb (read: less testerosterone).
So far, the Transition Commission’s Solomonic approach to its work has yielded the most exciting ideas for modernizing local public education in many decades. Its multi-district model dates all the way back to the late 1980s but includes some additions to inject consistency across the various school districts.
While the values and vision for the Transition Committee are pretty much pro forma, its actions have been anything but. When it was created, the idea that it would inject more autonomy into public education seemed next to impossible, but its approved Multiple Achievement Paths encapsulates high ambition, accountability, accessibility, and broadly supported principles.
As expected, the town mayors appeared reluctant to give it a fair hearing with one saying that it might not match her vision for a municipal school district. It was an interesting comment since it was news that the towns have a vision for their districts since so far, there’s been little talk about educational principles and lots about political posturing. (To see how some things never change, click here to read Susan Thorp’s article about the 1990 controversy.)
Be Careful What You Wish for
The town mayor said that some “some elements of the plan” don’t line up with “what we are trying to achieve.” That seems obvious since what they are trying to achieve is nothing so much as to keep those dreaded Memphis students as far away as possible from their pristine students of her town.
More and more, the towns’ plans just seem irrelevant, and in the long haul, the unrepentant parochialism may very well be the equivalent of a line in the sand for local politics, and with increased Memphis influence in county government, the towns may find themselves finally having to stand on their own feet and end their traditional role as step children of county government.
The Transition Planning Commission next turns its attention to the organization of the central office for the new unified district, student assignments, attendance zones, selection of a superintendent, and sustainable policies when leadership changes. Based on their past actions, there’s little reason to doubt that the Commission can’t handle the tasks. The most ticklish item on the agenda is to find a new superintendent, and it seems expedient that they will find someone with no preexisting ties to public education here. It’s the kind of new thinking that has gotten the Commission to where it is today – on the verge of reinventing a school system that will have national ramifications.
Meanwhile, while the ultimate goal for the Metro Charter Commission of merging city and county governments was not achieved, its work to develop the best thinking about local government continues to produce results.
Check List of Good Ideas
The Charter Commission’s focus on the importance of a CFO (Chief Financial Officer) position continues to draw interest. With the recent financial controversies in city government, the duties of the CFO position, as identified by the Charter Commission, seem much-needed and timely. The good news is that a requirement for a five-year strategic fiscal plan has been proposed by City Councilman Kemp Conrad and Mayor A C Wharton said his administration will develop a five-year plan although it’s not clear what the administration’s position is on the charter amendment itself.
The first serious discussion about single member districts in Memphis took place at the Metro Charter Commission, and now they are being proposed as the structure for the Shelby County Board of Commissioners’ redistricting. The Charter Commission generally believed that more districts with more manageable sizes were preferable to improve constituents’ communications and to make campaigns more affordable for people who can’t afford the costs of running for office in the larger district. That’s why the commissioners’ plan for single-member districts is a definite step in the right direction.
Finally, there was Ms. Ellis’ deep interest in the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award for the proposed city-county merger. The Award is designed to inspire organizations and governments to achieve “best in class” levels of performance. It is built on several principles, including an integrated management framework that gets results; assessment tools that evaluate improvement efforts; feedback reports highlighting organizational strengths and opportunities for improvement; and other improvements incorporated in the Baldridge Criteria. The Criteria work as an integrated framework for managing an organization, focusing on critical aspects of management including leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, measurement, analysis, knowledge management, workforce focus, operations focus, and results
Let There Be Light
This focus on quality is something that should be adopted by every government in Shelby County, and a recent issue of the Greater Memphis Chamber’s Memphis Crossroads reported that at least one has done it. The publication said Germantown officials “came across” the National Quality Award and “a light bulb went on.”
If a light bulb was switched on, it was put in its socket by the Metro Charter Commission, which is where, as we recall, Germantown politicians first heard about the concept as Ms. Ellis pushed for the new merged city-county government to meet the Baldridge standards.
Despite ambivalent public support of the Charter Commission by many local politicians and limp support from many in the business community, Commission members in the end produced a model local government charter that is already recognized nationally for its aspirational thinking and strong operational and financial management.
It remains a to-do list for governments that desire to be high-performing, entrepreneurial, strategic, and accountable. There are many other good ideas that should be mined from the Charter Commission’s model charter, and here’s hoping local governments will continue to learn from the Commission’s year of research, learning, and recommendations.
SCM,
I see some contradictions in your philosophies. You applaud smaller districts for the county commission, proclaiming that these will bring the government closer to the people. Yet you abhor smaller units of government: You are vehemently opposed to municipal school districts and see no role for the smaller municipal governments. “Consolidate everything!” You marvel at the autonomy incorporated into the Multiple Paths to Achievement plan and simultaneously applaud the modifications designed to “inject consistency”. Isn’t consistency imposed from the top the opposite of autonomy?
You ridicule the Mayor of Germantown, saying that “it was news that the towns have a vision..” The suburbs have had one overriding vision from the beginning – Local Control. You insist our real goal is something much less honorable. I accept that you will never believe what we believe about the best way to organize public education in Shelby County. Can you accept that if Memphis can unilaterally choose to stop operating a school district then Germantown is equally entitled to vote on whether or not to form a school district?
Aw, give him a break. He’s the closest thing we have to a 1929 stockbroker.
Shelby County and the entire Memphis region is in a downward spiral that no amount of local control can stop. All you people are whistling past the graveyard. Give up. Move. That’s the solution.
more like deck game steward on the Titanic.
Anonymous:
First off, you seem to be mashing up your comparisons. These single member districts are exactly the opposite of the town school districts.
Multiple districts as proposed by the Transition Planning Commission amount to the school version of the single member districts of the county commission because these commissioners’ districts converge as part of the larger county government. They do not exist in self-contained, parochial units where they can pretend like the rest of Shelby County doesn’t exist. They are but parts of the larger entity. Also, the philosophy is that while representing the constituency of one district, the commissioners also are keeping an eye on the overall needs of the entire county, but that of course is often the hardest test for elected officials.
Local control is not an educational philosophy. If it were, Germantown and the other towns would have conducted educational assessments, studies on pedagogy, and analysis of the comparable options for their schools. It was never anything but a hysterical attempt to wall off people who are different, but as we said in this post, we think these town districts will become irrelevant and as the towns’ taxes go upward year after year, it levels the playing field so that the mayors can no longer sell their cities for their low, low tax rates. But then again, despite the propaganda, Memphis delivers services to its citizens at a lower per capita cost than Germantown.
What is the harm in slowing down the runaway train and assessing what the Transition Planning Commission is recommending? Where is the damage in waiting to get better financial projects about the cost of these districts to the towns rather than low-balling the costs to get quick passage at the polls? Why don’t people pushing for their own schools take a more scholarly approach to evaluating what really makes for an exceptional schools district (if that is what they really want rather than the average schools that were the norm for the county school system)?
But most of all, if this is about local control, where has that overwhelming concern been for all the years that Germantown and the towns have been part of the same large district?
If Memphis is the Titanic, these towns go down in the undertow. Better to get in the game and fight for the future of Shelby County than to hide away in conclaves and pretend that there isn’t an iceberg in front of us.
Anonymous says: You insist our real goal is something much less honorable.
That’s the biggest understatement of this sorry affair. If it were honorable, you wouldn’t have to hide it behind all the local control BS – if only you could use state’s rights as a defense, you’d feel right at home.
“if only you could use state’s rights as a defense, you’d feel right at home”
lol, I predict a barrage of indignant harrumphing over that statement.
Ok, I’ll oblige: Harumph!
SCM,
I am “anonymous-March 12, 2012 at 11:36 pm”. Don’t know how I became anonymous; I put my name on my post.
I see that by your scoring you have won this debate.
It seems you will continue to reject the “smaller is better” argument for school districts while embracing “smaller is better” for county commission districts. Where you conclude that these county commissioners will automatically subjugate the interests of their voters in favor of the greater county good, I conclude that a little autonomy is okay so long as the real power lies with the Memphis majority. How you see things is greatly influenced by where you live.
“Local control is not an educational philosophy.” When I have pointed out that the overwhelming majority of the research indicates that smaller is better in school districts, you trump me by saying that if a person searches hard enough, he can find a study to support his preconceived notions. Assuming that is true, please point me to the study that recommends combining two top 150 school districts into one of the 15th largest in the country can be expected to do anything positive.
You believe, and ask us to believe, that a 150,000 student school district administered from Avery will provide a superior program to one created by a superintendent reporting to five Germantown citizens elected by their peers. We don’t believe that. We just don’t believe that. We are acting on our beliefs. I assume one of your motivations in your blog is to motivate citizens to get involved and make a difference. The citizens of Germantown, Bartlett, Collierville, and Arlington are engaged and are trying to make a difference.
I’ll quit with this. “Memphis delivers services to its citizens at a lower per capita cost than Germantown.” Germantown and the rest of the suburbs are not interested in the lowest possible cost for government services. We ARE interested in value. Is the service delivered worth the price paid? Germantown citizens answer with a resounding yes. We’ll find out on May 10th whether or not that analysis includes a smaller is better, local control school district.
Ken Hoover
Germantown, compared to premier suburbs of other large cities, comes up short. Only people who have never lived anywhere else but the memphis area think germantown is anything really special. It’s Whitehaven removed.
Ken:
Thanks for the comments. We always appreciate hearing from you and engaging in a discussion about this. We assumed that anonymous was you and wondered why it was anonymous since you have freely identified yourself in the past.
First, this isn’t about who’s winning and who’s losing. That’s not what we’re trying to do although we are strong in our opinions. Part of the problem in this school debate is that it feels a lot like it’s about winners and losers, instead of about the real issues of education.
It seems like our point isn’t getting through. Smaller districts make it easier for candidates to engage in the political system so for the sake of new faces that are needed in the process here, yes, we are strongly for it. But as we said, all these commissioners are not islands – like the small town districts will be – but are part of the greater whole. Just like the Transition Plan proposes for schools. We would never propose that commissioners’ districts should be smaller and they should be given the money from the budget that allows them to make isolated decisions that do not respond to the greater good of the entire community.
We haven’t asked you to believe anything, but only to say repeatedly that district size is not a major determinant of a child’s academic outcome. The students’ socio-economic status is the biggest determinant. Supporters of the town district cling to a study they like about smaller districts when the definitive research’s conclusion, at least to us, doesn’t say that somehow something magical happens when students are in a school in a small district. The magic is about their family income and demographic profile. Please point to a study that shows that a small district with large percentage of children from poverty backgrounds dramatically improved these students’ classroom performance.
As we have said, if no one told Germantown parents that the districts had unified, they’d never know it. And the students will perform just as well as they have. If Germantown instead had made their case on the basis that they want exceptional schools, which Shelby County Schools was not, and that for this reason, they are going to pay whatever it takes to have districts comparable to the best ones in the country. That was never the argument. Instead, it was about local control and building a wall around our towns, and the rhetoric from the towns’ elected officials reflected that. We’re not aware of more than a passing comment about what it takes to have an exceptional district or the towns commitment to achieving it. Instead, it’s based in an anti-Memphis sentiment – you can pretty it up any way you like but all evidence seems to support this – that drives the blind pursuit of the towns’ districts to make sure they are not tainted by city schools and kids.
We do want all citizens to get engaged, but we would hope that they act on the angels of their nature rather than narrow, exclusionary, us versus them motivations, Memphis as enemy rhetoric.
We would content that Memphians get much more value for what they pay than Germantown taxpayers. In fact, if Germantown had to deliver the broad range of services as a major city, based on its past performance, its tax rate would be through the roof, and contrary to its self-hypnosis, Germantown is not providing some kind of superior leadership or brilliant management. If it did, it wouldn’t still be struggling with how to make sense of the budgets of the Performing Arts Center, the Athletic Club, better recreational services for all ages, etc. And of course, being subsidized by county government for decades kept the Germantown tax rate down – as we’ve inventoried before – and it was Memphians providing that subsidy for all those years, so residents should first thank Memphians for keeping their tax rates low.
The vote in May will undoubtedly approve the town district because of the manipulation of emotions and the information about what it will cost and what it will produced.
And we ask again:
What is the harm in slowing down the runaway train and assessing what the Transition Planning Commission is recommending? Where is the damage in waiting to get better financial projects about the cost of these districts to the towns rather than low-balling the costs to get quick passage at the polls? Why don’t people pushing for their own schools take a more scholarly approach to evaluating what really makes for an exceptional schools district (if that is what they really want rather than the average schools that were the norm for the county school system)?
But most of all, if this is about local control, where has that overwhelming concern been for all the years that Germantown and the towns have been part of the same large district?