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The Janesville Schools’ Cautionary Tale for Whitewater

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Down in Janesville, there’s been a debate about whether to adopt a more detailed dress code. They’ve spent more than one school board meeting on the subject.

Just about any other discussion within that district, in that struggling city, would be more useful than an over-analysis of what teachers, administrators, and other employees should wear to work.

The amount of time and contention that Janesville has seen over this concern – peripheral to the substantive teaching of students in that school system – is a cautionary tale: the Whitewater Schools can and should do better than spending time on picayune matters.

It’s worth considering, contention by contention, the defense of an elaborate dress code that Janesville’s superintendent, Karen Schulte, offers. I’ll reproduce her recent remarks of 11.29.12 below, with my replies following thereafter, paragraph by paragraph.

Her remarks in appear bold, mine in a regular font:

As state and national policies in education continue to be examined, many issues are coming to the forefront. This is evident in statewide achievement testing, national common-core standards, global literacy and teacher effectiveness. Included in this reexamination of education in America are standards of professional behavior. Within these standards is an increased focus on staff dress codes. We are no different than other leading school districts across the country that are raising standards of professionalism.

It’s telling that of all the ‘state and national policies in education’ that ‘continue to be examined,’ Schulte doesn’t rank them in any particular order. State & federal, but all in common: a mishmash, a cook’s stew of trending topics.

Setting aside the passive construction (‘policies in education continue to be examined’), one wonders when policies aren’t being examined. There’s also no real explanation of priorities. Does Schulte see a difference in priority between core standards of substantive learning and a teacher dress code? One would hope so, but if she does, then she’s neglected or is unable to describe that priority succinctly.

The Janesville School District has a jointly developed “Standards of Professional Behavior” document, though the Janesville Education Association has not endorsed it. It is a guiding document and calls us to be our best at all times. However, it is vague regarding dress code. The Standards of Professional Behavior is the only document in the district that addresses employee dress by stating “I will wear appropriate attire.”

We are not alone in our focus on dress code. Other leading school systems are defining dress codes for their employees. Here are two samples:

“The Wichita School District is just one of a growing number in the nation cracking down on teacher apparel, and jeans are banned in at least one elementary school in New York City. … Several Arizona schools are strictly defining business casual,” USA Today reported July 30.

“The policies on professional attire adopted recently by districts such as Nicolet, New Berlin and Hamilton outlaw jeans and define the acceptable dress as ‘business casual.’ Most employees working under new dress codes said they thought it was acceptable to expect staff to dress nicely and that it was probably good for their district’s image overall,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Oct. 1, 2011.

First things first. Schulte quotes from a JS story by reporter Erin Richards, but anyone reading the story would see that Richards’s assessment is a casual observation, and almost certainly not the result of a comprehensive survey of teachers in one of the story’s schools, let alone all employees in one of the story’s districts.

Schulte’s whole contention that leading districts are advancing stricter dress codes is too funny: Wichita, at least one elementary school in New York City, and some schools in Arizona. Over three-hundred million people, in fifty states, but the supporting evidence Janesville’s superintendent musters is a few motley anecdotes. An average student, from any of her high schools, should be expected to offer better supporting evidence than Schulte does in this essay.

Even if it should be true that employees elsewhere favor these codes, the kerfuffle in which Janesville finds itself only confirms that Schulte is unable to produce as smooth and agreeable a result as other districts’ leaders.

As we reflect on appropriate attire for all of our employees, it is important to examine the course the district is on in its Journey to Excellence.

One now learns the truth: Janesville is not on a journey to good work, or even a journey to excellence, but a Journey to Excellence. Whitewater needs none of this. We need substantive academic, athletic, and artistic accomplishment, responsibly funded. These accomplishments should be the true priorities of our community.

We’ll not find it by traveling somewhere, and certainly not by crafting bad slogans about metaphorical trips to places of supposed excellence.

Yet, if Schulte wished to travel somewhere, she might consider nearby Elkhorn. (It’s closer than Wichita, after all.) That district’s established a simple, one-page code, with none of the fuss that’s swirling in Janesville.

The district has chosen an evidence-based leadership model. This model embraces standardization of workplace practices to promote efficiency, alignment and quality. Part of the standardization of practices is having uniform policies. It is also about communicating clear messages and defining expectations.

Are you not reassured that our neighbors in Janesville have an evidence-based leadership model? What leadership would not have such a model? What leadership would expect credit for having one? There are, after all, very few places that tout evidence-free or wholly indiscriminate methods of leadership.

I believe all employees have a right to know what appropriate dress looks like, but that’s a difficult target to hit, so writing a dress code policy as a portion of the employee handbook is an attempt to define “appropriate” for all of us. This is no small task because we have 1,300 employees.

This is truly an admission of administrative failure. Schulte and her principals should have been able to create a consensus through coaching and dialogue. Her pleas for greater detail are only an admission of her lesser coaching. It’s not her fault, you see – she has too many employees in her charge.

On the contrary, it’s a more economical and likely explanation to say that the fault is in one superintendent rather than 1,300 employees.

Without a common understanding of “appropriate dress,” we might define it differently. This conflicts with our evidence-based leadership practices that we have defined as a foundation for the district.

Janesville’s superintendent asks for a common understanding, but her essay assumes – falsely – that a common understanding will come only from a detailed document. That’s not true at all. Other districts have not needed such documents or have simple ones, as Elkhorn now does.

I’d ask Superintendent Schulte a question: does she think a society can have law, and a consensus about the law, without a written constitution?

If she answers that it can, then she’ll have to explain why she can’t do for a small district what whole nations do for themselves: achieve consensus without always reducing fundamental principles to a single writing.

If she answers no, then she’ll have to explain the example of a nation like Britain, that is a free and orderly society without a written constitution. Schulte’s goal of a common understanding erroneously assumes it can come only from a detailed, written document.

It’s safer for others to assume that she and her principals have failed at a consensus, and now seek the crutch of a detailed document to support their hobbled leadership.

An employee handbook is an important document to codify and standardize our beliefs and a critical communication tool to share those beliefs with all of us. We are on the path to excellence. We are aligning our efforts, defining our beliefs, and raising the achievement bar for all of us—students and staff alike.

Here’s the unpersuasive conflation of an employee handbook with a detailed dress code. They’re not the same thing. One could have an employee handbook without wasting time on a fussy dress code.

Janesville is free to spend money for leaders who cannot manage to consensus.

No one in Whitewater, however, should make the mistake of thinking that a similar approach for this community would be anything other than needlessly wasteful. If leaders in our schools or school board waste time on a dress code, they’ll deserve not the slightest sympathy. There are better things to do with the limited time that public officials have.

A fuss over something like this is simply an exercise in wrangling & time-wasting.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.5.12

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Good morning.

A sunny Wednesday with a high of thirty-six is ahead for whitewater.

On this day in 1945, the tragic loss of a torpedo-bomber squadron led to decades of fanciful speculation about the so-called Bermuda Triangle:

At 2:10 p.m., five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers comprising Flight 19 take off from the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station in Florida on a routine three-hour training mission. Flight 19 was scheduled to take them due east for 120 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 120-mile leg that would return them to the naval base. They never returned.

Two hours after the flight began, the leader of the squadron, who had been flying in the area for more than six months, reported that his compass and back-up compass had failed and that his position was unknown. The other planes experienced similar instrument malfunctions. Radio facilities on land were contacted to find the location of the lost squadron, but none were successful. After two more hours of confused messages from the fliers, a distorted radio transmission from the squadron leader was heard at 6:20 p.m., apparently calling for his men to prepare to ditch their aircraft simultaneously because of lack of fuel.

By this time, several land radar stations finally determined that Flight 19 was somewhere north of the Bahamas and east of the Florida coast, and at 7:27 p.m. a search and rescue Mariner aircraft took off with a 13-man crew. Three minutes later, the Mariner aircraft radioed to its home base that its mission was underway. The Mariner was never heard from again. Later, there was a report from a tanker cruising off the coast of Florida of a visible explosion seen at 7:50 p.m.

The disappearance of the 14 men of Flight 19 and the 13 men of the Mariner led to one of the largest air and seas searches to that date, and hundreds of ships and aircraft combed thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and remote locations within the interior of Florida. No trace of the bodies or aircraft was ever found.

Although naval officials maintained that the remains of the six aircraft and 27 men were not found because stormy weather destroyed the evidence, the story of the “Lost Squadron” helped cement the legend of the Bermuda Triangle, an area of the Atlantic Ocean where ships and aircraft are said to disappear without a trace. The Bermuda Triangle is said to stretch from the southern U.S. coast across to Bermuda and down to the Atlantic coast of Cuba and Santo Domingo.

This day in 1879 was a happy one for Wisconsin’s animals:

1879 – Humane Society of Wisconsin Organized
On this date the Humane Society of Wisconsin was organized in Milwaukee. Inspired by Henry Bergh, a New York City philanthropist, and his Humane Movement, the state Humane Society was formed to protect both animals and children.  However, with the formation of child protection laws in the early 1900s, the Humane Society of Wisconsin began to focus primarily on animal protection. [Source: Humane Society of Wisconsin]

Google has a sports question for today: “For what team did the NFL quarterback play when he was featured in the first famous Superbowl commercial?”

 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.4.12

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Good morning.

It’s another unseasonably mild day ahead for Whitewater, with sunny skies, a high of fifty-one, and a west wind of 5 to 15 MPH. We’ll have 9h 12m of sunlight, 10h 14m of daylight, and tomorrow will be two minutes shorter.

Whitewater’s Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1945, the U.S. Senate approved full American participation in the newly-formed United Nations Organization. Approval came on a 65-7 vote:

Washington, Dec. 4–The Senate passed by a 65-to-7 vote this evening the legislation to give the United States full, active participation in the United Nations Organization in accordance with the San Francisco Charter that it ratified, 89 to 2, last July.
Voting for the implementing measure, which now goes to the House, were forty-one Democrats, twenty-three Republicans and one Progressive. Opposing its passage were six Republicans– Senators Langer of North Dakota, Moore of Oklahoma, Revercomb of West Virginia, Shipstead of Minnesota, Taft of Ohio and Wherry of Nebraska, the minority whip–and one Democrat, Senator Wheeler of Montana. Senators Langer and Shipstead were the two who voted against ratification of the Charter.

Passage came after seven days of the Senate contest, which reached its final show-down stage in late afternoon as Senators Wheeler and Willis, Republican, of Indiana, sought to require the President to obtain specific Congressional authorization before he could make armed forces available to the UNO Security Council to halt an aggression or to maintain peace.

On this day in 1933, Janesville fought against the inevitable demise of Prohibition:

1933 – Janesville Council Denies Prohibition End
On this date the Janesville Council drafted a “drastic liquor control law” that prohibited serving liquor. The law prohibited distilled spirits, but not beer, at bars, and limited liquor service to tables. Backrooms and “blinds” (closed booths) were also prohibited. The only place where packaged liquor was allowed to be sold was at municipal dispensaries. Further, bars were prohibited from selling packaged liquor. The next day, the city was uncommonly quiet as the 18th Amendment was repealed. For nearly 14 years, the 18th Amendment (the Prohibition Amendment), outlawed the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages within the U.S. [Source: Janesville Gazette, December 5, 1933, p.1]]

From Google’s daily puzzle, a question about literature: “How many men accompany the sailor on his ship in Coleridge’s poem about the sinning seaman?”

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.3.12

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Good morning.

The week begins with an even chance of showers and a high of sixty-three.

At 5 PM this afternoon, Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board meets.

On this day in 1776, Gen. Washington arrived at the banks of the Delaware River:

In a letter dated December 3, 1776, General George Washington writes to Congress from his headquarters in Trenton, New Jersey, to report that he had transported much of the Continental Army’s stores and baggage across the Delaware River to Pennsylvania.

In his letter Washington wrote, ‘Immediately on my arrival here, I ordered the removal of all the military and other stores and baggage over the Delaware, a great quantity are already got over, and as soon as the boats come up from Philadelphia, we shall load them, by which means I hope to have every thing secured this night and tomorrow if we are not disturbed.’

CNN has the story of a dog who’s a toddler’s best friend:

In 1947, a first for Wisconsin:

1947 – First TV Station in Wisconsin Established
On this date the first TV station in Wisconsin, WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee, was established. The seventeenth television station in the country, WTMJ-TV was the first in the Midwest. [Source: University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Libraries]

Google’s Monday question is on geography: “The Canal Street Ferry will take you over to Algiers Point. Since when has this ferry been in service?”

Twitter

Recent Tweets, 11.25 to 12.1

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Cartoons & Comics

Sunday Morning Cartoon: The Snow Man (1940)

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John Oakes offers a succinct description of the plot: “A group of furry South Pole animals build a snow man. They begin to throw snowballs at it. This make him come to life and oh what a vengence he has. Stomps around scaring the living daylights out of everyone. How will they stop him?”

The IMDB also catches a continuity goof at approx. 4:50 in the cartoon: “When the snow man sits down at the church organ, the stovepipe on his head disappears. It reappears in the next scene.”

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.2.12

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Good morning.

Whitewater’s Sunday looks to be cloudy with gradual clearing, and a high of fifty-four. We’ll have 9h 14m of sunlight, and 10h 17m of daylight. Tomorrow will be one minute shorter/.

On this day in 1954, the U.S. Senate voted to censure Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy. Here’s how the New York Times reported McCarthy’s politically fatal day:

Washington, Dec 2–The Senate voted 67 to 22 tonight to condemn Joseph R. McCarthy, Republican Senator from Wisconsin.

Every one of the forty-four Democrats present voted against Mr. McCarthy. The Republicans were evenly divided–twenty-two for condemnation and twenty-two against. The one independent, Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, also voted against Mr. McCarthy.

In the ultimate action the Senate voted to condemn Senator McCarthy for contempt of a Senate Elections subcommittee that investigated his conduct and financial affairs, for abuse of its members, and for his insults to the Senate itself during the censure proceeding.

Google’s puzzle for today brings a geography puzzle: “What “autonomous region” includes nine major islands and an islet cluster, in three main groups?”