It
was a tumultuous time, and a tumultuous place to work.
A
management firm had been hired by our urban school district to undertake the
change that, politically, the school district had been unable to do. The
district’s infrastructure had been put in place at the height of student
enrollment, back in the early 1960s – 130,000 school children.
The
current enrollment was officially something like 40,000, and that may have been
an exaggeration. Aging, if beautiful, buildings, a huge administrative staff, processes
and procedures that might have worked a half century before – expenses were
approaching the out-of-control point.
Almost
as the management team arrived, the superintendent surprised everyone by announcing
his retirement. The head of the management team was named acting
superintendent, and looked at the financial books. The district was broke, and
had been for some time. A serious educational and infrastructure problem had
also become an urgent financial crisis.
For
the next three months, budgets were shredded. Hundreds of people were laid off.
Longstanding school programs like cafeteria food services were to be
outsourced.
Imagine
taking on the most conservative bureaucracy with rapid-fire change. It became
ugly, exacerbated by the role the school district played in city politics.
Protests at the district office and school board meetings became standard
operating procedure.
I
was hired as the communications director about four months into this process.
My team and budget told the story of what was happening. From a staff of 13 and
a budget of $1+ million, there was now a team of 1.5 (and I was the 1) and a
budget of $20,000, which had already been spent.
I
had experience working with management firms. For the previous two decades,
these firms had helped restructure much of corporate America. Simultaneously
vilified and lauded, they had played a major role in downsizings,
restructurings, acquisitions, and divestitures. But I had never heard of a
management firm taking over a school district.
This
particular firm was better than all of the previous ones I had dealt with. It
did some things wrong, and mostly political things. The grand poobahs of the school
district and political establishment were often disregarded (many for good
reasons). The president of the teachers union didn’t speak for all of the
teachers in the union. City Hall was always ready with advice and specific
directions.
But
the firm did many things right. In fact, it did the important things right. The
single most important thing it did right was to have courage.
It
took courage to close and consolidate schools.
It
took courage to outsource functions like food services.
It
took courage to take on the teachers union.
It
took courage to stand down the hundreds of protestors who showed up angry and
screaming at every school board meeting.
It
took courage to engage the community about unpopular decisions that had to be
made, or how to determine the least of all bad choices.
It
took courage to root out decades of favoritism, nepotism, and gentlemen’s
agreements that benefitted the gentlemen (and often the ladies) who made the
agreements and no one else.
And
it took courage to state the obvious. The district was broke. It had been
poorly managed for a long time. Children were not being well educated, except
for a very few elite schools.
The
management firm’s contract eventually and wasn’t renewed. It didn’t finish
everything it set out to do. But it saved the district financially, and set the
stage for the state government to come in a few years later to take over the
district’s educational programs.
Of
all the people I worked with in the school district, it was these outsiders,
these “MBA types” with hard-charging personalities and iron-fisted
determination to get the job done, who most had the interests of the children of
the district at heart.
And
it was because they had courage.
