District officials in the Kingston City School District bristled at claims from a parent that they’d been secretive in their goals of meeting New York State Shared Decision-Making requirements.
During a school board meeting held on Wednesday, November 8, parent Britta Riley accused the district of conducting meetings on shared decision-making “behind closed doors.”
“I’m here today because most people probably don’t realize that there’s a really important piece of legislation in the works for our school district that could impact every meeting at every school and every committee working on district-wide issues,” Riley said. “In fact, this particular piece of legislation is a document that needs to be drafted. It doesn’t exist yet, and this document has to do with who gets to have a say in the most important decisions that get made around our schools, around our district, and many of the inner workings of our educational system here in Kingston.”
Riley compared district-level shared decision making to the Constitution of the United States.
“It might remind everyone of a certain document that starts with ‘We the people….’” she said. “It’s basically an opportunity for a constitutional convention, and this section of code lays out very specific ways in which that constitutional convention is supposed to happen, and who gets a say in a meta level on how this gets drafted. The reason why most people probably have not heard about this is because it is happening behind closed doors.”
Since 1994, the state Department of Education (NYSED) has required school districts to approve a shared decision-making plan, then filed with the district’s county BOCES before final approval at the state level. NYSED recommends that administrators, a member of the school board, community members, parents, teachers, teaching assistants, support staff and students should be included in the process whenever possible.
Committees of the shared decision-making body cover subjects such as accountability, budgeting, communication, community involvement, extracurricular programming, health and safety, parent involvement, student performance and in-school procedures. Committees may also help set the standards to evaluate student improvement in standardized testing, graduation rates, attendance, and physical, social and emotional growth.
The state also recommends a districtwide and building level cooperative planning committees. A biennial review of the shared decision making process includes representatives of various stakeholders.
Riley claimed that a current draft of the district’s shared decision-making plan was composed exclusively by district administrators, “even though that’s only one of the required memberships. The other membership that’s required is by parents. We need parents to get to decide who gets to represent themselves in this constitutional convention.”
Superintendent Paul Padalino countered that the District Leadership Team (DLT) had its first meeting on July 11 of this year and that it included representatives from many constituent groups.
“Several members of this board of education are part of that committee along with 14 parents, (and) reps from every (school) building,” he said. “At our meeting in October, our second meeting, we had 28 of the 40 members were present, 14 parents. We had representatives from the Boys & Girls Club, we had representatives from Family of Woodstock, from Cornell Cooperative Extension, from Pointe of Praise, and from Radio Kingston, as well as several board members, several administrators, teachers and 14 parents who were there.”
Padalino said that over 20 parents sought inclusion on the DLT after an open call in June, and that everyone who applied was accepted and invited to join the process.
“It’s not going on behind closed doors,” Padalino said. “And no one was told, ‘No, you can’t be on it.’”
Trustee Steven Spicer agreed with Padalino that the DLT meetings were open and well attended.
“The room when we had our meeting in July was huge,” Spicer said. “The whole town was there…Then we broke up into some very large breakout groups to solve some huge educational problems.”
Padalino added that a draft shared decision-making plan was shared during the October meeting in order to solicit feedback from various constituents, which will then be reviewed in February.
“The administration doesn’t write, doesn’t approve, it doesn’t adopt anything,” he said. “Only you (the school board) do…There’s no cloak and dagger here. There’s no hidden agendas. We are moving forward trying to get this through..This will go through many different iterations to the policy committee, and then back to you.”
Trustee Jennifer Fitzgerald commended the superintendent for breaking standard public participation protocol by addressing Riley’s claims during the meeting.
“I think questions from our audience are really important,” she said. “They show what is sort of important to them. So being able to answer their concerns I think is really important. And I appreciate that you’re giving time to do that.”
Fitzgerald added that she also appreciated the notion of a “working document,” as the shared decision-making plan is crafted.
“It’s like you said, a lot of iterations it’s going to go through,” she said.“It’s much easier to start with something that is the core of what you’re going to be working on, to sort of help it organically unfold into something that we want.”
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