The newly convened Urbana School District Facilities Committee, presented as the ultimate decision-making body1Board President Poulosky commented that the Board will have to accept their decision, whatever it is. in the casus Wiley, – an egregious attempt to disband a successful majority-minority elementary school, – had its second meeting on May 9th.
A few patterns came into focus, all familiar.
One is the administration’s reliance on raw power2created with the acquiescence of the Board: the voting members of the Committee who are direct reports to the Superintendent, Dr. Ivory-Tatum, outnumber the independent members two to one. And the administration is not shy of using this power: in a vote on a procedure, the administration’s team unanimously quashed the proposal by the independents.
The other pattern is the remarkable vagueness of the data the administration feeds the public. Is there a shortage of classrooms in the district or an excess? Is the student population projected to grow or to stay flat? Is the district awash in money, or should we worry about every penny? The administration’s relation to reality is, how should we put it, playful, so that you never know for sure3unless you are ready to embark on an endless process of discovery through FOIAs., what is what.
The last, and perhaps the most insidious pattern is the intense (and intentional) equivocation in the goal setting.
What is the Facilities Committee is set up to achieve? The Committee charge reads
“the committee will review the comprehensive needs of all USD116 buildings and programs while also considering the financial resources expected to be available to the District.”
Charge for Special Facilities Planning Committee
Such a review has nothing to do with the acute situation of Wiley families, teachers and staff. As stated, this is a strategy forming exercise, and strategy is the central function of the Board, its principal duty4neglected so thorough over the past few years, that it might sound as a surprise to them..
The reason why the administration5the administration, not the Board created the charge for, and the composition of the Committee, despite it being, on paper, the Board’s body: a yet another evidence of how the Board neglects its basic duties and obligation before the district’s citizens and taxpayers. created such an omnibus charge is not a secret: it opens the doors to agenda manipulation6Agenda manipulation is a term in social choice theory indicating the power that those who can formulate what the (democratic! well meaning!) body votes on. I wrote a short post with a toy example illustrating how it works, but in essence, if it is up to you what is up to vote, you can achieve just about anything. We see it in the national politics, where bizarre entities, like CRT, become drivers of public sentiments and political decisions, and we see it at the local scale at USD116, where systemic mismanagement is presented as fight for equity., a key tool in the administrative toolbox.
A telltale sign of agenda manipulation is an ever-shifting story of what is needed. A couple of months ago, the administration was telling us that “We currently have the funds, personnel, and expertise available to complete an ongoing Facilities Committee Goal to fully abate Wiley Elementary in SY24,” sort of implying that that was the actual goal. Or not: on the same slide deck, they also asserted that the Committee is to consider options including
“Renovating Wiley to reopen as a 6th neighborhood elementary school; Renovating Wiley as a “Destination Location” (e.g., International Baccalaureate, Balanced Calendar, Magnet School or STEAM/Math Academy); Possible site for Whole School Dual Language School; Middle School Secondary Campus 6th Grade Center or Specialized Center for 6, 7, 8 Dual Language; New Central Office location”
USD116 administration presentation from 2.8.23.
Now, during the last meeting of the Facilities Committee, Dr. Ivory-Tatum said that she wants a Secondary Campus for the 6th Grade. To quote:
one thing that [Committee Co-Chairs] said is that they really wished as superintendent that I would have just come forward like I’m doing right now at a meeting in January and just said: “Okay this is what we need to do. We have done all the math, we have done all the work: Board of Education, we need a sixth grade [center].” The Superintendent continued: “however I don’t know if you watch the same Board meetings that I watch 7the audience – predominantly her subordinates, – laughs here. but that is not a space that we’re in right now, and again that is not how I usually operate.”8If there is anything that we know for certain about how Dr. Ivory-Tatum operates, it’s that she abhors the public gaze, and that she is afraid of public inquiry. Thanks to her for the honest acknowledgement..
Meeting recording: many thanks to Better with Us Urbana, for making it available, and to M. for drawing our attention to this bit.
Is this really what the Superintendent (or whoever is driving this show) wants? Hard to say, – the truth can be anything. They might want to please the bond underwriters, by borrowing $20 million (and then happily deciding where to spend it). They might want to make some local contractors happy. Or they might indeed be fanatically beholden to the idea of a “whole school” for the Dual Language program, and ready to demolish anything in their way. Whichever it is, they won’t tell you, because scrutiny is poison for such goals, and because manipulating the public is their game, and they are good at it (unlike, say, turning around bad schools, or maintaining good ones).
I admit that they might just succeed. Wiley families and community activists are outnumbered and not supported by the Board. Worse, the district voters are so apathetic that a seat on the Board remained unfilled.
Yet not everything is lost. The key to withstand this agenda manipulation is to set firm goals and criteria on which they will be evaluated. The Facilities Committee should demand a session with the Board to explicitly formulate these goals and to set up the criteria. If the goal is to speedily spend $20 million, it should be stated. If the goal is to resolve disciplinary issues in Urbana Middle School 9accumulated there during the illustrious reign of Dr. Wiemelt by dispersing its students to a new building, this should be stated. If the goal is to quickly remove the traces of asbestos from Wiley building and to restore the community, it should be so stated.
Right now, the Board has created a committee with the charge that can be shaped into whatever the administration wants. We got used to those maneuvers, but for a fresh eye, this is perverse, to put it mildly. The Board, by its charter, can, no, ought to set the agenda. Superintendent and their apparatus are there to merely implement it. If the Board is unable to formulate what its goals are, then the Committee should quickly dissolve itself. Asbestos abatement is a mundane matter, that does not require a special committee finding creative ways to spend twenty million dollars, or to disband a successful school. The charade of participatory democratic process we observe is bad for the district’s kids and for district’s future.