Municipalist

The lone hope among elected bloggers for 2008 blog awards

As we complete a fast scan of the 2008 Weblog Awards nominees, we find exactly one from the pool of Elected Humans: This very good blog by an elected school board member from Texas named Mike Falick -- the subject of a Q & A with Municipalist from one year ago -- has been nominated for Best Education Blog 2008.

There are plenty of intriguing blogs on the list in all these many categories. But we wish there were two more. We find a category called "Best Political Coverage" and of course, "Best Liberal Blog" and "Best Conservative Blog." But no "Best Government Coverage." Neither politics nor ideology equals governing. They mingle. Often. But they ain't the same thing.

And of course, the one category we would like to see: "Best Blog By Anybody, Anywhere Who Has Actually Been Elected." We have hope. Just not much.

Union lawyers target blogging Michigan school board member

"There is no teeth to the argument that public officials can't have blogs," says Wendy Day, an elected board member for a public school district in Howell, Michigan whose blog has attracted plenty of attention from across her community and from local media.

Wendy teaches at Lansing Community College. Of her early days on the Web, she admits: "I had no idea of the power of a blog." She candidly answered our questions about various dust-ups she has encountered in what could be termed a colorful blogging career. Her blog was recently the subject of a threatening letter from the law firm of the local teachers' union. One of her posts about that is here.

By the way, this Q & A, the 34th we have published with (mostly) public sector bloggers, is the first from Michigan, where I grew up.

Why she started her blog:

I was elected to the Howell School Board in 2006 after a lot of controversy in our district. As a conservative, home school mom, I was not welcomed by the administration or the board at the time.

I started the blog to offer another way to communicate with the public about Howell Schools and about broader education issues. There was little communication between the School Board and the community; I pledged to change that. The blog quickly became a place to discuss broader issues and at it's peak had hundreds of visitors every day and posts with 600-800 comments on them. I was brand new to blogging and learned some lessons the hard way.

Standing against bans by local governments and school districts of social networking sites

Once again, another FOM (Friend of Municipalist) gets it right: Virginia blogging school board member John Stevens is quoted by the Washington Post's LoudounExtra.com site on decisions by his school district and local county to ban access to social networking sites:

"We are not unleashing the power of technology to our employees to do what they do," he said. "We're handcuffing them."

He says more good stuff too.

Audio blogging could be good match for public sector bloggers

John Stevens, a quality blogger and public school board member in Loudoun County, Virginia, has added audio posts to his blog. We asked how it is working out:

I've done two audio posts so far, the first on June 6 and another this past Friday, June 13. I'll definitely keep doing it, but I need to be sure that I don't over-use it like a new toy or come to depend on it as a crutch, because there are definite drawbacks to it as well as great advantages.

I decided to give it a try for the same reasons that I started blogging to begin with ... there were times when I felt I had something to share and needed a good way to do it, and I want constituents to get to know me better. Sometimes due to time constraints or limitations of the medium, typing a blog entry just isn't a good option.

I used Hipcast after first trying Gabcast. Gabcast is a free service but after about three days of trying I couldn't get it to post to my blog. Hipcast does have a cost but works very well, though it does have limitations. It's a very new service and I expect that it will become more useful over time.

There are several possible ways to post but the easiest, and the only one I have used so far, is by phone. Call a number, punch in a PIN, speak. It's also possible to upload MP3s and record directly to the website via a PC microphone.

Stevens, one blogger whose commenters tend to contribute useful stuff to the proceedings, adds that they have pointed out some drawbacks to audio, such as search limitations for a non-text post, and one suggestion that "audio is inappropriate for the work setting."

We say: Buy some earbuds, pal. The options, potential, and value here are tremendous. We can see John doing a fast phone conversation with someone on a school issue, and quickly posting the result in minutes.

Another commenter suggested that John's school district could have used audio blogging to great use during a recent storm, where some students were kept after school, and though a recorded phone message system was activated, the district's Web sites were never updated. 

School districts: Blog your storms!

[See updates at end of post]

Parents of kids stuck at school during wild storms want info right now. They want to know: Why doesn't the school district update its damn Web site!? Not only to get the information out and update it. But to listen to and respond to feedback.

Engage your community. Blog the storm. Your parents will thank you.

One person was killed Wednesday as a brutal, howling, rain and wind storm rushed through the D.C. metro area leaving 300,000 homes without power for hours. At least two big Maryland school districts will be closed on Thursday. Loudoun County, Virginia blogging school board member John Stevens points out that because of the severity of the storm, school officials were delaying sending students home. But there was a problem:

The LCPS website is being hammered by parents and as of now does not have information about the delay on it.

That was at 3:13 p.m. More than nine hours later, still no info to be found on this site whatsoever. Nor is there any attempt to use the site to engage with parents about the school districts' decision, to provide continuous updates, to encourage email questions or allow comments, etc. Where is the superintendent? Get that guy his own blog. It is days like Wednesday when he needs it most.

Q & A: James Woods, school board member, Parkrose School Distrct, Portland, Oregon

Woods is chairman of the Parkrose Board of Education, one of six public school districts in Portland, Oregon, and an assistant professor of economics at Portland State University. His insightful blog includes plenty of photos, video, as well as one of those now ubiquitous CALL ME buttons:

How long have you been blogging? I started the school board blog at the beginning of the school year, but have been doing blog-like things for over a decade. I am an early adopter of free and cheap technology. My students were required to deliver homework via email as early as 1995.

What got your started? I need to lead by example on communication --there should be a lot of it and it should be in the right mode.

Brian Wheeler has tips for school board bloggers

School board blogger Brian Wheeler, who co-presented with me and Jennifer Abel at National School Boards Association's annual conference in Orlando on Saturday, posted a PDF of his session hand-out. Lots of good information. Check it out. And email it to your pals, especially if they are school board members. Or ANY public official. [Jennifer Abel's review of the session itself is here.]

And here is a list of 10 tips for public sector bloggers that I put together from my work here at Municipalist.

Brian also includes a link to a useful primer on RSS, the technology that allows you to "subscribe" to blogs, which can then be aggregated on sites such as Bloglines, saving you from having to visit each and every blog individually. [The primer is by Waldo Jaquith, a blogger and Web innovator profiled recently on Municipalist.]

Q & A: Fred Deutsch, Watertown, South Dakota school board

For a brand new blogger, school board member Fred Deutsch has plenty of thoughtful insight into what blogging is all about. "The benefit and the beauty of a blog is that my thoughts about education are not only recorded in a central place, but they’re open to the world to see and to comment," he told us. "And as a school board member, that transparency appeals to me." Plus, you have to admire a guy who admits to reading Blogging for Dummies.

Fred is a second-year board member of the Watertown, South Dakota public school district. Watertown is the fifth largest city in that state. Fred's five-member board governs a district that is home to 3,800 K-12 students who attend five elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school; and 1,200 students who attend a two-year vocational education institution.

Fred sent the following in response to Municipalist's questions about his blog:

During a recent lobbying trip to Washington D.C. for National School Board Association's (NSBA) Federal Relations Network, I was inspired by a few school board members from other parts of the country who blog with their constituents. After a little thinking and planning about what I wanted to do, my “School-of-Thought” blog was born.

Q & A: Will Richardson, author, speaker, blogger

Will Richardson is certainly among the top thinkers, authors, and speakers about blogging in any context, but likely heads the lists of experts on blogging in the K-12 classroom. His book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms offers plenty of insight for any blogger. [Check out some video of Will speaking here.]

Richardson left teaching/administration two years ago and is now speaking, writing, consulting, and blogging full time. Most recently, he co-founded Powerful Learning Practice with Sheryl Nussbaum Beach, "through which we offer long-term, job-embedded professional development for teachers and administrators to help them understand and use Web 2.0 tools in their own learning practice," Richardson said.

What is the brief history of your blog? Also: Why do you blog? I started blogging about seven years ago and quickly began to focus my writing on how these technologies change teaching and learning. According to Technorati.com, the leading blog ranking service on the Web, mine is the number one educational technology related blog in the world, which is pretty amazing considering its very humble beginnings as the ramblings of a classroom teacher trying to make sense of these changes. I blog because it's a great way for me to learn, not just by reflecting on what I read and what I experience but by interacting with readers from around the world.

What has blogging taught you? How has it connected you to anybody or anything? Blogging is the foundation of my network which is the foundation of my learning these days. It has connected me to thousands of other people from around the world who are passionate about these ideas as well. It's taught me a great deal about the power of publishing and the importance of being able to connect to people and ideas anytime and anywhere I have a connection.

NSBA 2006 presentation: Seems like yesterday

Here is a link to a rather breathless account of the packed panel discussion I hosted in Chicago in 2006 with several blogging school board members and one blogging superintendent. With a scintillating photo! Of the K-12 participants, two no longer blog, apparently: The superintendent, Clayton Wilcox, of Pinellas County (St. Petersburg), Florida, and Jim McNelis, of Skokie, Illinois. Still blogging is Brian Wheeler, a board member from Albemarle County, Virginia.

Brian and blogging board member Jennifer Abel of Charles County, Maryland, will participate in a panel hosted by me, Craig Colgan, at NSBA 2008 in Orlando Saturday.

Then, my friends, it is margarita time.

This education bloggers list is not quite complete

We recently found this set of "Links to School Bloggers." The list includes blogging administrators, principals, teachers, students. Except there is no section for school board bloggers, a growing subset. We point this out because we will be moderating a panel session on school board members who blog Saturday at National School Boards Association's annual conference in Orlando. Municipalist is finding more school board bloggers all the time.

[FYI: Our favorite K-12 very insiderish education policy blogger is Eduwonk. Eduwonk actually linked to Municipalist recently. Which we appreciate. The flowers are in the mail.]

Email FOIA issues are ever present with public sector bloggers

In a recent email exchange with John Stevens, a blogging school board member in Loudoun County, Virginia, we noticed this phrase at the end of his reply: "Please be aware that correspondence sent by or to School Board members is subject to Virginia's Freedom of Information Act." To those of us on the outside of the public sector, that can take you back a bit.

John told us that he now stores all his school board-related correspondence -- including correspondence related to his blog, since it focuses on school board work -- on one notebook computer, owned by the school district. So if a Freedom of Information Act request comes in, he can just hand over that computer, and have no worry about it providing access to any of his business or other personal email, since he never stores any on that machine.  Though he said he does access personal email on that machine through Web access.

"Typically a FOIA request wouldn't call for handing over a computer, but in a recent Loudoun case a judge ordered a county employee to search the chairman's personal computer for qualifying documents when the chairman had other qualifying documents stored on that PC, and I'd just as soon not be in that position," Stevens told Municipalist. "I don't know that operating this way inoculates me entirely (judge or plaintiff can always say 'I don't believe you') but it's the best I can do."

How do other public sector bloggers out there handle these issues? Let us know.

Q & A: Dave Ash, school board, Churchill County, Nevada

Dave Ash, aka Super Dave, the Nevada school trustee whose Web site caused quite a rumble between his school district and its teachers union before the union bullied him into taking it down, answers some questions from Municipalist. This is a follow-up to this post from Thursday.

This guy is thoughtful and obviously a trooper, and is one public official who enjoys engaging with his community. He sounds as if he lacks any bitterness whatsoever. It appears Ash has found a workable solution to his situation, one that could be a model for some public officials seeking to post online about their work. A sample of our conversation: What did your constituents and the community as a whole think of your site? "According to polls taken by the local newspaper and KOLO TV in Reno, NV 75-85% favored its continuation," he said. "They felt that all it did was expose issues that in the past had been covered up."

The "Super Dave" moniker comes from Municipalist, and is a reference to a hero of ours, the glorious Super Dave Osborne, the -- in our humble opinion -- frequently slammed-about but very noble stunt man. The name is used here with total respect, and is completely appropriate, in our view, given the crap Ash has put up with. Again: Please read yesterday's post for the full story. Finally: On with the show!

School board blogger shuts down after teachers' union objects

Drunk teacher in the classroom! Former school board member is an embezzler! Tedious, infantile teachers' union threatens endless, expensive grievance and arbitration procedures! Superintendent and school lawyer fold 'like lawn chairs'!

Wouldn't you read a blog about that stuff? Especially if it was published by a school board member with an inside view and apparently plenty of good sources from the very school district where this stuff was going on?

Municipalist lives for blogs like that. But it's gone, sister! Gone, gone, gone.

The blog in question -- or "message board," as some explanations have described it -- was shut down Dec. 4 by its operator, Dave Ash -- a trustee on the Churchill County, Nevada school board, after he was basically bullied for months by the school district's teachers union, as well as his own school district administration.

Ash will hereafter be known by us as Super Dave, after the fabulously determined stunt man who could survive anything. Super Dave Ash offered as his public explanation that he pulled the plug to save the school district money it would be forced to spend to fend off a threatened grievance procedure from the union, which began objecting at precisely the time a poster on the site revealed that a district teacher was drunk in school.

Local media round-up: December 2007 blog-demise story here.

Commenting Issues, Vol. II

Brian Wheeler, a blogging school board member in Albemarle County, Virginia, is fearless. He has worked hard to open the process of his work as a board member to his community. His blog is here. And he regularly -- and patiently -- engages his blog's commenters too. Check out this example, [referenced in the Municipalist post immediately below] and scroll down a bit. Those commenters are passionate, to say the least. How to handle commenting is such a concern for many new bloggers, especially those in the public eye. Brian simply jumps right in and engages his commenters directly, showing that the commenting feature can be valuable, and should not be feared.

John Stevens, another school board member and blogger profiled here previously, does not just blog, he like Wheeler replies to his commenters directly. Check out an illustration of this here, where Stevens engages some critics on his school district's budget process, on another blog, in some detail (see comment #8).

Reading these two public sector bloggers is like attending a clinic on how public officials can really make this all work. One post and one comment reply at a time.

For those of you keeping score, Commenting Issues Vol. I was published here.

Community engagement made simple: School board tries telephone town hall

The school board in Albemarle County, Virginia recently hosted a telephone town hall meeting. Read about it here on board member Brian Wheeler's blog. Sounds like it was a great way to engage the public. And the board did it together.

Social media in K-12: Why is the debate just about kids?

The debate about social media in K-12 education is going strong. A friend of Municipalist, Ann Flynn of National School Boards Association, a leader and much-respected voice in education technology for a long time, makes the case at the Economist. Her view: This new platform is a must-learn-about experience for students. But completely left out of this debate: What about the adults! The potential that these tools and sites offer to those throughout the public sector to boost productivity, engage communities, calm controversies, and yes, make friends, is dramatic, for the grownups as well as for the kids. This is flying right on by most people.

School board blogger's regular commenter addresses the fear

This comment to a Municipalist post I did this week about the fear of blogging came from someone who says he is a teacher who comments anonymously to KLBoardBuzz, the blog of Don Scott, former school board member in Westchester County, New York. Here is an excerpt to that comment left on this blog:

Fear has a lot to do with what people are willing to blog for the public to see. ... Any teacher who values his/her employment would be wise to not blog or post on a website read by school officials and thanks to Google, any post under a real name can now easily be found.

It is a known fact that some former and current board members read the KLBoardBuzz blog because they are frequent posters. And while the superintendent (nor the recently retired superintendent) has never posted, it would be a safe bet that they read the blog because it would be a disservice to the district if they did not take advantage of this opportunity to learn the thoughts of the people who care a lot about the school district and are willing to take the time to share their thoughts. So I am happy and proud to post on Don's KLBoardBuzz blog, though I feel I must use an alias.

Read the whole thing.

Q & A: John Creighton, board member, St. Vrain Valley School District, Colorado

"I am not always willing to pay the price that goes with thinking out loud," says John Creighton, who has been a blogging school board member since November 2007 in St. Vrain Valley School District, 30 miles north of Denver. Parts of Boulder fall within its reach. Instead of individually answering my questions about the history of his blog, why he blogs, etc., Creighton sent the following:

Creighton: I began my blog when I announced that I would be a candidate for St. Vrain Valley School Board. My intention is to continue to blog as long as I am in office.

My goals for the blog are to foster conversation about education issues, specifically in our school district; to build connections with constituents; to add transparency to the school board process, and to hold myself accountable by being "on the record."

Q & A: Mike Falick, school board member, Spring Branch, Texas

Local school board member Mike Falick was elected in May 2004 in the Spring Branch Independent School District on the west side of Houston, and re-elected unopposed in 2007. He is well into his third year of blogging, and claims 100,000 page views. "I think people in our community like the information I provide," he says. The school district serves a broadly diverse student population of 32,000 students.

What inspired you to begin blogging? I began blogging in August 2005. The reason I began blogging was that I see the blog as a very effective communication vehicle for providing real-time information about our district to the community. Initially, as the board's legislative liaison, my idea was to provide the community with information concerning legislation that might impact our district. Over time, the scope of the blog has broadened to include board related items, including a recap of all of our board meetings, and items of general educational interest.

Q & A: Don Scott, former school board member, Westchester County, New York

Don Scott served on the board of Katonah-Lewisboro school district in Westchester County, New York for six years and as board president for three. "I became a recovering board member approximately two years ago," he said. But he has kept his blog going, covering the school district now from the outside.

The school district has approximately 4000 students, with "94% of our budget funded by local property tax levies," Scott said. "The vast majority of which fall on homeowners. Because of New York State's bizarre funding formulas we receive very little state aid."

What is the history of your blog? What got you started? I started a blog about three years ago. It was in the last six months of my sixth year on the board. I'd accumulated a number of links, articles of interest, and other information that I was frequently forwarding to friends of mine who were interested in some of the things the school board was working on. I started the blog in order to make it easy to publish some of the information I had on my computer. It evolved into a more topical, current spot to post late breaking news about school budgets, personnel changes, and items of interest published in the local paper. Frequently, I am able to get a discussion going for those who can't wait for the next school board meeting or might not be interested in speaking at public forum.

Update: Blogging board member pushes for more transparency

Blogger Jennifer Abell (Municipalist Q & A is here), a school board member in Charles County, Maryland Public Schools, filed a formal information request to have her own board release school-by-school Advanced Placement scores. The Washington Post has it all here:

Abell said releasing test scores on a school-by-school basis provides Board of Education members with the information they need to manage resources effectively. For the past several years, individual schools' AP test scores have been released to the Board of Education in closed session; in contrast, High School Assessment and Maryland State Assessment scores are made public each year.

"We're supposed to be making data-driven decisions -- that message is pushed down our throats at every conference we attend," Abell said. "But it's hard to do that when you can't get the data."

The school district ended up releasing the info, but according to Abell's blog, with plenty of the information blacked out, even in documents provided only to board members. In a detailed analysis she published on her blog Dec. 4, Jennifer called that state of affairs "absolutely ludicrous."

Q & A: Dave Hutchinson, board of school directors, State College, Pennsylvania

Dave Hutchinson has served as a member of the Board of School Directors for Pennsylvania's State College Area School District for the past four years. State College is the home to Penn State University, and is located in the central part of the state.

What is the history of your blog? What got you started? What are your goals for your blog? I've been posting for about six months. I had kicked around the idea of starting a blog since I heard a presentation from David Warlick at an NSBA [National School Boards Association] conference. It struck me as a way to give the community some insight into the perspective of a school board member, and what goes into our individual decision-making process. Hopefully, it is also a way to engage the community in a conversation about what they want our schools to be.

Q & A: Jennifer Abell, school board member, Charles County, Maryland

Jennifer Abell has quite a story to tell. The Maryland local school board member has been kicked around for blogging, which happens to the best of us. But the culprit in this case was a fellow board member. Earlier this year at least one of her colleagues reportedly was displeased by Jennifer's immediate posting to her blog the minutes of her board's monthly meetings. Maryland's Baynet.com, in a November 2007 update, picks it up from there:

At one point the Board and Vice-Chair Bobbie Wise, in particular, sought legal means by which to punish Abell and restrain her from broadcasting any public information before it came through official channels. Wise preferred to have all school system information posted to the official school system website or announced to the press by Chairman Donald Wade. Board Attorney Eric Schwartz informed Wise that Abell was legally allowed to post non-confidential information. However, he also suggested a method of punishment: the Chair could refuse to formally recognize an offending board member when she signaled her wish to speak during a meeting, silencing her unless she spoke out of turn.

All this punishing and restraining. What kind of school district is this!

Anyway, it was Municipalist himself who moderated the forum at a national conference that Jennifer refers to below as having inspired her to take the leap. Municipalist could not be prouder!

Charles County, located in Southern Maryland, has a population of 133,049 and is considered part of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The school district enrollment is 26,669 students.

What is the history of your blog? What got you started? The concept of starting a blog began after attending a session at the National School Boards Association Conference in Chicago in April of 2006. They actually encouraged board members and superintendents to have a blog-site and dialog with the community and the session even covered the how-to's. What a wonderful way to reach out to the public. After months of pondering the idea, and a plea from the public to be more transparent, it came to fruition and Ready Willing and Abell was born.

Q&A: John Stevens, school board member, Loudoun County, Virginia

This public school board, located in an exurb of D.C., sports two bloggers. Municipalist plans to publish Q&A's with both. The first is with John Stevens, whose blog is here. Stevens is running unopposed for his seat today. "There are so many benefits to the community and to the board member that not using a blog as an instrument of your representation seems a lost opportunity to me," he says. [Stevens is also quoted in the Washington Post today in a story on efforts of his school district to increase academic achievement of black students.]

What inspired you to start blogging?
As soon as I joined the board, I would come home late night after night fresh from meetings in which I learned a lot of things that fell into the “did you know” category of conversation. I was learning about how our school system works and what is happening in different facets of education, things I never could have known, even as a very involved parent. I was eager to share all of this with my wife and my friends, and decided that it wouldn’t be right to keep these things bottled up in my living room.

What do you like about it?
There are more benefits than I could possibly list about being really open about the work I do as an elected official. I feel good about furthering the tradition of open government. It is gratifying to hear from parents that they learn about issues that are important to them. I use my blog to expand upon and clarify my positions when I’m quoted in a local paper, or when I say something from the dais that doesn’t come across the way I had hoped. The benefit isn’t just external. Some staff members read and they understand my concerns and see me praise the great work that they do in public.  The very best part is that I get to share my passion for this work with others in the community.

How do you decide what to blog about?
I write about what moves me as a father or as a community activist, about upcoming meeting agendas, about what I learned at a recent conference, about opportunities for parents to get involved. I make available materials that are given to me so that everyone can see what I’m seeing… there is an endless pool of potential. What is probably more important is what I choose not to blog about. I try not to be anecdotal. I try not to be acutely critical of others (staff, colleagues, voters!), because the words I write will be out there forever. I don’t write about what happens in closed session or in one-on-one conversations with parents, staff and colleagues because I don’t want people to be afraid that the world is going to read about our conversation on the web.

What are the challenges you have discovered?
I find that I am getting very little feedback in the form of reader comments. I think that these comments can become opportunities for great conversations and for me to become more educated, but I’m lucky to get one or two in a week. I also find that my blog entries come in rushes … I’ll be inspired for a week or two and churn out a lot of material, and then I’ll go for a couple of weeks in which it’s difficult to blog at all, which is a problem because steady readership depends on steady production.

Would you encourage other school board members to blog?
Yes, without a moment’s hesitation. Each of us approaches the job differently; we attend different meetings, have different expertise and represent different communities. Accordingly each of us will approach blogging differently… I think there could be very little redundancy, even among members of the same board. There are so many benefits to the community and to the board member that not using a blog as an instrument of your representation seems a lost opportunity to me.