September 11, 2002

Dr. Charles McClain

Implementation Monitor

Eighth Floor

1211 McGee Street

Kansas City, MO 64106

Dear Dr. McClain:

On August 19, 2002 I wrote to the KCMSD on behalf of the plaintiff schoolchildren to request an arrangement that would permit unannounced monitoring visits to determine the extent of the job embedded professional development that was agreed to on May 1, 2002 and later approved by the Court. Specifically, I requested the following:

1. Will the KCMSD consent to counsel for plaintiffs or consultants for plaintiffs making random unannounced visits to KCMSD schools after the end of September to observe job embedded professional development? Plaintiffs would not object to accompaniment by a representative of the KCMSD as long the escort did not interfere with the randomness of the unannounced visits.

On September 4, 2002 Kathy Walter-Mack responded to deny the request for unannounced visits, thus creating a dispute between the plaintiffs and the KCMSD. We request a meeting with you at your earliest opportunity to resolve this dispute.

It is critical that plaintiffs be able to conduct unannounced monitoring to determine whether and to what extent the KCMSD is actually implementing the professional development reforms it agreed to on May 1, 2002 after failing to implement professional development reforms agreed to in 1998, reforms preliminarily approved by the Court in May 1999. The record of the KCMSD in regard to implementing professional development measures is a poor record.

As you know, each school was required in May to choose from a menu of options and to deploy this school year an enhanced budget in order to implement job embedded professional development. The core of such job embedded (i.e., in the classroom) professional development is modeling, coaching, and mentoring. In addition, virtually every school chose an option that involves some level of dedicated staffing to assist with that job embedded work. Thus, our unannounced visits to schools and classrooms are intended to determine what these additional staff persons are actually doing and how much job embedded professional development (classroom modeling, coaching, and mentoring) is actually going on in the schools.

When our consultants or we arrive at a school, the professional development staff person will be sought and we will determine what she or he was doing at the time of our arrival. That person, who should know what job embedded professional development is occurring at the school, will be asked to lead us to those activities so that we might verify them. This is not an exhaustive description of our proposed unannounced visits. By such visits we intend to determine, pursuant to our monitoring obligations, the extent of KCMSD’s implementation of the professional development reforms the Court has approved. We intend to obtain the approval of the Implementation Monitor or the Court for these monitoring activities if the KCMSD does not agree to them at an early date.

Also, we hasten to point out, the plaintiffs intend to seek the KCMSD’s agreement, or the Court’s approval, for plaintiffs’ annual qualitative evaluations of selected KCMSD schools starting in late November. These professional development visits are not substitutes for our more comprehensive monitoring of the quality of instruction in KCMSD’s schools.

Yours very truly,

Arthur Benson

/AB

cc: Mr. Brian Wood

Ms. Kathy Walter-Mack

Ms. Pat Brannan

(all by fax and mail)