If you could share with us through the Chair who the leaders of the various programs are and what their certification is, I would appreciate it. You said Mr. Brown is in charge of the seven areas?
Mr. Brown is actually a construction person, but that certification isn't needed for that particular position.
The person who oversees the project is an administrator in my office. The areas of careers, the seven areas, the certification is needed for the classroom teachers. 130
Well, how would he know if they are doing what they were supposed to? MR. WILLIAMS; how would he know that the teachers are doing what they are supposed to?
Or the people who are in charge of the various programs.
The people who are in charge of the various programs are from those seven areas of certification, so the seven areas I have indicated, the people who oversee those programs have expertise in that particular area.
Mr. Brown is an exceptional administrator. The same things that have -- the 131 same rationale in creating that position or appointing him is the same rationale that school districts have used to bring CEOs in rather than traditional superintendents.
I do want to add one footnote. One thing that was not included in Dr. Williams' remarks is in addition to these reforms, we have embarked upon a program of enrolling students -- I don't know if you mentioned this, Craig -- in vocational ed courses in community colleges, in programs like Devry, universities who do a credit as part of our Project Excel program. We are doing something similar with honors and advanced placement where we are enrolling our seniors in university courses for dual credit. This program, I don't know how many we have this year, but we hope that this program will rise into the -- in the coming years will exceed a thousand, but the objective here is to allow our students to go beyond just the modest vocational educational program that may currently exist in the high schools, although obviously we are looking at 132 improving those, but to where we can actually enroll them in bona fide certified vocational ed.
Let's talk about college and career awareness. Who is in charge of that office?
Their function is to provide all of the -- the Geroff function is to do a functioning office. It oversees the federally funded hero grant, that we previously talked a little bit about today. That is number one. Number two, it also oversees the state Geroff function. Number three, it oversees the college and career awareness of functions that we have in each of our high schools. When I say "college and 133 career awareness," I'm focusing on or talking about all of the programs that we have in place to begin to make sure that young people are applying for financial education, that they are taking the field trips to colleges, that they are doing the college fairs, bringing in the speakers, all of the series of activities that are necessary to expose them to colleges and make them aware of them.
And from a previous hearing, is this also the office that is involved with the college scholarship issue?
Do you recall whether the statistics on college counselors, are they supervised by this office as well.
No, they work with this office. They are not supervised directly by them.
The high school counselors -- all of our counselors are supervised by the Office of Specialized Services.
Last year it was 1 to a thousand. And let me point out that the counselors are --
Yes, I know, but there are still far too many. Let me also point out that the dollar amounts that we gave you for the high school office, those counselors would be funded out of the high school office numbers, so I want to reiterate that the budget that we laid out includes programs.
You will show it, and again in that regard, what I would like to see over the past couple years is salaries and fringe benefits for the office. I would like to know any 135 new positions that have been hired in the past couple years as well as the cost. What will probably cover a significant portion of this is why don't you just give me the whole office for the past few years, all the people that work there, title, position, start date, salary. I'm tying to stay focused on the high school portion of this. The high school counselors now with a ratio of about 1 to 500, how often do they see a student?
We don't have an official number. We have created a survey with a student group. We do not have an official number.
Is a student required to see a counselor any set number of times a year?
In the past, students, once they enter high schools, obviously to be programmed for high schools, they would talk to a 136 counselor, make selections and so forth. Once the student has made a selection in terms of what academic programs and/or occupational programs they want, because of the ratio that was exhibited in the past, it just made it feasibly impossible for them to have an opportunity to see their counselor on a regular and on an ongoing basis. What was established to assist with that is what we call in high school advisories, which means there is a period in the day, perhaps about 12 to 30 minutes a day, where high school students 13 would be with their adviser and have an opportunity 14 to talk about all of the preparations and all of the 15 things that were necessary. 16
And what would be 20 your sense of what goes on during the average 21 advisory period in the classroom everyday? How 22 often is the advisory? 23
The advisory in most 24 schools is every day. It is a scripted approach to 25 doing group counseling and group awareness and that 137 kind of thing.
Just as we have moved to standardize the curriculum in the five subject areas including the arts, we are also moving to standardize the advisory. So what is done, what is taken up in the advisory, is descriptive. It is described. It is laid out, so that the advisories are covering areas of concentration that we want them to cover. We want them to be focusing on kind of our broad agenda.
So if a student is not required to see a counselor at least once a year, and you are saying in the course of the school year could actually, if they wanted to, could avoid for whatever reason seeing a counselor, how many students does a counselor see? Is a counselor required to see any number or percentage of students on an annual basis?
Counselors right now -- and, again, I will check with our Office of Specialized Services to see what sort of anecdotal records they keep in terms of the number of times they see a student, which I know that they do keep some form of record. 138 It is possible -- and unfortunately it has been in the past and probably throughout school districts throughout the country -- that as a student you may or may not see your counselor one to three times a year. Unfortunately, because of the ratio and the numbers of students that we have in school that is very, very likely. That is why we have to create other programs that make sure that we expose children to the kinds of things that they need so that since the individual counseling is not as readily available as we would like, we can cover some things that you can do as a group and then make sure that young people are exposed to them.
I hear what you are saying, but you have a position called school counselor, and what I'm hearing you say is neither the student has any requirement to see a counselor any number of times if they could, nor does the counselor have any requirement to see any number of students or any percentage of students. So how do you know what the counselors are doing or whether they are doing their job?
First of all, they are evaluated just like teachers. We would love to set 139 a minimum number of students that the counselors would see, but given the fact that the counselors are overwhelmed with the number of students and probably, if they had the time, they would have to see three, four, five students a day specifically focusing on those individual problems, I mean the bottom line is counselors are evaluated. They are supposed to document the number of students they see. They are supposed to have records of when they see those students, and that becomes part of their evaluation process. But I don't think we set a minimum of --
But if there is no 15 standard for the number of kids I have to see and I am a counselor and I said, "I saw who I could see" and "I sat in my office" -- I'm not saying anyone who do this hopefully -- but I sat in my office, put up a schedule, people knew that I was there and no 20 one ever showed up, how do you judge?
Brenda Taylor, who manages the counseling program, she will come in. No, it is important for her to respond --
-- because you have raised 140 the question. Brenda will come out here and articulate all of the functions and all of the responsibilities that counselors have to perform, and I think you will see that they have very specific prescribed responsibilities, but the bottom line is -- Brenda? Let me ask Brenda if she can come forward. Brenda, the question that has been posed --
Wait a minute. You can wait until she gets over here and give her a proper greeting. When you communicate the message slightly more quietly to her, I'm not making any allegation or charge as to whether people are working or earning their money. What I'm trying to understand is how do we enhance the students' contact or relationship. What additional grounding or foundation are we giving them as they try to figure out a whole host of things that are going on with them including what are they going to do with the rest of their lives. I'm trying to understand what do the folks do and what are the standards on either side. 141 There has to be a mutual obligation it would seem to me between the student and the counselor. Please identify yourself for the record.
Good afternoon. My name is Brenda Taylor. I'm the officer of specialized services and in my office is the responsibility of counselors. With the decrease of counselor/student ratio with having counselors responsible for less students in the high schools and having these comprehensive student support liaisons working in the high schools with counselors, we really tried to decrease their responsibility in responding to crisis and being in a crisis mode and freed them up to really respond to children in career orientation and those kinds of areas. So this year we are really working on freeing them up for the crisis and the crisis response mode, but it continues to be a big issue in our high schools.
Earlier -- and I think you were out of the room -- I was asking the question: It sounded like if you were -- you may not even have to be particularly creative. Students apparently can avoid seeing their -- I'm talking 142 about high school students -- apparently have no 3 requirement to see a high school counselor at any time and, similarly, the counselors don't have a particular responsibility --
Counselors have assignments. Some high school assign counselors by grade; others by career academies. So counselors have assignments and they have a population. They have the information on the population that is assigned to them and they have the charge and the responsibility to connect with that population throughout the school year, be it in groups or meeting with the grade groups to look at the records and the concerns of those students. It may not be one to one, but they have the responsibility of overseeing the progress of the students that they are charged with.
Are you anticipating any further reductions in the student/counselor ratio? And how do you get to a point of even if it were that you knew as a student you would have an opportunity to see your counselor, even if it was 20 hard minutes two or three times in the course of the year, again especially for seniors, even for 143 juniors, trying to figure out am I going to school beyond my senior year, where am I going, what are my choices? I mean, who else are they going to talk to about this? Obviously their parents, but the school counselor has a lot more information.
Our approach towards dealing with the counselor deficiency -- and I'm speaking as a high schooler who saw his counselor once in four years and obviously was not better off because of it.
Three years in community college can correct a lot of damage. So your point on counselors is well taken. There is certainly a deficiency in the number of counselors. In the ideal world we should have a 1 to 100 ratio because even 1 to 500 is -- I mean with -- but our approach is threefold. It is actually fourfold. Number one, let's take crisis intervention out of the hands of the counselors. As you know, we have done a lot of work in crisis intervention. We have crisis intervention teams in 144 the regions who go into the schools when they have hot spots. The whole objective is to free up the counselors from noncounseling activities and to have them focus on counseling. Because in the past counselors were NTAs, safety and security, you name it. They were a jack of all trades. So the first thing is to free up their time, and Brenda, I think, has touched on that. The second thing we have done is we have begun to reduce the counselor/student ratio, this year, this past year, from 1 to 1000 to 1 to 500. Whether we reduce it again will depend on what the final outcome from Harrisburg is, but we want to continue to gradually get those numbers down.
Are there standards, I don't know, state or national standards in this particular area?
There are. I'm not aware of what they are right off the top of my head, but I will get you the counselor on City schools ratio, counselor ration. The third thing that we are doing is cleaning up the advisories. Instead of the 145 advisories being a babysitting service, we want the advisories to be group counseling. That's why the advisories have very specific prescribed agendas. You know, this day it might cover testing. This day they might cover STD testing, sexually transmitted diseases testing. This month the advisories might be focusing on college applications or, for that matter, applying for a scholarship, things of this nature. So the whole idea is to script them. And, finally, the fourth thing worth citing, because, again, it is in the budget, has been to create in each of our high schools what we call student support centers, student support centers which are overseen by counselors but are not run or staffed by counselors, are staffed by what we call counseling interns. They are staffed by what we call the version of student teacher counselors. But they are staffed by social workers, staffed by university interns, and they are also staffed by City Corp, which incidentally has programs I believe in eight to ten of our schools and we have plans to put them in as many as two dozen of our high schools next year. 146 So the objective is you have your one-on-one counseling if you need it, number one. And, number two, you have your day-to-day contact with your advisories. Number three, you have your student support centers where you can go for help on tutoring for help, filling out applications to colleges, to get information about colleges, for help about how to apply for scholarships, things of this nature. So what we are trying to do is we are trying within a limited budget, within limited resources, to bring more counseling and social service support resources to bear in the schools. Again, it's not a complete substitute for a 1 to 100 counselor to student ratio, but, again, these are little incremental ways that we are getting our students more individualized support.
Let me ask one last question in this general area. Whether it's college and career awareness or career and technical education, tell me a little bit about the partnerships, their relationships that have been developed over time or anything that's new with community-based or nonprofit organizations that help 147 put the reform agenda forward.
Councilman, what we had an opportunity to do about a year and a half ago was to put together a task force to deal with the entire reform high school package. We had about a hundred individuals to work with us very succinctly to develop what's become known now as the secondary education movement. As a result of that, those individuals, which consist of the parents, teachers, union members, universities including our own community colleges, businesses and other entities, they came together to work with us to identify what we believe were the urgent needs of high schools in terms of reforming them. We created as a result a strategic plan that we are implementing now. The groups who helped us prepare were instrumental in terms of giving us advice, in terms of giving us from their perspective what they felt the needs of high school students were. You get a different perspective from universities obviously. You get a different perspective from community groups. So we have a number from all of those individual areas that work along with us in the 148 capacity of community organizations. Communities in schools, Philadelphia academies, OIC, I didn't bring a list with me, but there are a number of organizations --
I would also like to cite three examples of expanded responsibilities. Wherever we can, if there are quality legitimate community-based organizations and not-for-profits out there that are already in this field or already have a relationship with the School District, rather than creating a new bureaucracy, we operate within that bureaucracy. Now let me point out that we have worked with community schools in the public education fund, Philadelphia Public Education Fund, and the Philadelphia academies, to, in effect, jettison the programs that they run in the schools that are inefficient and to introduce programs that are more 149 efficient. But just to give you three examples, for example, with the community in schools, our cradle to the classroom program. This is our program where we identify pregnant teens and we assign them with parent advocates and parent trainers, and the goal here is to make sure the babies are born healthy and put in daycare and preschool and that the pregnant teens don't drop out. Rather than to create an infrastructure we are working with community schools infrastructure, the Philadelphia Public Education Fund. Our whole middle grades initiative in the conversions of K to A5 schools and K to 8 schools, that transition is being heavily -- community schools or Public Education Fund has taken the lead in making sure that the middle grades that are being added to those K to 5 schools and the middle schools themselves, that additional professional development is being provided. They are managing what we call our middle grade literacy interns. These are prospective teachers that are being brought in, and they are going to spend a year or two in the schools and then convert the classroom 150 teachers so we can reduce class size. The professional development that is occurring in the schools, the restructuring of the rosters, the preparation that the K to 5 schools need to make both on the capital and professional development side and the scheduling side, so that they can add sixth, seventh and eighth grade, we are not managing that inhouse. We are managing that through the Public Education Fund. So these are just a couple of examples of where we are working with existing community-based organizations or not-for-profit groups to come in and manage major programs for us. The academies, for example, are managing many of our new what we call neighborhood-based career education programs. Again, so where we have not been able to -- we don't want to reinvent the wheel, but these are some examples, and I could go into our partnership with the Red Cross and the creation of Red Cross clubs in our high schools, the Salvation Army, and our relationship with them. So we are partnering with anybody who has an infrastructure out there.
Why don't you get us 151 a full package on that. I just have a few last questions. A representative from the District was here a couple weeks ago. We were involved in a big discussion about the scholarship program. We had a lot of that discussion earlier so I don't need to go back into that territory. I do want to thank you again for the black binder, again in contrast to the big white one. It see my good friend Michael Harris over there. I'm still trying to figure out how to work on this book. And I only mention him because I care about him so much. But it is very helpful to have this at-a-glance sheet, which gives some very pertinent information regarding the District. I would like to encourage you to make sure that as you update that you get a copy to the City's secretary of education. We went through a rather painful experience just a couple weeks ago trying to figure out how many students actually went to public school, and so in that regard what I wanted to ask you is: Do you have up-to-date information on statistics for graduation of twelfth grade students and college attendance, average SAT scores, that kind of 152 information? Who keeps track of that?
We do have some information. Obviously we can retrieve the PSAT and SAT scores for the past three to four school years. We can definitely get that information. The District did not have --
That would be helpful. And could you chart them out year by year so we can see what the trends are?
The District prior to two years ago was not tracking its college graduates.
We have begun to track, but I can't go back three, four, five years and really give you with any degree of accuracy the percentage of students who enrolled in college or, for that matter, remain in college for four years.
At this point -- and I'm glad that you are going to be doing that -- as almost a separate publication, as Councilwoman Blackwell mentioned at the graduations that she attended and many of us will be going to different ceremonies over the next month or so, it seems to 153 me, again, because there are a lot of people who like to talk about public education who may not actually know a great deal about public education, but that has never stopped them, this kind of information, which, unless you go to every graduation, you would never be able to figure out what is going on, and the students go and then the information actually dissipates into the air, it might be actually helpful for people who care about a public education to get -- almost if the District would put out some kind of -- I don't want to call it a report card. That's about the last thing that a high school senior wants to see, but how many people graduated, how many went to college, the breadth and wealth of the various schools that they go to, the kind of information that you hear at a graduation where we had 400 graduates, their total amount of financial aid was $8 billion or whatever the real number is. And if you did it across the system -- and I think it has really been a challenge. You obviously are able to articulate at about 78 RPM anything that anyone would want to know about the District, but for those who probably listen a little 154 slower, I think that the District's ability to really communicate a message of what is going on in the schools, the progress that kids are making, that many kids actually do graduate, many do go on to college, some go to the finest colleges and universities in the United States, if not in other parts of the world, and, again, unless you are at that particular graduation to hear about Jane or Joe or whomever, you would never know it. And so whether it is during the summer or at least by the fall when people are thinking about schools again, some kind of report as to what our students have done and what they have accomplished in an aggregate, I think tells a very different story than what most people would know.
Full agreement. I agree with you a hundred percent. It should have been done many, many years ago. Let me point out that the SRC, and not to get ahead of the SRC, has laid out a number of categories that -- they have set out a number of goals for the District and they want the data reported in a manner that is consistent with those goals and objectives, and they focus on literacy, 155 academic achievement, number of students in honors and events placement courses, percentage of students graduating going on to college. The categories include equity because early on you asked a question about music teachers and art teachers. In other words, they directed us to develop an equity template that looks at class sizes, counseling ratios, et cetera, so literally every school will have an equity report card and you would be able to go to that school and say, "Do they have a gym teacher or music teacher? Do they have an honors and advanced placement course? These measures that matter, to refer to the list, also include safety and capital. So our mandate this year is to present an end-of-the-school-year report that lays out baseline data according to those measures. So I think when you see it, I think you will be pleased because it really does in principal what you have been requesting, and it is long overdue.
Great. Two last issues: Safety in the buildings. There was a -- we went through a process a couple of years ago. We eventually figured out, I 156 think, what we wanted to do and ended up on the same side of the issue with significant leadership by my colleague Councilman Mariano, chair of the L & I committee. We passed legislation in this Council with regard to an annual inspection of school buildings which some thought was an incredibly onerous and burdensome process or procedure. Many of us felt that it was something that went to the heart of ensuring to parents that our buildings were safe for their children. Can you give us an update on what's happened in the, I think, two years since we passed that bill?
Since the bill passed, we have completed 65 percent of the identified violations. An additional percent are in the 18 process of being corrected and there is a remaining 19 10 percent that have not been completed. 20 You know, all told, while we would like 21 to have gotten them done faster, I think the fact 22 that in such a short period of time we are close to 23 90 percent of the way complete on fulfilling that 24 mandate, I think is a testimony to Karen Burke and 25 her very capable, very able staff. 157 We anticipate by the end of the summer every single violation will have been corrected and then, like its investment in our new curriculum models, you make that heavy investment up front, but then just a modest amount of money will allow us to maintain. So, hopefully, once we have corrected everything -- and, once again, I think we are months away from completing everything -- we will have -- then it will just be a matter of us never allowing us to get into that serious situation again.
Is there a full report that could be made available to the members with an explanation of the kind of information that you just shared?
Yes, there is. In fact, it is by category and it is by building. So we will be able to identify what we did in each of the individual buildings.
That would be helpful. Lastly, I know there has been some concern that when either the preliminary report or it could have been the final report from a couple 158 months ago came out, there were some attachments or a transmittal letter that seemed to indicate that some portions of the legislation were not necessarily going to be implemented, that someone else had other ideas about how things were going to be communicated or how things were going to be done. Have those issues be resolved?
Yeah, I think so. My mandate and Karen's mandate has been get everything fixed and not debate whether or not this thing falls into the category. We will fix everything because I think -- first of all, I want to compliment the Council because I think the mandate was long overdue and we can now safely say it was like the drinking water mandate. A lot of people were debating whether or not, you know, the EPA had overstepped its bounds and whether or not these were really serious problems. Now we can say in all of our schools there is fresh drinking water. We have to get all of the fountains in all of the schools to that level. It is the same thing with these repairs. So we do not take an issue with the repairs, and, if you recall, when the ordinance was going through, we 159 did not oppose the ordinance. Now we are 90 percent of the way complete, and I think the public will have a lot more confidence in the quality of the buildings once we are a hundred percent of the way there.
330 buildings, 264 schools excluding the charters, which bring us to about 300 schools, but we have 330 public school buildings.
About how many of them are actual school buildings where students are every day? Is it 264?
We occupy about -- there are 264 schools. Some have more than one building. So there are 264 schools.
I think there are 48 now. With the three additions, up to 48.
Okay. So 264 and 48 is 312, and you are saying that there are 330. So there are 18 other school buildings that may be connected to some other 160 buildings; is that what it is?
Yes, and in the 330 buildings I wasn't counting the charter schools. Those were 264 schools, 330 school buildings. Those would include gyms, annexes, additions, little red schoolhouses, Bartram branches. Like Bartram is one school and it has four branches, so that would include the Lankenaus that are part of Germantown and the Randolphs that are part of Dobbins.
So if we take -- I don't want to have an argument about the numbers. 330 buildings plus 48 charters; 378 school buildings.
Now, who is responsible at the building for general safety issues, maintenance, many of these schools naturally have heating and air-conditioning systems.
About a hundred are air-conditioned. We are making progress there.
But the engineer has principal responsibility. Obviously the principal is in charge of everything, but the engineer has that on-the-job responsibility.
We are budgeted for approximately 514; however, we have 47 vacancies. Part of the vacancies are made up by an apprentice class.
For the most part, the apprentices have been drawn from the cleaning ranks out there. We have a cleaning classification called a cleaning leader. Those positions several years ago were red circled; that is, their wages were not allowed to increase because the District was reconfiguring its cleaning staff. However, they made available to people in the cleaning leader 162 title the ability to go into the apprentice classes. So, in essence, we have been creating our own building engineers through, I think, great training inhouse of people who already worked for the District.
Hold on for a second. Is there a license or certification you have to have to be a building engineer?
Yes, sir, you are required to have a license. It is a City license.
A City license? You don't have to be like a certified engineer or have a --
Class A engineer's license. This is based on a test that the City gives?
Are all 467 of your filled positions -- do they all have a license, engineer's license.
Yes, excluding, of course, apprentices who have not sat for that license. 163
And these individuals are responsible for major systems in the buildings.
Yes, they are. Well, they're responsible to the extent of the monitoring and preventive maintenance that they can do within their purview, so they are overseeing the heating system, if you will, but when repairs are needed of a major way, that goes to a centralized maintenance mechanics system.
No, I think they are all covered and some with multiple engineers if they are a high school.
You have 514 positions, 47 vacancies, 467 that are filled and with your vacancies some are being covered by cleaning leaders who are going to apprentice class; is that it?
No. By training an apprentice has to be accompanied by a licensed engineer, so it isn't as if you take an apprentice and say, "Here. The school is yours." 164
So you are saying there are no apprentices that work by themselves?
I'm just jumping in here, but I will have to check for you. They should not be working for themselves.
You said they should not be working by themselves. How do we know that they are not working by themselves?
I'm going to ask that for you. They are apprentices until they have passed their exam.
And tell me the difference between high-pressure and low-pressure 165 systems in buildings?
We don't have any high-pressure systems. Those were converted some time ago.
They do not, sir. They do not have to have a licensed engineer. I asked the law department on that. You will need engineering services on some of these buildings, but the requirement that someone sit in the building as a licensed engineer eight hours a day and so forth is not a requirement.
So you are saying the engineers are not at the building all day?
I'm saying -- I am saying that they would not have to be. For example, you could have --
Yes, presently we have an assignment that way, but you could have a rotating 166 assignment on engineering.
What happens if something happens at the building and the engineer is not there?
We have relief engineers throughout the system. We have a central number. We have other engineers, and actually we have an adequate number of engineers.
I hear what you are saying, but I'm also hearing something that you are not exactly saying because it sounds like you are going to a new phase at some point in time. You have been very careful to say they don't have to be there.
First of all, I don't want anybody taking this that we are hedging some kind of new assignment system on there. What I'm saying is if the question is legally must they be within the building, the answer is no. 21
Let me point out that as we move forward and we build little branch high schools with 250, 300, 400 kids, you might have an engineer that could serve both of those buildings. The bottom line is you work within an existing budget, 167 you have to spend your money efficiently. You don't need a full-time engineer in a building with 250 kids every day of the school year. That does not mean that we are planning on doing something, but the bottom line is we certainly retain the option, particularly as schools get smaller. Also, I will tell you nationally, if you look at some of the big cities, you know, if you go to San Diego and you look at Chicago and you look at, for that matter, Pittsburgh and some of these others, you don't always have one engineer in that building all day. So, again, we are not planning a change in policy, but we certainly retain the option of having an engineer serve more than one building, particularly in cases where we have two or three or four of these very little, tiny schools where we have maybe 250 to 300 to 350 kids, and an engineer can easily cover both buildings, particularly since we no longer have these high-pressure boilers. So it is just a question of using our resources in the most cost-efficient manner.
I understand the use of the resources. You know, I'm trying to keep track of the money. I guess my concern is it is 168 really back to the safety issue. I mean if I -- I don't -- obviously anything could happen in a school, and I understand on the one hand you said you don't have the high-pressure systems, but I mean there is at least, put the air-conditioning aside, I mean, most of the schools have boilers for heating?
And they have to be set or adjusted or something has to happen to them?
Could be. There are also systems out there -- if you were going to build, you would build as smart as you could to put in boiler and heating systems that could have remote reads on them where you could set them remotely.
I understand that, but unless you are really going to borrow about $20 billion you probably won't be remaking all of the schools, so, I mean, when a parent sends their kid to school, if it's one of the smaller schools, now you are telling me that there is not necessarily 169 going to be someone at that building to make sure that everything is in place correctly?
First of all, you don't need somebody in that small building every day of the school year or, for that matter, every hour of every day of the school year because when you have engineers -- if you have an engineer that is going to serve more than one or two of these small buildings, you would expect them to visit the building, but just wouldn't camp out most of the time because there is just not a lot of responsibilities for them to do. The question is, is the lack of an engineer in a small building every hour of the school day every day of the school year putting the kids at risk. The answer is absolutely no. This is not something that is unique. I think this School District has been slow to come to the realization that you don't have to have a fixed, full-time person in every site, particularly as we move towards a much -- a school district with much smaller schools. The sharing of engineers may be something that we may want to retain the option of. And, again, it wouldn't affect a lot of schools. 170
Is there some minimum number of engineers that the system will always need?
Well, for safety and even more so for the maintenance of some of the equipment that you have in there and seeing that it runs appropriately because it is a utility issue as well.
I will tell you this though: We will probably spend upwards of $20 million on new boilers. Every major renovation or most of them will also include obviously renovations that impact the engineering responsibilities and obviously any new school built, whether it is an elementary or high school, will be state of the art.
Understand my sensitivity here. I understand from a management standpoint you may not necessarily want or need a person of that high expertise to sit in the building every day for every hour that it is open. On the 171 other hand, you can cut back so much that between the things that need to be done daily and management of the utilities and the like, you could hurt yourself. Third, you know, we presently have -- and we don't have to go into all the details and there is no assignment of any issue here, but I have had the experience that at the Barry schools I think the boiler either flared up or blew up, something happened to it, and as a result we had no more school at that location. I will put aside any of my parental concerns with regard to the schools and just stay at a safety issue. Are there engineers at the charter schools?
You know, I'm not sure. I don't think all the charter schools have a full-time, fully deployed engineer. I think the mandate is -- Jimmy, do you know? I don't know right off the top of my head.
Why would a charter school be dealt with differently in this particular instance than a regular public school? 172
Councilman, I don't know if you go to the Archdioceses schools, charter schools or public schools. You don't necessarily need a licensed engineer there. Some of your heating systems are, frankly, just like you have at home with a hot air furnace. A lot of our little schoolhouses are hot air ventilation and air-conditioning.
I understand that, and if we had the Archdiocese in, I might be asking them. But for the moment I don't have them here; I have you here.
I don't think the charters are subject to the same mandate -- I can get you an answer on that -- that the public schools are. For example, the charter schools --
The charter law exempts them from a lot of the mandates that public schools are subjected to.
For example, teacher certification. They only have to have 75 percent of 173 their teachers certified.
I understand that, but this is a building safety issue that should be across the District.
Lastly, have there been layoffs with regard to maintenance staff at the buildings, school buildings?
There have not. What we did, sir, is we converted our positions to eight-hour positions. In the past the District had been staffed with a number of five-hour daily positions, and we believe that we want full-time cleaners in our buildings, so there has been a conversion to that.
Have any people lost employment as a result of the conversion?
There has been no loss of employment now; however, we do have some five-hour employees, if you will, that have not converted to those positions, and they may be an excess.
That was the most excellent explanation of what I think -- first they 174 didn't convert to the thing and then they -- I mean, are they working or are they not working?
Through attrition we will trade out certain positions, but we have not laid anybody off. And one of the reasons that the School District has been managed so inefficiently is because it was staffed with five-hour positions as opposed to eight-hour positions because we were paying more for maintenance and custodial work, and the bottom line is that these budgets are not balanced magically. They are balanced because we have to make tough decisions. So we have not laid off any maintenance staff, but we have through attrition converted from five-hour positions to eight-hour positions, and that means the net number of individuals working in the schools has declined through attrition, not through layoffs, but now at least we have a work force and we have people working eight hours as opposed to five hours.
Are they covering the same amount of area or job responsibility, the converted eight-hour people as compared to the five-hour? 175
The whole building inside/outside, do they have the same responsibility?
Of course we are under discussion with 1201 on some job change parameters, but I would point out too that every step that we take is compared to national statistics on cleaning and the square footage cleaned in the district per worker is somewhat lower than it is nationally, meaning nationally you would go and find per worker something like 25,700 square feet and we are below at 24,000 in aggregate numbers.
I would like to leave that where it is. This is my last question: About 10 or 12 years ago the City through its financial situation and with the assistance of the state created, at least for us, this new thing called a five-year financial plan, and I think the District in its documents usually gives us about a five-year 176 layout on the finances. What I would like to ask you, and I'm sure you have probably done this, although I have not seen it publicly, is there a five-year educational improvement or educational achievement plan that lays out in terms of your vision and the SRC the kinds of outcomes and progress and bench marks that we want to see children achieve? Let me take that back. That we want to -- because that will take us into old language that will make people's faces red. Just outcomes educationally, managementwise as well as the financials of the District. Is there a five-year education plan?
Yes, there is, and the SRC will be making that public shortly.
That was just a straight-up question I just made up at my desk.
The answer is yes, there is a five-year plan with specific goals as set by the SRC.
I would like to have Lee Whitaker and Hugh Allen up to the table, please. (Laughter.) 177
I would like to ask them about the office -- that's fine. You know, it is like that commercial on television. Ask Paul Vallas a question and ask Lee and Hugh. It is just priceless. So I will leave it at that. I am finished, Mr. Chairman.