I’ve been on the school board for a year now and I decided to make the trip down to the annual Minnesota School Board Association Annual Leadership Conference. Three of us from the board went down for the conference along with our superintendent and his wife.
After checking in to the Minneapolis Hyatt, I went downstairs to have a beer and ended up running into my old high school classmate who is the chair of the school board in my home town. We talked about life, basketball and the school board. It was fun to catch up – it was also interesting to see how things change after high school. He married pretty early to his high school sweetheart (who was 2-3 years older) and has an 11, 9 and 7 year old. He recently was divorced and now is dealing with life as a single parent with his kids 30 miles away.
On Thursday morning after breakfast, we went to the Expo area where all the vendors were trying to catch the attention of board members. There was no less than 30 construction firms there who all said they specialize in schools. We brought along an RFP for an architectural firm to review the current status of our buildings and help us outline our future needs. We had no trouble finding enough architecture/construction firms to hand it off to. I found a paper/supply company happy to give me a bag full of stuff which included some toys for the girls. That’s one of the main things I look for at these expos now.
Next came the main speaker for the event. I figured this part would be pretty boring and I usually struggle to stay awake through any speech longer than 20 minutes, but I found myself captivated by this speech. The speaker was Juan Enriquez – web site – and he talked about the history of language and codes in particular. What separates humans from monkeys or animals is the ability to codify language. Starting with the hieroglpyhics to Chinese and to the 26 letters in English, we have advanced because we can communicate via code. Our latest breakthrough has come through binary code – 0 & 1 – which has allowed us to transfer the information via computers and translate it into any language. Today 93% of information is in binary code and that percentage will only go up.
The code he really focused on was the genetic code – the A, T, C, and G that make up DNA. On February 12, 2001 the genetic code was first completely identified. This holds a world of potential because it allows us to target medicines to people based on their genetic code. He showed three different genetic codes of people with breast cancer and said that two would respond to a particular medicine and it would be worthless for the third person. He also talked about cloning that is happening in animals and the potential for regrowth of human limbs to replace prosthetic arms and legs in the future. His overall point was that the biotech/genomic industry is going to be the next big industry, and whichever country/company capitalizes on it is going to be the next big growth country/company. The education system in the US is lagging behind most other developed countries in science and math education. This trend must turn around if the US is going to continue to lead the world.
After lunch, I attended two different sessions. The first was on online learning courses. It showcased several schools around the state that are broadcasting classes to other interested districts. In Michigan, they have mandated that every student must take/pass an online class to graduate. I think this is something our school should look into further so we can offer more to our students. The second session was on the collaboration between the city, school and a local college. They talked about the synergies St. Peter has been able to realize due to the way the three entities work together. They share equipment, facilities and they meet regularly to discuss future plans so they can work on them in concert. It seems simple, but it just makes sense and it’s something we should do more of locally.
I managed to eat three different times on Thursday night. Everyone was invited to a reception offered by one of the construction companies. Their rates must be nice and high because they afforded an open bar and a buffet with carved turkey as an option. I had a little of the buffet there, and then at 6, my brother picked me up at the hotel and I went out to eat with him, Kari and Parker at Chili’s. They ordered chips and salsa and I couldn’t really sit there and not eat. So after I pigged out on some chips, Marc gave me a ride back to the hotel for the main course. Manny’s Steakhouse serves the best steak that I’ve ever had. I skipped the salad to save room for my $43.95 14oz filet mignon. It was outstanding as usual. During dinner I got to hear the story of the School Board controversy that went on about 3-4 years ago. It was interesting to get the perspective of someone on the board – the fallout was a superintendent was fired, three people had to leave the board and two of the board members ended up getting convicted of fraud for their other shady business practices.
Friday morning brought another session – this one on was on school funding. It was probably basic for most people there but since I don’t understand it well thus far, it was really interesting for me. Basically, there are two components to state funding – $4,974 per pupil unit and pupil units are allocated based on student values – you get .55 for each kindergartener, 1.115 for 1-3 grade, 1.06 for 4-6 and 1.3 for 7-12. We heard from a business manager at Little Falls where they’d been losing 100 students per year. The effect on the budget was devastating because with fixed costs for faculty (85%) you can’t reduce your budget much if your funding drops through the year as the kids leave the district.
For our Friday morning session, we got to hear from the governor. He spoke for 30-40 minutes without notes or slides to the group discussing the state of education in Minnesota. He said we need to do better, but we really need to reform the approach to schools. He highlighted his QComp program which is a program to allocate teacher salaries based on performance instead of solely relying on seniority. He also talked about the need to put money towards programs that assist minority and low income families in early childhood. That’s where he feels we can get the most bang for the buck.
The following speaker had expected to be the only speaker that morning, but her time was essentially cut in half, so Kati Haycock from the Education Trust Foundation – web site – raced through her slides about the education problems in the US. The biggest point that I took away was that good schools can overcome bad parenting and produce good results for their kids. Students who have between 3 and 5 excellent teachers in a row will succeed regardless of their family issues. Basically she said that as a school we can’t use lack of parental support as an excuse – yes, it makes it harder, but achievement can still occur in a good school system.
The biggest thing I took away from the content at the conference was that I need to spend time looking at the high school curriculum to see what we can do to offer more options and make the curriculum difficult and college preparatory. The last speaker said that those students who aren’t expecting to go to college will be better off with college prep classes.
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