Learning Matters: GUSD encountered its share of issues in 2015

We tell our children to look both ways before crossing the street. School boards do best when they follow the same advice in their decision-making, looking thoughtfully to their history before stepping off the curb into the future.

The Glendale Unified School District faced some big issues in 2015, beyond the enormous job of adjusting curriculum and training teachers in the Common Core standards — beyond, in other words, the seemingly endless efforts to transform public education to meet the needs of the century. Whoever says public education has been in a state of inertia hasn’t looked at public schools like Glendale’s.

The challenges that come to mind, and which occupied much of the board’s time and energy this year, originated outside the district’s stated priorities and strategic plan, from other groups and individuals with their own plans.

Discussion continued on the subject of Sagebrush, that sliver of La Cañada which was incorporated into Glendale Unified when La Cañada Unified split off from Pasadena in the 1960s. It’s an issue that has arisen from time to time since — and thus far been settled in favor of keeping Sagebrush in Glendale Unified.

But current board members in both districts have indicated a willingness to reconsider the question and its significant financial, political and historic implications. Discussions have stalled, however, and some in La Cañada are losing their patience.

As reported in the Glendale News-Press on Nov. 19, La Cañada residents have been gathering signatures. “Frustrated by stalled negotiations between La Cañada and Glendale school officials regarding the transfer of students living in western La Cañada into that city’s school district, a citizen’s group has decided to begin pursuing a resolution,” according to the article.

Another focus of the Glendale board’s attention came from the credible threat of a lawsuit challenging the district’s at-large elections, which led to an advisory vote in a municipal election in April. After voters rejected the idea of trustee-area representation, attorney Keven Shenkman followed through on his threatened suit.

Faced with the track record of other districts’ ineffective and expensive legal battles under the California Voting Rights Act, and following the example of Glendale Community College, Glendale Unified’s board voted to begin “…the process of changing from at-large elections to by-trustee area elections.”

Beginning in 2017, candidates for the college and school district boards will campaign for the chance to represent the voting areas in which they reside. Glendale Unified’s chief business and financial officer, Robert McEntire, said the district’s website will be updated early in 2016 with the first draft of trustee area maps and information about upcoming public hearings to finalize them.

In the midst of the year, and with these unasked-for challenges on their agendas, board members learned they would also need to find a new superintendent, when Dick Sheehan announced he would be returning to his home district of Covina-Valley.

What followed, along with the appointment of retired deputy superintendent Don Empey as interim superintendent, was a search for a search firm, then community-wide surveys of desired superintendent attributes, and finally the search itself, recently extended for the second time until Jan. 8. The board now hopes to interview candidates in mid-January.

The charter school petition, which I addressed in my last two columns, and which the board denied on Dec. 15, came during the seven months since the board began the superintendent search process. Of all these issues, only the charter petition has been settled, or at least moved to the back burner pending the charter advocates’ expected appeal to the Los Angeles County Office of Education. The remaining matters will simmer on into the new year.

I’m sure Glendale Unified’s board wishes all these issues were behind it, so it could go on with its “normal” work. I expect its members are grateful for the legally imposed timeline that prodded their relatively quick decision on the charter petition. I also have little doubt their overall decision-making has been hampered by the interim nature of the district’s executive leadership.

But the slow pace of the superintendent search may have an upside. Since the expiration of Don Empey’s term as interim superintendent, the board has experienced the team leadership of two recently retired superintendents whose informed guidance has served as an example of some of the attributes the district needs.

Interim superintendents Joel Shawn and Marc Winger have been like crossing guards at a busy intersection. Their willingness to share with the board the wisdom gained from their respective years of experience has been a gift to the district, one which we can hope will positively influence the eventual selection of the next superintendent.

What Shawn and Winger recently wrote about school reforms in the district’s “Staff-o-Gram” applies to important school board decisions as well. They “…require patience, persistence, and time.” I’d add circumspection to that list.

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JOYLENE WAGNER is a past member of the Glendale Unified School Board. Email her at jkate4400@aol.com.