Leadership Vacuum Hinders School District POINT OF VIEW Board Member Voices Frustration

December 17, 2009 by Anonymous

Leadership Vacuum Hinders School District
POINT OF VIEW Board Member Voices Frustration
BY STEVE SHAFER The Oklahoman
Published: December 14, 2009

Two years ago I registered as a candidate for the Oklahoma City School Board with high hopes and expectations. Today, as the board’s District 4 representative, my hopes and expectations persist but only under a shadow of gnawing frustration.
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My frustration stems from the painful lack of urgency displayed by our chairman and board. Monthly, we "go through the motions” that keep this district afloat, merely maintaining the status quo. We are running in place, stuck in the business of the district rather than working on what the district should look like three, five and 10 years from now.

Our board is uniquely governed by a publicly elected chairman rather than a rotating presidency filled by board members. The chairman’s seat is the epicenter of our district’s power, where vision is cast and agendas are set. With MAPS for Kids in 2001, city leaders purposefully concentrated power in the chairman’s seat with expectations that the public nature and associated accountability of this position would generate results.

Nearly one year into her term, however, our chairman, Angela Monson, has yet to cast a vision or craft an agenda revealing a credible plan for transforming our schools into a nationally recognized urban district. Why would someone run for chairman without a plan for dramatically reforming our schools which, for nearly 10 years, have been undisputedly in need not of marginal tinkering, but of massive overhaul? I fail to see that our chairman has any comprehension of the gravity and public nature of her position, or the degree to which patrons are watching and awaiting the long-overdue delivery of excellence promised by 75 city leaders whose names appear in the "MAPS for Kids: Building a Learning City” document.

Not to concentrate all of my frustration on our chairman, it is time for our superintendent to fill the leadership vacuum left in her wake. Hiring Karl Springer was the most important step of progress made during my first two years on this board. After a stifling decade-long bout of turnover, Springer brings competence and a persevering commitment to do whatever it takes and stay as long as it takes to achieve excellence in our schools. To Springer’s credit, he has worked patiently under three chairmen during his short 17-month tenure. With no strategic plan in sight after Monson’s first 10 months, it’s time for the superintendent to take the reins and lead our board through a strategic planning regimen that will generate results.

"Excellence” will not spontaneously appear in our schools. It must be pursued and earned through the hard-fought execution of a carefully scripted strategic plan. Our chairman has no plan and our superintendent’s handcuffed "shotgun” approach in the chairman’s lurch will not cut it. I have patiently waited for the intended leaders to do their job while our schools labor under the weight of urban decay and years of administrative dysfunction. In 2010 I refuse to wait any longer, and so should you.