BUSINESS LEADER CALLS FOR SCHOOL ACCOUNTABILITY
January 30, 2002
A local businessman urged the board of education to adopt better accountability for employees and more student assessment measures to make Toledo Public Schools run more like a business.
"We in the business community can't hire people that can't read," Ford Cauffiel, president of Cauffiel Industries of Toledo, said at the boards meeting last night. Mr. Cauffiel, a longtime education supporter, was one of about 55 educators, business people, university officials, and Toledo Public Schools administrators who visited Houston schools last year. Many of his recommendations are a result of that visit, he said.
Board President Peter Silverman invited Mr. Cauffiel to become involved with district initiatives. "We share your passion," he said. "We're doing many of the things you've recommended."
Board member Larry Sykes, who went on the Houston trip, said the Texas district achieved successes in the last 10 years but hasn't fixed everything, including its low graduation rate and high teacher turnover. "Houston has its problems also," he said. "What I'd like to ask you and everyone else is to help us."
INDUSTRIALIST FEELS SHUNNED BY TPS BOARD - CRITIC FROM SPRINGFIELD TWP. SAYS HE'S TRYING TO GET SYSTEM INTO THE DISTRICT
April 22, 2002
Toledo industrialist Ford Cauffiel doesn't understand why students in Toledo Public Schools can't read at grade level, and he doesn't understand why the district isn't letting him do something about it.
"Here's my problem: I don't want to be critical of the board. I don't want to be critical of the teachers. I don't want to be critical of the superintendent," he said. "I'm trying to get school reforms and a system into the schools."
But Mr. Cauffiel, owner of Cauffiel Industries and other businesses, has been critical in a series of meetings, correspondence, and public forums this year.
He's made demands of the district in letters, during private lunches, and at board meetings that the board adopt a resolution he wrote.
He wants the district to focus on improving the reading scores of its fourth-grade students - the youngest students assessed on state proficiency tests - through measures he outlined in a proposed resolution.
On the March, 2001, test, 29 percent of Toledo Public Schools fourth graders met the state standards for passing the test. That was down from 34 percent in 2000 and 38 percent in 1999.
"This is not acceptable," said Mr. Cauffiel, who lives in Springfield Township.
Is he a frustrated citizen who is answering the district's call for the community's help in getting out of academic emergency and improving education? Or is he an independent, wealthy businessman trying to impose his own vision on an elected board and a public school district where he does not reside?
"You must have people who think differently. Ford might be an example of that," said Brenda Lanclos, director of the Center of Reform for Education at the University of Toledo. "When he comes to the table, his voice is different from anybody else's. That ruffles people."
But Ms. Lanclos, who helped organize a December trip by Mr. Cauffiel and about 50 other district, university, and business people to the Houston Independent School District to learn about reform there, admitted she's not working with him anymore to foster improvement in Toledo's schools.
"My style is not his style," she said, declining to elaborate.
Released first to the media this year, Mr. Cauffiel's resolution would change how student performance is measured, adopt a district reading curriculum, offer financial rewards for high-performing schools and sanctions for low-performing schools, and change what authority and responsibility principals have.
He wants the district to change to a 41/2-day school week for students so teachers could have an afternoon of communication between each other or with parents. He also wants the district to give him half the elementary-level students slated for state-mandated summer reading programs for his own instructional program, which the district would fund.
"We're only trying to do some reform for reading at the fourth-grade level," he said. "I want things to happen fast."
At issue, he said, is the economic and social well-being of the community. He's enlisted the support of several businessmen who say they recognize the importance of a quality public school system in Toledo to the future of northwest Ohio.
"If a kid can't read, he's set for failure," said Keith Brown, owner of Brown Realty in Toledo. "We get a lot of our workers that work in the suburbs from Toledo city schools. And if you have an uneducated population out there, it's proven that you have higher crime rates. All that affects the ability for our community to grow and prosper."
The district agrees with the importance of early reading success.
"There's clearly a frustration, and it's a frustration on my part. I want to move faster and jump higher as well," Superintendent Eugene Sanders said. "Everybody wants the same thing."
But board members and administrators, while saying they welcome and invite public input and community involvement, are wondering why Mr. Cauffiel needs to be so heavy-handed in his approach.
"What he says about the school board people is insulting. He questions us, our ability, questions our knowledge, and insults our intelligence. He threatens us with starting a school, and then demands us to fund it?," said board member Larry Sykes. "He's looking for a fight."
Mr. Cauffiel said he's looking for answers. After attending three board meetings and last month's curriculum committee, he said he doesn't think district officials have them.
"The board needs to be educated," he said.
Mr. Cauffiel has criticized board members for publicly asking questions of district administrators - about program costs and state law, for example - that he thinks they already should know.
"I have seen a considerable amount of wasted time while [Board President] Pete[r] Silverman and other board members ask questions," he said.
But Mr. Silverman said Mr. Cauffiel's observations are wrong. Some of the questions are asked publicly for the benefit of the audience and others in attendances who haven’t been involved in work on issues prior to the monthly meetings, he said.
"There are a number of reasons to ask questions. One is you need to put things on the record so everybody understands what it means," he said.
Mr. Cauffiel also has bristled at the board's limiting him to the five-minute requirement for speaking at board meetings and not responding to his questions in the forums.
"Anybody can meet with us privately or telephone us," Mr. Silverman said. "Board meetings are a chance for people to make a public statement to all the board members and all the media present."
Many of the reforms Mr. Cauffiel is asking for are already under way, Dr. Sanders said.
"It would be inappropriate to say we aren't doing anything," he said. "I think many of the things that Mr. Cauffiel has proposed are things we are either doing, have done, or will be doing as part of our effort for reform and change."
Board Vice President David Welch said he hopes the district and Mr. Cauffiel will find a way to work together, despite their many differences of opinion.
"He's frustrated, just the same way as I am and the whole school community and labor - everybody. We're all trying to change this," he said. "He's just trying to do what he thinks is right."
REVOKED TRANSFERS AGGRAVATE PARENTS - LACK OF PORTABLE CLASSROOM BLAMED -
BEVERLY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
July 17, 2002
They thought they were all set.
Months ago, the Toledo Public School District approved transfers for 11 kindergartners to attend Beverly Elementary School this fall instead of their neighborhood schools. Older siblings of some of the students already attended Beverly on transfers.But after some Beverly parents objected to the increasing number of transfer students attending the school and the planned installation of a portable classroom, the Board of Education earlier this month rejected an administration recommendation to put the modular classroom there
The one member who opposed the decision, Larry Sykes, said it was bad policy - and worse - to disallow transfers months after they were approved.
"It's racial and it's going to remain racial," he said. "I voted against it because I think it's wrong."
Mr. Glazer disagreed.
"To raise race as an issue because parents don't want their kids sitting in a portable outside is the most ridiculous statement I've heard yet," he said.
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