Putting School Improvement At The End Of The Line

I couldn’t help but feel pessimistic going into the Board of Education meeting on Thursday.

It wasn’t because of the vote on whether to adopt the strategy to pursue the establishment of New London as an all magnet school district. It wasn’t because of anything on the agenda, actually. It was because of the agenda itself. Or, more to the point, where this crucial topic happened to appear in the lineup of board business.

The decision on the magnet school model—a huge shift in the educational dynamic of New London Public Schools—has been mulled over for several months. The board has been putting together a strategic operating plan to improve student achievement, and Thursday’s vote was a decision on whether to formally pursue the magnet option as a strategy.

On an agenda of some two dozen items, it was the third to last one.

Some of these items—like the call to order and pledge of allegiance—naturally went by quickly, and the arrangement of the agenda seems to take into consideration how long the discussion on any given topic could run. It certainly stands to reason that an item determining a fundamental change in how the schools are run could take longer to act upon than reaction to a letter from the Coast Guard Academy.

But as Thursday’s meeting dragged along, I couldn’t help but think back to some of the Board of Education meetings I covered after I first began working in New London in 2010. The orphaning of a crucial item behind interminable discussion on a slew of committee reports was a frequent occurrence. There were plenty of times when the meeting ran into its self-imposed deadline of 10 p.m., with members having to decide whether they even wanted to continue.

The late meetings helped contribute to short tempers and general difficulties in completing the business of the district, as important votes were crunched by the dissection of such reports. One could even argue that the lengthy meetings played a role in the state intervention in the district. A governance and management audit said the board meetings failed to address important topics related to student achievement, and the report also noted “a significant discrepancy between how board members describe their effectiveness in carrying out the board’s responsibilities and how almost every other person interviewed described the board’s effectiveness.”

I joined the reporter from The Day in rejoicing at the appearance of the first agenda after the state intervention. It essentially cut the meeting down to essential topics, with a blessed absence of the dozens of items that bled the hours out of the meetings.

Thursday’s agenda was more of a return to the old methods of the board, the methods the state openly criticized with its audit. It’s understandable that some presenters get an opportunity to appear first so they aren’t needlessly delayed by lengthier discussions. But it was still rather aggravating to see things such as reports on suspension rates and the middle school’s partnership with a sailing program take precedence over an issue as important as the strategic operating plan.

Now that the board has adopted the magnet school strategy, the district will be working in the coming months on steps to implement the idea. Hopefully, when these are presented, they can appear a little farther up in the Board of Education’s priorities.

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