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Happy Friday! I hope you've had a great week! For my comments today, I want to try and recap the conversation we had Monday with James Craig at my 'Coffee with your Councilman' meeting.
First, I want to thank James, who represents District 3 on the JCPS Board of Education, for taking time out of his evening to answer difficult questions from community members. We spent an hour or so talking about the district's challenges and future priorities, fiscal concerns, and overall academic achievement. It was an interesting discussion, and I appreciate all those who attended.
I'll do my best to recount his answers as closely as I remember them (my memory is not infallible!) and refrain from adding my own commentary at this point. In other words, the highlights below are my summary of his answers to key questions and not my endorsement, agreement, or disagreement with those answers. That said, I do think it is helpful to understand where we are and how we got here.
James touched on three primary themes - the current fiscal situation, Dr. Yearwood's approach as superintendent, and the Board's focus on strategic priorities.
First, and most pressing, James spent a lot of time talking about the fiscal cliff and how we got here. In short, JCPS had basically been working on an operating deficit for the past several years. However, because filled positions were fewer than budgeted positions (and due to some one-time inflows), they were able to operate without running a deficit. Over the past year, they have filled many of those open positions and the one-time funds have been expended, meaning those buffers that used to exist are now gone. This has created the operating deficit.
To address this shortage, James talked about the work currently underway to review expenses and identify cost savings. The district also has a buffer of investment income that can be used to mitigate any potential personnel reductions in this year's budget. Of course, this functionally continues the process of using one-time money to solve a structural problem and will only help for this coming budget year. He acknowledged more would need to be done, either in the form of additional cuts or seeking a referendum on a rate increase.
He also talked a little about Dr. Yearwood and what he brings to the district as superintendent. Specifically, he described Dr. Yearwood as someone very much focused on driving improvement in student outcomes year over year. He did not get into specifics, but acknowledged that the district has not always done the best job of ensuring that students finish the school year at least one grade ahead of where they started the year. He expects this to be a very clear focus going forward.
This brings us to the third area of focus - the board's strategic priorities. James acknowledged that the board has not necessarily had the clearest focus on measures of success (specifically around student outcomes) and that a new strategic plan is being developed. Again, the conversation was somewhat light on specifics so much remains to be seen on how this comes together. Still, it is an acknowledgement that we have not had clear measures that the community can understand and track.
This is certainly not an exhaustive recap of the discussion, and I'm sure I've left out some important things. However, I thought you'd appreciate knowing what I found to be some of the more interesting things from the meeting.
It's clear that much needs to be done to improve the outcomes at JCPS, and I look forward to further conversations and solutions. As I've said before, it is my hope that JCPS will take a 'whole of community' approach to find partnership opportunities that help resolve some of these challenges.
If you haven't attended one of my coffee meetings yet, I hope to see you at one soon. If there is someone you'd like me to invite as a speaker, just let me know. We try to rotate these meetings (different days of the week/weekend, times of day, etc.) and hope we find at least a few that work for your schedule. As always, if there is anything I or my office can do to be of assistance, please don't hesitate to reach out!
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