Sunday, March 30, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
IN the alphabet soup of education, the Clark County School District has concocted a three-letter acronym: LIT.
Don't feel dumb if you didn't know it stands for Learning Improvement Team. Most folks outside the district hierarchy are clueless, too -- and that spells a problem.
LITs, as their name implies, are supposed to build "site-based management," another catch-phrase that au courant educators like to toss around. The theory is that individual schools best know their needs and should be empowered to make decisions.
Back in 1994, board member Judy Witt championed the LITs as a way to give voice to every campus community. She stipulated that each elementary group should be made up of one administrator, two teachers, one specialist instructor and two parents. A community or business panelist was optional.
"I thought it was real important to guarantee parent involvement," Witt recalls. Acknowledging that some PTAs and PTOs have become too politicized or too faded, she saw the LITs as a catalyst for participation across the district.
That was then. What's evolved is a patchwork program that defies the spirit -- and in some cases, the letter -- of Witt's initiative.
A random sampling of parents indicates that few even know that LITs exist at their children's schools. Some of that can be blamed on apathy. But it took district officials months to deliver a list of the team members in Witt's zone. So who's more ignorant?
Even worse, actively involved parents say they have been shut out of the LIT process. The loudest complaints are emanating from Marion Earl and Lummis elementaries.
Critics at these schools say the membership is stacked with seven or more teachers on the panels. That's an obvious violation of the district's guidelines. So too is the presence of support staff, who are not mentioned in Witt's directive. Parent representatives are hand-picked by the principals. Sometimes, members are selected as "two-fers" -- campus teachers who conveniently have children in the school on zone variances.
Said one principal: "We want people we can work with."
Then there's the agenda. Lummis parents, on the outside looking in, objected that the school's LIT was co-opted as a "one-shot funding" panel to decide how to spend a district allocation last year. This frustrated those who sought serious and objective discussion about the school's sagging test scores.
Witt fears that these are not isolated cases.
Because the LITs were never formally codified as district policy, their make-up and enforcement provisions appear loose at best. CCSD administrators appear powerless or uninterested in fulfilling the mandate.
As a result, the chief site-based managers, the principals, have latitude to bend and flex the rules. Instead of cultivating grassroots democracy, some LITs look more like feudal fiefdoms. In lieu of parental oversight, schools get puppetry. So much for checks and balances.
Aware of the complaints, Witt is looking at ways to tighten the process without becoming overly bureaucratic. She is considering a plan to open all LIT meetings to the public and to post all meeting times in advance.
This would be a good first step in exposing LITs to some much-needed sunlight. Meantime, district officials and parents are said to be working on ways to overhaul the "governance system" at Lummis.
But have no illusions. Despite their public pleas for parental involvement, professional educators believe privately that they alone know what's best. Not surprisingly, the district leadership has shown little inclination to disabuse them of their autocratic tendencies. Indeed, CCSD retains strict control over essential decisions involving schedules and curriculum.
When apprised of concerns -- some of them lodged formally in writing -- the customary response from headquarters is: "This is the first I've heard of it." It's the worst of both worlds: a normally rigid front-office that becomes a flaccid protector of site-based shenanigans.
Parents who have tried to crash the LIT sanctums have been given the bum's rush, or barred at the door. One was haughtily informed: "You are a guest and you will not be permitted to make comment."
In other words, we welcome your input ... if it's on our terms. So far, such Learning Improvement Teams seem to have precious little to do with learning or improvement.
archive
