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WPCNR SCHOOL DAYS. News & Comment By John F. Bailey. February 9, 2009: Dr. Christopher Clouet, the Superintendent from New London, will be authorized to be hired this evening as the new Superintendent of Schools in White Plains. He is expected to be in attendance as the Board of Education makes the most crucial and important decision about the schools since it ordered choice of schools and busing decades ago.

Dr. Christopher  Clouet steps into a position that for the sake of the schools and White Plains as we know it, has to change in order to make education in White Plains  educationally sound for more than just the white, Hispanic and Black children with demanding parents. His challenge should the Board of Education allow him to do it is to make it economically viable for the White Plains taxpayer and more educationally effective for the students. Throwing money at it is off the table as an option.

The Board of Education has for the nine years I have been reporting on this district accepted excuse after excuse and incremental gain after incremental gain in the achievement gap hand-wringing crisis. They have approved budget after budget doubling inflation rates in increases year after year. They have spent money on projects whose need is because they would be nice.  

The Board has been masterfully compromised by administrators who do not take responsibility and make excuse after excuse for not delivering results and not being able to show results reliably. Every year the budget is decided upon before the previous year’s School Report Cards are published by the state (a disgrace).

25% of the Boston City School Budget

The  White Plains budget, educuating 7,123 students with 5 elementary schools, two Middle Schools and one high school,  has grown to the point AT $184.4 Million where it is slightly less than 25% of the school budget for the city of Boston ($833.1 Million).

The Boston Public Schools educate  55,800 students in 143 schools.

If the White Plains budget stays at $184.4 Million it will be more than 25% of Boston’s budget which is seeking to cut $107 Million to $726 Million.

Well, this year, Timothy Connors the present Superintendent leaves June 30 turning over the leadership to Dr. Clouet.

The Dream Job

Clouet is a used to a small budget, $50 Million compared to this year’s budget of $184.4 Million for the White Plains schools. Dr. Clouet has had to fight for mere million dollar increases from the depressed city of New London, where the city council supervises the school budget.  No one really can tell whether the painful progress of New London schools under his leadership is from having to fight hard for change every step of the way, or rather the job was just too big. The district appears beyond repair.

Dr. Clouet instead moves into Westchester’s dream job: the district that never says no, loves its children, and burns money at double the rate of inflation.

A Poisoned Atmosphere

However all is not “all for the kids this year.”  The  Board of Education who this year has suddenly discovered that  perhaps a 6% to7% increase in a budget might be a little politically incorrect this year.  They have declared war on the Teachers Union and are handing Clouet a charged negotiation atmosphere.

It never occurred to the Board of Education as they ran up the budget compounding and raising expenses the last nine years that the public income was not keeping pace with their school taxes. The Board of Education even refused to negotiate with the White Plains Teachers Association over a contract, throwing the ball to the New York State Public Employers Relations Board going to mediation. 

This is the situation Dr. Clouet steps into: the question is what does the Board of Education really want him to do? Cut the budget next year? Close the Achievement Gap? Rein in spending more? Bring in fund-raising from the community and the state to shore up the budget? Trim the teaching staff or increase it? Negotiate a contract and  tweak a pay and step schedule that pays new teachers less going forward and trims step increases? Trim the fat from the administration or tone it up? Evaluate programs more effectively? Make the faculty bilingually correct and effective? 

Those are just some of the issues the Board of Education needs to decide and tell Dr. Clouet. It’s called leadership. And perhaps if they have given Dr. Clouet a “To Do” list, perhaps they should tell the public what it is, instead of a Strategic Plan that is developed behind closed doors.

Or does the Board of Education just want an earnest, committed  and charismatic Superintendent to sell the budget? Dr. Clouet does not appear to be that kind of man. He deliberately puts himself into very hard situations and gets beat up but keeps fighting for what he believes in, apparently.

When this search for a new Superintendent began, I wrote a mock ad for what White Plains needs in a new Superintedent it went like this:

WANTED

Savior of Schools

For White Plains City School District

Experience: Proven credentials as a leader or Assistant Superintendent of a school district of  up to 10,000 students of diverse population.

He or she should bring to the district a demonstrated record of academic improvement in upgrading academic performances of a diverse student body in a 3-year or less time interval with a significant  ESOL student population in a district respected by the collegiate community, demonstrated by the number of students continuing to collegiate education.

They should be capable and familiar with the challenges of and demonstrated ability to manage a school budget of $200 Million for maximum educational achievement with prudent financial cost conservation in the face of dwindling taxpayer support and significantly increased costs.

He or she should be able to interact productively with parents, taxpayers, faculty and administrations and city management to contain costs in a manner that will not overburden taxpayers and compromise quality of education.

Proven Administrator Motivator

Able to reorganize district management, academic administration, and information reporting to demonstrate timely feedback on the effectiveness of skills, practices, and managers.

Innovative Amiable but Firm Negotiator 

Able to work with teaching faculty to attract high quality new recruits with pay-benefits ratios acceptable by employee  to deliver bottomline effectiveness, arresting out of control salary escalation now affecting district – with pragmatic department-trimming skills to lower overall budget.

Endowment Specialist/Fundraiser –

Able to interact with the community, city and government  to build a district endowment fund to transition the district from a totally taxpayer supported operation into an endowment/taxpayer combination to finance major new construction and limited borrowing.

Innovator – problem-solver

Capable of undertaking a major cost-cutting management initiatives to lower the costs of operations without sacrificing educational effectiveness.

Salary: $300,000K and Up Plus generous incentive package based on performance in bringing school budget growth under control.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Let’s see how they did.

Dr. Clouet appears to fit these parameters in some respects, and not in others. His present district is just 3,000 students, but it is about 80% black and Hispanic.

Demonstrated record of improvement after three years. It depends on whom you talk to in New London as to whether he has done that. If you go strictly on test scores, his elementary program is improving, but it is so far behind what the State of Connecticut wants (and was before he got there), that you have to think it is a lost cause. However Clouet took on the challenge turning around a whole mindset and took on the community and entrenched bureaucracy to attempt that change, and he had only one assistant Superintendent. In White Plains he will have  4 heavyweights. Whether he keeps them all is open to question. He is the Lone Ranger against entrenched bureaucracy. (Never works well.)

Cost cutting? Wow. Where does he start with that one?

A complete overhaul of the maintenance program would be in order. How do you budget $3 Million a year for maintenance of the schools and wind up in 5 years having to borrow $15 Million for infrastructure improvements?  How about use of teaching assistants? Do we really need a high school office the size of the White House  greet staff (I exaggerate to make a point)?  Interaction with the city? Good luck on that one. Maintenance in White Plains is a blank check and they’d probably charge the school district a fortune – but the work might be done more effectively with the appropriate engineering.

He or she should be able to interact productively with parents, taxpayers, faculty and administrations and city management to contain costs in a manner that will not overburden taxpayers and compromise quality of education.

Proven Administrator Motivator

Able to reorganize district management, academic administration, and information reporting to demonstrate timely feedback on the effectiveness of skills, practices, and managers.

That’s going to be tough because the management, academic administration and data people say they do that now, but the district year after year cannot get meaningful figures on data. The district pays 4 data processing executives close to a million dollars a year in salary and benefits and we can’t get the data we want. Clouet is a data specialist and is closely attuned to measuring results. This should be an interesting conflict and interaction. Let’s face it: if you provide inconclusive data, nothing changes, because you can’t make a decision.  That has been the strategy (whether intentional or just convenient incompetence on the part of the administration) that has kept things moving along to the $200 Million level in the White Plains School District.

Innovative Amiable but Firm Negotiator 

Dr. Clouet based on his record in New London has changed the culture there somewhat.

In White Plains, he inherits one of the great teacher contracts in the country – the envy of many another school district. He has to decide whether the district can live with this contract going forward, or whether benefits, retirements, and perhaps step increases have to undergo some “creative” adjustment to restrain the 5% a year rate of growth on teach salaries. He has to have some guts from the Board of Education on that one and some imagination on his part. The Board has shown the last nine years that they have no stomach or brains for negotiating – hence the mediation procedure this year – and certainly no ability to use simple baseball statistics, and a calculator,  to see what will happen to their school budget if practices continue. As long as the budget kept passing  and school parents raved the Board of Edcucation  did not worry about the budget growth. Never mind that the White Plains tax base has been dwindling.

Will Dr. Clouet trim staff by attrition? This is another way of putting out career administrators out to pasture and trimming the fat. The district never met a job they did not think was necessary.

Administrative talent evaluation. Here is where Clouet will be most challenged. Who does he really need? What positions does he want to keep and what eliminate?  More to the point, what does the Board of Education want him to do?  

But, I digress.

Endowment Specialist/ Fund-Raiser

Here, Dr. Clouet, with his boundless enthusiasm and relentness questing that he demonstrated in New London, obviously has an advantage. Unfortunately, the economy is going to hurt his ability to get local corporations and individuals to fund endowment for the school district. But, perhaps with major “ObamaBucks” coming to education from the state and Washington, he will be very effective in sweet-talking the sweet money to White Plains School District.  The White Plains record of fund-raising has not been the greatest. The football field is a good example of that.

Innovator-Problem Solver.

This apparently is Dr. Clouet’s strength.  My description above in the mock job ad I created, focused on cost-cutting. But that may be short-sighted.  Is it time to rethink the busing that goes on in White Plains since the population is now very diverse anyway, reverting to the prospect of “neighborhood schools?” Should he enhance the magnet school concept, and keep the busing – turning the schools into academies – and not just the public relations names they have now?  One school Hispanic based, another African-American based, Another White-based, another science based, another art-based, another English Based. (Radical, yes? Thought-provoking, indeed?)

Class-size? Can smarter students have larger classes? The list is endless.

The White Plains School District equips their students better than any other district in the county to survive both academically and socially  in the college environment and get into and succeed in elite schools because of the quality of their academics. But, the make up of the district is changing and the resources to keep funding it are dwindling, so Clouet will have to examine more than ever how the district manages to maintain the quality with a leaner fuel mixture.

Meeting the Parents

Dr. Clouet has apparently passed with flying colors the power-groups that the Board of Education allowed to meet him prior to his being announced. So he has already been seen as a “friend to education,” “a supporter of the kids,” and has heard a litany of their hopes and dreams of the realtors, the neighborhood movers and shakers, the teachers, the district administration.

Dr. Clouet at the High School January 29.

Will he work for them or work for what apparently, given the future the district faces, dwindling tax base and compounding school budget, a repackaging of the district to make it something White Plains can afford?

Does he see his job as an assignment to keep the status quo by finding ways to pump more money into it and sell the taxpayers on it, or does he see his job as trimming the fat while making education better? What has the Board told him they want him to do, again?

Introduction to the Community.

Dr. Clouet visited White Plains and met about 100 parents, teachers and administrators taking questions from the audience last week, at White Plains High School.

He impressed the audience, saying he took the New London position because he wanted to work with a heavy minority population.

He said on the subject of testing that he felt exhaustive testing diminished the district ability to nurture the spirit of learning in children, but nevertheless realized the necessity for testing. He felt tests should not be given every year, but perhaps every other year. This was a very politically neutral statement.

He said to a question from a person who did not have students going to the district schools that he was aware of the tax pressures on such families. He told WPCNR he had met with the Mayor of White Plains and been acquainted with the tax pressures in the district from assessments and other matters.

He strongly supported language programs and the dual language program just begin in the White Plains Public Schools. He has started a similar program in New London.

He acknowledged that he considered himself a good fund-raiser and hoped to bring about private corporate funds in the district through his contact in the city as a way to bring more revenue to the district.

He praised the district Strategic Plan.  This plan by the way, is the  plan for moving the district forward – without any specific ways  or commitments  in place of achieving its objectives.

He is personable, earnest and radiates enthusiasm that wins over an audience. You could see him easily selling a budget to the PTA, the League of Women Voters, and the parents of the district very easily. He is, if any one person could be more Tim Connors-like than the present Superintendent, Tim Connors, that person.

Working With Connors, Monitoring.

I asked him after the talk if he would be working closely with outgoing Superintendent, Mr. Connors. He said, taking a cue from President Obama , that there can only be one superintendent at a time, but would be keeping in close touch with Connors to monitor budget developments. Asked if he would have veto power on any cuts in the budget now being shaped, he said he would not.

He said he believed in teacher input in curriculum and listening to teachers in the classroom as to how to improve programs. That will play well to the White Plains Teachers Association which is on record as deploring the district reliance on consulting.

What was sad about the community meeting with Dr. Clouet were the questions that were not asked. There were no hard questions.

The parents acted worried and seemed to seek reassurance from this man, that he had his heart in the right place, and would continue school as we know it in White Plains. It was melancholy and hopeful, too.

No one asked about his experience in New London and his progress there and how it could be useful in White Plains. It can only be hoped it will be useful.

But New London and Thomaston Connecticut, his two previous Superintendent positions are the past. They do not matter now. He is the Superintendent of the White Plains Schools now.

No one asked how he might change the operations of the White Plains School District. But, Dr. Clouet can only take his cue from the Board of Education, which other than saying they need to save money this year has given no indication of how to do that or what they want. How will the Board support him if he runs into conflicts? This is not a Board of Education that takes stands, makes demands, and makes hard decisions unless it involves sports, band uniforms, and class trips. 

The head of the teachers union thought Dr. Clouet was an excellent choice because of his intelligence.

This is a dream job for Dr. Clouet, He has never worked in a district that was an upper middle class school district. He said the right things, promised even more community involvement and parent interaction than we have now. (White Plains loves that.)  The audience wants to believe.

We shall see.

Tonight the Board of Education will authorize the President of the Board of Education to hire him.

I and we should wish him well and support him.

He is going to need our support.

And we need to tell him what we want directly.

WPCNR The Housing News. From Westchester County Department of Communications. February 7, 2009: County Executive Andrew Spano in the face of record forclosures in Westchester County held a new conference this week to showcase how Westchester Residential Opportunities can help families facing problems paying their mortgages.  Spano said: “I want people to know that we are there to help, but we can only be successful if people reach out to counselors before it is too late. We also are applying for $7.2 million in federal money to revitalize neighborhoods most hurt by foreclosures. ”  

Citing three cases, Spano praised the county partner, Westchester Residential Opportunities, for being able to get the mortgages modified and help the three families with affordable payment plans. In these types of cases, the length of the loan may be extended or  emergency funding provided or lent from a fund set up by the county legislature.

 WRO’s ability to intercede with the banks holding the mortgages is due in part to a letter Spano sent to the major mortgage lending banks last fall asking them to make every effort to keep Westchester families in their homes by providing mortgage modifications.

“The Schiefer family  problem provides a perfect example of how this targeted county investment in foreclosure prevention can work,” said County Legislator Bill Ryan. “Helping these responsible homeowners through a rough time so they can stay in their homes demonstrates the effectiveness of the county partnering with non-profit agencies like WRO that have the expertise and tools to turn a problem around quickly and successfully.”

Commented Dan Jenkins, who chairs the legislature’s Government Operations Committee, “Everyone knows that times are tough. The county board was the first to provide direct assistance in the foreclosure crisis in New York State. The $150,000 investment is a prime example of how county government provides vital resources to Westchester residents.”

The WRO funding proposal was advanced by Ryan with Legislators Jenkins, Lois Bronz, Peter Harckham, Jenkins and Lyndon Williams.

Foreclosure rates in Westchester County have increased 104 percent since 2005 and default filings have jumped 244 percent.

Westchester County government is stepping up to the plate with a multi-faceted approach:

·        Counseling services to prevent foreclosures continue through the “Don’t Borrow Trouble Campaign,” supported by the Spano Administration and the Board of Legislators. In 2008 the Westchester County Board of Legislators approved a $150,000 grant to WRO for mortgage default counseling and to create a rescue fund. Rescue funds can be used to pay mortgage arrears.

·        At the behest of the county, three housing counseling agencies, certified by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, are available to help.  They are Housing Action Council ( 914 332-4144), Westchester Residential Opportunities (914 428-4507) and Human Development Services of Westchester (914 939-2005 ).  Go to www. westchestergov.com/housing for contact information and other important links.

·        In a separate initiative focusing on homes that are already abandoned or in the hands of banks, the county is applying to New York State for $7.2 million in Neighborhood Stabilization Program funding including Affordable Housing Corporation funds.  The money would be used to purchase vacant and abandoned homes, repairing them and making them available to moderate-income families to purchase at an affordable price. The federal  program was created when Congress approved the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 to address the rising number of foreclosures across the country. With the resale of these homes, the county will recycle the funds for subsequent purchases of homes for the life of the program through July 2013.

·        To maximize the chance of the resale, counseling services for future homeowners – even those not facing foreclosure –   are available now from the same three HUD-certified agencies listed above. The goal is to help people straighten out their credit problems now, so if they want to buy a house a few years from now they will be in top financial shape.

·        The county government has launched a financial education initiative.  Throughout the year, the county will be running various seminars and other programs to educate people about how to make wise financial decisions. A major conference is scheduled for May 12, with details to be provided later. In addition, the county’s web site has brought numerous financial education resources to one place: www.westchestergov.com/managingmoney

            Gary Brown, director of the Westchester County Department of Consumer Protection, said, “Don’t ignore a problem paying your mortgage – it won’t go away and will only get worse. The most important thing a homeowner in trouble with their mortgage can do is to have a housing counselor review their case as soon as possible – even before they receive the first default notice.  The sooner families seek help, the greater the chance of saving the home.”

CASE STUDIES

Jorge and Marina Schiefer purchased their home in 2006. Their hardship began in 2007 when their home was flooded and they had to exhaust a lot of their savings to repair the damages. Then with the economy getting worse, business slowed down for Jorge. Their original mortgage was an Adjustable Rate Mortgage fixed for 2 years. In 2008, their interest rate was reset increasing to 9.25 percent, from 7.95 percent, increasing their monthly mortgage payments to $3,944, from $3605. Thereafter the rate would re-adjust every 6 months until the rate capped at 11.95 percent. When the Schiefers went to WRO for help they were three months behind on their mortgage. They contacted their lender for assistance but were denied. WRO was able to resubmit another request for a loan modification and was successful! The lender added 6 months arrears to the back of the loan and offered the client a “Step Fixed Rate” The rate on the first year was reduced to 5 percent, from 9.25% to 5%. The second year will be at 5.5 percent; the third year at 6 percent. After that, until the end of the 30-year-term, the rate will be fixed at 7 percent.

Melvin & Agnes G. refinanced their home located in Yonkers after the lender told them they could refinance in four months to lower the rate. But the lender denied them a new loan and refused to modify the loan until WRO persisted with a complaint against the lender. Finally the lender offered a rate reduction that lowered their monthly payments to $2,856, from $4,279.55 and placed the arrears on the end of the mortgage.

Ana A. of Tarrytown has two jobs, but when her husband left her and her three children she could no longer afford her home. Ana turned to WRO, and the agency was able to negotiate a loan modification. This lowered her interest rate and her monthly mortgage payments by almost a third for 5 years.  As part of the modification, Ana was required to come up with $15,000 in cash to make good on some of the mortgage payments she had missed. WRO made an interest free loan for $5,000 of this amount to Ana out of its rescue fund money, which she will repay over three years.