Education spending a key difference for House, Senate

This from Ronnie Ellis of the CNHI News Service from the Glasgow Daily Times:

FRANKFORT — One of the big issues the free conference committee will have to resolve to get a budget agreement between the House and Senate is how much will be spent on education and human services.

House budget chairman Harry Moberly, D-Richmond, said “securing the revenue to have an adequate education and human services budget” is the House top priority.

He reiterated that stance Wednesday during the budget conference, telling Senate members the House wants to resolve those issues before going on to such questions as capital projects and water and sewer projects in single counties.

House Speaker Jody Richards, D-Bowling Green, said the same thing: “We would like to get education and human services – those big things – out of the way before we deal with projects.”The differences in the two chambers’ budgets affect both public schools and the state’s higher education institutions.

The House would restore – and add a little to help cover teacher raises – to current levels the basic funding formula for elementary and secondary education. The House budget increases the SEEK formula in 2008/09 by $12 million and by $30 million in the following year. It would fund teacher salary increases of 1 percent in the first year and 3 percent in the second.The Senate on the other hand does not increase the formula and calls for 1 percent salary increases in each year....

Kentucky Board of Education: Inexperienced board lacks seasoning in Erwin mess, H-L editorial writer says.

Presents one image to the board behind closed doors,
another to reporters

I am a podcast listener of Comment on Kentucky, KET's long-running public affairs program hosted by journalist Al Smith. Unfortunately, I didn't get around to listening to last Friday's program until this morning - while I restacked the firewood onto a palet I made.

At any rate, the show (June 15, 2007) included comments from Herald-Leader Editorial Assistant Jamie Lucke and CNHI News Service reporter Ronnie Ellis on the Kentucky Board of Education and the Erwin situation. (Note: video runs about 3 minutes and starts 2/3rds of the way through the program.)

Sitting in for Al Smith last week was Director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at UK, Al Cross.

Al Cross: The state board of education met this week, and the new commissioner, Barbara Erwin, is not on-board yet, but...can you tell us why the state board picked the controversial Barbara Erwin and why they're sticking with her?

Jamie Lucke: Well, I...can only surmise, but I have to surmise that they must not have had a very strong field of applicants to begin with. Perhaps because of the uncertainty about a change in administrations, that this governor may lose and that whoever got the job would have to deal with a new administration. And then I think they just got so deep into the process without having been informed by their search firm, their professional search firm that she had a lot of baggage. I mean this is the kind of baggage that a reporter googling her can find out in fifteen minutes. Why the board was taken by surprise is something that I don't know. But it just seems like they were too far in to back out. It's a fairly inexperienced board. All of the board members now are appointees of Governor Fletcher and you know, they don't have the seasoning that some...earlier boards have had and they just stuck with their choice. I suspect she must be very dynamic in person because they spent a great deal of time with her in a closed session and came out and said 'we're stickin.'

Ronnie Ellis: And...she can be a very good interview. She can be dynamic. I think she perhaps is presenting one image to the board behind closed doors and dealing with reporters in a little bit different light because there have been a number of things that we were told that board members were told differently in that meeting. And,, just quickly, all of the board members were appointed by Fletcher. ...Keith Travis, the chairman, was originally appointed by Paul Patton, and reappointed. All the others are Fletcher appointees for the first time.

The Texas Two--step

Care to dance?

Ronnie Ellis of the CNHI News Service posted a story yesterday which, at once, clarifies and muddies the issues surrounding one of Barbara Erwin's four resume indescretions.

What’s being discussed are three lines from her resume; a central part of her application for the position of commissioner of education.

"AASA 1999 National Superientendent of the Year"
"TASA 1998 Texas Superintendent of the Year"
"TASB 1997 Texas Superintendent of the Year"

Three lines.

Three Awards.

Three different years.

As Ellis reports, Erwin has offered different explanations for her claim that she was Texas SOY in 1998, "depending on her audience." She originally told reporters the error was a "typo" and that it should have been written to say she was nominated by TASA for the AASA award.

Then she said that it must have occurred as various unnamed persons typed and re-typed her resume "over several years" and she never caught the mistake.

But in executive session, she presented hardware for the board to examine persuading them that items on her resume "check out."

When reporters asked her to explain why she didn't tell them she had plaques and rings in the first place she said it was because she didn't have the resume in front of her. Then she shifted her position and said the typo she was referring to was in the spelling "Superientendent" on one of the listed awards. See above.

Huh? Not the 1998 date?

Dr. Johnny Veselda, Executive Director of the Texas Association of School Administrators told Ellis, "I believe it is reasonable for her to say she was twice named Superintendent of the Year." He made this comment despite the fact that his organization presents no such award. He explained the date confusion as a matter of timing - that she was considered for the 1999 nomination during 1998.

So that's the news on resume Error #1. Clear as mud. TASA doesn't give such an award - but maybe they do - or at least it's reasonable for us to think of it that way - whatever the year.

Ellis goes on to discuss her explanation for resume error #2. The lines in question here are:

"Triple I Conference
Presentations on School Improvement, AP, Superintendent Search Process
Chicago, Illinois, 2004 & 2006 Conferences"

What do these lines say to you?

Well, to Barbara Erwin they seem to say, 'If I signed off on it, I did it.' When the Illinois Association of School Boards officials could not verify that she presented anything during the 2006 conference, Erwin seemed to argue that it was sufficient that she might introduce the real presenters, and that she had to "sign off on" their participation. When these individuals returned to the district and made their report to the St Charles Board of Education, there was no representation that she presented anything. That would have been an audacious thing to say in front of folks who knew better. The difference between the professional activity necessary to present at a conference (and therefore deserving of credit) - and the professional activity needed to introduce the real presenters is - everything.

For some, Error #3 is a throw away item. She confuses her membership in the education honorary Kappa Delta Pi (unconfirmed), with and undergraduate mens fraternity. But others who value high academic standards for students express frustration with Erwin's obvious carelessness with the preparation and review of her resume - a document that should command extreme care. These critics decry her apparent lack of technical writing/editing skills as a major flaw.

But let's not become confused. The real issue is about her character as demonstrated through ethical practice. (For you school administrators: the problems lie in ISSLC Standard Five.) There is, indeed, a bothersome pattern here.

Error #4 is Erwin's claim that she served on the AASA Executive Board from 1991 to 2001, a ten-year period, when in fact she only served three years on what the AASA calls their executive committee.

Again, a bothersome pattern. Everythng is presented in a style that is just a bit grander than reality. Sounds great; we want it to be true, but it doesn't quite test out.


I was touched by a comment made to me by a St Charles resident the other day. After viewing Trevor Frye's terrific photo from the Herald-Leader, this sympathetic person, who has seen Erwin in action, was taken aback, saying the stress on Erwin's face was visible; the tight lipped smile; the resolve; brassing it out; grace under pressure…

When she's not hacking off the folks she works with, you've gotta know that Barbara Erwin has personality and skills.

But that's not the concern here. Kentucky's schools do a whole lot of good for a whole lot of people, but the board of education was not created to be a benevolent society nor a guarantor of employment for the charming. The example set by our leader, in this crucial position, must be above reproach. We cannot hope to raise the expectations for our teachers and students while simultaneously lowering them for our commissioner; their leader. We can not hope to convince our legislators to make the necessary investments in our schools if the message is undermined by questions about the messenger.

Typos?
Poor secretarial help?
Exaggerations?
Sign offs?
The twistifycations?

Whatever happened to "no excuses?"