IN THE EDMONTON PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT Jerome G. Delaney The Newfoundland Royal Commission of Inquiry intothe Delivery of Programs and Services in Primary, Elementary, and SecondarySchools (1992) suggested that a model of school administration worthy ofconsideration was that of participatory management. One such specificmodel of school administration is school-based management or, as it ismore frequently referred to, site-based decision making. The EdmontonPublic School District, which serves approximately 70,000 students in Edmonton,Alberta, pioneered this concept in Canada. In 1976 the district initiateda pilot project in seven of its schools and in 1980 had expanded the conceptto all of its schools. Today 15 years later, school-based managementis functioning successfully and other educational jurisdictions acrossCanada can look to Edmonton to see how this system of school administrationis operationalized on a daily basis. In this article the author tracesthe beginnings of school-based management in Edmonton Public and discussesthe various challenges faced by the district in implementing this system-widechange. In a future article the author will discuss school-basedmanagement and its implications for school improvement in Newfoundlandand Labrador.
As the story goes (B. McIntosh, personal communication, September19, 1994), there once was a principal in Edmonton Public Schools who wantedto develop a library in his school. He called the Director of LibraryServices at the central office and received assurance that he would beable to obtain some books from the district to make his library operational. He then contacted the maintenance director at the central office lookingfor a supply of lumber in order to make shelves for the library but hisrequest was turned down. He was told that there was no money leftfor that kind of expenditure. A few days later, maintenance workersshowed up at his school with a supply of new doors and informed him thatit was time for his school doors to be replaced. The principal protestedand explained that he didn't need doors but rather shelving for his library. In disgust, he told the workers to take back the doors! This actual account does serve to illustrate the significanceof the concept of local decision making, the very basis of school-basedmanagement. Prior to 1976, the Edmonton Public School District operatedunder a very centralized system of school management and principals andteachers, who worked under this centralized system, readily admit thatthe above story was just one of many examples of that type of decisionmaking (B. McIntosh, personal communication, September 19, 1995). This was symptomatic of what schools and their personnel tolerated priorto the introduction of school-based management or what was locally referredto at that time as "school-site budgeting". The Arrival of Dr. Jones In 1968 an American educator, Dr. Rolland Jones, became superintendentof the Edmonton Public School District. According to M.A. Kostek(personal communication, February 9, 1995), Jones was a "visionary 20 yearsahead of his time" who believed that every principal should be "superintendentof his school". It bothered the chief superintendent that principalsdid not have the decision-making power he felt was necessary for them torun their schools as effectively as possible. Jones believed thatcentral office administrators and supervisors should serve schools andtheir principals in an advisory and consultative capacity. AlthoughJones was keen on the philosophy of site-based decision making, he wasunable to operationalize the concept and under his tenure no significantactions were taken to further advance the concept. However, during Jones' period as superintendent, a young schooladministrator by the name of Michael Strembitsky was rising through theranks to eventually become Jones' executive assistant. It was whileworking under Rolland Jones, who was perceived by many as "Strem's mentor",that Strembitsky began to consider this whole notion of site-based decisionmaking (M.A. Kostek, personal communication, February 9, 1995). Havingserved as a school administrator in the Edmonton system, Strembitsky hadfirst-hand knowledge of the kinds of decisions being made by central officepersonnel and it too perturbed him that although principals had the legalauthority of being ultimately responsible for everything that went on intheir schools, they lacked the financial resources and the flexibilityto deploy those resources as they saw fit. Dr. Jones resigned from Edmonton Public Schools in 1972 and returnedto the United States to serve as superintendent of the Charlotte-MecklenbergSchool District in North Carolina (Kostek, 1992). Michael Strembitskyserved as acting superintendent in the interim and was officially appointedsuperintendent of Edmonton Public Schools in 1973. The Pilot Project Strembitsky was now in a position where he could work towardsoperationalizing his thinking regarding site-based decision making (M.A.Kostek, personal communication, February 9, 1995). In late 1975 heinvited schools in the Edmonton Public School District to volunteer toparticipate in a pilot project on "school-based budgeting". Accordingto R.P. Baker (personal communication, December 20, 1994), the invitationprovided little detail about the project because the terms of referencewere to be developed with the schools chosen to participate. However,principals were aware that if their schools were chosen to participate,they would be involved in developing a budget which could respond to theindividual needs of their schools. The seven schools selected toparticipate in the pilot -- Grovenor, Hardisty, Kensington, M.E. LaZerte,Lynnwood, Parkdale, and W.P. Wagner -- were announced early in 1976. The terms of reference and parameters for the pilot, which ranfor three years from 1976 to 1979, were as follows (Baker, 1977): � budgets were to run concurrently with the school operation year --September to August; � budgets were to reflect short and long term goals; � budgets were prepared by program (e.g., Language Arts, Mathematics,Custodial, Utilities, etc.); � the budgets were to be used as an authorization and control document; � the school board had to approve each budget prior to commencementof the operating period; � principals were designated as signing authorities for designated programs; � average salaries were used for budgeting purposes; � 1976 budget dollars were used with allowance to be made in 1977 forinflation and salary negotiations; � provincial curriculum guidelines were to be observed; � contracts with Board employees were not to be violated; � the project was not to be used to circumvent problems for which procedureswere already developed (pp. 54-55). Not long after Strembitsky became superintendent, he hired plannerAlan Parry whose primary responsibility was to develop a system for school-basedbudgeting. Parry is regarded by many as the architect of school-basedmanagement in the Edmonton Public School District and although he confrontednumerous obstacles in setting up that system, he was tenacious in thoseefforts (M.A. Kostek, personal communication, February 9, 1995). Those efforts included Parry visiting the Dade County School District inFlorida and the Orange County School District in California where school-basedmanagement had been in operation for some time. It was during theCalifornian trip that he met two consultants, Fred Wellington and Les Shuck,who provided invaluable assistance to the Edmonton Public School Districtduring the pilot stage and the early district-wide implementation years. R.P. Baker (personal communication, December 20, 1994) and VictorNakonechny (personal communication, December 21, 1994), two of the pilotprincipals, recalled that when their schools had decided to get involvedin the pilot project, there was a certain amount of apprehension and anxietyon the part of teachers. "They nor I weren't quite sure what we weregetting ourselves into but overall there was a considerable amount of co-operationfrom teachers and that certainly was instrumental in making the pilot work,"commented Baker. The Role of the School Board Although the Edmonton Public School District is well recognizedin the literature on school-based management (e.g., Brown, 1990; Herman& Herman, 1993; Mohrman & Wohlstetter, 1994), it appears that theSchool Board itself has not received the appropriate recognition for itsleadership role in approving Superintendent Stembitsky's pilot initiativeand eventual district-wide implementation of the concept (J. Cowling, personalcommunication, February 15, 1995). Former board chairperson Joan Cowling, who spent 12 years as atrustee and who began her term of service in 1980, the first year of thedistrict-wide implementation, has suggested that the public and at timesthe trustees themselves, didn't always appreciate the leadership role thatthe board played in facilitating the start of school-based management inthe Edmonton Public School District (J. Cowling, personal communication,February 15, 1995). She too recalled the anxiety and uncertaintyof teachers in the district when the decision was made to go district-wide: "It was certainly a classic example of a paradigm shift and the first yearwas a real learning experience for all of us." During the implementationyears, principals were invited to meet with board subcommittees to discusstheir educational plans and Cowling recalled that it was around 1984 or1985 when the concept of school-based management seemed to "become institutionalizedand have taken on a life and philosophy of its own" (J. Cowling, personalcommunication, February 15, 1995). Obstacles to Implementation In retrospect, one can now agree that the strategy of startingoff with a seven school pilot project was certainly a successful one. In the late 1970s there was a paucity of written information on the conceptand apart from some isolated efforts in the United States and none in Canada,there were no locations where Edmonton Public administrators could go toview a model operation (M.A. Kostek, personal communication, February 9,1995). In fact, Edmonton was indeed "blazing new trails" and of coursethere were a number of obstacles that had to be overcome. One ofthe most obvious obstacles at the time was the resistance on the part ofcentral office personnel who worked in the area of finances. Onegets the impression that those personnel were rather skeptical as to whetheror not school principals could actually handle the financial end of theprocess (B. McIntosh, personal communication, September 19, 1994). Also, with control over the finances, these individuals wielded considerablepower over the schools and perceived their very existence and employmentto be threatened by the introduction of school-based management. Consequently, it was obvious that many roadblocks had to be overcome. Another impediment at that time was the lack of computerizationat the central office. This computerization would have greatly facilitatedthe generation of much-needed data for making budgetary decisions (A. Durand,personal communication, December 22, 1994). Hours and hours of tedious,time-consuming manual labor were expended in order to come up with information,such as determining allocations, which was vital to the decision-makingprocess. In spite of these impediments, the tenacity and perseverance ofMichael Strembitsky, Alan Parry and others, along with the leadership andsupportive role of the trustees, paid off and became a reality (M.A. Kostek,personal communication, February 9, 1995). As Kostek (1992) has soeloquently stated, For years, educators have discussed the benefits of decisionmaking at the school level by people who are affected by those decisions--students,parents, teachers and principals. The theorizing has stopped in Edmontonwhere site-based management has been a reality for over a decade (p. 432).The Allocation System Andre Durand of the Edmonton Public School District (personalcommunication, December 22, 1994), in reflecting back over the introductionof school-based management, recalled that the change in structure the districtexperienced when converting to school-based management was a very significantone. Now principals were expected to take on a new role with a muchgreater emphasis on planning, decision making, and involving teachers inthose processes. To assist principals in becoming more proficientin those new roles, the central office provided consulting services whichwere available on a voluntary basis to school administrators. One of the greatest challenges facing the district with the adventof this decentralized approach to school governance was deciding how toallocate financial resources to individual schools (A. Durand, personalcommunication, December 22, 1994). Prior to the transition to school-basedmanagement, schools received a printout late in the previous school yearlisting how much money they would be allocated for the various departments. There was a limited amount of flexibility with those allocated amounts. And of course, principals, who were very astute politically, knew of differentways to increase those amounts for their schools. Traditionally,two percent of the money utilized by schools actually went out to the schools. With this district-wide change, it would eventually increase to approximately75 percent. Durand (personal communication, December 22, 1994) emphasizedthat one of the things the central office held "very sacred and guardedwith our lives was the concept that if you're going to give people responsibility,you must also give them the resources. You cannot say to them youwill now have the responsibility but we are going to control the money." The challenge, after it had been decided as to what responsibilities weregoing to the schools and what responsibilities would stay with the district,was to determine how to actually distribute the monies to allow individualschools to meet those responsibilities. The "paradigm shift", earliermentioned by Cowling, came into play because schools now had to make decisionswhich, under the previous centralized system, were made for them--how manysupplies, equipment, services were needed, what levels of staffing wererequired to offer their programs, what kind of staff mix with regards tocertificated and noncertificated staff would be sufficient to offer programsand so forth. Responsibility now lay with the schools for makingthose kinds of decisions. Previously, those decisions were takenby central office with some input from the schools. The district office was very keen on having the allocations "student-drivenand not supply-driven, not equipment-driven, not staff-driven so that therewould be a way to distribute the money and to get away from the old conceptof having supplies-equipment-services (SES) money assigned and staff moneyassigned" (A. Durand, personal communication, December 22, 1994). Durand further stated that "it was important for us to shake the tree soas to get as much money out of the tree as possible." Central officesupervisors responsible for the various subject areas were reluctant togive away their budgets and what it came down to in the final analysiswas that "it took a group of central office administrators with a singlepurpose of determining what was to go to the schools to decide which resourceswould be decentralized" (A. Durand, personal communication, December 22,1994). The next step in the allocation process was to try and come upwith a relative weighting for students. That weighting procedureresulted in various ratios being developed (the baseline ratio being 1.00)which attempted to relate to the actual needs of students. It isimportant to remember here that this system was a completely new way ofallocating financial resources and that this system was not one that wasbeing used by the provincial government at that time. As the school district made decisions regarding the allocationof financial resources to the schools, in a similar vein, the schools wouldthen have to make their own decisions regarding the deployment of thoseresources. And back in the early 1980s when school-based managementwent system-wide, this was indeed quite a dramatic shift in the way decisionswere made. In the 1985-86 school year a review of the allocation system wasconducted and it was decided to move from a whole listing of individualstudent categories to a grouping of categories called "levels". Overthe years the system was further streamlined and today there are eightlevels serving as the basis of allocation. Back in the early years of school-based management, it took centraloffice personnel three to four weeks to get back to the schools with confirmationof the actual amounts of money they would be receiving after the September30 cutoff date. Today with computerization, that same confirmationperiod has been reduced to approximately five calendar days. A Final Word Although individuals such as former school trustee Cowling arequick to acknowledge that school-based management is by no means the perfectsystem, she is of the opinion that this decentralized approach representeda dramatic improvement in the way schools were administered (J. Cowling,personal communication, February 15, 1995). REFERENCES Baker, R.P. (1977). School-based budget. Challengein Educational Administration, XVI (1 & 2), 53-56. Kostek, M.A. (1992). A century and ten: The historyof Edmonton Public Schools. Edmonton, AB: Edmonton PublicSchools. Newfoundland Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Delivery ofPrograms and Services in Primary, Elementary, and Secondary Schools (1992).Our children, our future. St. John's, NF: Governmentof Newfoundland and Labrador. Author Biographical Note Jerome G. Delaney recently received a Doctor of Philosophy in EducationalAdministration at the University of Alberta. His dissertation "TheRelationship Between School-based Management and School Improvement" involvedschools in the Edmonton Public School District. Jerome has servedas a teacher and administrator with the Appalachia Roman Catholic SchoolDistrict based in Stephenville and is presently a junior high teacher atSt. Kevin's Elementary School in the Goulds. His e-mail address is: jgdelane@calvin.stemnet.nf.ca |