Long ago and far away, in a land called Orygun, lived two kings. The one king was very, very good, and the other king was very, very bad.
The good king was loved by his subjects. The good king loved his citizens, and did everything he could to prepare and guide his people for their comfort, happiness. and their role in life.
The other king was very, very bad. His primary interest was the amount of money in the treasury. The bad king pursued every opportunity to add funds to the treasury, taxing his subjects at every turn, and showing no concern for their happiness or well being.
Thus begins the fairy tale. In real life, we don’t have to look far to find actual situations very similar to those of the fairy tale.
Corbett School District is a small rural, community school serving the unincorporated Eastern half of Multnomah County in Oregon. The superintendent is Robert Dunton. Supt. Dunton is first and foremost concerned with a superior education of the 700+ students attending the Corbett schools. Guided by the leadership of Bob Dunton and an outstanding school board, the staff and students of the Corbett School District have received national recognition, being chosen by both Newsweek and U.S. News as one of the top high schools in the United States.
When Dunton became superintendent in 1995, the school was among the lowest performers in the greater Portland area on the State of Oregon assessments in math. Supt. Dunton began searching for a means by which to disrupt the cycle of low expectations that seemed to permeate the local culture. In 2001, five students from among the 200 enrollees at Corbett High School took Advanced Placement exams in two subjects. Over the next three years, 25 students took another 41 exams in four subjects. Participation was by invitation only.
Having a limited budget, the first Advanced Placement classes in the Corbett District were taught by Superintendent Dunton himself. The Corbett School Board, recognizing the superintendent’s goals, assisted in expansion of the program by surrounding the superintendent with highly capable staff. With the cooperation of the Board, Dunton assembled an amazing team of educators. The program was uniquely broadened by requiring that all certified administrative positions teach one or two Advance Placement classes within their specialty.
Student participation in the Advanced Placement offerings was more than gratifying. In 2006, students at Corbett took 115 exams, equal to the number taken in the years 2001-2005 combined. Students earned scores of 3 or better on 54 exams. Two 9th graders passed A.P. Calculus exams.
In the spring of 2007, 87 Corbett High students took 168 A.P. exams in eight subjects. Thirty-eight of the forty-four seniors participated in the program. The school-wide passing rate was 51%. Twenty-two students, including 38% of the graduating seniors, earned the A.P. Scholar designation. For the second year in a row, over thirty students took the A.P. Calculus exams. Nine 10th graders participated and passed 11 exams. The senior class passed 63 exams, more than the school-wide total for any previous year.
What else is unique at Corbett School District? Teachers teach class for six periods a day. Teachers also get merit pay based on performance. Staff retention rates are outstanding, with a long list of applicants whenever there is an opening. Administrators who also teach A.P. classes are paid 10-15% above the rate of similar sized districts.
What are the results of the added effort? Graduation rates are up and the number of graduates continuing their education in college has also increased. Parents of neighboring school districts are clamoring to enroll their children at Corbett. Adjoining school districts began to deny further transfers to Corbett because of the reduction in revenue at the home district. Additional doors were opened at Corbett when the district approved a charter school offering A.P. opportunities. The response was overwhelming.
The national rankings earned by the Corbett School District are well deserved. And it all started with the vision and determination of one man…Superintendent Robert Dunton.
This article started with an opening paragraph sketching a fairy-tale beginning. The description of the program at the Corbett School District under the leadership of Supt. Dunton certainly parallels the fairy-tale qualifications of the good king.
But the opening paragraph also makes reference to the bad king. One need not travel far to reach the domain of the bad king. Estacada is only fifteen miles from Corbett, but a world apart in school leadership and programs. Estacada, like Corbett, is also a relatively small district. Small, that is in enrollment, which hovers around 2,300 students. Estacada District is huge in area at roughly 750 square miles. Much of this area is in the Mt. Hood National Forest.
Long ago and far away…the opening phrases of a fairy-tale. Those phrases also bring to mind several places in the Estacada School District. Nestled in the timberlands of the Mt. Hood National Forest are two facilities which truly are… long ago and far away.
The first of these unique places is Three Lynx, twenty miles up the Clackamas River from Estacada. Three Lynx is an old power generation site owned by Portland General Electric (PGE). A school was established at Three Lynx in 1927. Due to consolidation, the Three Lynx School became a part of the Estacada School District in 1978. Enrollment at Three Lynx continued to dwindle, and in 1988 the remaining students were transported to Estacada and the Three Lynx building was mothballed.
The old school building’s only use was for storage, until 1999 when Howard Fetz was hired by Estacada School District as assistant superintendent. Fetz convinced the Estacada School Board to authorize extensive repairs on the Three Lynx School and to refurbish the teacher’s apartment in the old building. Since that time Fetz has resided in his forest hide-away, rent-free and utilities paid by the School District. A conservative estimate for that little perk is $1,200 per month for ten years, or a total of $144,000. Certainly, a discrete bonus for an already well-paid, and apparently money conscious individual.
Howard Fetz was appointed as superintendent of the Estacada School District in May of 2007. In June of that year he appointed his wife, Bernie, to an administrative position for which she did not qualify. In one decisive move, Mr. and Mrs. Fetz assembled a personal financial package, including benefits, of over a quarter of a million dollars per month. Not bad for a small school district.
Supt. Fetz’s isolated residence on the Mt. Hood National Forest has effectively removed him from any meaningful social or community contact with the citizens and taxpayers of the Estacada School District. Community involvement should be an important goal of any individual in charge of educating that community’s next generation. Is $1,200 per month worth of free rent foregoing that role?
Timber Lake Job Corps Center has been operational since 1970. It is located on an old, post World War II, sawmill site on the Clackamas River twenty-three miles from Estacada. That should qualify it as both, “Long ago and far away”.
Other than in his personal finances, Supt. Fetz’s professional financial priorities become shamefully apparent in the Estacada School District’s dealings with the Timber Lake Job Corps Center.
Estacada School District became involved with the Job Corps Center in 2004. The District signed an agreement with the Job Corps to furnish academic training services to enable students to achieve a high school diploma. The parties agreed to a sum of $500,000 for the 2004-2005 school year. The Estacada School District showed anticipated expenses for the Job Corps project of $196,465, as signed by Howard Fetz.
The profit ratio for the program was in excess of 150%.
The Job Corps program continued as an Estacada School District project depending on funding from the Job Corp Not being satisfied with that arrangement, Supt. Fetz applied for and received, Oregon Department of Education recognition of the project as Estacada Alternative High School. As an ODE sanctioned institution it became eligible for State of Oregon School Support Funding on an adjusted per student basis.
The State School Support funding for the Estacada Alternative High School for 2009-2010, while not clearly identified in the budget, was approximately $1,000,000. Add the $500,000 from the Job Corps and you get total revenue of $1,500,000. The budgeted expenses for that period are $515,144. A tidy net profit of almost $1,000,000. That ought to make Supt. Fetz smile.
Apparently, however, Supt. Fetz forgot another important factor. Since the Alternative High School is now recognized and funded by ODE, statistics such as dropout rate are also included in the annual Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) report. Estacada School District has consistently failed to pass the AYP goals. It seems as if Fetz accepted $1,000,000 in exchange for the dubious honor of worst dropout rate in the State of Oregon. The goal of the Job Corps is twofold. To teach their participants a vocational skill and raise their academic skills to where they can pass a General Education Development (GED) test. By ODE standards, any student that fails to earn a diploma or a modified diploma, is classified as a dropout. ODE does not recognize a GED. The two programs are totally different in their final objective and Estacada School District is likely to pay a high price for their participation in the Job Corps program. Corbett School District also has a Job Corps facility within their District. Corbett recognizes the incompatibility of the two programs and has not attempted to interface with the Job Corps.
On January 5, 2010, Supt. Fetz received a letter from ODE stating that the Estacada School District would be under special observation to monitor improvement. The District must file an Improvement Plan by April 2010. Failure to show significant improvement in the next two years will bring serious consequences to Supt. Fetz and the Estacada District.
The fairy-tail is over. It is time to face reality. The bad king must reconcile the price of his financial gains (both personal and professional) as compared to the poor record of the District and the disservice to the students and the community. How can two School Districts so close geographically be so distant academically? How can two kings be so vastly different?