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parents, clergy, the medical profession community, and business leaders. It is very
important to get the community involved in the educational process. The community is the
customer of the system and it brings different perspectives than the paid, educational
employees. It is imperative that the teams be empowered to function as decision making
entities. The school that becomes exceptional will he the example for the other schools. It is
also recommended that the Education Study Committee, or a committee very similar, be
made a permanent committee with revolving membership. The function of this committee
will be to accumulate the information from the school improvement teams on a periodic basis
and present it to the school board and commissioners. It is past time to lay down blame and
criticism and get on with the task at hand. We can either be content with an average system,
or we can set our sights on a much higher level.
Mr. Turner ended his remarks by using the African proverb, "It takes an entire village to
raise a child."
Questions & Answers
Long: There's been much publicity about the study, and while we don't appreciate that the
report was given to the papers before we had time to discuss it, that's just the way it
happened. We agree very much with some of the recommendations. If the committee chose
to go back and look at this system's '91 SAT scores and the test data for '92, one would see
that no credit has been given for the good things that have started occurring. Did the
committee know that a site-based plan was already in the system and had been for two years?
Turner: We recognize progress has been made, but we didn't try to critique past vs. current
boards. We looked at trying to improve our system. The committee did know that a site-
based concept had been implemented, but we want something where the community is truly
involved.
Long: Each school has a plan and a performance improvement team. Every school has to
set goals. The school board reviews every plan. We have 2,000 employees and they all
have to be trained.
McCall: Was the study committee not aware that the site-based plan was in place? If you
were, didn't you feel it warranted further investigation, since this is a primary
recommendation?
Turner: What we have in mind might be a little different in approach. It might be a little
more aggressive than what the schools already have in place. We feel the community should
be given more authority.
Miller: In reference to investigating site-based management, we had about three meetings
with Dr. Register and his staff. We purposely asked questions about site-based management.
We did not get any answers locally, so we pursued it at the state level.
Dr. Harris: We did talk a little about site-based management.
Miller: I would recommend you encourage the audience here tonight to participate in our
schools and make them the best they can be. We don't need a list in someone's file drawer
to satisfy some state requirement.
Tong: Did you talk about the 9o -minute block classes at West High School?
Miller: Yes, we talked about this and how this plan was adopted.
Laney: Did you make your school visits during the day?
Miller: For the most part the visits were at night. Usually a principal accompanied us. l
was interesting to observe the work on the bulletin boards. I have visited some during the