March 22, 2000
By Hand Delivery
The Honorable Fernando J. Gaitan, Jr.,
District Court Judge
United States District Court, Room 7552
United States Courthouse
400 E. Ninth Street
Kansas City, Missouri 64106
Re: Jenkins v. Missouri, No. 77-0420-CV-W-2
Dear Judge Gaitan:
At the status conference in this matter on March 10, 2000, the parties were asked to submit a
letter to the Court by 10:00am, Wednesday, March 22, 2000 discussing their recommendations as to
a) the appropriate number of monitors, b) the identity of the monitors, and c) the duties and
responsibilities of the monitors. The follow are the responses on behalf of the plaintiff
schoolchildren. We begin first with the duties and responsibilities of the monitors.
Background. The issue of monitoring responsibilities has important roots arising from a
hearing before Judge Clark at the end of the 1995-96 school year. At that time the plaintiff
schoolchildren asked the Court to order the KCMSD to reform its educational programs which even
then were failing the children badly. Specifically, the KCMSD was asked to adopt a high standards
core curriculum and implement it, improve classroom instructional practices, adopt an effective
professional development plan, improve assessment and implement personnel policies focused on
educational efficacy as the main criterion for job decisions. The KCMSD opposed an order
compelling the adoption of those educational principles as unnecessary, arguing that the school
district was "on its owntaking many of the steps that would be required under plaintiffs' proposal."
In its order of July 16, 1996, document number 4131, the Court declined to order the
KCMSD to implement the educational strategies urged upon it by plaintiffs. Instead, the Court wrote:
Although the Court will not impose upon the KCMSD the 'belief system' or guiding
principles advocated by plaintiffs, the district should be aware that the Court will not
sit idly by and watch another year pass without substantial steps being made in this
endeavor. To help make these substantial steps the district has available to it the
expertise of its personnel and the curriculum frameworks and support from the
Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Given that the capital
improvements plan is nearing completion, the Court believes that this project to
develop a comprehensive plan should become top priority so that further gains can be
made in eliminating the vestige of inferior education.
Id. at 4-5.
Then, in an Order dated March 25, 1997, document number 4454, the Court, in denying the
State of Missouri's motion for unitary status and approving the KCMSD's settlement agreement with
the State, noted that the:
KCMSD still lacks a comprehensive, integrated educational and instructional
plan.[Its] fragmented efforts to implement meaningful staff development have fallen
far short of the markthere is a great deal of poor teaching and little learning in many
schools.administrative instability has plagued the District for years, resulting in a
lack of accountability for deficiencies.These deficiencies in performance cannot be
blamed on a lack of financial resources.
Id. at 46-48. In the summer of 1997 the KCMSD adopted a core curriculum and a Transition Plan.
The Transition Plan called for the development and implementation of comprehensive educational
reform measures.
Nearly a year later, the KCMSD still had failed to develop the educational reform called for
by Judge Clark two years before and required by its own Transition Plan of the prior year. So, at the
end of March, 1998, the Desegregation Monitoring Committee convened the parties in a weeklong
series of meetings at the Kansas City Federation of Teachers offices. Those meetings were to a
substantial degree presided over by Dr. John Poggio of the University of Kansas, a national leader in
educational improvement in general and assessment and accountability in particular. Dr. Poggio had
been suggested by the Teachers and agreed to by the KCMSD. The meetings were facilitated by Judy
Gouwens of Roosevelt University of Chicago (the person used by the plaintiff schoolchildren to
conduct their annual in-school assessments). Substantial progress was made at the meetings on
professional development, assessment and accountability plans. The meetings ended with a
commitment by the KCMSD to flesh out the skeletal plans agreed upon by the parties.
KCMSD, however, did not complete its work on the plans after the March, 1998 meetings.
In August, the DMC again convened the parties. Dr. Poggio (having worked for the district, and with
a district-appointed committee, all summer on the assessment and accountability plans) and Ms.
Gouwens again facilitated efforts by the district to complete its own plans. Then, in November, with
still no plans, the DMC directed the KCMSD to submit its plans by the end of the year. When that
deadline was not met, it was extended to the end of January, 1999 and the plans were finally filed,
document number 4761. Judge Whipple approved those plans in an order dated May 27, 1999,
document number 4768. As of January, 2000, however, the KCMSD was already a year behind in
the implementation of major aspects of the plans according to testimony in depositions for the stay
hearing.
Also, from late 1997 until mid-1998, the DMC played a central role in effecting major budget
reductions to match KCMSD's expenditures to its reduced revenues, a role the DMC was forced to
assume when the KCMSD proved unable to make the major decisions precedent to setting the budget.
The DMC simultaneously facilitated the development of a plan, eventually agreed to by the KCMSD
and the other parties, with respect to modifications in the magnet school and transportation programs
of the district.
Thus, plaintiffs submit, the DMC has played since 1997 an integral role in first urging and
then requiring the KCMSD to produce educational, budget, magnet school, and transportation plans
that it was unwilling or unable to do on its own. And, until the August, 1999 hiring of a new
Superintendent, the DMC remained active, seeking to require the KCMSD to implement effectively
the plans it had filed with the Court in January. After Mr. Demps became superintendent, according
to the testimony of Dr. Eubanks at the January, 2000 stay hearing, the DMC deferred to Mr. Demps
on all significant issues, thus informally relaxing its oversight of the KCMSD.
For eight months, since the new superintendent began, the KCMSD has remained without a
Deputy Superintendent for Education (a key position, since the Superintendent has no experience in
education), a Director of Professional Development (another key position, since, without effective
professional development, improvements in curriculum implementation, assessment and even
implementation of the accountability plan cannot be effective), and other important administrative
leadership positions. Furthermore, it is reported that in recent weeks or months the KCMSD has
reverted to filling positions without adhering to the quality control measures implemented by the
DMC, has hired persons disapproved by the DMC before August, 1999, and has given in to school
board political pressure in the hiring and promotion of personnel, including the seemingly unqualified
promotion of a daughter of a school board member.
With this background and under the existing conditions, plaintiffs suggest that the Court
continue the monitoring and oversight activities of the DMC, adjusted for the new conditions and
challenges faced by the KCMSD as it seeks to achieve unitary status, constituted as follows:
1. Duties and Responsibilities of the DMC. The DMC should have the following duties:
a) to facilitate and mediate among the parties as needed on any pending issues, including
helping the parties to resolve the outstanding non-educational issues on which the KCMSD seeks
unitary status, and mediating among the parties to narrow the educational issues before an evidentiary
hearing on unitary status:
b) to assist the KCMSD in the implementation of its educational plans, by advice,
encouragement, ideas, monitoring and feedback, meetings with the school board, and by such other
assistance as is necessary, including reporting to and seeking the assistance of the Court if judicial
action is deemed necessary; and,
c) to monitor and protect the KCMSD administration from political or other interference as
the KCMSD seeks to implement educational reform measures that will not be easy or popular, and to
monitor personnel policies and practices to assure that job decisions are made on the basis of
educational criteria.
2. Number of Monitors. The plaintiffs suggest that the DMC be reduced from three to two
members and that both members act in a limited or part-time capacity, devoting only such time to the
tasks of the DMC as are reasonably necessary for the discharge of its duties. The DMC should
maintain its office and its office director, at least through the unitary status hearing because the
expected documents and reports needed for the monitors to perform their duties should initially be
reviewed and filed by a staff assistant to reduce the time that would otherwise be spent by the
monitors on clerical activities for which they would be paid at their monitoring rate.
3. Suggested Monitors. The plaintiffs suggest that this Court reappoint Dr. Eugene Eubanks
and appoint Dr. John Poggio to be the Court's two monitors. Since the KCMSD remains the
constitutional violator, and because the KCMSD has been so markedly deficient in discharging its
obligations to eliminate the vestige of poor education, the Court should give more weight to the
recommendations of plaintiff schoolchildren and the intervenor-teachers than it does to the
suggestions of the district. After all, the goal of all these efforts has been, and remains, to benefit the
schoolchildren.
Drs. Eubanks and Poggio would make excellent monitors for the following reasons:
a. Dr. Eubanks (whose resume is attached) provides an enormously valuable resource to
the district. He is a nationally recoginzed leader in the field of urban education with special
understanding of the high standards educational principles adopted by the State of Missouri and
acknowledged by the KCMSD; he is former Dean of the School of Education at UMKC and thus
brings substantial expertise on the critical issue of teacher training; he served as Special
Assistant to the Superintendent of the KCMSD in 1983-84 and thus has valuable experience in
direct administration of the school district; and, he has served on the DMC since its creation in
1985, thus providing irreplaceable institutional memory, exceeding even that of the KCMSD
where virtually all top administrators have less than one year experience in the KCMSD. All in
all, Dr. Eubanks provides the Court with expertise, wisdom, and experience that is of
inestimable value.
b. Dr. Poggio (whose Vita is attached) has attained preeminence in the fields of
assessment and accountability. He is acclaimed as both a theorist and a practitioner. As an
academician, his publications are relied on nationally and he is frequently asked to lead
professional meetings, edit publications, and lead national organizations. As a practitioner, he
has served as Director, Development of the Kansas Assessment Programs for twenty years and
for more than fifteen years as the co-director of the Center for Educational Testing and
Evaluation at the University of Kansas, giving him insight into the challenges of converting
educational principles into real-life educational reform in classrooms. Having enjoyed the trust
of the KCMSD, the Kansas City Federation of Teachers, and the plaintiff schoolchildren when
he largely led the 1998 effort in the KCMSD to draft assessment and accountability plans, Dr.
Poggio is uniquely situated to serve this Court by monitoring and overseeing implementation of
the district's educational plans.
No school district could simply hire the expertise and experience of persons so uniquely
qualified as Drs. Eubanks and Poggio and thus the KCMSD and this Court are particularly
fortunate that circumstances would allow them to serve as the Court's monitors. For these
reasons, the plaintiff schoolchildren urge this Court to appoint these two men to the new DMC.
Respectfully submitted,
Arthur Benson
Attorney for Plaintiffs
/AB
Encls.
cc: Mr. Charles Brown
Mr. Mark Thornhill
Mr. Brian Wood