The Educated Communicator

Stow Sentry: Campaign violations complaint resolved

Posted on February 6, 2012 by The Avakian Team
February 5, 2012

by MARSHA MCKENNA | SENIOR EDITOR

A complaint filed by the school district and its levy committee with the Ohio Elections Commission alleging seven statements made by a local citizens group during the November 2010 election were false has been resolved.

No action will be taken against the Stow Citizens for Responsible Government as a result of the complaint, which alleged the SCRG made false statements during the election campaign for a 4.56-mill renewal levy.

The district and the SCRG reached an agreement just before the Jan. 26 hearing commenced that a violation had occurred with one of the statements, according to Philip Richter, executive director for the OEC. The commission found a violation with one other statement, and the rest of the complaints were dismissed.

The complaints were filed in October 2010 by Supt. Dr. Russ Jones on behalf of the school levy committee. In February 2011, the Board of Education voted to have the district join the complaint.

According to Richter, the two groups agreed that in a statement the SCRG made that the superintendent “took credit for the first Excellent with Distinction rating while the timeline for his hire can’t support any contribution on his part,” the use of the word “any” was a violation.

The two entities also agreed to dismiss a complaint regarding the statement “Five-year forecasts have been inaccurate and weakly presented.”

According to Richter, the commission did find a violation in the use of the word “ignore” in the SCRG statement, “The treasurer chose to ignore the previous board’s direction to apply for the Meritorious Budget Award, which the previous treasurer earned for the district.”

Richter said the commission voted there was “good cause not to refer the issue for prosecution,” meaning no penalties were imposed against the SCRG.

Four other statements listed in the original complaint were dismissed by the commission as having no probable cause shortly after the filing was made.

“While we are pleased with the findings against [the SCRG], it is unfortunate that we are forced to spend time and resources on matters like this,” said Jones.

In a press release, representatives of SCRG said, “Stow Citizens for Responsible Government appreciates the findings of the commission. Throughout the proceedings, which began with the superintendent filing the complaint over a year ago (process was prolonged by the district’s request for two continuances), the elections commission has been professional and objective. It is unfortunate that the district administration has chosen to expend significant time and resources, with such questionable benefit to the taxpayers.”

According to Catherine Bulgrin, the district’s treasurer/CFO, the legal fees associated with the OEC hearing won’t be available for a couple of weeks.

Board of Education president Karen Powers said, “It’s unfortunate that the school district had to incur additional costs” in the matter.

“My hope is that in the future the individuals involved will exercise better judgment and more restraint concerning their public statements,” she said.

The statements that were dismissed for no probable cause were:

* “The district has experienced a windfall in state and federal stimulus funds. It has benefited from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which the administration used to begin a new, unsustainable program (International Baccalaureate).”

* “Since experiencing such success with AP courses and ACT scores, why is the superintendent introducing the International Baccalaureate Program (IB)? The start up costs are prohibitive, let alone sustaining such a specialized course of studies.”

* “The complaint asserts that other references to IB are misleading.”

* “The district’s appeal declares, ‘Nothing New – Just Renew!’ But there is no substance here to justify the plea. What happened to the Five-Year Strategic Plan?”

http://www.stowsentry.com/news/article/5153504

 

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NY Times: Pennsylvania Schools’ Financing Fight Pits District Against ‘Charter on Steroids’

Posted on February 6, 2012 by The Avakian Team
By 
Published: February 4, 2012

CHESTER, Pa. — The Chester Upland School District is more than $20 million in debt, its bank account is almost empty and it cannot afford to pay teachers past the end of this month.

To make matters worse, the localcharter school, with which the district must divide its financing, is suing the district over unpaid bills.

The district’s fiscal woes are the product of a toxic brew of budget cuts, mismanagement and the area’s poverty. Its problems are compounded by the Chester Community Charter School, a nonprofit institution that is managed by a for-profit company and that now educates nearly half of the district’s students.

The district sees the charter as a vampire, sucking up more than its fair share of scarce resources. The state, it says, is giving the charter priority over the district.

“It’s not competition, it’s just draining resources from the district,” said Catherine Smith, a principal at Columbus Elementary, a district school. “It’s a charter school on steroids.”

The charter says that it is also part of the public school system and that the district, its primary source of financing, has not paid it anything since last spring. The state has taken over payments, but even those are late, it says.

Chester may be a harbinger of fiscal decline. At least six other Pennsylvania school districts are bordering on insolvency, according to State Representative Joseph F. Markosek, the Democratic chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

Chester’s troubles also show just how deeply budget cuts bite in poor districts. With a median household income of $26,000, just half of the state median, Chester has one of the state’s most meager tax bases. State financing makes up about 70 percent of its budget. For comparison, nearby Radnor Township, with a median household income of $85,000, draws just 10 percent of its school budget from state money, according to a town spokesman. The largest share is real estate taxes, at 83 percent.

“Poor schools in this state are underfunded,” said Thomas Persing, acting deputy superintendent for the Chester Upland district. “Poor kids aren’t going to get the same shot as wealthy kids. That’s the society we are in now.”

But the district has been troubled for years. The state took over its finances in 1994 but has since handed control back to the community. Five state administrations, including the current one of Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, have been unable to fix the district. Budget cuts may be painful, the state argues, but they are not the root of the district’s problems.

In December, Mr. Corbett refused to advance the district emergency money, saying it had mismanaged its budget. The district says that the state was in charge as receiver for years and that it left the district with a large debt when it handed back control in 2010.

Whatever the case, the math was stark: the district could not afford to pay salaries.

The district’s teachers tried to ease the pressure by voting to work without pay as long as they were able, a gesture that drew considerable attention. One of the district’s teachers, Sara Ferguson, was invited by Michelle Obama to attend the State of the Union addresslast month, and she appeared on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” on Thursday.

Ultimately, a federal judge intervened in a separate lawsuit by the district, ordering the state to pay $3.2 million, enough to cover the salaries. In the end, pay was only two days late.  Still, the district has money to cover only the next two pay periods. Money to pay vendors, like insurance companies and power suppliers, runs out in the middle of the month.

“There have been money problems, but we’ve never been threatened like now,” said Ms. Ferguson, whose school, Columbus Elementary, was decorated with a poster by students congratulating her on being invited to the State of the Union address.

On a recent Monday, students ran and shouted on the Columbus playground. In the latest round of budget cuts, the school lost its art teacher, its music teacher, its technology teacher, its staff person for the library and even the money for its fledgling band. “The children have gym, gym and gym,” Ms. Ferguson said.

When Ms. Ferguson began teaching here in 1991, she was one of 11 fifth-grade teachers, she said. Now there are only two.

The charter school initially had less than 100 students in 1998, but it has grown to more than 2,600 on two campuses. At its West Campus, a gate with lions on the front and the school’s initials, CCCS, on the painted black iron bars give the impression of a private school. Its wooden lockers are open shelves, and its offices have security cameras that watch every classroom. Each student in third to eighth grades was given an XO laptop, a computer designed to be used by students in developing countries.

“It’s just an entirely different culture that we’ve created — very structured, very respectful,” said Vahan Gureghian, a lawyer and entrepreneur who founded the charter. When the school first opened, “we had zero parent involvement,” he said.

He continued: “Now on any given back-to-school night, it’s packed. Parents are looking at us and saying, ‘I didn’t get an education, but there’s hope for my kid.’ ”

The district argues that the charter is receiving millions of dollars in extra special education funds. And money to the charter also goes toward fees to the private management company of $5,000 per student. The charter says the district has not paid its bills since last April, leaving it no other choice than to go to court. The state was also named in the lawsuit because it has also fallen behind by millions of dollars in payments, the charter said.

While budget cuts forced the district to slash its staff by about 30 percent and cut art, music and language classes, the charter has made no such reductions, Judge James Gardner Colins of Commonwealth Court wrote in a decision on Tuesday that ruled against immediately satisfying the charter’s claims.

Judge Colins wrote that there was no evidence that the charter had been obliged to make any cuts or had tried to renegotiate its contract with the for-profit management company “to reduce its unusually large management fee.”

There is no legal mechanism for a school district to declare bankruptcy in Pennsylvania. It is not clear whether the state would dissolve the district, which has contracts with unions that represent teachers and other support staff. There is a designation of distressed school district, but the state has said Chester Upland has not met the requirements, which include the staff’s working for 90 days without pay.

Mr. Corbett pledged last month that students “will be able to finish the school year at Chester Upland.”

But how that will be paid for and what happens after the school year ends are both open questions. “This is right on our doorstep now,” Ms. Ferguson said. “There’s a question about whether we will even exist.”

 

 

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/education/pennsylvania-schools-funding-fight-pits-district-against-charter.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

 

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Harvard Business Review: Boost Your Career with Social Media, Tips for the Uninitiated

Posted on December 23, 2011 by The Avakian Team

 

11:55 AM Tuesday December 20, 2011
by Amy Gallo | Comments (8)

You’ve heard the horror stories: a job applicant gets turned down because his potential employer discovered his objectionable tweets, or saw pictures of his keg party on Facebook. There is a lot of advice out there about keeping your online activity from hurting your career. But there’s a flip side. When handled correctly, social media can help you professionally. You can use it to enhance your personal brand, establish yourself as an expert in a field, or demonstrate fluency with all things digital. The key is to be proactive about managing your activity and image.

 

What the Experts Say
It used to be that people were deemed to be experts based on their titles, years of experience, or length of their CVs. While those things are still important, especially in some circles, they’re no longer the only ways to show credibility. “Status is much more democratic now. Expertise can be noticed more easily,” says Soumitra Dutta, a professor in business and technology at INSEAD, author of “What’s Your Personal Social Media Strategy?” and coauthor of Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Transform Your Life, Work and World. Social media allows anyone to put their ideas out there and to gain respect, notoriety, and a following. “The opportunity to reach people directly is powerful, and still underexploited,” says Dorie Clark, a strategy consultant and author of the forthcoming book What’s Next?: The Art of Reinventing Your Personal Brand (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012). To make the most of social media to further your career, you need to make a conscious choice to use it for professional purposes, understand what your goals are, and then actively manage your digital footprint.

 

Put your professional self online
Most people have dipped their toes into some form of social media. If you’re already out there, it makes sense to think about how professional contacts, especially potential employers and current colleagues, will see you. “More and more we have to realize that there is no such thing as private space online,” says Clark. Dutta concurs: “Privacy today is something you have to work hard at. You have to assume your actions are public by default.”

 

Commit to using social media for more than personal reasons. This doesn’t mean you have to start a whole new online persona. Some people are comfortable with the blurring of the professional and personal boundaries. Others find it difficult. Decide which social media channels you’ll use for what purposes. For example, Clark makes this distinction: She uses Twitter and LinkedIn for professional reasons and does her personal interacting on Facebook. Dutta says it’s a personal choice that each person needs to make. The key is to think about what people will see when they look you up in each space.

 

How it works
When it comes to advancing your career, there are three things social media is particularly suited for:

 

  1. Building your personal brand. ”It gives you a great opportunity to brand yourself, especially to internal colleagues and external peers,” says Dutta. When people peruse your social media activity, they get a sense of what you’re about. The more you comment on or write about a certain area, the more likely you’ll be affiliated with it. Clark points out that social media has an “echo chamber effect” in which even a small amount of content can go a long way toward establishing you as an expert. It is a medium that doesn’t require credentials to prove your credibility. Dutta says that if you are passionate about a topic and argue your perspective in a compelling manner, you can begin to generate a following. Even if you aren’t trying to be labeled as an expert, contribute to discussions you find interesting, are related to your industry, or you simply want to be part of. “Social media can be a way to demonstrate your familiarity with a field,” says Clark. “If you blog or tweet about a topic it shows that you’re in the game.”
  2. Demonstrating your proficiency with all things digital. ”It shows you’re up on digital trends, which are affecting every company,” says Clark. Employers are increasingly looking for this competency in potential employees. She also points out that this may be especially important for baby boomers: “If you’re over 50, companies are worried that you won’t be able to use social media and other digital tools.”
  3. Learning from your digital network. By design, social media is a conversation. When you post information, people like, comment on, or forward your thoughts. This means that not only can you put ideas out there but you can learn a lot as well. “You have to be open to a two-way dialogue and hearing other people’s points of view,” says Dutta. Becoming part of an online community is a great way to identify and follow trends in your areas of interest. You can also turn to your network with specific questions about your field or even a job search.

 

How to start
Once you’ve committed to using social media for professional purposes, it is easy to get started. Here are three things to do:

 

  1. Figure out what space you want to play in. Before you join the conversation, think about what topics you want to be associated with. “You need to ask yourself, what you want to be known for? What are you passionate about? What are your distinctive views?” says Dutta. Find the forums where other thought leaders are talking about that topic. While it is more manageable to focus on a particular subject or two, you can also dabble. “You can work hard to showcase you’re an expert in a certain area but participate in other conversations too,” says Clark. For example, if you’re in sales, you are likely to have a depth of knowledge in that area, but you can also show that you know something about marketing or finance.
  2. Establish a presence. Give people something to see when they look for you online. One of the easiest ways to do that is to set up a LinkedIn profile. Make sure it is robust: fill out the experience and specialties fields. Provide links to your other social media activity. Then, consider setting up a Twitter account if you don’t already have one. Clark suggests that you commit to posting to it once a day, even if it’s just a retweet.
  3. Generate content. To truly establish yourself as an expert, you need to create a following. Create content that people want to share. “If you want to drive home that you have expertise, post articles that show, don’t tell, you have expertise,” says Clark. If people find your opinions and perspective interesting, they will do a lot of the work for you. Clark says the goal is to build an army of ambassadors who pass on your content to others. “You lose credibility with people if you show you’re blowing your own horn. You need other people to blow the horn for you.”

 

Play by the rules
While social media has very few rules, most companies do. Before you begin tweeting about your work or start a blog showcasing your expertise, be sure to know your company’s policy on social media. “You may not be able to talk about certain industries or what you do for the company,” says Clark. Adds Dutta: “When you’re part of an organization, you are already ascribing to rules and values. In the online space, it’s important you don’t violate that,”. If you are banned from mentioning your job or company, you can still accomplish the goal of demonstrating proficiency in social media by blogging about other things you care about, such as baseball or cooking. While not strictly professional, it might just cause a boss or recruiter to take notice?

 

Principles to remember

 

Do:

 

  • Consider what potential employers or colleagues will see when they find you on social media — you don’t want them to see nothing
  • Decide which social media channels you’ll use for professional purposes — it’s ok to mix personal and professional
  • Create content that others can forward, retweet, or repost

 

Don’t:

 

  • Say you’re an expert — show it by posting compelling content
  • Limit your social media activity to one topic — participate in many conversations so you don’t get pigeonholed
  • Inadvertently violate company policy — check what rules your employer has set around social media

 
Case study #1: What boundaries?
Dany Bourjolly Smith, the director of human capital management at Ross Technologies, an IT solutions firm based in Baltimore, first started using social media back in 2006. She had a basic LinkedIn profile but rarely posted any content related to her work. In 2007, while she was a recruiter at another firm, she needed to hit an ambitious hiring goal within six weeks. To succeed, she thought, “I have to fire every engine I can think of.” So she turned to social media to find candidates and was able to fill the positions within the deadline. Many recruiters use social media to find job seekers and build a pipeline of candidates but for Dany it’s more than a tool to do her job. “It is an opportunity to brand myself as an effective talent acquisition professional,” she says.

 

She is an avid user of Facebook, where she has over 1,700 friends, and her status updates are often a mix of personal and professional. Originally she used the updates to share many of the humorous things she saw and experienced reading thousands of resumes and interviewing hundreds of candidates. Her network responded well, asking questions and requesting more. She realized that inherent in those entertaining posts was valuable advice. She now prefaces some of her posts with “Recruiting Tip:” and offers tactics, strategies and guidance for people in her network who might be looking for a job. Dany sees her activity on Facebook as a way to further her personal brand, which she summarizes as “I connect people”. “Without social media, I might not have established myself as a thought leader,” she says. She may also not have gotten as far in her career. Her current employer, the founder of Ross Technologies, saw what she was doing on Facebook and recruited her. He gave her an offer she couldn’t refuse and the opportunity to run her own division.

 

Case study #2: Social media as a reference check
As the owner and managing partner of Avakian Consulting, Joel Gagne helps school districts and municipalities communicate with the public. It is important that potential clients see Joel as adept with various forms of social media. Therefore, he regularly publishes content that shows his familiarity with the medium as well as his expertise in communications and marketing in the public sector. “It’s about putting myself and the company in a position of being an expert,” says Joel. While he rarely attracts new clients through social media (most of his work comes through referrals), it elevates his profile with potential clients who seek him out. “It becomes an extension of our credentials,” he says. Joel sees his social media strategy as a three-legged stool, with the blog being the center and Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube as each of the legs. In each of these spaces, he posts content about communicating effectively with public constituents. Joel says that his social media presence often serves as a reference check. Prospective customers learn more about what Joel does and they get a taste of what it’s like to work with him. “Potential clients get a better understanding about my business and whether there’s a fit,” he says. Clients are checking that he has a distinct perspective on or experience with the issues they care about.

 

http://blogs.hbr.org/hmu/2011/12/boost-your-career-with-social.html

 

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Turbines up, taxes down in Ohio

Posted on December 20, 2011 by The Avakian Team

 

By Lindsay Vaughn
ntprinceton@newstrib.com
Turbines up, taxes down in Ohio

OHIO —Thanks to the dozens of wind turbines that have gone up around Ohio, the grade school and high school are looking forward to bringing their tax rates down.
Ohio’s tax rates have been high. Last year the combined rate for the grade and high school districts was 7.6806, but in anticipation of receiving more wind farm tax dollars next year, that’s going to change.
“This year the proposed (combined) rate will be approximately 5.9,” said Sharon Sweger, superintendent of both districts.
The rate at the grade school will drop from 3.6486 to about 3, while the rate at the high school will fall from 4.032 to about 2.9, Sweger said.
“That will make our rate similar to surrounding districts,” Sweger said.
Big Sky has substantially increased property values around Ohio, Sweger said, almost doubling the districts’ equalized assessed valuation.
The schools have been waiting for this a long time and had long planned to lower their tax rates once those new tax dollars started coming in.
“Both boards were committed,” Sweger said.
As the districts’ local income grows, they will lose some state aid, she said. However, since local dollars have become more dependable in this economy, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.“We can count on local money coming in. The state hasn’t been as reliable,” Sweger said.The Ohio districts received a very small payment this year from some of the turbines for one month, but they should see their first big sum of wind farm money this summer, Sweger said.
Both boards held hearings this week before approving their final levy extensions. At the high school, the board approved the levy extension of $1,059,775, up from $619,959 last year. The grade school board approved its levy extension at $1,062,411, up from $542,580 last year.
“Trying to capture that wind turbine money, obviously those numbers went up,” Sweger said.

 

http://www.newstrib.com/articles/news/nci/default.asp?article=31366&aname=Turbines+up%2C+taxes+down+in+Ohio

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You get what you ask for…

Posted on December 8, 2011 by The Avakian Team

Cathy Shaffer Olshefski, Pickerington BOE Member:

“If school districts deny the public the opportunity to understand the fiscal challenges of today, then school districts can not expect the public to support future ballot issues.”

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