Fingers Crossed on School Building Assignments

On June 30, RSD Superintendent Paul Vallas told a BESE committee that the district plans to release its recommended building assignments by mid-July.  I’m sure that schools across the city are excited to hear that they may soon know where their permanent location will be.

Vallas was testifying in front of BESE as part of the district’s response to a request that the district share the process that it uses to assign school programs to buildings.  A few months ago, BESE asked the district to present a “policy matrix” at the June BESE meeting.  Rather than a matrix, the district submitted a one-page memo with very few details.   This memo is not a matrix and it certainly isn’t a process.  A process explains how things are done, listing actions that were taken and the order in which they were taken.

It is unclear whether the RSD officials truly do not understand what BESE asked for or whether they are merely unwilling to provide a description of the process they used to assign schools to buildings.  Despite the lack of response to date, there are nevertheless things they can do to convince school leaders, parents, students, and others that they are addressing this problem in a fair, equitable, objective manner.

First, the list of school building assignments they release should be comprehensive.  It should include all schools, not just schools that will be moved into buildings in Phase 1 of the master plan.  If we merely assign schools as we go, rather than taking a look at all schools at once, we run the risk that those schools who are assigned to buildings early will be matched with better buildings than those who are assigned to buildings late in the process.

Second, the plan should include an assessment of how well each school is served by the draft assignments.  The memo presented to BESE lists five considerations that the district is using to assign school programs to buildings.  I understand that RSD officials might not have developed a comprehensive, quantitative system that optimizes the assignment of buildings.  However, no matter how they arrived at the draft recommendations, it would be a good exercise for them to evaluate how well their list serves each school.  I’m envisioning something like Consumer Reports puts out, using Harvey balls.  Or the district could do a short write up for each school describing the most important considerations in assigning that school to its building.  Anything that helps them and everyone else evaluate the results.

Lastly, the plan should include a clear timeline of when all schools will be in their permanent homes.  District officials have said that their top priority is to move schools out of temporary facilities, particularly modular campuses.  If this is the first priority, RSD officials should be able to clearly explain how their draft assignments achieve this goal.  Every school that is in a temporary facility should be identified and the timeline for them to move to their permanent homes should be presented.

RSD officials have repeatedly said that they have talked to school operators about the draft assignments and that people are happy with the direction the district is going.  This is a different sense than I get in talking to people recently.  Either way, the decisions that are being made currently about where school programs will be located will impact our city for years and years to come.  It’s important that we get this right.

It is frankly incredible that the School Facilities Master Plan was first presented 2 years ago next month, and yet we do not know where schools are going to be located.  Even worse, we don’t even know how those decisions are being made.  Hopefully, whatever the RSD releases in the coming days will show that building assignments were made in a thoughtful and fair manner; we’re all counting it.