After Six Weeks as Jeffco’s CEO, Tracy Dorland is Approaching a Moment of Truth

Memorial Day (May 31st) marks the start Tracy Dorland’s seventh week as the CEO (Superintendent) of Jefferson County Public Schools, the United States’ 37th largest school district, with an annual budget of over a billion dollars to serve about 84,000 children.

Jefferson County is an educated, affluent suburb located west of Denver. Almost 50% of Jeffco adults have at least a BA degree, and median annual household income is $82,986. Thirty percent of Jeffco’s students are eligible for free/reduced lunch.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, Jeffco was one of the nation’s best school districts. After thirty years of declining performance, those days are a distant memory.

Today, Jeffco is a district in crisis. On the 2019 state assessments (the last before COVID arrived):

• 54% of Jeffco 3rd graders did not meet state ELA standards (vs 56% in 2015).
• 65% of 6th graders did not meet state math standards (vs 58% in 2015).
• 62% of 8th graders did not meet state science standards (vs. 56% in 2015).
• SAT scores have been falling in both Evidence Based Reading and Writing (EBRW) and Math.

While academic performance was plummeting, Jeffco’s district overhead spending increased by $48 million over the past three years, to $267 million, or $3,658 per student / $91,456 per 25 student classroom.

Despite this, Jeffco’s CFO has assured the school board that every dollar in the district’s billion dollar budget is being spent as efficiently and effectively as possible (something no CFO of a billion dollar public company would ever be so arrogant to claim to her or his board).

After just two years the district’s six-year, $705 million Capital Improvement Program is already more than $100 million over budget, due to a combination of cost overruns and spending on projects (e.g., new athletic facilities at affluent schools) that were never disclosed to voters during the 2018 bond campaign.

One member of the Citizens Capital Asset Advisory Committee, which, per the language in the bond issue approved by voters, is supposed to be providing “oversight”, has received over $1 million in Capital Improvement Program contracts. This makes a mockery of Jeffco district policy GP-13, which states that members of the CCAAC shall be “free from any relationship that would interfere with independent judgment”.

After stonewalling by district staff when she asked questions about the Capital Improvement Program, the only CPA on the district’s Financial Oversight Committee resigned.

Finally, according to the latest release by the US Department of Education, 24% of Jeffco’s teachers use more than ten personal and sick days per year, the point at which DoE research has found that teacher absences begin to have a significant negative impact on student achievement.

In sum, Jeffco is an organization in an out-of-control downward spiral.

Most public company CEOs walking into similarly challenging situations follow the same playbook. Rather than telling investors that everything is fine, they quickly acknowledge and describe their understanding of the company’s critical problems, dismiss the managers responsible, cancel failing programs, and take big writedowns of overstated balance sheet asset values.

At the same time, turnaround CEOs also reassure investors, customers, employees, suppliers and other stakeholders that they intend to do whatever it takes to restore the company’s strategic, competitive, and financial health, and describe key details of their initial actions to solve its critical problems.

In short, effective turnaround CEOs quickly give stakeholders what they need to hear in a crisis: Truth and Hope.

The best school district superintendents take a very similar approach.

For example, when he took over Denver Public Schools, now Senator Michael Bennet didn’t minimize the breadth and scale of the challenges he faced. Nor did Angelica Infante-Green when she took over as Rhode Island’s Commissioner of Education, or Jeff Riley when led the Massachusetts’ state takeover of the failing Lawrence school district.

Unfortunately, far too many superintendents who take over poorly performing districts do the opposite.

Whether it is because they want to avoid conflict with employees andtheir unions, or conflict with their board or powerful local interests (e.g., local realtors), they get off on the wrong foot by telling the public how honored they are to have been chosen as the new leader of such a fine school district.

But in an era when comparative school and district academic and financial performance data is more widely available than ever, most parents and employers aren’t fooled. Worse, by trying to fool the public a new superintendent undermines people’s trust in them going forward.

That is especially the case today after so many school district management teams and boards have already lost so many angry parents’ and employers’ trust during the pandemic.

As a former deputy superintendent of Colorado’s Adams 12 school district, does anyone doubt that, after six weeks in her new job as Jeffco’s CEO (and after articles like this one), Tracy Dorland now has a painfully clear understanding of the scale and scope of Jeffco’s problems, as well as an initial read on the quality and trustworthiness of the members of her top management team?

The longer she waits to do what effective public company CEOs do under these circumstances — publicly acknowledge her organization’s problems and describe what she plans to do about them — the more parents, employers and other Jeffco stakeholders will grow concerned that she is part of the problem, not the solution.

The harsh truth is Jeffco’s kids don’t get a “do-over.” In the 21st century economy, time is not on their side if they graduate unable to proficiently read, write, and do math and science.

Nor is time on the side of Colorado employers if they can’t find the talent they need to successfully compete in the global economy.

When it comes to her credibility as a turnaround leader, time is not on Dorland’s side either, given pressing demands to recover students’ COVID learning losses, effectively address their pandemic-related mental health issues, effectively and efficiently spend the incoming flood of federal aid, and get Jeffco’s Capital Improvement Program under control.

If by the end of June (when Jeffco’s fiscal year ends) Dorland still has publicly said nothing about the district’s problems and made no substantial changes to her top management team, then she can expect that many parties who know what is a stake if Jeffco’s accelerating decline is not reversed will stop giving her the benefit of the doubt — and go on the attack.