I am a social studies teacher at Wilson Magnet High School in Rochester, New York. Yes, the Rochester, New York—so heralded for school reform almost a decade ago and so troubled today by lack of improvements. I have considerable experience with a cornerstone of Rochester's improvement plan, site-based management.
For other districts considering such a model—or for those struggling with it, as Rochester is—I offer my reflections on seven issues we have grappled with.
Opportunities for Learning
Since 1988, a significant struggle for our SBM teams has been agreeing on issues to address. We spend far too much time talking about what to do instead of actually doing it. More significantly, we do not always focus on student achievement. School staffs need continuing opportunities to learn skills that will help them work better as teams.
Recently, our district provided us with “Design Tasks,” written by members of the SBM Steering Committee. These guides have helped us in developing our School Improvement Plans. Central administrators have also offered professional development in group dynamics, problem solving, and consensus decision making. These opportunities have not been ongoing, but they should be. Those of us who have been on teams for several years have, for the most part, the skills to make high-quality decisions. New group members may not.
Even when a team does receive preparation, election time arrives, and a whole new team is brought together, shifting the process back to the beginning. Add to this the fact that each constituency may hold its election at different times, and you have a blueprint for confusion.
Unbiased Data and the Knowledge to Use It
All SBM team projects must be directly linked to increasing student learning. The best way to do this is for central offices to provide schools with objective academic and experiential data, as Rochester has provided us. The central office also suggested that we collaborate with area businesses to learn new skills, and this idea has proven to be a good one.
Last year, Eastman Kodak Corporation guided us through their Creative Problem Solving Process, and, as a result, we had more buy in to our School Improvement Plans this year than ever before. If we measure for those same objective indicators again (and we hope to), we expect to see progress.
It took us several years, however, to base what we do on such unbiased information. All teams need such data and the assistance of consultants from area businesses to show them how to use it.
Autonomy to Make Decisions
Like anything else, site-based management can become bogged down in the huge education bureaucracy. Over the years, a number of conflicts have limited our progress.
For example, Wilson Magnet has had grievances with the teachers' union over scheduling parent/teacher conferences and funding sports teams, and with the school board over whether we can have on-site day care. After having been led to believe we had real power, our site team soon learned that the old hierarchy of decision making was still in place—at least for the important choices. Top-down decisions continue to be made even when we are quite sure that we know our building best.
Too often, SBM schools don't enthusiastically support districtwide initiatives because the people in them feel too detached from the decisions that launched them. Site teams need direction from the central office, but, again, we need autonomy in order to have a stake in new programs.
Having been around Rochester for 10 years, I have fully witnessed the cynicism that emerges whenever another new program is announced. When we are not allowed to make decisions that are truly our own, we feel patronized, humiliated, and angry. This is not the best environment for cooperation.
In brief, decision making is not decentralized in Rochester, it has not been during my experience, and it probably never will be (although I'm not sure this is such a bad thing—more on this in a moment). Contracts, precedents, school board policy, and state law place far too many restrictions on schools for them to be very creative, and teachers can get in a good deal of trouble if we challenge the wrong authority.
Time To Do It Right
Students, parents, teachers, and administrators all have full-time responsibilities that make it impossible for us to give SBM the effort it deserves. Decision making cannot be a part-time job. If we are to accomplish influential work, the school day and the teaching load need to be fundamentally restructured.
In Rochester, some of this reorganization has begun with the introduction of block scheduling. At present, however, SBM meetings are squeezed in early in the morning or late at night. The next agenda is not always at the front of our minds.
Appropriate Team Size
In general, SBM teams are also too big: 15 or more people sitting around a table trying to reach consensus is arduous at best. At worst, the time and effort required of members in order make effective decisions drives some people from the teams. Most research that I've read says that eight is a much better number of members for site teams. Of course, union contracts set the number and are always difficult to change.
Control of the Budget
Perhaps more than any other area, the budget presents the obstacles to authentic site-based management.
Currently, only a few schools in Rochester are allowed to develop our own budgets, and even after several years, they're still called pilots. And, of course, they're subject to review by the central office. A school has very little power indeed unless it has control over how to spend its money.
Contracts and administrative decisions set class size, student/teacher ratio, and the number of faculty and staff in each building—and that makes up well over 90 percent of a program's budget. At Wilson Magnet, we have managed our money well, given district constraints. But is this really decentralized decision making?
Over the last year, Rochester's mayor has called for investigations into site-based budgets (I have not heard him speak on this for a while). Undoubtedly, he realizes the constraints that mandates place on schools. Further, if all schools were allowed to become Site-Based Budgeting Schools, this would only put them into competition with one another—and for limited funds at that.
As it is now, SBM teams have budgets in the hundreds, not thousands, of dollars. Wilson Magnet's parent group has already struggled with another high school over budget allocations, when we should be working together. A survival-of-the-fittest mentality has no place in public schools.
Central offices need to rethink current allocations in order to specifically direct money to schools, where site teams can use it as we see fit. Teams have no real influence over programs, number of teachers, or extracurricular programs. What else is there? Not very much.
The Principal's Role
Finally, principals in SBM schools often find themselves in Catch-22 situations. In a worst-case scenario, a principal may be forced to assume an adversarial role with the central office and the school board in order to get things done in his or her school. Whenever waivers are written or grievances brought, principals must take the lead—a role that pits them against the central office and is a throwback to the traditional principal's role, rather than a member among equals on a site team. How can a principal possibly sustain such a balancing act?
A Final Note
My conclusion is this: If systematic changes are made in schools, site-based manageament might succeed. So far, that has not happened. At Wilson Magnet, a school with a reputation for making SBM work, the teachers can't even get enough people to run in site team elections to fill out our numbers. By now, most of us have figured out the drawbacks: trying circumstances and long hours for minuscule results.
Maybe hierarchical, undisguised decision making is best after all. As long as teachers, parents, and students feel that their input is valued, they are comfortable with administrators leading, as they are expected to do. Teachers teach, parents work, students learn, and administrators lead. These are our responsibilities. All each group wants is a sense of belonging. Skilled administrators knew this far before someone coined the term site-based management.
