Inglewood Prepares to Overhaul Schools : Education: Tackling problems one at a time doesn’t work, superintendent says. An envisioned top-to-bottom reworking will involve the community.

After four months as the head of the Inglewood Unified School District, McKinley Nash has found that tinkering with school staffing, district personnel and curriculum will not save the city’s school system. It needs to be reworked from top to bottom, he says.

Nash’s conclusion is no surprise to many who have watched the school system founder in recent years: Test scores at the middle and high schools are at the bottom of the South Bay--even though the city’s elementary schools typically perform well. The district is struggling to comply with state bilingual education requirements, and its budget problems induced the state to appoint a fiscal administrator to the district. Many of the best students leave the district to attend high school in other cities, Nash has said.

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What is a surprise is that the City Council and city manager, the Chamber of Commerce, religious leaders, and parent and teacher groups all have agreed to join with the school board to overhaul the school system.

At a meeting to which every segment of Inglewood society was invited, Nash and the school board unveiled plans to begin a strategic plan for the system. The plan would examine every aspect of the district and develop goals for the future. In an unusual act of governmental unity, the City Council already has voted to provide $40,000 to pay for the school project, and the board has called its first meeting with strategy planner William J. Cook of the Cambridge Group of Alabama.

“No longer can we sit on the sidelines and point a finger at others for not educating our children,” said board President Lois Hill Hale. “We have to rejuvenate an outdated education system. We on the board of education know we’re not providing the quality of education we should be for our children.”

Rather than haphazardly attempting to raise test scores or remedy budget problems, the district first needs to agree on what its mission should be, Nash said. Then it needs to define its specific goals and how it plans to accomplish them.

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To that end, Nash has asked the board to commit to an intense, yearlong effort to develop a plan for the district.

“A strategic plan is really the only way we’re going to be able to get all the junk out of this system and start over,” Nash said in an interview. “We’ve got to look at every single aspect of this system and decide whether it’s functioning in line with what our goals and values are. But first we need to define those goals and values.”

Strategic planning, which gained popularity among corporations 20 years ago, has become a trend in education.

The Cambridge Group has helped more than 300 school districts nationwide develop strategic plans, and in California the group has worked with the Glendale, Beverly Hills and Berkeley school districts, among others.

The plan requires districts to include representatives from every group affected by education on a team of 20 to 30 people and to draft the district’s beliefs, missions, a variety of analyses, objectives and strategies. The draft plan is reviewed with the public, and action teams then are formed to implement the strategies.

The difference between the planning that the district has done in the past and a strategic plan is that the entire community will be included and decisions must be unanimous.

Recently the board invited about 200 people to meet Cook, who will help Inglewood develop a plan.

“I’m not a consultant and I don’t come equipped with answers,” Cook said to about 180 people. “If we begin this process, you’ll be the ones to develop those. But I do have one saying: ‘When the horse dies, it’s a really good time to dismount.’ ”

The audience laughed, but Cook said he was preparing them to look unflinchingly at the school system and be willing to do more than minor repairs.

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Strategic planning also requires a high degree of community unity. All decisions reached by the planning committee must be unanimous, and committees should include representatives from virtually every segment of society affected by Inglewood education.

“We have to rejuvenate an outdated education system,” Hill Hale said. “But we cannot do it without help.”

Administrators at other school districts that have done strategic plans give the effort high marks.

“It is a process that helps a district to focus all of the energies and resources in an agreed-upon direction,” said LaVoneia Steele, superintendent of the Berkeley Unified School System when it began its strategic plan in 1991.

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Cook asks each district that does a strategic plan to identify its core beliefs. Berkeley’s included: That societies prosper to the extent that they care for their children. Each person has a right to make his or her own choice and is responsible for his or her own action. Everyone has an unlimited capacity for learning. A truly educated person cannot be racist. Excellence is worth whatever it takes.

“All this translates into better-educated students,” Steele said. “Our objectives are to have 100% of our students graduate . . . to see that all graduates are prepared for post-secondary education or employment of their choice and that all students achieve their own educational goals.”

Beverly Hills also developed a list of beliefs: That a person’s rights to thoughts and ideas are inviolate. Society requires standards of right and wrong. Every person needs love. Family is the primary influence on each person’s development. Literacy is vital to individual empowerment. Diversity of all kinds enriches.

Administrators in Beverly Hills already know that their school system is excellent and are not seeking to correct major problems, said Bert Pearlman, assistant superintendent for educational services. The district, however, decided that a strategic plan is necessary if it is to carry that excellence into the rapidly changing, technological world of the 21st Century.

“One thing about Beverly Hills: We are both a very forward-thinking and very conservative district,” Pearlman said. “We looked as this carefully before doing it.

“It sounds abstract in the beginning, but I think this is a process that has potential for bringing action home and making ideas real.”