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Our
Schools: How Leadership
Makes a Difference
Jim Rurak, Former Haverhill Mayor
01/04/07
 The
Department of Education (DOE) lambastes our city for the
lack of leadership in our schools. The School Committee
will discuss the extensive report on January 4. But one
real chance to prove the DOE wrong, and the one recent
chance to show our teachers and students that we really
want to promote better achievement, was completely
botched by the mayor. The real problem is that it was the
kind of mistake totally in keeping with his style of
politics.
Here’s what happened. Over the past two years our
students’ test scores have drop-ped dramatically.
The DOE is, and every-body should be, deeply concerned.
The superintendent, the mayor and the members of the
School Committee rightly reasoned that a major cause of
this decline is that teachers are for-ced to use
text-books which are woefully out of date. Students
cannot “shine” on tests if the texts that are
supposed to prepare them are a dull representation of
what they need to know. The needed textbooks cost
$450,000.00.
So, the committee, acting as a whole, requested that the
mayor submit a loan order for $450,000.00 to the City
Council so that up-to-date books could be bought soon and
the teachers and students could begin to use them. The
reason for the rush is two-fold. Our students need the
books, and, unless scores improve, the DOE might take
over our system.
Everyone was all set to make a major and positive step
toward improving school cli-mate and showing our students
and teach-ers that we’re solidly behind them. The
School Committee made the request for the needed
textbooks and it was prepared to pay for them over time.
Note the School Committee was not asking for the money
from the city budget. It simply required that the mayor
ask the City Council to authorize a loan which the School
Committee would pay from its own budget over four years.
The mayor is the bridge between the committee and the
council. Thus, it was up to him carry the request from
one branch to the other.
Instead of leadership, we got political gamesmanship.
First, the mayor issued a press release claiming full
credit for the idea and for bringing the loan request to
the City Council. Most insiders have gotten used to that
type of thing, but his next move was a disaster. Without
consulting the superin-tendent or the School Committee,
and who knows for what reason, the mayor abruptly altered
the deal. Instead of asking for a loan to cover the full
cost of the books, he sub-mitted a loan order for only
one-half the a-mount. The other half, a full $225,000.00,
would have to come from the current school budget, money
which simply isn’t there. So, on his own, the mayor
changed the deal and essentially wanted the schools to
pay one-half the loan up front.
This would have required the type of cuts everyone tried
to avoid when putting the budget together last spring.
But because it hurt the schools without helping the city,
it simply made no sense. It’s the kind of mistake
only an unseasoned opportunist would make.
Look at it another way. You run a delivery service that
requires a truck. Your truck wears out. Without another
one, you’re out of business. You don’t have the
free cash to replace it, so you go to the bank for a
loan. The bank says of course you can have the loan, your
business can easily make the payments over the next four
years.
Then you get the paperwork back and you discover that the
bank changed the deal and now requires you to come up
with one half the purchase price in advance. The fact
that you don’t have that kind of free cash is why
you went to the bank in the first place, so now you can’t
buy the truck. You go out of business or make deliveries
by foot (our current textbooks).
That limits your customers. While you try to save up for
the cash you need to quali-fy for the loan, you lose good
customers, you don’t make the sales you need to stay
in business. Your business suffers, maybe even fails,
despite your best efforts. (What our students and
teachers are now doing without the books they need.)
It seems the mayor likes to think of himself as the bank
in the above illustration. But a good bank doesn’t
act that way. If your credit is good, you qualify often
for a 100% loan. You pay it off from the business the
loan keeps afloat. Unlike a good bank, the mayor didn’t
care whether the terms he dic-tated would seriously
compromise the ability of the school system to do its
job. This is what everyone, including the
super-intendent, seemed to be saying would hap-pen if the
mayor got his way. The schools do not have the
discretionary capital to pay for one half of the loan up
front.
Ultimately, the mayor caved in, but only because he must
have calculated that there was more political capital in
doing what he had first promised rather than in appearing
to be an emperor without any clothes. His power-play
tactics had backfired one more time. Remember the fiasco
over repairs to the Crowell School?
The real problem is the spectacle this creates for our
students, parents and teach-ers. When we have a chance to
show them we care, that we’ll supply the texts that
we know that they need, the mayor drowns out that
positive message by political games. Perhaps that’s
the leadership the DOE most questions. In any case, it’s
a leadership style that needs to change if our students,
teachers, parents and the general public are to have
confidence in our schools. And it is that confidence and
sense of general ownership that is the true foundation of
student learning and achievement. The DOE website lists,
as one of the defining characteristics of a successful
school district (and I would also say of a successful
city), that it cultivates a culture of ownership for its
challenges rather than a climate of individual praise and
blame. Haverhill needs that, and it needs it now.
*Send your questions comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com
The January 2007 Edition
of the Valley Patriot
The Valley Patriot is a Monthly
Publication.
All Contents (C) 2007, Valley Patriot, Inc.
We publish 10,000 newspapers and distribute in Andover,
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Beach, and Lowell.
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