Des Moines School Board’s Illegal Superintendent Contract

When the Des Moines School Board began the search for a new superintendent last May, district spokesperson Phil Roeder advised the board it should present a united front to the public and applicants. Only the board president should speak to the media, he urged. He told them to keep things behind closed doors – all bold and robust board conversations should be held internally. They took that part of Roeder’s message to heart.

While the board was unable to present a united front about the person finally selected, they were and remain unified in their commitment to keeping their deliberations and the selection process a secret.

Board member Teree Caldwell-Johnson is so steadfast about keeping things from the public she refuses to explain her vote on new superintendent Tom Ahart’s contract. She didn’t speak during the public meeting at which the vote was taken and when asked afterward about why she voted “no” and her thoughts on the selection process, Caldwell-Johnson offered one of the strangest responses from a public official I have ever heard; “I’m not really at liberty to discuss (my vote) with you. I had my conversation with Mr. Ahart about why I voted the way I did. That’s who I needed to share that information with, not the media.”

No, Ms. Caldwell-Johnson, you represent the people of Des Moines. You owe them an explanation even more than the one you thought you owed Mr. Ahart.

The board’s shameful unwillingness to include the public in the selection of the highest paid superintendent Des Moines has ever had ($260,000 plus an impressive benefits package) should trouble Mr. Ahart’s supporters and detractors alike. The Des Moines School Board failed to meet even the bare minimum legal requirements in the selection of Ahart, the sole internal candidate.

Last week, board president Dick Murphy and three other board members held a news conference to announce the selection of Mr. Ahart and release final details about his contract including his salary. The board had never met in public to discuss, let alone vote on any of this. Since Mr. Ahart’s selection as superintendent and details about his contract weren’t discussed and decided in public, that leaves only one other option. His selection and the details of his contract were discussed and decided upon illegally.

The Des Moines School Board not only abused the intent of Iowa’s public meeting law, they flagrantly broke it.

When addressing the board last May, Mr. Roeder said, “There’s nobody going to tell you this time around that you’re doing it right or wrong. It’s self policing.”

It appears the school board believes self-policing and complete disregard of the public process are one and the same. Oh, and I’m here to tell you what the school board did was wrong.

The Des Moines School Board violated the law when they made a decision in private about who to hire as superintendent and what to pay him. Mr. Ahart should refuse to sign the contract. If the contract is executed, it should be struck down by the Court as illegal.

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Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com 
This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register print edition essay.
It is similar to the Iowa Watchdog piece posted the same day. 

It’s Time for a Des Moines Schools P.E. Intervention

Fact:    Childhood obesity has more than tripled in the U.S. in the last thirty years
         Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, June 3, 2010

Fact:    The Des Moines Schools have made it tougher for students to get a waiver to
         opt out of physical education
         Source: More States Let Students Opt out of PE, USAToday, December 14, 2010

Reality: Something about roads paved with good intentions

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America’s crisis is easy to see.  It is lopping over the belts of our nation’s kids.  Sarah Palin may not believe childhood obesity is a problem and she may find it easy to discount the serious efforts of Michelle Obama to address the issue, but the health consequences for fat kids are real.

The Des Moines School District is right to act.  However, such a serious and complex problem will not be solved by instituting tough sounding policies that, in the practice, only result in student athletes having to take P.E.

Let me explain.In years past, high school students with full academic schedules could take contract physical education as long as they exercised on their own outside the school day or played sports and logged their activity for review by a teacher.  Students who participated in athletic programs such as basketball, cross-country, swimming or other school sports, and those who danced, played hockey or did something outside of the District would be able to claim their rehearsal, practice and game time to meet the minimum physical education standard of the few laps around the school track and Ping-Pong games their fellow students were doing during the school day.  To show they were cracking down on the collective student bulge, Des Moines Schools did away with this waiver.

For the most part, the kids who are playing sports and participating in other athletic endeavors outside the confines of the school day are not part of America’s fat problem.  Taking away the waiver was a bad idea.

Let me cite an example.A Des Moines high school student with a full schedule of advanced classes and fine arts sought the waiver before school began in August.  She and her parents were confident the student’s standout performance on the school cross-country team and her work as a contributing member of the basketball team and other extracurricular athletics would far surpass any standard the District would require.  The guidance counselor denied the waiver and told the student she had to enroll in P.E.   When asked what class should be dropped, the counselor suggested, and I am not making this up, the student drop math.  That was jaw-dropping silly and after plenty of wrangling, the student was given another option.

The United States is falling farther and farther behind in how it stacks up to other nations when it comes to education.  A school system that signals an educator to tell a student athlete to drop math so she can sit through the joke many high school P.E. programs are insults the student and is missing the larger picture.

Here’s what needs to be done.

1. Fix the school lunch program.  As Jamie Oliver’s outstanding exposé on the sorry state of school lunches showed this fall, there is much we should do to fix how we feed our nation’s school children.  This should be a top priority for U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.  His department controls the federal dollars that fund school lunches.  He has done some, but needs to do more.
2. Fix physical education.  P.E. has not changed much since many of us were kids:
   Changing into workout clothes  - ten minutes
   Attendance  - ten minutes
   Instructions about the day’s activities – ten minutes
   Students turned loose to jog/walk the track – ten minutes
   Activity of the day – ten minutes
   Attendance to make sure nobody skipped out – ten minutes
   Change clothes/shower – ten minutes
3. Integrate health education, nutrition and exercise into the curriculum and activities throughout the school day.  For example, we need to teach students why putting the Cheetos downand why walking a few blocks instead of riding in a car are good ideas.

I know I have oversimplified some of this, but not much.  There are great P.E. teachers and I shouldn’t stereotype.  But, you get my point, physical education programs are lacking.

It is time for parents, students and schools to take obesity seriously.  It starts by doing away with policies that deny P.E. waivers to student athletes just because a school board wants to look like they are doing something in the battle to trim waistlines.

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Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com
This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register blog entry.