JAMES DAVIS

Name: James H. Davis III

Age: 49

Town: South Orange

Current employment: American Express

Past public service: I have never held an elected position.

What are your three top priorities for the school district if elected?

The Board does not appear to function as a cohesive body that speaks with a single voice in terms of direction and priorities. I would like to lend my skills and experience, in advising corporate and non-profit Boards, to helping Board members bridge their disagreements and reason to a consensus on direction and priorities.

One of the reasons I became interested in running for the Board late last year was the vision that Dr. Ramos articulated and the promise inherent in his strategic planning initiative. I look forward to hearing the recommendations of the planning committees when they’re presented to the Board in November and hope to be part of the Board that helps set those plans into motion in January. But the Board must not take every proposed initiative and provide rubber stamp approval. 

The Board must ask some hard questions. For example, how will the components of the plan fit together? And are the plans feasible given our financial constraints, apparent lack of organizational capacity and operational effectiveness on day-to-day matters? The Strategic Plan holds out the hope of putting us on the path to a major transformation where we begin to be more consistent in serving all children well. I want to see that happen and intend to add my voice to the discussion, whether I am elected or not.

The Access and Equity policy was adopted nearly a year ago by the Board.  However, there has been no consistent implementation yet.  What I have seen is analysis and planning about what needs to happen to make real the promise of increased access to higher level courses. Our ability to make progress on these efforts in the coming year will be a measure of whether we can undertake the broader educational change efforts envisioned in the Strategic Plan. I intend to pay close attention to this process and insist on effective Board oversight mechanisms.

How do you think Dr. John Ramos has done in his first year as Superintendent? What could he do better?

Dr. Ramos accepted the Superintendent position facing some tough challenges.  I give him credit for pushing ahead with generating support for his educational vision in the face of the many day-to-day problems that can consume 100% of everyone’s bandwidth. I give him high marks with getting a good Access and Equity policy adopted by what was clearly a divided Board, and with generating a lot of enthusiasm and participation in the Strategic Planning process from people not previously involved in district-related matters. If you look at the membership of the action planning committees, you will see a lot of committed educators and a lot of community-based talent. 

At the same time, there have been missteps over the last year, in particular the handling of the investigation of the HIB complaints related to the baseball coaches. The issues have festered for more than a year. These situations are always messy, but it’s also clear there needed to be more attention paid early on to getting it right. To be fair, this issue did begin before Dr. Ramos was hired and I believe that there were deficiencies in the process that have been addressed by Dr. Ramos.

I am also concerned about the number of operational problems we see in the schools, including scheduling issues at MMS, SOMS and CHS, and most recently the problematic decision to hire a leave replacement teacher for SOMS who had been brought up on tenure charges in a prior district. The district’s day-to-day operations need to improve, and that is a key element in the Superintendent’s job.

How should the district handle the PARCC testing in the future if it becomes more of a mandated requirement?

PARCC testing is and has been a mandated requirement. It was implemented originally as the latest in a series of standardized tests fulfilling New Jersey’s obligation under the Federal No Child Left Behind Act to gauge the effectiveness of a district’s efforts to have every child on grade level. Standardized tests are a poor way to measure individual student progress and do not even claim to capture many dimensions of student growth and engagement. But they do act to highlight those cases where a district is failing to serve its entire student population. That is why the NJ Supreme Court in its early Abbott decisions mandated the State of New Jersey to use a standard measure of educational outcomes as an indicator of whether each district was providing the mandate of New Jersey’s constitution to provide every child with a “thorough and efficient education.”

Recently, the NJ state Board of Education made passing the PARCC in multiple subject areas a graduation requirement. I believe that the PARCC test has yet to be proven as an effective test. It is not aligned with grade-level content actually being delivered in NJ classrooms. In addition, it's scoring is problematic and the technology which delivers the online test from the state level is not reliable.

However, I believe that, at this time, it may be a mistake to get rid of the test and start the search for another standardized test all over again.  The New Jersey Department of Education should listen to its constituency and make the necessary changes and enhancements to make the test more effective.  

We (as a board member and as parents) need to insist on the PARCC being fixed, to make it a meaningful measure of student outcomes.  If that endeavor is not possible, then we need to replace it with a more effective measure. Out of the approximately 24 states that first adopted the PARCC test, only 11 continue to utilize it.  I believe that is an indicator of its current value, but I have yet to hear conversations about making enhancements which may be cheaper and more feasible than starting from scratch.

All that being said, I don’t think we can just get rid of all standardized tests. They are a reality of modern life, and students who want to go to graduate school or law school or advance in other professions need to be able to handle difficult standardized tests.

Whatever NJ decides to do with PARCC, I am strongly in favor of the immediate elimination of the use of PARCC scores as a measure of the effectiveness of teachers. There are too many factors outside of an individual teacher's control that affect student scores.

In terms of achieving some improvement in the state's approach to testing, I am not in favor of using students’ opting out as a protest measure to change the PARCC. We adults need to engage and insist to the legislature that New Jersey’s testing regime needs an overhaul. And building a strong, statewide, consistent parent voice is the only way to achieve and sustain meaningful reforms on this and other issues. 

A revamp of the state's approach to testing needs to be circumspect about how much test scores tell and use a richer model of student achievement that incorporate multiple measures. Further, comparing the scores (or averages) of this year’s fourth grade versus last year’s fourth grade is not helpful (different set of children). What we need to do is look at the progress of individual students over time, and then aggregate that to determine what percentage of the district’s students are on grade level, and for those who are not, whether they are making progress back toward grade level.

How would you help the district improve its communication with the community?

We must do better on how the district communicates to and engages with parents, but I’m told that every prospective Board member has promised to do so and more or less failed.

I think some proactive work on key messages and essential information would go a long way toward making a part of our efforts a Standard Operating Procedure, not dependent on the whims of some individual teacher or administrator. There is no reason why we can’t get the facts to the community more effectively.  The SEPAC parents’ organization produced a model guide for parents of children with disabilities. That is laudable, but one has to ask why had the district not done so?

So we need to foster a discussion among Board members and the broader community and create a list of exactly what information the district needs to provide; how frequently it needs to be updated; and who is responsible for generating it. And we need to look at those needs as a whole and determine how much is feasible with our limited staff, so we can set reasonable expectations. Then we need to insist that the Superintendent establish operational oversight mechanisms so we know the necessary content is being provided and updated.

And then, we need to ask how it is that we can make all parents and others effectively aware of the information available, so they know where to look and whom to ask. The "Let’s Talk" online communication system is a promising start, but there’s no information on how effective it’s been in its initial year.

Beyond providing parents with all of the useful information they need, we must get a lot better at ensuring that the messages from teachers, principals and central office are consistent, that we are not sending contradictory signals on important issues.

Finally, on all the information that goes home to parents, from teachers and principals, the Board needs to insist that central office define standards of content, messaging and timing. Letters to parents about placement and scheduling are one area where dramatic improvement is needed.

How would you help improve the achievement gap?

All of the vision about access and equity is meaningless if we don’t enable all students to achieve at top levels. That is possible. There are certainly struggling students who would benefit from better and earlier academic supports and who need intensive academic interventions in the upper elementary and middle grades.

Many students of color start off in kindergarten on a level playing field and then fall by the wayside as they progress through early grades. Everything I’ve seen and experienced, and what I’ve read, leads me to the conclusion that some teachers dramatically underestimate what individual children are capable of, and that the children in turn perform down to those low expectations. I don’t think teachers consciously do this; however, it is part of the larger national culture that they absorb that takes conscious effort to overcome. I support cultural competency training and implicit bias training, which can be a first step in improving the way that teachers see and engage with students of color. But a few hours of training is only a first step. Recruiting more teachers of color is another step we can take, but there aren’t enough of them nationally to treat that as a viable solution. We need to ensure that the people providing that instructional leadership and day-to-day motivation can win the confidence of teachers and, over the longer term, change their teaching practice and our institutional culture where every teacher looks at every student and sees all of the potential in those young minds.

Looking at data is important, and looking at it the right way is doubly important. We need to chart the progress of each individual student over time, as part of ensuring that struggling students are making their way back to grade level and that our interventions are effective. Doing that is a lot more informative than looking at the average of one demographic versus another.

How do you see racial issues in the district given the concerns by some African-American students at CHS that assigning a police officer to the school would have been a mistake?

Fortunately, in my view, the district did not decide to put police officers in our schools. With the history of the district disproportionately suspending and disciplining children of color, I believe that introducing a police officer in the school would have further exacerbated that problem. 

With respect to so-called “racial” issues, I did not perceive a racial divide over the question – many white parents opposed the presence of police in our schools.

In terms of the safety and security of our students, I am hopeful that the “restorative justice” model will take hold, helping the general climate in the schools and making it substantially less likely that some angry, disaffected student will bring a weapon to school to “settle scores”. 

I would also challenge us to think about how our current security officers and staff are trained.  Are they trained in how to de-escalate tense situations with children?  If not, why not?  In my view, if we have put the safety and security of our children in the hands of people that have not been properly trained to address adolescents and teenagers, especially when our children are in distress, we have failed as a community. 

How would you handle the expected enrollment increases that are already sparking some overcrowding given the budget constraints that forced the cutting of 11 teaching positions?

We need to take steps to accommodate the near-term increased enrollment. I am not sure that rearranging boundary lines will do that when all the elementary schools are essentially full. The district has engaged a re-districting consultant to look at alternatives. We will soon hear those recommendations. There is a lot of rumor and conjecture in the community over this topic. My personal practice is to avoid getting involved in speculation and work to ensure that there is adequate engagement with the community and feedback to the Board once the alternatives have been reported.

Over and above our near-term space needs, I think we have to do some longer-term planning in conjunction with our municipal officials to ask where we want to be in 20 years and what we need to do now to get there. 

What is your position on contracting out services vs. in-district staffing?

I am not fundamentally opposed to out-sourcing services, but one always wants to see a thorough cost-benefit analysis, which is then revisited every few years.

One needs to look at out-sourced services not just from a narrow cost perspective but also from an effectiveness standpoint. I am not sure that is being done very thoroughly in our district.

How do you think the district handled the CHS baseball coach controversy over alleged HIB incidents?

As an attorney, I have watched this issue unfold over the course of the last year with growing concern. I am not privy to the investigative reports delivered to the Board this summer, but it’s clear from the amount of time spent on this topic that the Board was determined to get to the bottom of what, if anything, did happen, and the public outcomes indicate that some changes were and are necessary.  The Board’s attorney, Phil Stern, has departed the district, and the district has indicated its intention to hire new coaches for the coming Spring season.

I would commend the Board for its policy work, initiated early last fall as its initial response to the situation. In early 2016, the Board adopted a comprehensive set of policies describing expectations for the district’s athletic coaches and the process by which they are hired, evaluated and managed. So I would give the Board high marks. Exactly what happened in the administration is hard to gauge, but as a Board member, I would evaluate the process not the outcome of any given situation.  I anticipate that Dr. Ramos, being new to the district when this incident occurred, was not happy with the process as it had developed. Therefore, as a Board member, I would evaluate Dr. Ramos on how he fixed the process so that similar issues, if and when they arise, are handled in a timely and thorough manner that is fair to all parties (students, parents and coaches) and fully compliant with the law.