Q&A with Randy Ward
The San Diego County superintendent and former state administrator offers some pointed advice about avoiding state takeover
By:
Kristi Garrett
Fall 2012
Kindergarten teachers have more in common with state-appointed district administrators than you’d think, says Dr. Randolph E. Ward. And he should know, because he’s been both.
Like the teacher confronted with a classroom of unruly tots who must invoke order so children can learn, the state administrator—the official appointed to govern a district taken over by the state—has to quickly triage the situation and build capacity to get the district back on track.
Called Randy by most, Ward is perhaps best known in school governance circles as the “fix it guy” appointed by two state superintendents to run first the Compton and then the Oakland unified school districts when they were taken over by the state. Ward was the fifth state administrator in Compton, serving from 1996 to 2003, and the first assigned to Oakland, where he served from 2003 to 2006.
He’s now superintendent of the San Diego County Office of Education. Hired by the county’s elected board of trustees in 2006, he works to help local school districts avoid state control. Yet it’s his work with students that seems to energize him. Ward was on his way to a medical career when he tried his hand as a classroom teacher, a transformational experience that led him to graduate from Tufts University with a degree in early childhood education and mental health, and then earn master’s degrees from Harvard and the University of Massachusetts and an educational doctorate from the University of Southern California. He even took a couple of years to polish his Spanish skills by teaching English as a foreign language in Columbia and fifth grade at an international school in Venezuela.
Despite his no-nonsense approach to district and county administration, Ward describes himself as a “kindergarten teacher at heart” and remains focused on equity issues and closing achievement gaps.
Although loath to be known as the “state takeover guy,” Ward says his experience can help districts learn to cope with financial shortfalls, offering a grim warning about succumbing to state takeover: “Don’t go there.”
California school districts are experiencing one of the worst fiscal crises in decades, with, at last count, 188 that may not be able to pay their expenses in the coming few years. Historically, it’s been circumstances unique to the district that led to their need for an emergency state loan. What’s different about the fiscal crisis experienced by a growing number of districts today?
Obviously, there’s an underfunding of public education. Usually, when districts found themselves in a potential state takeover situation, it was due to district mismanagement. That’s not the case anymore. We’ve got a lot of districts that are in qualified status or worse, and it’s mostly due to the fact that the state of California has divested in public education.
What assistance can the county office provide to help the district stay solvent?
We provide regional support, we create consortiums, we limit redundancies in infrastructure in districts for savings all along, whether we’re in good times or bad times: payroll, health benefit consortiums, student information systems, JPAs, professional development, technology support—all of that is the work of the county office beyond just the statutory fiscal oversight under AB 1200. Rather than being done individually by school districts, these things can be done as a county or as a region and save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.
Now, that being said, when districts are in trouble we provide budget guidance and help them with assumptions. Quite frankly, most county offices are very conservative in this area. It’s better to be safe than sorry. We provide technical assistance in understanding the impacts of state budget legislative action, such as cash deferrals; we help districts with cash management, with borrowing; and we help them think about multiyear projections.
Other things we can do: We assist in communicating the district’s financial positions for various constituencies; we try to identify problems early for districts as we work very closely with them; and we independently analyze those districts’ budgets to look at inconsistencies or just things they haven’t thought about.
Is it possible for the message about the district’s fiscal condition to come from the county office as a third party, for a reality check to the different employee groups or parents or other local constituents?
We do give a very objective point of view about the district’s financial status, without the politics of school districts, whether at the board level or at the employee association level, whatever it is. And I think that’s a positive. We don’t have any skin in that game in the politics of school districts. We tell it like it is.
But the reality is, districts’ constituencies should not be surprised by a district’s budget. The district’s financial status should be transparent; their cash position should be transparent. How they use resources internally and externally outside of their district headquarters should be transparent. [The county office] can, and the district should be able to, explain in simple terms the impacts of their budgets, particularly as we talk about the impact on educational quality.
You know, a lot of times what is lost in these discussions is the fact that our primary mission is to make sure that we provide free public education for all students and give access to quality education. That should be a major part of the discussion, at the county level, at the local level and at the state level. This is affecting the quality of education in our state of California.
Too often the discussion is around adults’ employment—layoffs—and too much time is unfortunately taken to have those discussions.
So you’re recommending that boards focus their discussions on what the impact will be on the educational program?
The quality of education, the experience of every student in the classroom.
We talk about how many layoffs and class sizes and those kinds of things; how does that impact the quality of education? Class size doesn’t necessarily impact the quality of education. We have to bring it down to a level of understanding for the common person. I think that’s the only way we’re going to get back to the place where we again invest in public education.
If there are boards that still have not budgeted based on Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax initiative failing, what do they need to be doing?
If this tax initiative does not pass, I think we’re going to have one of greatest challenges in free public education that we’ve had since it started. And it’s a major civil rights issue. It’s a major equity issue. It’s going to mean some very difficult conversations that need to occur.
Boards need to be putting in Plan B and C. And they should be talking to their employees and their community all along the way. But again, let’s not give up on the tax initiative. Let’s give it our best college try.
What are steps that boards should absolutely take so they can turn the situation around if they’re in negative or qualified status?
First and foremost, boards need to understand that this is a time that, if you’re going to be a board member, accept that you’re going to have to make difficult decisions and not all people will like your decisions. That’s why you took the job. It’s not always adding and giving more; sometimes it’s taking away. If board members and superintendents aren’t able to do that, they probably don’t want to be there.
Given that, district constituencies should not be surprised by a district’s budget, nor the impact it’s having on students and communities. Forums and communication mechanisms with your constituencies at all levels should be a priority. Not just during crisis, but during good times. The message, again, has to be how much we continue to work to provide quality learning for our students.
So if the public and parents understand what needs to happen in order to continue to provide the educational program, they can help provide support for the board’s decisions?
They can provide support at the local level in terms of helping with resources. They can provide support at the state level in terms of pressuring the Legislature and the governor to invest in public education.
See, the challenge is that up to three-quarters of our voters in the state of California don’t have children in the public schools. You can’t look at this selfishly. You have to deal with what this means for a community: What are the economic impacts of the achievement gap, what are the economic impacts of not being able to grow our own, what are the global work impact issues? We need to get back to “we” as a community, “we” as a state, and “we” as a country, where we need to go collectively, not just what’s good for my child or my student or my school.
Those sound like good messages for the public. What do employees need to hear to help them understand they’ll have to make concessions if we’re going to get through this?
I think concessions have to be more than just fiscal. It’s change, it’s transformation of how we do our work. Too often we focus on benefits and salaries. But as you think about employer-employee relations, there’s more to it than just concessions. Or should I say fiscal concessions.
We really need to get to the place where we have a very efficient public education system that prepares our students for the 21st century. And I mean all students, not just students in certain zip codes. That’s the part of the concessions that I think if we can get to … we’ll have a lot more public support in terms of the financial resources.
Considering the severity of the state’s budget crisis, is state takeover inevitable once a district is in negative certification?
State takeovers are never, ever inevitable. Districts have a choice, and when you work with the constituencies, the stakeholders, etc., it’s always preferred and most successful if everyone comes to the table and says, “What do we want to do? What do we want to be?” and then backwards-map how you’re going to get there. Once you give up, the ability to do that is lost.
That said, what does it mean for students and their education when a district goes into state receivership?
There are both positives and negatives to state receivership. Obviously, you do not want to lose the ability of the school board and the staff to control their own destiny.
We all know that education will go on. The question becomes, in what form? I’ve told boards that many times they avoid making difficult decisions, and if you do that too many times consecutively, you get into trouble. You get too close to the point of state receivership. You know, like when I’m with kids climbing the rocks I tell them not to get too close to the cliffs, because sometimes you can accidentally slip and fall off. And that sometimes happens to school districts.
In my experience, many of those decisions that could have been made to avoid fiscal insolvency become the low-hanging fruit in a state receivership. Those are the [cuts] that are made practically in the first meeting. So when boards think about that, they realize that you have to make decisions, and difficult ones, for parts of the family so you can save the whole family. While they are difficult, they need to be made.
So why would you allow a state administrator—usually, if not every time, from outside the community—to come into your local community and determine which programs stay, which programs have to go, what the staffing changes will be, what pay scale changes may occur, what benefit changes may occur, and even what the student to teacher, counselor, librarian or nurse ratios will be? And the board becomes advisory, with no benefits and many times no offices, no staff, etc.
Now, that is much of the negative. But on the other side, sometimes boards—for political or other reasons—can’t make many of the changes I just mentioned for the benefit of children versus adults.
Are you saying there are boards that would allow a state takeover to happen so they can have a state administrator make those tough decisions for them?
That is the end result, but what’s behind that it in terms of their thinking, we don’t know that. But certainly I’ve had board members say, “I’d rather you made that decision than me.”
Now, that’s not ideal, but the positive part of it is, if you get a good state administrator that cares about the community and the educational program of students, then needed changes can be made in a very short amount of time that the board maybe couldn’t have accomplished in a decade.
Why is that?
Change is tough. Some of the things we were able to do in Oakland—for example, we created a service-oriented central office with service agreements between central office services and schools; we started a results-based budgeting formula …
And you were able to do that because of the streamlined nature of the governance?
That’s exactly right, because you didn’t have all the politics. Frankly, in Oakland those things were talked about for years—by the board, the superintendent, the community. You can talk till you’re green in the face so that everybody’s comfortable, but you never get to where everybody’s comfortable, yet you know it’s something that’s good for kids.
So as much as the board may want to make all those changes, there are forces at work that just don’t allow them to happen?
I just think that sometimes the structures and the influences around decision making at the board level and the district level change the landscape. That then can translate to a different decision than if those structures were not there, structures that have been there forever: “We do it that way because we’ve always done it that way.” At least that’s been my experience.
So that litheness, if you will, is really the only positive piece of the “streamlined” governance structure that comes with a state takeover?
Yeah, it’s a one-person board is what it is. It’s one of the potential past benefits of state takeover, and it may not be that way in the future. There could be some advantages, but we’ve outweighed the advantages with disadvantages.
Here’s another thing I want to make sure people understand. Once you get into state receivership these days, the way they have the banks giving you a loan, you’ll never get out.
So it’s not like the days of Compton or West Contra Costa, which were able to repay their state loans?
That’s right, where you can get out of state receivership. There were ways, if you had a state administration and an advisory board and staff working together, that you could get out rather quickly. But it was because the loan was at a state rate of 1.5 or 2 percent—something like that. Now the loans are at 5 to 7 percent. At that rate, you’re spending a lot of money giving it to the bank. It’s as if you were a homeowner and had a high mortgage. A bunch of your paycheck is going to the bank and very little is going to the principal.
I know the state Legislature is trying to change that, but they also don’t want a situation where it’s easier for districts to go insolvent at a very low interest rate than to make those tough decisions. So they’re caught between a rock and a hard place on that one. But I tell you, some of these state takeovers now, they’re going to be there for decades.
So what’s your warning for districts?
Oh, there’s absolutely a warning: Don’t even think about it. Because you give up your democratic process in the district. You give up your control, your community control. And you roll the dice on whether you’re going to get a good state administrator or a not-so-good one.
It’s interesting to hear you speaking negatively about what a state administrator may do although you’ve been one yourself.
The reason why I’m not gung-ho on state administration is because, remember, I came into Compton after four state administrators in three and a half years. I was the fifth and the last. Then I came in first in Oakland, but there were two after me. And not everybody seems to have the same foundation in terms of how they make their decisions.
It’s ironic that after 10 years of state administration I’m in the position of helping districts not go there.
That makes me want to ask you which role you’ve enjoyed most over your educational career, as you’ve been a teacher and a superintendent at several levels, as well as a state administrator.
Actually, I’ve also been a student. So I guess I’ve got student, teacher, principal, area superintendent, district superintendent, state administrator, and county superintendent. I can’t pick one; they all have advantages and disadvantages in terms of impact and value added to the student experience in the classroom.
I’m liking the one I’m in now because I’m able to collaborate with district superintendents and boards and figure out how we can cooperate and get to the bottom line, and working with the county office so that the work we do for our districts and for our juvenile court community school students is impactful and value-added. Work on achievement gap issues and transforming classrooms ... all of those are good, but I can’t say which role I like the best.
OK, but can you say which job has been the most fulfilling?
I can tell you that—it has to be a kindergarten teacher. You know, when you teach 4- to-6-year-olds the basic learning foundations that they’ll use for the rest of their lives, whether it’s reading, listening, waiting, sitting in a chair … you know, like that book says, “Everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten”? Preschool and kindergarten teacher, which I’ve been both, have absolutely been the most fulfilling, but also very difficult work.
That’s where the promise is developed, right?
That’s right. That’s where all the idealism gets fulfilled.
Now, if a district does find itself in state takeover, what can the board members keep in mind as they’re trying to work with a state administrator? How can they make that the most productive environment possible under the circumstances?
First of all, it’s a very emotional experience, as we all know. Yet the reality is that when you work together as a board, as a community, as a state administrator, it will end quicker than if you try to fight it. So my suggestion is to really figure out how to build a structure, an infrastructure, for advisory board members and the community to work with the state administrator, to become solvent as quickly as possible, to build capacity at all levels, so that you can get rid of the state administration and get back onto the business that people elected you to do. There’s a way to get through it quickly, and that’s by working together.
Do you have any last words to help board members stay focused on what’s really important as they work to get through this economic crisis?
Keep your eyes on the prize. Understand that it’s about free public education for all students. No matter how many resources you have, try to take away some of the politics—and I only say some because I understand the realities there—that influence your decision making. But if you keep your eye on the prize and you use whatever resources that we’re given, as skimpy as they may be, then your decision making becomes much clearer and certainly more focused on students and the experiences that they need to have to be successful.
Kristi Garrett (
kgarrett@csba.org
) is a staff writer for California Schools.