20 April 2005
Bernadette Medige
The white smoke went up over the Buffalo Board of Education too
Well, the smoke is rising. The secret conclave has chosen as new leader. A new pope? No, a superintendent for Buffalo’s public schools. A true believer in corporate salvation and access to the final frontier of greed: public education dollars. But like the pope, this one promises more of the same, and in Buffalo that is not good news.The man is James A. Williams, former superintendent of Dayton, Ohio schools.
I wrote about the superintendent search relative to the charter school issue in Buffalo Report March 8. After the charter school initiative was declared dead in Buffalo, I predicted that the search firm, in bed with the charter industry and funded by pro-charter Robert Wilmers, would yield a charter school advocate for superintendent. I suspect the reason behind the secrecy had less to do with protecting the candidates than the agenda. Sure enough, we are getting the former superintendent who led a charter school Mecca; Dayton has 40 charter schools and several more are slated to open in the fall and about 11,000 fewer students than Buffalo. A voucher program also began there during his tenure.
The Buffalo News quoted Dayton Daily News’ analysis of Williams, which stated "James Williams wore his brusque style with pride as Dayton school superintendent… But Williams may have pushed too hard, too far, for too long. Even his backers acknowledge Williams ruffled so many feathers through the years that at last, when a financial crisis hit, his support was too thin to sustain him."
Ruffled feathers? The man was so divisive he inspired a bomb threat. A district bought out his contract despite a fiscal crisis. The next day the News toned it down in another article, which stated that he is the chief academic officer for a private firm that operates alternative schools; the word “alternative” has come be a euphemism for anything. The firm is not identified. The News, for all it’s recent talk of media transparency, appears to be in collusion with keeping Williams’ contentious agenda quiet until his hiring is a done deal.
What I found is that Williams is executive director of the National Independent Private School Association (NIPSA). This organization is comprised of educators who are entrepreneurs, and "addresses the unique challenges and opportunities inherent in proprietary school operation" (for profit).
"We are the tax-paying schools," Williams says in an interview in the Daily News, a publication of the pro-voucher Children First America. "Many of the people who start proprietary schools are disenchanted public-school or disappointed independent-school teachers who don't want to deal with a board of directors or a school board." (emphasis mine; perhaps this is not the right person to answer to a school board).
The Dayton Daily News reported that one board meeting “descended into a fingerpointing, blame-shifting verbal melee. Two board members called for the superintendent's firing, the superintendent singled out the school district's treasurer to blame for the district's financial crisis, the treasurer referred to one of the superintendent's statements as an 'outright lie' and a board member accused another of conspiring behind other board members' backs. To top it off, Dayton police interrupted Superintendent James Williams during the meeting to tell him someone had called in a bomb threat against his car” (posted on this Ohio Board of Regents newsletter).
The News reported that Williams had “pursued a series of bold reforms during eight years as school chief in Dayton, Ohio, but was then fired during a fiscal crisis.” Our board of education has also pursued bold reforms and is currently in a fiscal crisis.
Among his bold reforms was merit pay for teachers. A lot of people who don’t think support the premise that teachers whose students get high test scores should be paid more. Nothing will dissuade a good, experienced teacher from going into a high-need school faster than knowing their pay will stagnate. Inexperienced teachers will be assigned to struggling schools and the result will be rapid turnover where stability is crucial. Nothing will widen the achievement gap more drastically. Teachers have little control over what happens to kids during the 18 hours a day they are not in their classrooms. As an e-mail making the rounds puts it, it’s like paying a dentist only for the teeth without cavities, even though the dentist has no power over the kid’s sugar intake or brushing habits.
Another reform was outsourcing jobs, such as contractors to take over computer and technology services, and to manage water and electricity use. He outsourced teaching jobs during a teachers strike, providing instruction to elementary grades via closed circuit TV and using out-of-state teachers for high schools. He also tried to outsource school management by hiring Education Management Organization (EMO) Edison Schools to manage five schools but was overruled by the board. Edison is among the most oppressive EMOs in the business and oversees the failing Stepping Stones Charter School on Buffalo’s East Side.
One of Edison’s founding partners was fellow Daytonian and Thomas B. Fordham Foundation president Chester Finn. Williams co-authored a school choice survey with Chester Finn and others for the conservative Fordham Foundation, which has been approved to open “community schools” as charters are referred to in Ohio. Both (along with Edison and a host of other EMOs) are members of the Education Industry Leadership Board . The membership list is a who’s who of conservatives and education profiteers as well as Milton and Rose Friedman, who has openly favored dismantling public schools for decades.
Also an EILB member is the search firm who recruited him for Buffalo, Heidrick and Struggles.
Among the goals of the Education Industry Association are fair access to the education “marketplace” and networking opportunities for its members. Looks like everyone’s membership here paid off.
Which begs the question: why is the Board of Education outsourcing itself? So far they have paid the think tank Education Innovation Consortium at least $7 million of our money. What did we get? Classic Business Roundtable rhetoric they could’ve gotten free off the web. Their grand idea was more charter schools, even though they are draining the district financially. They accepted a gift from Robert Wilmers of M&T Bank, sponsor of the Westminster Charter School, to fund the superintendent search and subsidize his salary. There were strings attached as many of us feared. For all the talk of special interests influencing government, none is gaining more strength than big business. The Board has done nothing but outsource their own responsibilities on our taxes. They have completely bypassed the democratic process here.
When will the special interest served by the schools be the actual students?
It is time that the Board of Education members were paid more than a $5,000 per year stipend. Then we must abolish money to “think tanks” and instead use the money to pay them. Maybe then they would treat it like a job and not something they squeeze in after work. It needs to be a job that is full time and taken seriously and accountable to the public that elects them, not the highest bidder. It would give them time to educate themselves on the issues. Make them think for themselves.
Make them think, period.
There will be an an open forum with Dr. James A. Williams, leading candidate in the Buffalo Public School's superintendent search, on Saturday, April 23, 2005, from 1:00 - 3:00 p.m. at the Makowski School.
Copyright 2005 by Buffalo Report, Inc.