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On Sunday she had a tour of the town, ending in dinner at Blackstone's with everyone on the Board of Education except Migdalia Rivas. On Monday, Dr. Susan Marks, finalist in the secret competition for Norwalk's next superintendent, met the public on City Hall. The evening began with a short, who-am-I presentation by Dr. Marks, and then settled into the familiar question and answer session.
The public included former BOE members Greg Burnett, Shirley Mosbey, Amy Jimnez, Rosa Murray and Bruce Kimmel, along with a smattering of educators, administrators and PTO members. Not a whole lot of parents came, which makes sense considering the short notice. She was named on Friday, with the public forum ramped up just three days later.
]Dr. Marks said some really interesting things. One was that she disagreed that the problem facing Norwalk schools is a lack of parental involvement. She revealed that she herself didn't always attend her daughter's school functions, because she was working. The relationship to focus on, she said, is the one between the school and the student. If you believe that student performance is in fact the responsibility of the student, then Dr. Marks is stating the obvious. But a culture of excuses permeates the school system, so getting away from blaming the parents might be hard.
She also stressed the importance of funding teacher training, a topic that cash-strapped residents might not want to hear. Any discussion of school funding typically breaks down into a dialog of "throw money at it" versus "cut money from it." What people should be talking about is Investing in the programs designed to achieve desired outcomes. No one questions the money spent on NFL football team practices because the desired outcome is to win on Sunday. The same should be true about educational spending, with the eye on student performance in reading, writing and performing functional math.
Dr. Marks was clear: put money into training and development, especially for teachers who deal with the students who are the hardest to educate. That sure sounded like maximizing dollars for the classroom.
One last thought. Dr. Marks may be the best candidate ever to grace the application. But we don't know that, because there's been a fundamental flaw in the process. The BOE micromanaged this hire so much that they never told the public what they were looking for. So we have no context for judging the candidate's potential to solve Norwalk's problems. And while the Q&A format was standard, it would have been nice if Dr. Marks had been asked to address harder questions posed by people who could not be at the forum. The short notice certainly didn't help people arrange their schedules, or to dig into her qualifications and background. The questions raised were mostly softballs, easily answered but also not specific enough to gauge what she might do.
Dr. Marks, who mentioned Skype as a communication tool, might have been a little concerned about the BOE's glaring lack of communication infrastructure during last night's forum. Live streaming webcast back to the schools? Not likely. You can almost hear Migdalia Rivas mutter that she knows people who still communicate solely by carrier pigeon.
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