SPECIAL MASTER'S REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION RE STUDENT SUPPORT DEPARTMENTS
WILLIS D. HAWLEY, Senior District Judge.
Overview
The Special Master has consistently urged the Court to terminate the Mexican American Student Support Department and the African American Student Support Department arguing that they duplicate current functions and that there is little evidence that the departments have been effective. The Court has rejected this recommendation but has required the District to work with the plaintiffs to improve the functioning of these departments. The District worked to develop a proposal with the Mendoza plaintiffs which the Mendoza plaintiffs initially endorsed. However, the District subsequently made several changes and the Mendoza plaintiffs object to a number of these. Whatever discussions the District had with the Fisher plaintiffs appears not to have reached a satisfactory conclusion because the Fisher plaintiffs do not endorse the District's proposal for reorganization and want to start on the development of a new proposal, the fundamentals of which the District appears to be opposed. Part One of this report and recommendation focuses on the limitations the Special Master believes characterize MASSD. Part Two addresses the proposed reorganization of the African American Student Services Department (AASSD).
It should be noted that there is no documented need for the MASSD or the AASSD and no explanation for why the Departments will better serve students than the core departments responsible now for the work that the District's proposals assign to the student support departments.
Part One: MASSD
The MASSD proposal calls for a staff of eight program specialists (PS). The department director, a coordinator and an administrative assistant. The PS are to be based in separate schools but principals in other schools may request support from any of these PS. Presumably, these PS will be based in schools where the need for their services is greatest (though some of the PS responsibilities are not school-based) and it is almost certain that the students in the schools that house the PS will receive more substantial services than other students in the District. When the support of services directly to students is involved, the PS are to focus their attention on Mexican American/Latino students in need of tier 2 or tier 3 interventions. Thus, these staff members are expected to have skills that exceed those of the students' teachers and counselors.
Problems with the Proposal
In order to draw attention to the limitations of the proposed restructuring of the student support departments, the Special Master raises several issues that are not addressed by either the District or the Mendoza plaintiffs:
1. Students in need of tier 2 or tier 3 interventions typically have more problems than those defined by the position descriptions of individual PS. For example, students performing poorly in academic matters are often truant and more likely to be involved in misbehavior that requires disciplinary action. How will those needs be addressed, especially when the PS are housed in different schools?
2. Who is to address the needs of students who are having behavioral problems if the PS in that school is an academically focused person?
3. In many cases, students struggle with particular subject matter. If the students in school A are having trouble in math but the PS is a reading specialist, how will the students be served?
4. Who will serve the needs of the 30% + TUSD students who are not African American or Latino?
5. Who will serve the needs of Latino students who are having behavioral difficulties when the PD assigned to their school is an African American?
6. The District has recently added staff and increased its capabilities with respect to some of the functions to be performed by the departments? For example, staff and their functions have been increased with respect to family engagement.
7. Virtually all of the functions of the PS are the responsibility of other staff members throughout the District. Would it not be more productive to devote resources to enhancing the capability of the people already responsible for meeting the needs of the students with whom the PS would work? A particularly nonsensical notion is that there is a need for another staff person to enhance culturally relevant course teaching and curriculum. The CRPI department, which is responsible for ensuring the integrity and quality of culturally relevant courses, is extraordinarily well staffed (better than any District's support for curriculum development and implementation) and can provide support for numerous teachers throughout the District.
8. Assigning the PS for behavioral matters to be essentially a lawyer and advocate for students facing severe discipline will pit the PS against teachers and the schools. This is what was happening with the African American ethnic studies department prior to the implementation of the USP.
9. Students in families that are in the schools at which the PS are based will inevitably have better access to relevant services than students who are not — if the expertise of the PS in that school is relevant to the problem students are having. The plan calls for principals in other schools to file a request for support for particular students. How comfortable will principals be in acknowledging that they or their teachers cannot deal with their students effectively?
10. The scope of the responsibilities of particular PS vary widely with some of their tasks being much more extensive and complex than others. This poses a resource allocation problem of some difficulty.
The Mendoza plaintiffs identify numerous omissions and changes in the plan they initially agreed to but it is not clear what the consequences of these omissions and changes would be. With respect to the omissions, the District addresses some of these in its response to the Mendoza objections that the District filed on October 7, but since it is not possible to know what effects might occur if the Mendoza plaintiffs' proposed additions are not adopted, the Special Master is unable to make relevant judgments and recommendations.
The sheer volume of the connections, acts of coordination, and other activities that the Mendoza plaintiffs want to see in the plan might be considered evidence that it is not realistic to imagine that eight people can pull this off.
Part Two: AASSD
As noted, the Fisher plaintiffs oppose the District's proposed reorganization plan. Their objections reflect doubt that the District's assertions are correct and take the form of a series of questions and requests for information. The District has made it clear that it will not support the Fisher proposals for reorganization, which the Fisher plaintiffs seem to make with reluctance. It makes little sense to send the District and the Fisher plaintiffs back to the drawing board to find yet another structure for the AASSD that satisfies both parties. Instead, the AASSD, which has been moving to implement the District's proposal during this fall term, should be given a chance to demonstrate its efficacy. To introduce uncertainty to the current staff and to the activities in which they are now engaged, seems dysfunctional.
Recommendations Relating to Both Departments
More than 1,500,000 dollars will be invested in these departments. In most cases, the staff functions of these departments duplicate the responsibilities of staff in other departments of the District. One exception to this generalization is the student mentors who, if they are properly trained, will provide support to students they would not otherwise receive.
If the Court believes that these departments serve vital needs otherwise unmet by the District, the program specialists should be based in a single office where they can learn from one another, identify needs not being met, and be allocated to the schools and students most in need. A primary function of each of the program specialists should be to provide professional learning opportunities for teachers who need to enhance their expertise. If the departments are to provide support throughout the District, it is essential that they be highly expert and they should be paid accordingly. Over time, the PS should be cross-trained so that they can better diagnose the sources of problems and collaboratively design strategies for improvement. Some of the more expert PS could also serve the Superintendent by reviewing proposals under development by the leadership team for the District.
The Special Master does not recommend that the District and the Fisher plaintiffs try again to agree about what action should be taken and to reorganize and re-staff the AASSD for reasons cited above.
District should, as the Mendoza plaintiffs request, develop a rigorous evaluation plan that could be reviewed by the plaintiffs and the Special Master early next term, if not before. The District should evaluate the effectiveness of both departments as soon as possible following the end of the current school year so that any changes in structure can be made before the beginning of the next school year.
The District is suggesting that the roles of the PS transition away from the provision of direct services to students. The Special Master recommends that if the court sustains the existence of the service departments, that this transition occur as soon as possible given activities already underway. If this is supported by the Court, this would allow the consolidation or elimination of the roles of some of the PS (e.g., parent and community outreach could be combined, CRC support and college and career readiness could be eliminated because those functions are the responsibility of core departments and there is no evidence to believe that these positions are necessary. As noted, CRC courses are already very well supported.
Willis D. Hawley
Special Master
