Higley Schools Blog

I decided to post the pool of questions in the queue for tonight’s HUSD governing board candidate forum and my initial thoughts. The forum will be held at the Higley High School center for the performing arts at 7:00 pm.

There are a few odd questions this time around that had me scratching my head at first. I discovered a few days ago that most or all of the questions were written by students so that helped explain things a bit. Here are the questions we received and some of my thoughts in response:

1) As of October 21st, Higley is still trying to hire a high school math teacher and has multiple openings for special education teachers. How will you specifically address the problem of not just finding qualified candidates for these positions, but hiring great teachers and retaining them in HUSD?

It is not the job of the school board to find, interview, and make offers to teachers and staff members. There are plenty of full-time administrators with nice big salaries that we pay to do that. As I understand it, the governing board approves or disapproves the candidates that the administration presents for hiring. I do think it is the job of the board to represent the desires and interests of the public and oversee the administrators in the job they are doing. I believe that by demanding that the top administration create an enticing work environment at HUSD we will be better able to attract and retain top quality teachers. Continue reading ‘Tonight’s HUSD governing board candidate forum preview’ »

Apparently a bunch of Higley teachers emailed Emily over at the AZ Republic after the last article on the override. Here is the follow up article. They reportedly were unhappy that the AZ Republic hadn’t done more to endorse this important measure.

As I have mentioned in the past, it is crucial to the health of Higley Schools and thus to the home values in the HUSD boundaries that this continuation of the Budget override on the ballot Nov. 4 passes. Tell everyone you know in our district to vote YES on the Higley Schools budget increase.

Emily Gersema put up a short article over at the AZ Republic site on the budget override that appears on the ballot this election season.

If you are wondering… VOTE YES! It will not change your taxes now (since it has been in place already for years) but it will help us improve Higley Schools and that in turn will increase your home values.

Here is the link to the article with pictures and all. I think Hayley did a very nice job on this.

Here are some quotes she got from me:

“A high level of distrust” between parents, teachers and administrators comes from a lack of communication, Johnston said.

“I think the administration has done an atrocious job at marketing itself to teachers and families,” Johnston said. “It’s created an utter lack of communication between families, teachers and administration, and caused a tremendous problem and culture of distrust.”

Johnston said teachers and families don’t feel supported by district administration, and they need to feel that their opinions matter. He said some parents feel their concerns are being dismissed.

“The way you make parents happy is to listen to them,” Johnston said. “Parents are the customers. An unhappy customer will be 10 times more vocal and will have more memory of their bad customer service.”

I went to the work study session portion of the board meeting last night and the board decided to wait until the new board in in place before voting on the raise Superintendent Lutrey will receive.  With 3 of the 5 seats on the board up for grabs I can’t blame them.

I then went to a “meet and greet” sponsored by the folks at ChangeInHUSD and met with more former and current HUSD employees and their spouses about the upcoming election.  The reports are pretty much what I always hear from insiders: Employee morale is low, leadership and vision are severely lacking, there is no consistency in programs, support for teachers and staff is erratic at best, money is being wasted because of the general chaos, etc.   Yet the promising signs were there as well: There are a ton of talented people who would prefer to work at HUSD rather than commuting to other districts — they are just hoping the district can pull its crap together finally and give them a reason to come back.

Change in HUSD is coming but it will come a lot faster if you can tell your friends to vote for Geoff Johnston (me), Greg Land, and Paul Howell.  Plus be sure you tell everyone you know to vote yes on the HUSD budget increase or the new board will have its hands tied financially from the get-go.

With a new board that demands far greater accountability from district management and the budget override being renewed, I believe HUSD can turn around very quickly.

Congratulations to HUSD for achieving AYP.  Here is the quote from the AZ Republic:

The Arizona Department of Education released results this week showing whether districts and their individual schools have achieved Annual Yearly Progress - the federal measurement of a school’s improvement.

Federal officials determine whether a school made AYP based on student achievement on the state’s standardized test, Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards.

In the Gilbert area, Higley Unified School District’s two high schools and seven elementary and middle schools all achieved federal AYP for the 2007-08 school year, when more than 9,400 students attended the district.

See the entire article here.