[Ohiogift] OAGC Advocacy Update -- Achievement Committee Votes Out Gifted Standards to Full Board

[Ann Sheldon]

Achievement Committee Meeting Recap --- November 14, 2016 -- All achievement committee members were present (Chair Rebecca Vazquez-Skillings, Vice Chair Todd Jones, Melanie Bolender, Pat Bruns, Stephanie Dodd, Joe Farmer, Nancy Hollister, Ann Jacobs, and Ron Rudduck).  Board president Tom Gunlock and board member Mary Rose Oakar also were in attendance.


After accepting the minutes and a short discussion on career tech standards, Chairwoman Vazquez-Skillings opened up the discussion about the gifted operating standards. The first motion of this meeting turned out to be the most controversial.  As she did in October, Ms. Vazquez-Skillings asked for the November draft including all of the amendments conceptually agreed to in October to be voted as the base draft for discussion.  Several committee members quickly made the motion to accept the draft.  Committee member Todd Jones raised objections. He indicated that he did not agreed to the amendments, because he was so confused by the October’s committee discussion. He wanted to go through each of the changes that were agreed to by the committee last month.  He also brought up the education management letter that he said raised several legitimate concerns. He indicated that he had concerns, for example, about the language in the draft rule that calls for a district audit every three years. (Note from Ann: This is required by law and has been part of the operating standards since 1999.)


At this point, several committee members challenged his objections. Melanie Bolender questioned the timing and actual field support of the education management positions as the letter was sent late in the process by U.S. mail so that many committee members hadn’t received it. She also indicated that members of the associations she spoke to did not support the positions outlined in the letter. Stephanie Dodd brought up the fact that the new draft had been available since November 3rd, and that Mr. Jones hadn’t expressed any concerns to the committee before the meeting. Pat Bruns felt that the draft was a good distillation of the committee discussion.  Ann Jacobs noted that Mr. Jones hadn’t objected to any of the amendments when they had been discussed at last month’s meeting.  She also spoke about the fact that this issue had been under discussion for well over three years and needed to be resolved. There was also some other very colorful commentary as well as fun literary references. These are best heard directly when the audio tapes are released by ODE in the next few days.


At this point, there was a brief discussion about which amendments were actually included in the draft. A vote was taken to accept the November board book draft as the base draft for discussion. The vote was 8 to 1, with only Mr. Jones objecting.  Ms. Vazquez-Skillings asked ODE staff if they believe the draft accepted was a solid draft with which to move forward. Staff indicated that they believed it was a true reflection of what the committee had discussed along with input from all stakeholders.  Ms. Vazquez-Skillings then asked if there additional amendments beyond those that were submitted previously. Mr. Jones stated that he had no amendments, but that if the draft were passed out of committee, he would be introducing a “panoply” of amendments at the full board in December.


The chair then asked Melanie Bolender to discuss the amendments that she had submitted for discussion. Ms. Bolender spoke about the need to move forward so that districts could be given clear direction for the next school year. In the interest of compromise and closure, she indicated that she was going to withdraw her amendments and move that the base draft earlier accepted be voted out of committee so that it could go to the full board for an intent to adopt in December. Mr. Jones made some additional comments about how if he had known the amendments were to be dropped he might have had a different opinion of the base draft, but reiterated his statement that he reserved his right to bring amendments to the full board.  At this point, the draft was voted out of committee with a vote of 9 to 0. A copy of the current standards voted out can be found at here.


Note from Ann:  OAGC would certainly have welcomed additional changes to the draft, especially with regard to reporting and accountability. However, it is more than time for the standards to be adopted. Additional changes can perhaps be addressed by the gifted advisory council in the future.


Based on Mr. Jones comments, December may be a very contentious meeting. Conversely, due to the withdrawal of any additional amendments to the base draft, the meeting may provide the long-sought calm vote most stakeholders (and board members) crave. We will need to communicate our support of the current draft with all board members. We will also need to line up witnesses to support the draft. It is particularly important to have supportive superintendents and school board members speak up. If you would like to testify or can recommend someone to testify on December 13th, please contact me at anngift at aol.com.


In the meantime, we need to celebrate and thank the committee board members for voting out this draft. Please take a few minutes to thank them for their support and ask them to keep the work intact at the full board meeting, next month. As always, use your own words. 



Committee email addresses are:
rebecca.vazquez-skillings at education.ohio.gov; Pat.Bruns at education.ohio.gov; melaniebolender at education.ohio.gov ; Stephanie.Dodd at education.ohio.gov; Joe.Farmer at education.ohio.gov;Nancy.Hollister at education.ohio.gov; ann.jacobs at education.ohio.gov; jones.todd at education.ohio.gov; ron.rudduck at education.ohio.gov
   Posted: 11/16/2016
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/ohiogift/attachments/20161116/f0a5f606/attachment.html>