Today, July 2, 2009, in the matter of the suit referred to in the post below, Judge Letourneau ruled in favor of HSD 1J (the Board and the District) on all aspects of the complaint. It’s no secret…the Argus called me minutes after the verdict was rendered. Not having been in attendance at the trial, I couldn’t comment, and because our attorney, Larry Brisbee, is the official source of all commentary for the time being, I have nothing else to say.

But you know that I will eventually.

Being sued for doing public service apparently comes with the territory. Anybody can sue anybody, no matter how dumb it seems.

An article about the suit against me and other school board members, and the Board, et al,  is here. The background article is here. And the official Hillsboro School District 1J description of the situation is here.

For a decidedly one-sided view (and it’s not mine)  from the local paper, the Hillsboro Argus, read here. (Read here for my history with this reporter/editor.) I have a comment on the Argus article in the forum that follows it. For those of you who appreciate logic and critical thinking, the introduction of a lesson on sophistry should amuse. BTW, Mr. Hughes’s comment (in the article) on “fiduciary” is a reference to my prior post on RepairKit. He and his political crowd have a habit of pirating original verbalizations and giving them a negative spin back to the originator. I don’t have a lot of patience with that nonsense.

That all being said, I hope this partially explains my distraction of late.

With the trial on Thursday of this week, I’ll be out of touch until we hear the ruling. I’ll post it here.

Oh, and hello to the locals. Smile if you’re friendly!

From US Legal.com:

“A fiduciary duty is an obligation to act in the best interest of another party. For instance, a corporation’s board member has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders, a trustee has a fiduciary duty to the trust’s beneficiaries, and an attorney has a fiduciary duty to a client. (This might lead you to believe that a school board member has a fiduciary duty to the school district and its patrons.)

A fiduciary obligation exists whenever the relationship with the client involves a special trust, confidence, and reliance on ithe fiduciary to exercise his discretion or expertise in acting for the client. The fiduciary must knowingly accept that trust and confidence to exercise his expertise and discretion to act on the client’s behalf.

When one person does agree to act for another in a fiduciary relationship, the law forbids the fiduciary from acting in any manner adverse or contrary to the interests of the client, or from acting for his own benefit in relation to the subject matter. The client is entitled to the best efforts of the fiduciary on his behalf and the fiduciary must exercise all of the skill, care and diligence at his disposal when acting on behalf of the client.”

Why do I mention this now?

At our regular School Board meeting last night we heard from some people highly placed in the youth athletic community who greatly value on the completion of the Lincoln Street Elementary School Complex, which includes building three dedicated athletic fields for use by the children of Lincoln Street and the community at large for evening and weekend athletic events.

Some other members of our community, through a web site and letters and some biased articles in the Hillsboro Argus, encouraged the ouster of incumbent Board members (who ran for office in this month’s election) with the idea that the replacements could undo the current Board’s decision to remain on course with the building of the Lincoln Street fields. (This failed coup had the support of at least one Hillsboro City Council member and a former mayor.)

It is fortunate that these replacements did not find themselves in the position of choosing between their fiduciary duties to the School District and their private interests with regard to the preservation of the JB Thomas Middle School building. Why? Because failure of a fiduciary to perform in accordance with his or her duty carries penalties according to law.

I have to wonder if the City’s “political” crowd really thought this all through.

Cross-posted from Straight Talk.

This is also a cross post from Straight Talk, April 19, 2009...

Mark Orton, who, through his blogs and activism, has helped his neighbors participate in the HSD 1J boundering process (see my sidebar under “Community Commentary”), published a letter on The Argus “Keep It or Can It” blog that shines a light on the twisted reasoning process behind our former mayor’s comments on the completion of the Lincoln Street Elementary School complex, and the demolition of JB Thomas Middle School at the Lincoln Street site.

Mark, in this post, taught me a couple of new words.

Here’s Mark’s letter…

Posted by markorton on 04/18/09 at 3:15PM

As a current resident of Reedville and lifelong resident and product of the Hillsboro School District I must support demolition of Thomas.

The plan to tear down the school has been plan of record for YEARS and yet all that FOTOS has produced is agit-prop and a strong whiff of indignation that the the school district will not bow to the wishes of their political betters. Mr. Hughes baseless and hypocritical attack upon the character of the district facilities manager in this thread of comments emphasizes that this is more about politics than the facts.

It is clear that former Mayor Hughes believes that sharing his city’s name with the 4th largest school district in Oregon makes it beholden to the wishes of himself and the ~55 other members of FOTOS. The former mayor and others, like The Argus itself, cannot believe that their provincial view of western Washington County is not in fact reality, that the needs of the residents surrounding do not simply orbit the Hub City.

I want to reinforce the fact that the parents and children of Reedville, Tobias, Indian Hills, Butternut Creek, North Plains, West Union, Farmington View, Lenox and Free Orchards have very little interest in the machinations of the Hillsboro City Council (members past, present and future) with the exception (for some of us) being the twin topics of annexation and taxation.

In his Argus article Mr. Hughes conflated city goals with district goals and, by glossing it all over as “public money”, justified redirecting district resources to a personal project that has nothing to do with education – a betrayal to those of us who believed the bond money would be used as stated. Given the current economic outlook and sad state of education in Oregon, this is the worst possible time to misdirect district resources to a dubious plan to finally make downtown Hillsboro ‘interesting’.

Dr. Lyon and this school board delivered to the entire district, including the City of Hillsboro, a healthy education infrastructure built with a timely bond levy which is the envy of other public entities. That legacy is assured with no need to indefinitely burden the district with a relic of the past just to please Mr. Hughes and his merry band of hipsters.

During upcoming board elections I am confident that every community in the district will reflect on the new and upgraded school facilities and recall the fine leadership that produced that result.

Mark Orton
Reedville

Thank you, Mark! — Hugh O’Donnell

PS for RepairKit readers: there’s a lot more history on Straight Talk if you want to dig.

Honest folks, I haven’t been out of the loop, just awfully involved in the local loop. Here’s a peek at what’s been going on in my world. –Hugh

Cross Post from Straight Talk: SHORT UPDATE ON BOARD ACTIVITIES (April 15, 2009)

Short story: there’s a lot going on.

Long story:

1. Oregon’s in a whopper of a recession and we’re looking at budget recommentdations. Stay tuned.

2. A new charter school (Knova) is looking for approval.

3. Board incumbents are looking to hold on to their positions (and I recommend  that you support them).

4. The Board is in the process of hiring a new superintendent. That’s the most important function of the Board, and I can’t say a thing about it yet.

5. We are in the bargaining process with the Hillsboro Education Association (teachers’ union).

There’s a lot going on, and I would seriously advise anyone looking to replace an incumbent that they take an honest look at their health, the scope of the issues they’re concerned with, and the other issues they’ll have to deal with, plus their willingness to be a good, functional Board member (which, for some candidates, should they slide in, means getting along with some folks they’ve totally dissed). That will be interesting.

As always, the Board’s goal is to maximize the educational experience of our students.

Okay, I’m becoming part of the world rave for EVERNOTE.

I don’t have a policy against making recommendations to my peers that will improve the quality of their personal and professional lives, but somehow, I rarely get around to it. Even when I got an iPhone 3G for my birthday last November, I didn’t tweet, face, or mention it here. And I love my iPhone.

But I have to talk about Evernote. It’s that good. In fact, it’s one of those apps that’s worth buying an iPhone for.

“Your External Brain” is the company’s catchphrase. And right they are. This app is a radical departure from the average note-taking app, e.g., Appigo’s Notebook, which I like because it syncs to the net (Toodledo) and my phone, and is accessible from any computer. So is Evernote. And that’s not all…

Evernotes can be photos, voice, text, paste, drag and drop, or you can snatch entire web pages from the net, or just parts. Evernote has character recognition (in addition to tagging and attributes), so it will search for words you input even in pdfs and legible handwritten notes you’ve photographed or scanned in.

This thing even has geographic search that works off the phone’s gps. If I take a photo of my parking spot row sign at LAX, I can search for it by asking for all notes made within a mile of the parking lot (although I think I’d tag it “LAX”).

Evernote is easy to use and so versatile that I’ll still be finding new uses for it next year.

Oh, and did I mention that a full-service version is free. After I figured out how to use it, though, I got the guilties and signed up for the Premium account (just $5 per month) that features more storage than I’ll ever use, along with high-end encryption algorithms, and a few other features.

Check out the Evernote web site, the blog, the podcasts (talky, but informative), and sign up. Mac and Windows clients are available, and the Windows Mobile phones and others will handle it too. A BlackBerry app is in the works.

Evernote was not designed to be a GTD (Getting Things Done by David Allen) app, but functions as a companion program to any of them. You can’t make good lists of things to do if you can’t remember what it was you needed to do in the first place, right? I use Evernote along with Toodledo, a task app.

As a teacher or administrator, can you imagine being able to capture and catalog all the cool ideas you’d like to implement to improve student achievement? Now you can, easily.

I still use my own brain, but it’s getting more rest now.

I don’t know how long this link will be available, but Eric Schopmeyer, a Portland, Oregon music teacher speaks about, not the impossibility of instituting merit pay fairly across the board, but of the disrespect to our profession by pushing the issue.

Right on, Eric!

For another view on merit pay, which highlights how the federal government (a government that intrudes on the constitutional right of the states to handle public education) views the issue, check out Larry Ferlazzo on In Practice.

Folks who run for a school board position usually have a burning passion to improve local education and/or an agenda to change something in the District that unsettles them.

Then you find yourself actually, after surviving an election, on the Board, and — Surprise! — you have no power to change things by yourself. The Board acts as a group, and if you want buy-in on your “agenda,” it had better be a good one, and you’ll need a lot of patience and persuasive ability, because the Board has a multitude of competing challenges.

A prudent new Board member gets humble, settles in, and learns as much as they can about maintaining a good Superintendent-Board relationship, and a respectful relationship with fellow Board members. Somehow, over time, your concerns will be heard by your peers, and the Board will act…as a Board.

Five candidates were able to make the 12 Noon meeting at the Administration Center yesterday. Board members Beth Graser and Hugh O’Donnell hosted the forum, and were assisted by Board member John Peterson and Board Chair Carolyn Ortman.

High on the list of candidate questions was: How much time does the Board require of a member? The answer varies, and it provided a jumping off place for the rest of the discussion about the Board life of a member.

To begin with, there are two meetings a month that average 3-3.5 hours each. The regular meeting on the fourth Tuesday of the month, and the work session on the second Tuesday of the month. Preparation for each meeting involves 1-4 (or sometimes more) hours of reading meeting packets, which are available to the public on District web site.

Board members also have special duties like membership on either classified employee or certified employee bargaining teams. During bargaining, it may seem that your life is not your own! Bargaining can go on for months.

Board members also serve on the Budget Committee with citizen appointees, and may also serve on District teams that address curriculum and instruction issues, e.g., the Middle School Study Team, and the Secondary Assessment and Grading Research Team.

In 2011, Board members will have an opportunity to participate in the marathon known as strategic planning, a very time-consuming but rewarding odyssey that sets the path for the District for the next five years.

The duties of the Board include making policy within the bounds of state and federal law, adopting textbooks, approving new courses of study and abandoning obsolete ones, but most importantly, the Board hires and supervises the top District employee, the Superintendent of Schools, who is the CEO of HSD 1J. There is nothing the Board does that has more impact than that. Yes, hiring the Superintendent is Job One.

New Board members will be trained by Oregon School Boards Association trainers in ethics, Sunshine Law, conflicts of interest, and other subjects that will keep the new Board member from being sentenced to public service for trying to do public service. (You’ve gotta know the rules — no back rooms full of cigar smoke, if you get my drift.)

Where the rubber meets the road is in the Board-Superintendent relationship. No Board member is able to or is expected to know everything about everything in the District. The difference between a passive rubber-stamp Board that nods “yes” at all the Supe’s recommendations,  and an active, decisive, questioning, and effective Board is a bond of trust with the Superintendent. A strong bond of trust, based on transparency, honesty, integrity, and collaborative decision-making, will make for a strong school board and an effective superintendent.

Board Chair Carolyn Ortman, who first came aboard in 1997, is a past President of the Oregon School Boards Association. Carolyn has led our Board to be one of only two Boards state-wide that are recognized at the top level for participation in school board professional development activities. We are a mutually respectful and highly trained body devoted to the achievement of every student in our District.

And student achievement is our mission and the mission of the District.

This is not an exhaustive Board task inventory — we didn’t even talk about school visits and graduations — but it does give a little insight into Board life. I think we did a fair job of giving the candidates a head-up.

(Left to right in the photo: Carolyn Ortman, Beth Graser, Patti McLeod, Rebecca Lantz, Superintendent Jeremy Lyon, Lisa Poehlitz, Hugh O’Donnell, John Peterson.)

Today a fly fishing friend of mine who volunteered at the OHS museum and research library from 1979 to 2000 clued me in that the research library may be shut down for lack of funding. That would be a disaster.

Please visit the petition site to weigh in on the matter, and then let everyone you know about the opportunity to keep Oregon history available.

This resource must remain accessible to keep Oregon history alive. One of the first steps to obliterating a culture or a people is to cut them off from their history. We can’t have that happening in Oregon. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

Anyone else have any ideas on how to get the word around? Please comment here and I’ll do my share to spread the word.

As of tonight, only 20 people had signed the online petition. Surely more of us must care.

Well, it’s good news in an ugly context. Tonight, Adam Stewart, HSD’s Chief Financial Officer, reported to the board that we will not have to cut school days to finish out the school year. According to today’s The Oregonian, possibly a third of Oregon’s school districts may have to cut an average of four to five days, with Portland Schools going from eight to four. HSD still has a spending freeze, but we are going to get through it this year without compromising class time.

Governor Kulongoski isn’t remotely realistic asking teachers to work without pay. I think the guv needs to kick a little tax reform into gear so we don’t have this dismally predictable mess every few years. My suggestion? Reduce and cap income tax, keep property taxes reasonable, and institute a fair sales tax that would capture some revenue from tourists who currently pay very little in user fees for using our beautiful state’s attractions.

I can’t believe that the citizens of Oregon want our state to be a poster child for educational funding stupidity. Will we attract the highest quality young teachers? Will we give our kids the quality education they deserve?

Folks, let your voice be heard. “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore! No more education booms and busts.”

Contact your state senators and representatives. Give them an earful.

My sincere thanks to all the students, parents, educators, legislators, and others who attended the recent rally in Salem to encourage more generous use of federal stimulus funding to mitigate our current mess. Now we just need Ted to let loose of some Rainy Day money, and promote some enlightened tax law that will enable us to avoid these periodic dramas.