Anna Cowin, elected Superintendent of the Lake County School District (FL) is having a bad month...
We previously posted Lauren Ritchie's Orlando Sentinel article about the great improvements made by a Superintendent of another Florida School District, and some comparisons to Lake County and Cowin's actions.
Then Ritchie followed up with two other articles expanding on the issue, and responses from Cowin on some questions, so they are included below for the record.
Then, today, the Sentinel published a story by reporter Tanya Caldwell about Cowin's failure to complete any employee written evaluations for her senior staff in the last three years, with lots of details. So, the next post after this includes that article.
Read and weep...and congrats to the Orlando Sentinel for spending the time to ferret this stuff out...
vj
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Lauren Ritchie published her first column on the successes of the School Superintendent for Okaloosa County on Feb. 1, which we included in our Feb. 1 post on this blog at http://webworks.typepad.com/lakecountyfiscalrangers/2008/02/florida-school.html
Below, in order, are two subsequent columns following up on the issue:
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This was the first follow up column on Feb. 3rd, 2008:
orlandosentinel.com/news/local/lake/orl-lritchie0308feb03,0,5153355.column
OrlandoSentinel.com
COMMENTARY Lakefront
Cowin claims she reformed schools - evidence, please
Lauren Ritchie
COMMENTARY
February 3, 2008
Friday's column detailed how former School Superintendent Don Gaetz lobbed a virtual Molotov cocktail into the Okaloosa County district and watched with glee as the traditional way of doing things went up in flames.
He took office and:
*Collected all the cell phones, district car keys and gasoline cards. He eliminated travel and conferences.
*Cut payroll at the district office by 50 percent
*Allocated 90 percent of the district's money to principals, acting as chief executive officers, and their School Advisory Committees, serving as boards of directors.
*Held the principals accountable for budgeting, student performance and customer service. He tore up employment contracts and instituted a requirement that a principal get a 60 percent approval from parents to keep the job.
Intriguing results followed, even on the smallest of scales. For example, when the principal at Bruner Middle School in Fort Walton Beach started paying bills, he realized that five industrial-size trash bins were allocated for waste from various parts of the school, such as the cafeteria. He cut back to one, saving $25,000 that he put toward after-school tutoring for students failing math. That's how schools ought to work.
The result of Gaetz's reforms: 32 of the district's 36 schools, including Bruner, today are rated "A" and the remaining four earned the rank of "B."
In Lake this year, four of the county's seven high schools are failing with a "D." Two others got "C"s. Tavares checked in with the highest grade, a "B." This is hardly a stellar record.
Could a radical approach like Gaetz's work to improve academics -- and save money at the same time -- here in Lake County? I asked School Superintendent Anna Cowin.
Cowin claims progress
In two lengthy e-mails, Cowin hotly declared that she's already done nearly everything that Gaetz did -- it's just that she never gets a venue to tell people about it. She said she eradicated old traditions in Lake, created new ones and saved the district millions in the process, mostly due to her personal vigilance of spending.
She sent a list of accomplishments too voluminous to print. Among them, however, were claims that mirrored Gaetz's actions during his shake-up in Okaloosa. The superintendent said she:
*Retrieved district finances from near-disaster by a variety of means, including ordering the use of the "Red Book," the state's operating manual for school financing, which she said was "new" to the district.
*Began requiring principals to improve student performance or lose their jobs.
*Cut administrative positions if lower-level staff could do the job, and "stopped the practice of keeping past salaries with demoted personnel."
*Eliminated some cell phones and restricted the use of others; cut new purchases of district cars and stopped "illegal" use of them; halted the payment of "illegal" mileage charges for meetings.
*Changed the role of the principal from "manager of things" to "leader of academics and accountability."
First, the "Red Book." Cowin stated that she "got rid of" the finance director after she learned that "poor financial management" had left the budget "in jeopardy." She said she instituted the use of the state manual to properly account for taxpayer dollars, a process she said was "new."
Perhaps Cowin's memory fails her. Contacted at his current job as executive financial director for the Manatee County school district, Lake's former finance chief, Jim Drake, said the State Board of Education Rule 6A-1.001, Florida Administrative Code, requires every district to use the manual, and Lake did. Auditors never cited the district for failure to follow the manual. Such an oversight would have been considered a horrific accounting lapse.
During his tenure, Drake secured lower interest rates for the district through his award-winning financial reports, saving the district tens of thousands of dollars. The improved fiscal condition earned the district credit ratings of "A," which reduced interest charges. Drake's stewardship also brought the general fund from $250,000 in reserves to $13 million, or 7 percent of expenditures, nearly double what the state recommends.
Perhaps Cowin also did not recall that Drake resigned to take a job in a bigger coastal county with a $5,000 annual raise. (Her next two finance directors took pay cuts -- one gave up $20,000 a year -- to get out.)
Demoting success
One has only to examine Cowin's personnel changes for this academic year to determine the veracity of her statement that she requires improved student performance for a principal to retain his or her position and that she has halted the practice of allowing demoted administrators to keep their higher pay.
The principal at Eustis High, whose school dropped from a "C" to a "D," was rewarded with a transfer to Umatilla, a high school rated "C." The principal at Umatilla -- though she raised the rating from a "D" the previous year, missing a "B" by only four points -- was demoted to run a middle school. The principal at Leesburg High, which has been rated "D" for five years in a row, continued to hold the position to which she was appointed at the beginning of the 2004 school year.
Tavares Middle School, which was rated as a low "B" two years ago, rose to within five points of being A-rated last year. Despite the gains, Cowin demoted its principal to assistant principal at an elementary school. At the time, Cowin said she was recommending that he keep his $90,441 a year salary. Apparently, he did -- and got a raise to boot. Today, that elementary assistant principal makes $96,926 annually.
Cowin says that she cut administrative positions when lower-level staff could do a job. Maybe she never found any capable lower-level staffers.
In October, Cowin tried to slip a salary increase of nearly 10 percent for her administrators past the School Board without discussion. The move followed her previous year's irrationally generous raises -- three in six months to her five assistant superintendents, including the two she added since taking office in 2004.
So much for those claims.
Attempts to verify Cowin's other assertions yielded mixed results.
Data slow to arrive
On Jan. 14, I asked her top administrators to tell me the number of district-owned cell phones and the amount paid for service when Cowin took office in 2004 and this year; how many vehicles the district bought in 2004 compared with this year; and for an explanation of what "illegal" mileage Cowin says was paid that the district now refuses to reimburse.
That was nearly three weeks ago. Four times in writing they promised delivery of the information, usually by the following day, and twice on the telephone they committed to sending e-mails answering the questions on that day.
At 5:30 p.m. Friday, an e-mail with some of the answers bounced into the inbox.
Here's a summary:
*In regard to cutting cell-phone costs, Chief Financial Officer Carol MacLeod provided no figures showing how much the district was spending in 2004, when Cowin took office, compared to how much it is spending now. She said, "Additional information will be forthcoming" because some records are in storage.
*About Cowin's claim that she cut the number of district vehicles and trimmed new purchases: the district had 151 cars when Cowin came aboard and in 2007, the total had grown to 168, including 17 new ones that the schools purchased during that time. While the number of cars rose, the amount spent on fuel dropped slightly, from $180,750 in 2004 to $175,155 last year.
*The CFO stated that Cowin discontinued "unauthorized use" of school vehicles but did not cite any examples of impropriety. She said that there had been "inconsistent" reimbursements for mileage but didn't explain. She said the district now follows IRS rules.
*No policies or job descriptions for principals have changed to reflect Cowin's claim. In regard to students demonstrating academic improvement for principals to keep their jobs, MacLeod wrote, "While the district includes academic performance and accountability in the evaluation process for all administrators, there is no specific number or score to document this process." That, I believe. It's why Cowin promotes and demotes on the basis of, well, it's anyone's guess.
Cowin will be replaced in November by a hired superintendent.
Hopefully, the new superintendent will ignore Cowin's top-heavy, ineffective management methods and strike out as Gaetz did to re-create a new Lake County School District.
Lauren Ritchie can be reached at [email protected] or 352-742-5918.
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This is the second Ritchie follow up column and I am only including the portion related to the Okaloosa / Cowin issues described above:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/lake/orl-lritchie0808feb08,0,102492.column
Lauren Ritchie | COMMENTARY (from the bottom half of the column...)
February 8, 2008
Last week, this column featured the management techniques of Don Gaetz, a businessman who became superintendent of schools in Okaloosa County. Gaetz turned Okaloosa around, both financially and academically. Today, 32 of the district's 36 schools are A-rated and the four remaining earned Bs.
Below is some reader reaction to Gaetz, who is a freshman state senator.
We could use Don Gaetz in Lake County. What a way to run a school system! We could probably double his salary and he'd still save us money the way he operates.
James T. Gordon Jr.
Altoona
Where was Don Gaetz when nominees were made for the USA president? He sounds exactly like what this entire country needs.
Robert Bernard
Leesburg
You were right on target with your column about Don Gaetz. However, you failed to bring the School Board to the realization that you can't get this kind of performance if you limit the search to people who have an education background. You just get more of the same because of their training and work experience. General Motors does not go down on the factory floor and pick their best employee to become CEO.
Jon VanderLey
Leesburg
I wish we could get Don Gaetz as superintendent for Lake schools or better yet, let's draft him for secretary of the Department of Education.
William Overbay
Howey-in-the-Hills
I was amazed and upset to learn that the [Lake] school district owns 168 cars. What on earth does an organization charged with educating our children do with taxpayer-purchased autos? Last time I checked, public educators did not make house calls.
Joe Lepley
Mount Dora
Lauren Ritchie can be reached at [email protected] or 352-742-5918.
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