The latest bad news from the city school district

It’s just about the last thing the Rochester school district
needed, right?

Tension between the superintendent and the school board has
erupted into public view, and that’s terrible in many ways – not the least of
which is that any bad news from the district reinforces the public’s poor
opinion of it.

In a move that had been under way for some time, the school
board informed Superintendent Bolgen Vargas that it
was going to vote on changing some of his “duties and responsibilities.” Vargas
fired back that if the board did that, he might sue. On March 3, the board went
ahead. And Vargas filed a “notice of claim,” a step toward a suit.

As is the case with any personnel matter, this dispute is
more complicated than it might seem. But one of the issues at its core is the
management of this huge, important institution.

The responsibilities of school boards and superintendents
are spelled out in state education law. But within that framework, different
school boards have had different philosophies about their role. Some boards have
wanted a lot of power. Others have wanted to stick to making policy, and they have
given the superintendent additional authority over day-to-day operations and
personnel.

The current board wants to pull back some of that authority.
The board says it’s simply trying to get the district’s practices in compliance
with state law. The superintendent says the board is trying to take away
authority that both state law and his contract allow – authority he needs in
order to carry out his responsibilities.

Under New York State law, school boards are ultimately
responsible for the operations of their school districts. The seven elected
members of the Rochester board – who often have no professional training or
experience in education – not only hire the superintendent but also “appoint”
nearly everybody who works in the district.

In the language of the state education law, the Rochester
school board “shall have the power and it shall be its duty” to appoint
“principals, teachers, lecturers, special instructors, medical inspectors,
nurses, auditors, attendance officers, secretaries, clerks, custodians,
janitors and other employees and other persons or experts in educational,
social or recreational work or in the business management or direction of its
affairs….”

Obviously, the board doesn’t interview every candidate and
employee, check references, and assess performance. Supervisors and others do
that, and in a large district like Rochester’s, the school board’s action normally
consists of approving or not approving what somebody else recommends –
sometimes voting on “hundreds” at one meeting, as Rochester board president Van
White puts it. In the case of “instructional” personnel – teachers, principals,
other in-school administrators – state law says the
superintendent has the authority to make recommendations before the board acts.

Thanks to a 1997 change in the education law, one group of
employees is excluded from the school board’s hiring-firing duties: those who
are in something called the SEG, the Superintendent’s Employee Group. These are
the staff positions that are part of the superintendent’s administrative staff.
The SEG members aren’t in a union, and they aren’t covered by collective
bargaining.

That 1997 law names some of those positions specifically:
associate, assistant, and district superintendents. But it also includes a
broader category: “other supervising staff who are
excluded from the right to bargain collectively pursuant to article fourteen of
the civil service law.”

School board president Van White says the board thinks that
over the years, various superintendents have included too many positions in
that last category, possibly including some that may be eligible for collective
bargaining, and that the district may be violating state law.

On March 3, the board voted unanimously that the
superintendent’s “duties and responsibilities shall hereby be modified or
deleted.” The board changed three things. First, rather than being able to hire
and fire SEG staff according to the school board’s “Rules and Regulations,” the
superintendent can hire and fire them only as state law specifies.

The board voted to ask the New York Public Employee Relations
Board to determine which of the positions in Vargas’s SEG actually are
“excluded from the right to bargain collectively.”

Second, the board weakened the superintendent’s authority to
make recommendations about some other district employees. While state law says
that the superintendent’s recommendation is required before the board approves
hiring and firing instructional personnel, previous boards expanded that
authority. They said that the superintendent’s recommendation is also required
before the board acts on non-instructional personnel: cafeteria workers, for
instance.

Third, the board must now authorize all service contracts
before the superintendent signs them.

In interviews late last week, White said that the board is
simply undoing some actions previous boards took that they shouldn’t have
taken. The board isn’t trying to remove Vargas’s authority over all of his own
administrative staff, White said. “Clearly,” he said, state education law gives
the superintendent the authority to appoint, supervise, and fire people who are
legitimately in the SEG.

In the case of the superintendent’s recommendations on
non-SEG personnel, White said, the superintendent will continue to make
recommendations on all personnel. But the board can act on non-instructional
personnel without those recommendations. Right now, the board can’t do anything
about anything in personnel “until he says yea or nay,” White said.

The change related to service contracts is simply technical
wording, White said. And with all of the changes, he said, all the board wants
is to make sure the district is in compliance with state law.

But Vargas’s attorney,
Steven Modica, says the board’s
resolutions do much more than what White says. In a letter to the school
board’s attorney, released to the media, Modica said
that the board “intends through these resolutions to assume direct hiring and
firing authority over virtually every RCSD employee and to assume
responsibility for negotiating contracts on behalf of the RCSD.”

That, he says, will violate state education law.

In addition, Modica says, the
board has unilaterally taken away authority that Vargas’s contract gives him.

So is the school board trying to grab power? Is the
superintendent over-reacting to minor changes? Did previous boards give
superintendents authority that state law says they can’t have? Or were their
actions well within the law?

The Employee Relations Board will decide some of this. And
if Vargas follows through, a court will also weigh in.

This tug-of-war is what can happen when we have both an
elected body and an appointed professional in charge of a crucial public
institution. Add personalities, management style, vision, and expectations into
the mix and you sometimes get what we have now.

Although I think Rochester might be better off with mayoral
control of the school district, that wouldn’t prevent tension between elected
officials and the people they hire to run the district. Jean-Claude Brizard left Rochester and headed to Chicago to lead that
city’s mayoral-controlled district. He left just over a year later, following
tension with Mayor Rahm Emmanuel.

But we also need to keep in mind the difficulty of the
problems facing urban school districts.

Frankly, I’m not sure they
can dowhat
we’ve asked them to do. I’m not sure they can succeed – not sure that the best
superintendent and the best school board can do what we expect them to do. Because
what we expect is that they educate children whose lives are affected by the
enormous damage of highly concentrated poverty. Plenty of research has
documented that damage. And it’s not mere coincidence that throughout the
United States, the school districts where student achievement is lowest are
those where the poverty rate is highest.

In the case of Vargas and the school board, we’re watching a
very difficult personnel problem and a very complex governance problem play out
in full public view. I think for both sides, the needs of Rochester’s children
are their first priority. I’ve observed many of the players, on both sides, for
a long time. I don’t think any of them are in it for themselves. They’d be
crazy to put up with the grief if their interest wasn’t in something much more
important.

Given the tension between the board and the superintendent –
which didn’t originate with this dispute – and given these latest developments,
I can’t imagine this will end well. Vargas’s contract ends in June 2016, and my
bet is that we’ll get a new superintendent then, if not before.

Could this relationship have ended better? I’m not sure.
Criticizing the players is easy. Knowing what we ought to do now is
considerably harder. I don’t have any ideas, other than to repeat this: The
challenges imposed by high poverty levels make it almost impossible for urban
school districts to succeed. We shouldn’t be surprised when tension and turmoil
break out.

And there’s a reason that these blow-ups don’t happen as
often in more affluent suburban districts, where the education success rate is
higher. The real problem is the poverty, not the personnel.

This article appears in Mar 11-17, 2015.