Has the Geneva School District Veered Off Course?Check Out "North" and "West" on Your Compass

At NoStrings, we have a ‘no leaks, no gossip’ policy. We resist posting on aspects of topics we’ve only heard about, and which are not traceable to a source the public can access. That said, and as our anonymous comments post indicates, we are willing to consider information provided by credible sources if they identify themselves to us and give a compelling reason for their name not to used. While that may be an even higher threshold of anonymous citation than most journalists use, we still use it sparingly.

Over the holidays, we were approached by any number of people who wonder why, given our commitment to accountability and open, transparent decision-making in all arenas of government, we haven’t weighed in on the proposed ‘realignment’ of the City’s elementary schools. The answer is simple: we hadn’t heard about it. But, now that we have, and had it verified, at least as a move under consideration, we feel it’s an issue that we should take up. In part one of this two part post, we explore the process issues related to the proposed realignment, in part two we will delve a bit deeper into the content of the proposal.

“Realignment” refers to housing all district K-2 students at one school, and the 3-5 students at the other. Let us say at the outset that we are both advocates of public education, in general, and Geneva schools in particular, as detailed in a previous post. However, we have serious concerns about the governance structure within the district. If it is true that district leaders have already decided—without any further discussion allowed-- to realign the West Street and North Street elementary schools, then the move would be a case study in bad policy-making.

First, the concerns about process. On the macro-level, school board members are elected representatives of the people of the district, and the school board--as a whole--is the policy-making body for the district. The school board is analogous to the City Council in so far as each body sets the policy course, hires the chief executive to carry out policy and oversee departments, approves all taxing and spending, and monitors progress toward achieving the goals it has set.

The National School Board Association (NSBA) lists the eight key roles of any School Board: to set the vision and mission of the district; to establish performance standards; to engage in assessment of performance; to be accountable for that performance (or lack thereof); organizational alignment to achieve goals; to create a climate and culture of support for students; teachers, and parental involvement; to encourage collaborative relationships across levels of decision-making; and to strive for continuous improvement.

The NSBA provides links to school board initiatives across the country that exemplify these qualities. Community engagement is key to school district success and that, as it is with City Council, requires to things: (1) That leaders share accurate and timely information with district residents; (2) That leaders create opportunities for meaningful feedback from students, faculty, staff, and residents. 


A good example of this can be found in the Hillsboro School District (Oregon) which features “Community Listening Sessions.” Residents are given their due as participants in the decision-making process, and are encouraged to both share their own views and to help disseminate information back into the community in their roles as ‘key communicators.’ Nothing we’ve heard about the proposed ‘realignment’ of the schools indicates that parents, students, or even staff have been meaningfully engaged in the discussions leading up to the decision.

The city of Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, considered a similar change in 2005. They involved staff and parents from the start and it looked as if everyone was open to the idea of moving from two K-5 elementary schools to one K-2 school and one 3-5 school. But after several questions were raised (some of which we will discuss in Part 2) it was determined that the change was not in the district’s best interest. Both schools, Lincoln and Euclid, retained their K-5 configuration, and Lincoln was named a Governor’s School of Excellence.

What prompted the Hasbrouck Heights initiative, and what we can only assume is prompting Geneva's look at realignment, is an attempt to cut costs. Again, when a public body is considering a major change, we find that it’s usually better to ‘prime the pump’ by communicating with the public, early on in the process, the need that is prompting the review. In this case, Geneva taxpayers are left to wonder, is the ‘need’ one of student performance, of fiscal crisis, of facility inadequacy, or some combination therein? We’ll make a medical analogy to illustrate our point: Would you, as a patient, undergo a radical therapy, with potentially harmful side effects, if your doctor hadn’t first told you what condition he was treating and why this particular course of treatment was the preferred option? We are pretty confident that NoStrings readers would want a diagnosis first, treatment options second, and then the recommendation!

As Ken Camera likes to say about City Council, what’s needed in the discussion is a complete and accurate ‘data set’ and an infusion of some ‘public intelligence.’ So, if it is true that the Geneva School Board is about to spring a major change on the students and families of our school district, we need to hear something more than, “Talk to the Superintendent, it was his recommendation,” which is the answer we often hear. Where’s the accountability? Check your compass.

Political Appointments, Qualifications, and the American DreamPart I: Blagojevich and Kennedy

The novelist, Richard Ford, once wrote, “Luck is infatuated with efficiency.” Against all odds, luck gets things done. (That’s, after all, what makes it luck.) Political appointments are a lot like luck. They, too, are efficient. They, too, get things done. As if by magic, shoulders get tapped, appointments are made, positions are filled, and life goes on.  

Over and against luck and political power is the American Dream, essentially, an ideology which couples the work ethic and equal opportunity. Work hard, play by the rules, pay your dues, build up your qualifications, and, when an opportunity arises, your time will come. Are political appointments compatible with the American Dream? What do politicians mean when they say an aspiring appointee is qualified for a particular position? Where does loyalty fall in democratic theory? Appointments are the talk of the day in politics. We are devoting two posts, one looking at the national scene, and a second, at the local situation.  

Nationally, we’ve seen Governor Blagojevich of Illinois arrested, in part, for the way he is allegedly handling the appointment of Barack Obama’s replacement in the U.S. Senate. As president-elect, Obama resigned his Senate seat in order to be inaugurated President, January 20, 2009. F.B.I. reports suggest what Blagojevich has in mind is for the seat to go to the highest bidder. The one most qualified would be the one who could do the most good for Blagojevich, whether that be campaign fund raising, appointments to positions, even possibly outright cash payments to the Governor, it has been suggested.  

Facing criminal prosecution, and even impeachment, Blagojevich might well resign. Party leaders in the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois have hoped for that, and Obama has even called for it. However, in a surprise move, the Governor now says that he is hunkering down, that he is not resigning, and that he will fight the charges. He wants to subpoena Rahm Emanuel, a product of the Chicago machine now headed to the White House as Chief of Staff for the new president. Having had the whistle blown on him, perhaps Blagojevich is now the one blowing the whistle. Let the public hear what insiders have to say, under oath, about how all this works. What exactly was said about Obama’s personal preference for the post, Valerie Jarrett, or Jesse Jackson, Jr., son of civil rights icon Jess Jackson? Does any Chicago Land politician really want a trial with the whole world tuned in to the inner workings of the machine, even if Blagojevich is a renegade? If Blagojevich is guilty, then shame on him, but to the extent that he just carried ‘machine politics’ too far, then shame on the other cogs as well.

In another surprise move, Blagojevich, yesterday, announced the appointment of Roland Burris, former Illinois attorney general, to the seat. If the appointment holds, Burris would be the one and only African-American in the U.S. Senate. Disingenuous or not, this move, severely complicates the matter as critics of Blagojevich must now weigh the merits of the appointment, against the process tainted by various accusations of wrong doing on the part of the governor.

Back in New York State, with New York’s junior U.S. Senate seat likely to be vacated with the presumed confirmation of Hillary Clinton as U.S. Secretary of State, Governor Paterson is now pondering her successor. He, too, pundits advise, is weighing the personal and political benefits of the various prospects. Paterson, who was Lieutenant Governor, assumed the governorship upon the resignation of Eliot Spitzer earlier this year, has declared himself a candidate for re-election in 2011. He is looking for someone who can help his interests, including campaign fund raising and vote getting, for whoever he picks for the Senate seat would likely be on the ballot with him. We are in a strange moment: A governor not elected to that office would select a U.S. Senator who would not be elected to that office (at least temporarily, until November, when a special election to complete the remainder of the Clinton’s term would be held) and together the two incumbents would seek a proper election to his/her respective office. Paterson is also looking for a strong advocate for New York in Washington, D.C., who could help steer bailout funding our way.  

Caroline Kennedy, 51, daughter of the late President John Kennedy, has made her interest in the post known, and has been actively seeking the appointment. She’s been the frontrunner for the non-election, but once she came out of seclusion and under the scrutiny of the press, her candidacy has lost some luster. She’s been questioned about her qualifications, and doubts about her have emerged.  

In a series of media interviews over the past few days Kennedy answered questions, essentially for the first time. Turns out she doesn’t have much to say about herself and the great issues of the day. She has also been ridiculed for her frequent pauses in her speech. Public speaking experts say that her speech pattern is distracting and hurts her credibility, as if she needs time to search for what she wants to say. Overall, it’s as if she’s been not in a Kennedy spotlight, but a Kennedy fog all these years. It’s almost as if she is trying to portray herself as the sympathetic figure. “…I come into this thinking I have to work twice as hard as anyone else. Nobody’s entitled to anything, certainly not me. There are many qualified people in this. And so, I am an unconventional choice. I understand that I haven’t pursued the traditional path. But I think that in our public life today, we’re starting to see there are many ways into public life and public service. All our institutions are less hierarchical than they used to be.”

When asked about her qualifications, she lists her accomplishments as a writer, mother, and fundraiser. Now that her qualifications are better known, she appears less qualified. Kennedy has contributed heavily to various Democratic candidates. She gave $4,600 to Obama’s campaign; $1,000 to Christopher Dodd; $5,000 to Hillary’s Senate race, and $2,300 to Hillary’s presidential run. The Kennedy name is not about name recognition, as much as it is about a family network formed over a half century of political life at every level.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines qualification as “a quality, an ability, or an accomplishment that makes a person suitable for a particular position or task.” Suitable means “appropriate to a purpose or an occasion.” And appropriate means “suitable.” In an equal opportunity situation, qualifications for a post would be stated in advance, interested parties would come forward with credentials verifying their qualifications, and then the most qualified would be selected.
In the political realm, though, things are different. Qualifications for a position are usually not articulated, and when they are, hardly ever in advance. And no one ever argues that this particular person under consideration is most qualified. Merely qualified, which begs the question of how qualified, is good enough. And in the political realm, political qualifications count a great deal. Political weight can tip the scale in favor of an otherwise weak, but plausible candidate.

Presidential candidate John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, offered a sensational demonstration of these points. As governor of Alaska for a brief period and mayor and city councilor of a small Alaskan town for some years, political supporters said she was qualified, while her detractors said no, even though she had more years in office and more executive experience than Obama, and far more years in office than Hillary Clinton. Problem was, when she opened her mouth, it was clear that whatever experience she had had, it did not translate to knowledge, perspective, insight and understanding. Much the same is happening with Caroline Kennedy. On the other hand, whatever their experience, Obama and Hillary become more impressive when they speak; Clinton with her knowledge and Obama with his inspiration.

Blagojevich may survive as governor and Kennedy may well fail in her brief, shining moment of a run for the U.S. Senate. The scenarios may be on opposite ends of a continuum of how political appointments work, but both situations give us pause as we reflect on the meaning of qualifications in democracy, because they are not all that far apart in what they reveal about our political lives

Steps In The Right Direction: A Look Back at 2008 and Suggestions for 'Moving Forward' in 2009

NoStringsGeneva launched 2008 with a series of New Year’s resolutions for the new Council. We called for improvement in five areas:

1. That ‘executive session’ as the norm for Council meetings would be stopped, reserving such sessions for when the narrow conditions set for them by the Open Meetings Law were met.
2. That Council should conduct itself with professionalism and decorum, focusing statements on public actions and the public record, rather than personalities and personal attacks.
3. That financial disclosure forms would be filed by Councilors and management staff disclosing any real or perceived interests in organizations or private firms that have, or may be seeking, support from or business with the City.
4. That Council operates as a body of the whole, meaning that public business should not be conducted by subgroups of Council (along with staff) unless there is a specifically designated and publicly announced committee to do so.
5. That the Mayor and Councilors recognize their status as role models in the community and do not seek to exempt themselves from the law.

While Council did make progress in each area, there is still room for improvement. Executive sessions have been curtailed, but controversy around the Bergmann Plan and other issues show the need for more transparency in government. There were still some raucus Council meetings, with the demeanor of of individual Councilors still questionable, and personal attacks were still too frequent, even if confined to non-televised worksessions. The new Mayor is far less tolerant of Councilors being roughed up in public so that has brought some much needed protection and professionalism to the table. An enhanced Code of Ethics, which includes provisions for full financial disclosures, passed a first reading and will be back on Council's agenda in early 2009, so we are hopeful that the Code will be implemented. But, one councilor was front-page news with his chronic failure to comply with City codes in his role as landlord while a community agency saw its properties shut down for similar violations. The key moving forward will be equity and fairness in both policy-making and enforcement.

With the former Mayor, City Manager, and City Attorney now absent from the scene, most of the year was spent in searches, for new City staff and for coherence in the Council. So, a lot of the new Council’s time was dedicated to ‘cleaning house’, even if much of it was involuntary. Then, of course, there was the lakefront. We’ve made our opinion on that matter quite clear, including our recent post that garnered comments from both the Mayor and community-based participants in the decision making process.

A few additional details on some of these points:

First, we would note that, with the exception of the meetings to discuss and interview the applicants for the City Manager’s position, Council did not engage in many executive sessions. From the time the new City Manager came on board (July 1st) through the end of 2008, City Council convened eight (8) executive sessions out of nineteen (19) meetings. Several of those sessions were for reviewing resumes and interviewing candidates for the City Attorney position, others were to discuss the Town of Geneva’s lawsuit against the City regarding sewer rates.   Not only have there been fewer executive sessions, Council has been better about indicating the purpose of the session, again, as called for in Open Meetings Law. These are positive developments to be sure!

The enhanced code of ethics for Council and all City employees, if implemented and complied with, should go a long way towards addressing several issues. A financial disclosure form will be on Council’s table at the January meeting when the code of ethics is slated to become law and the City Manager also created a rubric of specific behavioral guidelines to give Council, staff, and the public a better understanding of the expectations of the conduct of public business.

What will 2009 bring? Well, we have a few suggestions:


1. As our upcoming post on trust will discuss, the Mayor and Council have a responsibility to engage the public in a meaningful way, and that includes interacting with the public. The two keys here are being responsive and being respectful. In order to achieve those two objectives, Council has to create and maintain an environment that fosters respectful dialogue. We believe this is an area where improvement can occur in 2009 if Councilors are prepared to not only let the public speak their mind, but to be responsive, in dialogue, to what the public is saying. Responsiveness can take many forms, and it is as important in between meetings as it is during the open sessions themselves.
2. The City Charter indicates that the Mayor shall act as the head of Council and chair Council meetings. On at least three occasions, the Mayor has turned that responsibility over to the City Manager, who freely participates in Council meetings, as if he were an elected representative of the people, which he is not. This is not to say that the City Manager's contributions are ill-conceived, in fact, quite the opposite. But we believe Mayor Einstein is perfectly capable of running meetings, no matter the format, and he ought to be alert to the dangerous precedent of the turning the legislative body over to the executive. It not only sets up an inversion of power that leaves the public confused, but it lets Councilors off the hook for carrying their own weight in the legislative agenda-setting that they were elected to do. This will mean that Mayor Einstein should be more assertive in his leadership of discussions and in moving the agenda along in a productive way. On that note, while the new agenda format is a great tool in bringing focus to various parts of the meeting and clarifying, for all involved, the purpose of particular items, additional attention is needed under the unfinished business section and Council reports to ensure that Councilors are not simply using ‘TV time’ to give an appearance of Council activity, where it is either otherwise absent or not appropriately placed.
3. There were several early announcements from the Mayor about new committees and initiatives. We are concerned about the Green committee. As we stated before, it appears the Ethics committee is about to get up and running, but the status of the Green committee is not as clear. Current economic conditions, combined with the ongoing necessity of attentiveness to environmental issues, makes this an issue that should get going sooner rather than later. The Mayor has the ability to bring together representatives from a variety of key organizations and charge them with developing innovative solutions that will both improve overall environmental practices within the City and also save money in the long term on operational costs. We are also hoping that the Youth Council, an effort to engage teenagers in the civic process, will be taken seriously by Councilors. 
4. This year’s budget development was a great process and yielded the first true zero-tax-increase budget in years (neither an increase in the tax rate nor across the board increases in property assessments). The ongoing monitoring of the budget’s objectiveswill be essential.  Most important, in our view, is tracking the property owner’s return on investment. The first priority area of the budget was ‘value for the tax dollar.’ As we discussed in a previous post  this is a function of both tax dollars paid into the system and city services rendered to the residents. Keeping an eye on this, and balancing effectiveness with efficiency will be key in 2009.