Interview with a director of pupil personnel services. Franklin City School’s Pupil Personnel Services: An Interview David Profitt University of Dayton

Interview Date: 4-29-04

Director of Pupil Personnel: Steve B. – Franklin City Schools

Is there an organizational model utilized by the district (i.e., organizational chart)?

An organizational model is a function of the superintendent’s office. Though one exists, it is not used in Steve’s job. Steve does have a job description, but it has not been revised since the 1980s, and with all the various legislation which has been implemented since then, the description is no longer useful. Steve is on his own in how he carries out his job. He considers his job to have “themes” which loosely define what he does. The three top themes would be Curriculum work, which is almost completely state mandated (he used to work in developing curriculum); Staff development with curriculum; Curriculum mapping; Staff development plan, managing federal entitlement programs (monies received to operate programs within the district); oversee the educational services staff; working with the tech department on technology issues as they relate to instruction and curriculum; and working with entry year teachers and the entry year program.

Dr. B. has yearly goals which become part of his plan. These can change from year to year. Personally, Steve considers himself to be very fluid, yet task and project oriented. He is a project manager. His office was very orderly, and he could point to any section and specifically report on the project it represented.

Description of social, economic, political, and cultural factors that contribute to service delivery in Franklin.

In Franklin, they often deal with students whose lack of experiences have contributed a lack of academic progress. They deal a lot with academic interventions for the lower grades, social service programs, support systems for students who are not making progress due to environmental factors. Compared to wealthier districts, much energy is spent in this area. In other districts more parents may be involved, gifted students would garner more attention, college preparation may receive more focus, etc.

The job is always different in different communities. Programs evolve because of individual community needs.

What techniques are particularly helpful in administration and management of services (i.e. computer technology, staff meetings, staff evaluation procedures)?

It’s not the technology or plans, but a management style and the people themselves who make the system work. Dr. B. speaks in glowing terms of his faculty and staff, from the secretaries to each and every specialist. He is a great supporter of open communication and respects the chain of command. He is not here to oversee every problem; rather, he oversees individual overseers, and the people under them first attempt to tackle all problems. He accomplishes things through others. He is their support when they need it, making sure they have the tools they need to do their jobs. He expects his employees to be honest with him, and he expects the assigned jobs to be done, and a chain of command to be followed. Classroom problems are fixed in the classroom, building problems are fixed in the building, etc. Take care of the small things, so they don’t become big things. Take care of every day’s problems that day.

Dr. B. give credit to his organizational skills in keeping things running smoothly. He’s read Seven Habits for Highly Effective People many times, and did seem to be a walking, living commercial for Covey’s book. Like Covey, he is the master of his calendar.

As far as technology, Steve considers e-mail to be one of the best time savers out there. He no longer has to bother people in the middle of class/meetings, but can instead send and receive messages at everyone’s convenience. He does not miss the days of phone tag or having to bother teachers in class.

List the responsibilities of the Director of Pupil Personnel:

Top responsibilities include managing the educational services department. This includes the personnel and the things they do. He doesn’t micromanage; he expects his employees to do their jobs. His focus is on the big picture, and orchestrating the big picture.

Another part of the job is dealing with curriculum and assessment issues. He wishes he had more time to focus on curriculum, but doesn’t. Steve estimates he spends twenty percent of his time there. Assessment continues to take a larger portion of his time as new state requirements come into effect. The job of organizing, preparing for, and tracking tests is a large part of his job.

Staff development, designing and monitoring staff development plans

Managing federal titles and grants that the district receives. There is no grant writer in Franklin, but Steve has been involved in writing many grants. He considers grant writing a shared responsibility. In his opinion, everyone needs to be a grant writer. They would get more money if more people were working on grants. Managing the mandates of “No Child Left Behind” is terribly time consuming. These are new issues that no one had just a few years ago.

What are the job descriptions (which indicate the role and function) of the various pupil personnel service specialists working in Franklin?

The clerical staff (Curriculum secretary and Special Services secretary) is Steve’s right hand people. Like all good administrators, he realizes that it’s truly the secretaries who keep things together.  They allow him to get done what he needs to get done.

The education supervisor works with most of the day to day issues. Steve is only called in on very hot button items, such as 504 complaints.

School psychologists work with special ed needs and in the case of Franklin, a school psych heads up the crisis team. School psychologists also make sure assessment services are done legally and in a timely fashion. They are the lay lawyers of the district, keeping the district legally sound.

The gifted coordinator (Dr. B. estimates that 3% of students are in the program receiving direct services, and 6% receive indirect services, such as Honors classes or AP classes). There are three members of the gifted staff.

School Counselors provide individual counseling, consultation, dealing with conflict, personal safety, and a lot of real world issues (esp. with the younger grades). They are members of the intervention assistant teams (IATs) and must have good conflict resolution and people skills. Jr. High and High school counselors spend a lot of time dealing with scheduling, test coordination, and more often than they wish, crisis intervention.

Dr. B. also feels the media coordinator holds an important position, but she, along with many others, was recently let go with two day’s notice due to budget issues.

Additionally, the school nurse is essential in overseeing school health services. He or she would be responsible for overseeing student selection and referral for medical care, caring for ill children at school, watching for abuse and neglect, and keeping records for all students. Nurses are also in charge of student medication administration and first aid administration. Much of the school nurse’s time is spent in paperwork.

Describe various documents (Provide a brief description of each) which could guide the planning, administration, management, and evaluation/accountability of the district’s pupil personnel services.

• Guidance Plan:

  This plan is outlined and board approved every five years. The job descriptions of the guidance counselors comes from the guidance plan.

• Superintendent Assurance Form:

  This form basically assures grant givers that the funds will be used with integrity. It is signed by the superintendent.

• ODE Management Information System Disability Child Count Data

  This report includes counts of students with disabilities who are considered residents of the district for Title VI-B Flow-through purposes, in public or nonpublic schools. The students counted in the report are receiving special education and related services in accordance with Rules for the Education of Handicapped Children or Rules for the Education of Preschool Children with Disabilities Served by Public Schools and County Boards of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, as reported via EMIS. Districts should not report students who have not been identified.

  For a full explanation of every page of this report, please see the ODE website The following link uses Dec.2000 as an example:
  http://www.ode.state.oh.us/emis/documentation/emis_december_child_count.asp

• ODE Management Information System District Profile

  The District Profile, available through the ODE website was formally known as the CUPP report. It contains useful statistics on school districts in Ohio classified into areas of demographic information. Areas include personnel information; property valuation and wealth information; local tax effort information; expenditure information; revenue by source information and student outcome and other related information. Additionally, the new District Profile includes comparisons of each individual school district’s statistics with statewide and similar districts’ statistics in over 600 pages (one page per district). These comparisons can be searched online (they will find similar districts for the viewer)

  For a complete explanation of every line of this report, please see the ODE website:
  http://www.ode.state.oh.us/school_finance/data/policy_research/f2003_district_profile_letter.asp

• ODE Division of School Finance Form (SF-12)

  This form was (not used after 1998) an accounting of all monies utilized by a school district. Each numbered line of this form shows various values of income spent on students, administration, etc. Sources of income are listed (the most surprising being that lottery revenue accounts for approximately 17.5% of total revenue). Other income is separated into each source, such as state aid, federal aid, etc.

  Recently (post 1999) many reports are available on the Ohio Department of Education website which give a variety of yearly data. For example, in 2002, lottery funding to Ohio schools totaled over $603,000,000.00. Good money, but I must admit I was saddened to see this figure, as it represents half of all the lottery dollars spent, mostly by poorer people who would be much better off spending their money on items such as food, clothing and shelter.

  Most similar to the old SF-12 is the SF-3 report. This report documents payments to schools, divided into monies for various disabilities and special ed categories, gifted students, transportation, MRDD, etc. While a general understanding of the amounts of monies used in education is made available to the public and obtainable from these reports, their full details would be best understood by a school financial specialist.

  Other reports available on the ODE website include district settlement reports, budget reduction reports, tuition rate reports (shows fiscal year revenue for each district), as well as many others.

• Pupil Profile

  The ODE pupil profile reports are supposedly available for any district for the years 1980-1998. However, when one tries to access the profiles, the site shows an error.

  Were the report available, it would show the total statistics for students in a district.

  Individually, a pupil profile sheet will list a student’s personal stats, including age, grade, special education documentation including known strengths and weaknesses, medical notes, and general comments.

• Vital Stats for the Community

  There is no “form” the district uses for this data. Steve is friendly with people on Franklin’s Chamber of Commerce, so a simple phone call will answer any questions he would have in this area.

• Approved Special Education Units

  There is no longer unit funding. The term is a misnomer. Monies (dollars) are received from state and federal sources based on the number of kids in special education categories. These dollars are used to operate special education programs. Franklin has 19 special education teachers and a speech specialist. Classically, a special education teacher is a “unit.”

• Pre-referral Intervention Plan (such as IBMFE)

  Used by the IAT and the special education supervisor and drafted by the special ed. supervisor.

  The plan follows the levels process (four levels of intervention).

• Dropout prevention plan

  There is no drop out prevention plan in Franklin. However, the way they do business is showing improvements, as graduation rates have decreased from 76.8% when Dr. B. took the position 11 years ago to 87% currently. Everything the district does is designed to keep kids in school and make them successful in schools.

• Crisis intervention Plan

  This is an extremely detailed plan put together by a team led by school psychologist W. Terrill. This team has been called on not only in Franklin, but in several surrounding communities as well.

  Please see http://www.sch-psych.net/archives/000643.html for a detailed report on the development of this plan.

• State of Ohio School District Profile (Numbers available online)

  This information (District Report Card) is used for the community. The community is given an annual report card showing the scores for the district. It is sent directly to the households. Long before the community is told, Steve has looked up the information online and knows exactly where his schools stand in comparison to other schools and state standards. The profile focuses on hard data, and several positive programs and information are not shown to the public.

Summary

I enjoyed my visit with Steve. Though it may be different with others, Steve was a walking and breathing example of everything Covey writes about. He operates with independence and authority, yet seems to have the up-most respect for each and every one of his employees. Steve has been with Franklin for 11 years and has seen steady improvement in school scores and graduation rates since that time. He feels his experience in teaching has served him well, and his unofficial statements would reflect a desire to see all school workers spend time in the classroom. This way, everyone would have a chance to see and work with the true product of their efforts, the students. This would also give all workers an appreciation of the talent needed to teach.

Steve is a good example of an overseer. He understands he could never do everything required on his own, but he realizes he must be knowledgeable of the many jobs performed by the many specialists under him. Much of his job is paperwork (as is the same with those working under him), but he is by no means a “paper pusher.”

Filed under: EDC 539 & 573 Administration of Pupil Personnel Services & Orientation to the Educational Process
Copyright: May, 2004 - David Profitt