One District size fits most

[Twocubdad 665]

Sounds like our local school system. If the goal is to have 80% of students at grade level and School A has a 90% score and School B has a 70% score, how do you raise School B's score? By rejiggering the attendance zones so that both schools are at 80%! No actual educational improvements needed!

 

Our council went through this shell game about five years ago. Two out of five districts always struggled so the solution was to merge those districts into the other, stronger, districts. As with the schools the averages improve but not the net.

 

Unfortunately, a funny thing happens in a merger. One of the two CSDC staff's decides two camps aren't needed and this is a good time for them to retire. The extra District Chairman, Commissioner and many of the district subcommittee chairman see it as a good time to bail as do many commissioners, who were simply worn out and looking for an excuse. The result was that you have twice the units to service, twice the membership and FOS goals and twice the territory to cover with half the volunteers.

 

It took us about three years to get back to Quality District status and even now we are still weaker in some area than before the merger.

 

Lessons learned? First, tinkering with districts should be done for the right reasons -- to better serve the units. I won't disagree that something needed to be done to rescue the two struggling districts, but leaving them on the doorsteps of two healthy district wasn't the answer. Secondly, doing this in secret is a really, REALLY bad idea. As in this situation, our realignment was decided in secret by a committee of four. The volunteers were given less that six weeks notice of the change. (We were told that an open process or more lead time would just allow for more complaining and dissent. No Doubt. But perhaps to the complaining and dissent was due to the change being a bad idea.) In my opinion, the lack of the opportunity to plan and manage the change, led to the mass defection we endured.(This message has been edited by Twocubdad)