The Scranton School District’s Recovery plan is a monster of a document.  Small font.  214 pages.  Lots of jargon and lots of data.  It’s a lot, even for the initiated.

I’ll try to break down the plan generally for everybody.  There are 11 areas that the plan covers (Academic Achievement, Special Education, Administration and Governance, Business Office, Procurement, Human Resources Office, Student Transportation, Capital Planning and Facilities Management, Information Technology, Revenue, and Workforce).  Within the 11 areas, there are a combined total of 100 initiatives.

I’ll break down each part of the plan in separate posts so everybody doesn’t pull their hair out reading my own novel-length response to the novel that is the plan.

I won’t be there to implement the plan, but I still care enough to talk to the public about it.  I’ll keep the analysis coming.

Academic Achievement

The district has poor graduation rates and poor academic performance.  There are a lot of reasons for this.  We are extremely poor (82% poverty rate), we are extremely diverse (38 languages spoken), and we have a large population with special needs.  The fact that we aren’t worse off is amazing to me.

There’s a reason that this is the first portion of the plan.  Dr. Finan, our Recovery Officer, pointed out that this will ultimately be better for our students.  It’s going to take 5 years of pain, but it’ll get us there.  Along the way, improving academics, rather than maintaining status quo, is part of moving forward.

The goals under this category are based on improving statewide standardized test scores, student achievement, graduation rates, and college and career readiness.  I’d argue that this is something every district simply does anyway, but this provides a more clear framework to work from.

Right off the bat, I don’t want to see graduation requirements relaxed, because that is one way to increase rates.  I know administrators in districts often feel pressure to push kids through.  Teachers get that pressure, too.  Sometimes it’s spoken, sometimes it’s not, but it’s there.  “Why isn’t Johnny passing your class?” is something I’m sure a lot of us hear.  And it sounds like it’s our fault, rather than Johnny’s refusal to do work, show up to school, and on and on.  It’s easy to pass kids.  It requires an insane level of accountability to fail them, and so the system pushes teachers in the wrong direction.  So that’s a concern.

There are 18 initiatives related to this category.  I’ll cherry-pick, so as not to bore you.

• Curriculum development.  This is a necessary and ongoing piece of every district.  It’s my understanding that the state will further assist us in this at no cost.
• Textbook purchases.  This costs $1.8 million over 5 years.  When I was a student at West in the wayback year of 2000, I had a Psychology textbook that my mother had.  She graduated in 1978.  This is a massive problem, and it has to be addressed.  Good.
• Summer school is to be expanded.  The purpose of this is to help underachieving students.  Intervention programs are ESSENTIAL to helping struggling students.  Glad to see this.
• Elimination of Social Promotion.  So the existence of this is CRAZY.  Kids, whether or not they are failing, move up grades for the purposes of age-level socialization, not actual skill-level.  Which means their content is harder, but they don’t have ability required from the previous year.  Teachers tell me this happens all the way up to the high school, but it’s apparently on the books for grades 1 and 2.  That’s setting kids up for failure and whomever it was that came up with this should never work in education again.  I’m disgusted that this has been a policy and glad we are returning to sanity.
• ER&D gets moved to after school.  This would have to be negotiated with the SFT.  This is basically a program where teachers can sign up for classes to get credits toward maintaining certification.  This currently happens during school hours.  The idea here is to offer compensation, but move it to after school so as to avoid teachers out of classrooms.  And we wouldn’t be paying subs, so we’ll see a savings.  There is no tuition reimbursement in Scranton, unlike most other districts, so offering compensation to teachers is fair.  It just moves this to their own time.
  • This is a subheading because I have an idea: if it’s after school, we can offer ER&D to other districts and actually MAKE money!
• Principal realignment.  This doesn’t specify Tripp having two principals instead of a principal and a vice-principal, but that’s how it reads.  It’s written as “evaluate” the situation and move based on need.  It sounds like a slight restructuring.  It makes good sense.
• Mess with Pre-K.  There’s a reason this is buried in the middle of this section and I don’t fully understand it, hence my characterization.  If this were the lead-off, everybody would scream.  I fought to keep it with our Title I funding.  But the plan says move to “center-based partnerships” — I do not know what that means.  Title I funds will move to K-8 for sure.  But this SOUNDS like it would leave things in flux.  What if we don’t have a community partner for Pre-K?  Does it disappear?  There’s no way I’m in favor of losing Pre-K.
• Building-level academic needs assessment.  This is already ongoing and will continue.  What Morris needs is different than what Whittier needs.  After the academic assessment is completed, then the district will form an overall comprehensive plan to address academic achievement.
• Evaluate course offerings.  This is probably where program cuts happen, though there are no specifics.  The plan talks about “potential consolidation of duplicative programs” and that could be problematic.  It’s coupled with using arts grants to supplement instruction in the arts.  The referenced grant only exists until 2022 (the plan goes to 2024).  So what arts programs are affected and how they’ll be affected in the future are unclear.
• Review partnerships with educational institutions.  This means “work with Lackawanna, Johnson, Marywood, the U of S, Keystone, and Penn State in order to supplement programs” — and I’m fine with that.  They can do more than what we can do, and if we are losing something because we are broke, maybe they can step in to fill in the gap.  There aren’t specifics, so this would be explored over time.  I know that Lackawanna has some VERY innovative ideas that are worth looking at.  Passing the plan would make exploration a requirement.
• Expand in-house Cyber-School.  I’ve advocated for this for some time.  Charters and cyber-charters have been peeling kids away.  While I don’t agree with their existence, we have to combat it.  If parents don’t want their kids in a traditional public school, fine.  We now offer our own cyber school!  And with public-ed cybers, kids can get diplomas from the district and they can participate in district extra-curriculars.  This will save money for sure.  We can basically contact families in cyber-charters and point out our programs are demonstrably better.  Our outcomes are better and our offerings are better.  Period.
• Create a STEAM Academy at West High.  Super cool!  This is a really good example of offering more, despite how dark this plan is.
• Expand AP course offerings.  As an AP teacher, I’m all for this.  Academic rigor needs to be expanded and this is an easy choice.
• Expand the number of clubs and after-school groups.  Another good thing in the plan.  Scranton is a large district and the kids have diverse interests.  As such, Scranton can provide access to unique clubs that other districts simply don’t have the numbers for.
• Review sub management.  Kelly Services, our current sub manager, routinely fails to fill all positions, despite a guarantee of reaching a threshold.  I’d need to see data, but the district used to in-house this and teachers preferred it.  In fact, my wife subbed years ago and the woman in charge knew to prioritize subject matter (like English subs teaching English) in a way that Kelly does not.  (I don’t want to use the employees name without permission, but she was great and subs were placed without issue.  Bring her back!)

In terms of implementation, some of the action plans are due by August 31st of this year, if the plan passes.  This is a pretty aggressive timeline, which I appreciate.

If anybody has questions or wants details, I’m here to offer whatever insight I can.  Next up, Special Education…