Meet District 150's new Chief Turnaround Officer

At the July 25, 2011, board meeting, the Board of Education approved the contract for the new position of Chief Turnaround Officer (CTO).

A generic job description for a CTO:
The chief turnaround officer will direct and coordinate academic and fiscal activities working in concert with the administrative team, school turnaround officers, and community partners, to improve student achievement. Manage the operational plans related to the work being done in the district’s lower-performing schools through the School Imporvement Grant. Duties also include monitoring turnaround school performance data, aligning resources with the district’s education plan and establishing early warning systems to ensure compliance with state and school board standards. In identifying new targets and shared strategies, the CTO will also be establishing and implementing strategies that provide for increased learning time and ongoing mechanisms for family and community engagement among other duties related to accountability.

I am Geraldine (Gerri) Russ Cox. I am a native of North Carolina. I grew up in the small Eastern North Carolina town of Smithfield, North Carolina. I later attended NC A&T State University where I earned both my bachelor’s and master degree. I also attended Gardner Webb University where I earned a Master degree of Educational Administration.

I am a wife, mother, and grandmother of three. My husband and I live in Rural Hall, NC with my mother and aunt. We also share our home with “Teddy Bear Cox” our 40lb. Chow dog.

It has been my pleasure to be an educator for almost 30 years. Helping children learn is my passion and life! I believe given Phenomenal effort success is enviable.

School resegregation

I don't think it is a stretch to assume that the vast majority of parents feel that their children should be allowed to attend close, safe, healthy, successful, neighborhood schools. They don't think about any federally-imposed busing or desegregation orders.

Even if parents don't think about issues of desegregation, school districts must. In most cities, inner city growth patterns and NCLB are forcing school districts to take a careful look at what it will take to bring equality to education.

NAACP Says North Carolina School District Shows Return To Jim Crow
Post by Associated Press in Nation on Dec 3, 2010 at 5:58 pm
RALEIGH, N.C. – The country’s most prominent civil rights group has come to Raleigh to draw attention to what it calls a growing erosion of the gains made since a 1954 Supreme Court decision made segregated schools illegal.

Using Wake County’s ongoing debate over school diversity as a backdrop, the NAACP is holding a national conference on education in Raleigh to argue that schools around the country are, in essence, returning to Jim Crow-era patterns of segregation.

“Resegregation is on the rise,” said the Rev. William Barber, chairman of the state NAACP chapter. “The rates now are worse than in the 1970s.”

Wake County has been the scene of acrimonious dispute since the school board voted to scrap a decade-old policy that used busing to achieve socio-economic balance in public schools. The NAACP and other groups have staged protests and marches and filed a federal civil rights complaint. Barber is among several who have been arrested in demonstrations against the end of the policy.

“School boards across this country are rolling back the clock to the time before Brown vs. Board of Education,” NAACP national president Benjamin Todd Jealous said in a statement. Jealous was scheduled to address to the conference Friday.

But that sentiment is out of touch with both the reality of public education and recent Supreme Court rulings, according to Roger Clegg, president of the Falls Church, Va.-based Center for Equal Opportunity.

A 2007 decision by the court found that school districts can’t pursue integration policies by using students’ race as a basis, which Clegg argues is what busing for diversity amounts to.

“Even if you think there’s something desirable about having a politically correct racial and ethnic mix, it doesn’t justify the enormous costs of engaging in racial discrimination,” he said.

Clegg also challenges the claim that schools are becoming more segregated, arguing that falling percentages of white students matches the declining number of whites in the population overall.

The term “segregation” doesn’t refer to demographic change, but to legal policies explicitly designed to keep people of different races separated from each other, Clegg said.

“If you use that definition, not only is there no resegregation in the United States, there is not a single segregated school in the United States,” he said. Source

Related articles:
Racial Tensions Roil NC School Board; 19 Arrests
New School Board Has N.C. Worried About “Resegregation”

Pam Schau - The Making of a Victim

It’s amazing to see PIAien’s come to the defense of “outsider” Pamela Schau. Schau, the former Treasurer/Comptroller of District 150 was let go this past Monday in executive session immediately following a regularly scheduled BOE meeting.

Today, the pjstar has actually done a background story on Schau being let go, as if to imply that the District did something wrong in cutting Schau.

Even though Schau was hired by the former administration, she has supporters in Peoria who are coming out of the woodwork. Would there have been any controversy if former interim Superintendent Durflinger had let Schau go? I doubt it.

The controversy is because Dr. Granita Lathan (a black woman) cut Schau with the swiftness of a professional/executive/administrator who knows when an employee is not up to par.

Let’s look at a little bit of what Schau was up to while in Peoria...

From the May 24th Board Meeting minutes (hat tip to Jon):

“Ms. Schau reported that when the budget was adopted in September it was based on the prior year and had some flaws and now we have documented all needed changes. An amended budget has been prepared that shows our best estimate of how the district will end the year. Administration is recommending that the amended budget be put on display for 30 days and a hearing be held on June 29, 2010.”

When comparing the revised budget presented at that June 29 meeting with the original budget dated the prior September, one of the prime differences was that “Purch Serv” (an expense) from the operating budget was $4MM higher than budgeted, with no real change in operating revenues (thus the operating budget as a whole was $4MM worse than previously expected). The natural question is how much of that difference was an admitted error and how much was due to overspending, presumably by others in authority?" [*under Schau's watch]

Additionally, there were at least two occasions that Schau gave the Superintendent erroneous information regarding spending for summer school and adult education. Oh, and let us not forget when ten (10) clerical workers were given raises, even though Durflinger said he knew of and approved "three to four people" but no others [*under Schau's watch] .

But for some reason the Journal Star didn’t raise any of those issues. They chose to phrase the article in a light that invites commenters to make this a black and white issue.

Pandering to their audience has paid off, because the commenters on pjstar.com are rising to the occasion and the fear of the black lady from North Carolina, who is bringing all of her “friends” to take all of the District’s money and brainwash the children of Peoria continues.

Today, Pam Schau is an unwitting, hard working victim, who was “fired for reasons unknown”. Karen McDonald et al, has done such a great job of painting Schau as a victim, one would think they were hired to do her pr.

*[under Schau's watch] = my words.

UPDATE @ 3:00 p.m.: Interesting, do my eyes deceive me? What happened to the usual race baiters in the pjstar speaking on the Schau issue. Take a look - not one racist comment is appearing today. HOW RARE IS THAT? Great moderation.

UPDATE II, August 14, 2010:

speakmymind1, 1 day ago, Report AbuseReport Abuse
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Geeze... did Schau get the axe for another african american female from North Carolina? And how did that Lathan asskisser/cheerleader Debbie Wolfmeyer ever get on the school board in the first place?

Guess I spoke to soon.

District 150 has their eye on a particular candidate

District 150 is prepared to announce that Dr. Grenita Lathan is their preferred candidate for the position of Peoria Public Schools Superintendent. Although no official appointment will be made until all due diligence is completed, she will be coming to Peoria soon for an official introduction.

Dr. Lathan is currently the Interim Deputy Superintendent for the San Diego Unified School District.

In 2007, a staff member at Guilford County Schools, in North Carolina, where Dr. Lathan was a Principal at the time described Dr. Lathan as follows: An individual who leads with,”…vigor and compassion, strength and courage, humility and respect – beckoning all the while for all of us to come alongside and share in the grand adventure of educating children and shaping the future”.

Yeah, we are gonna need ALL of that for District 150. Bring it Dr. Lathan.

Articles on Dr. Lathan:
Taking Initiative a Look inside Guilford County Schools

Struggling School Comes Out on Top

Tough Test Beginning for Magnet Programs - if she can bring a Montessori Program to District 150 - we just might be on to something...

$1.00 per day not to get pregant

Paying girls $7.00 per week to not get pregnant. On the surface it sounds good, but couldn't that be considered a form of euthanasia? Girls in the program attend 90-minute meetings every week at which they receive lessons in abstinence and the use of contraceptives. Should they be paying boys too? What do you think?

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A buck-a-day -- that's the incentive being offered to young girls to keep them from getting pregnant.

The group College-Bound Sisters was founded at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro by Hazel Brown, a maternity nurse who thought too many teens were having babies.

Brown said she hopes the program, which pays $1 each day to 12-to-18-year-old girls, will keep them from getting pregnant. In addition to remaining pregnancy-free, the girls must also attend weekly meetings.

Under the program, $7 is deposited into an interest-bearing college fund that the girls can collect once they graduate high school. The program is funded by a four-year grant from the state.

Program director Laurie Smith said nearly 100 percent of the girls who finish the program have gone on to graduate college.

If a girl drops out or gets pregnant, her money is divided among the other girls still in the program.

Read entire article here.