Blogging with the doors open: he may receive 1,000 posts on a controversial matter, but this superintendent wants to keep a finger on the public pulse.

Have you ever asked yourself whether you really wanted to know what your community thought about an idea?

"A stupid and bad idea. Leave the times the way they are. High school students actually have jobs after school that they need to go to at 2:30, plus numerous after-school activities and sports, so keep the times the same. Have the elementary and middle school start later in the day."

This was one of a thousand posts I received expressing a similar sentiment --though many not as politely--when I asked the community for their thoughts about changing our schools' daily starting and ending times. I thought it was a fantastic idea, and several of my key staff members agreed--at least they said they did. But with apologies to "The O'Reilly Factor," if you really want to enter the "no spin zone," read a blog focused on a hot topic.

Monitoring the Pulse

New to the Pinellas County, Fla., School District in 2004, I was looking for a way to connect and communicate with families across the county in a way that would complement our communications plan. Pinellas County, the 7th-largest school district in Florida, has 150 schools serving 115,000 young people in kindergarten through grade 12. Almost 9,000 teachers and another 6,000 employees support our classrooms. These demographics add up to some fairly tremendous communication challenges.

I've always liked to tinker with technology, although I'm not a technology geek or even a cutting-edge kind of guy. Yes, I have a Blackberry attached to my hip and I, like hundreds of other superintendents, can't set it down for fear I will miss something going on in the district. Yes, I have a wireless-anywhere card so I am always connected. But I'm not obsessive or even compulsive about technology; it's just a tool that helps me keep my finger on the pulse of a large school district.

Hosting an online discussion or blog seemed like the perfect tool. When word got out that I was moving forward with the idea, The St. Petersburg Times approached me about co-hosting a blog on Blogger.com. They would publicize the site in the newspaper and provide a link from the newspaper's website to the blog. The blog, which we call The Classroom, would be my venue. The newspaper promised to exercise no control of the site.

Opening the Door

Today, The Classroom is flourishing. More than a simple communications tool, it has played a part in school district decisions about such issues as our student dress code, transportation, start and end times, district finance and issues related to race and student discipline. While sometimes dominated by passionate folks who want you to see the world the same way they see it, the blog also serves as a sounding board for folks who don't normally participate in district discussions.

For example, within hours of posting the findings from a district transportation study that offered what we (or I) thought the community wanted--later school start times for tired high school students--the "thread" of the discussion, which we called "Flip-Flop," was inundated with hundreds of impassioned posts about the topic. Needless to say, they weren't all supportive.

Flip-Flop blogger posts seemed civil when they characterized the idea as "out of touch, misguided and stupid" and perhaps not so civil when the comments stopped being about the idea and focused directly on those advancing the change. Yet even those not-so-civil posts paled as frustrations boiled over into bitter personal attacks between anonymous posters questioning the marital status of posters' birth mothers or assaulting each other with sharply carved political attacks.

Some topic threads, such as school choice, cross-town busing and performance-based pay, have inspired such emotion that The St. Petersburg Times online editors and I have stayed up late into the night monitoring posts that crossed the line between conviction and profanity. We allow anonymous posts, which makes the blog dynamic but invites some problems as well. Some threads have incited posters to challenge each other to the point of distraction. Some individuals repeatedly bombard the blog as if they were a groundswell of interested community members.

Self-proclaimed online monitors spring up from time to time to help moderate conversations and cool the flames of cyberspace's equivalent of hijackers--folks determined to take the thread to a place it was never intended to go and squelching real dialogue on tough topics.

Each post requires a careful review for purpose and intent, and then the application of some level of decorum. This is, after all, a site associated with the school system. The decision to delete posts is never an easy one, but it has been necessary at times and likely will continue in an environment that invites anonymous thought and idea sharing. Most often, however, the dialogue is thoughtful, on point and helpful as we struggle to lead a large school system with seemingly endless opportunities and challenges.

Facing the Challenges

While The Classroom has not influenced the media coverage of the district, I believe it has clearly given reporters, editors and readers of the St. Petersburg Times an edgier perspective. The Classroom has been mentioned in a few Times articles as a source document used by the school district in the decision-making process and has been identified by board members and reporters as a resource they have used in preparing for their days' work.

Most, if not all, of our board members read the blog, as do other community leaders, which builds common understanding. The blog also gives me, as superintendent, a place to test ideas and challenge the status quo without the normal pressures attendant to the office I hold. It has given me another tool to help shape public opinion about the district and the actions of those who serve the children and young people in Pinellas County. The blog has helped us beat the news cycle on several occasions, which allowed the district the chance to help shape the discussion rather then simply react to headlines or sound bytes.

As we started the process of cutting $20 million from our operating budget, we used the blog to gather ideas for eliminating duplicated services, eliminating archaic practices and simply identifying areas our readers thought ripe for the taking. Here's what some of them had to say:

* "Have we considered those who have the benefit of driving cars paid for by the county ... and I don't mean the work trucks, I mean the cars. Why can't these people drive their own vehicles and just give them a smaller stipend for gas/mileage?"

* "Get rid of CHOICE. Start with rezoning high schools in the same zones as MS & ES. Allow the student to attend a HS out of his/her zone as long as they provide their own transportation. Then do away with countywide choice completely the next year."

Counting on Feedback

Bloggers are an interesting lot in that they tend to pile on and keep score as if the side with the most posts supporting a position should carry the day. When considering the public's opinion on hot topics, my role becomes one of perspective police, trying to determine whether what appears to be the general sentiment is actually reflected in the other decision-making tools we use. Finding balance in the fast-paced world of the blogosphere is constantly a challenge.

Another challenge is to constantly monitor and update the blog to keep it fresh. I decided early on that while I would read the blog daily, I would not respond every day. In fact, I sometimes go for weeks at a time without responding, choosing to monitor the conversation rather than to moderate or participate in it. My infrequent participation on some threads has been a point of concern for regular bloggers, who have surmised that I really don't care or that my blogging is really a political stunt or an effort to simply appear "with it."

They are wrong. I do use it daily and I've come to count on the feedback. It is one element of a much broader communication plan. I am keenly aware of the digital divide in our county. In addition to those who do not have access to technology, we have a polar opposite, the well-connected who have the ability to create a roar through the power of web-based technologies. However, I am absolutely convinced that providing our school community with varied access points to the system and its leadership will pay dividends down the road.

Those who are given an opportunity to express their opinions and who are thus involved in decision making will feel a greater responsibility for seeing that those decisions lead to successful outcomes for all of our kids. They also will become engaged in more personal forums like traditional parent-teacher conferences, school performances and simple acts of volunteerism.

Clayton Wilcox is superintendent of Pinellas County School District, P.O. Box 2942, Largo, FL 33779. E-mail: [e-mail]

Dr. Jan's blogging life: excerpts from a school reformer.

BY JAN G. BORELLI

Chaz Hill, who has gained fame as the blogger of www.dustbury.com, claims you have to be an egomaniac to blog because you have to believe you have something of significance to say and that someone else is interested in it. I believe he's right on target.

I began writing my blog almost two years ago when I was appointed principal of a chronically at-risk elementary school in the Oklahoma City Public Schools. My blog chronicles the experiences I have had working with my faculty to turn around our school. (And, in fact, we finally made it off the state's list of low performers last fall after five continuous years of low-performing school status.)

I usually contribute to my blog a couple of times a week. The entry can be about students, teachers, educational philosophies, methods we have used to turn academic achievement around, speeches I have given, personal stories about my own children or tributes to educators I have known. In fact, the blog is a journal that documents my personal and professional experiences as the principal of Westwood Elementary School, known to some as the "hippest school in America."

I am happy to share with you, excerpts from two of my blogs.

Howdy Hillcrest Dear Blog Watchers,

Today was the beginning of my intersession vacation. Naturally, I didn't get to start it today. My friend and colleague, Betsy, made me go to her school, Hillcrest, to conduct an in-service on data-driven instruction. The faculty wasn't too keen on me at the start. They didn't even laugh at my opening joke. But I think I said something that may have gotten them to begin the process of teaching based on assessment of children's needs. What follows is an excerpt from that presentation.

Imagine we are all going to the dentist today. The dentist will start off giving us one of those fancy panoramic X-rays. She will review our X-rays and conclude based on her average patient that she will fill one of our teeth for a cavity. Now, that tooth may or may not have a cavity, but the odds are at least 72 percent we may need a filling in that tooth.

Do you think you would like being treated using this method? So what about our kids whom we teach what we think most of them need based on data from the whole group (if we even use the data to change our instructional plans)?

We have entered a new era in teaching. We now have the capability to know what the students do or do not know, and we now have the capability to reach most of the children if we use data to guide our instruction. Our district provides benchmarks aligned to state standards three times a year that can tell us what the students do or do not know, so we can tailor our instruction to reach and teach a vast majority of them.

That being said, why would we not use these tools if it will improve our ability to reach and teach the children so that none are left behind?

Let me ask you now: Do you know how your students did on the last criterion referenced test? Do you know what each child needs to learn to improve his or her learning? Did you clamor to find out what the benchmarks from this fall told you? If not, consider yourself to be offering the kind of instruction the dentist used. But you don't have to stay with your current practice. You can change. And today, my message to you is to find ways to reach and teach all the children regardless of the circumstances that hinder their educational opportunities.

The federal legislation of No Child Left Behind has gotten a bum rap. When anyone steps forward to decry what we have learned and can now practice in education, you have to ask yourself what is wrong with a drive to reach and teach them all. I can tell you as the mother of a child who is on an IEP for a language perception problem, if someone gave up on him just because of his disability, I would be fighting mad. And if teachers accept that only 50 percent or fewer of their children will become proficient in reading and math, then these children should be fighting mad about the low expectations for them. Don't you think?

Education Choice Dear Blog Watchers,

It's not a popular thing among public school leaders to believe in educational choice. My superintendent, whom I admire immensely for his educational practice, is strongly against educational choice as are just about all educational leadership organizations that I know.

There is a belief that educational choice is the beginning of the end for public education. I recently read the convention bulletin for the ASCD, and there was a session about an activist who "lays out why NCLB is not really about improving schools but privatizing them." And so it seems behind every educational initiative is a fear that we might be changing public education.

We are so afraid to find alternatives to public education that we hurt public education by failing to make the changes that would improve our practice. [For example], there are children who detract from regular class instruction due to significant behavioral issues. Some teachers experience more difficulty with these children than others; and yet, all teachers experience some degree of dysfunctional student behavior.... In my own elementary school, we have children whose behavior is so dysfunctional as to continually stop the educational process. We have involved parents, provided behavior intervention plans, gotten counseling for the students, disciplined them with progressive steps of punishment and invoked other seemingly endless interventions. These children pose a significant threat to other children and to the teacher.

Unfortunately, there are no alternatives for these elementary school-aged children within our district's (and most other districts') regular public education venue.

But there appears to be an answer. There is a dangling carrot to send the student to charter schools and other choices that are not supported by the traditional public school district .... However, this choice is not supported, as referring our children to other entities would cause our district to lose the funding for that student. It puts the educational practitioner in a rather difficult position, i.e., keep the child and suffer the educational consequences for the teacher and other students or refer the child and lose funding.... If we are unable to provide the services, it is not such a far leap of logic to assume that someone will.

Public schools must change.... If we do not change to meet the needs of our "customers," then they will go elsewhere. And, to continue to ignore this salient fact is short sighted and an extreme danger to the continuation of public education.

Jan Borelli is principal at Westwood Elementary School, 1701 Exchange Ave., Oklahoma City, OK 73108. E-mail [e-mail]. Her blog can be found at drjansblog.blogspot.com/.

Blogging with purpose.

BY JOHN HILL AND DAN TYREE

The notion of starting our own blog as school district leaders came up in a conversation with one of our colleagues last year. While we were familiar with the concept as the superintendent and assistant superintendent, we didn't really know enough about blogging to really get it.

Our colleague suggested we read Hugh Hewitt's book Blog, which we did. At the time, the state's General Assembly was in session and we were battling rumors and misinformation in our community in northern Indiana. After reading the book, we realized a blog would be an effective way to provide accurate information quickly to the school community. Thus, the Plymouth Truth was born.

Once we had the blog up and running, we got the word out through formal meetings with teacher union representatives, the local print media and mass e-mails to our staff. We were off and running. Our initial post summarized a community meeting with local legislators. The initial response was small (50 hits). Since then we have used the blog to address legislative issues; provide summaries of school board meetings, including issues under consideration; explain new programs; and issue regular updates to the staff and school community about the district's building project. During the redistricting process, we even posted drafts of maps so residents knew what to expect.

Early on, we recognized that although our blog was focused on our constituents, anyone has access. To get a better idea of who our readers were, we inserted a stat tracker into the blog. We learned that approximately 80 percent of the visitors come from within the school district. Knowing this, we have focused on corporation news.

The stat tracker does not tell us specifically who our readers are, and sometimes they don't tell us either. Anonymous comments have been a challenge because they often are negative and even attack specific individuals. We don't prohibit anonymous posts, but we do monitor the blogs carefully. Our provider sends an e-mail whenever a new comment has been added to the blog site. If the comment is vulgar or attacks a specific individual, we remove it.

Proofreading Posts

Both of us contribute to the blog, which works well. We also have learned to carefully review our own posts. Readers often will comment on a grammatical error rather than the issue at hand. We share blog topics with one another and seldom review one another's blogs prior to posting.

Surveys conducted last spring revealed that more than 70 percent of our parents have Internet access. To take advantage of that vehicle for communication, some of our teachers developed their own websites. Unfortunately, many had difficulty maintaining them. Last fall we offered a class in blogging as an alternative to a website. Several teachers who participated have since started blogs, which are linked from the Plymouth Truth. Feedback from parents is positive as they can easily stay up to date about class activities and assignments.

Administrators are constantly seeking effective ways to communicate with their constituencies. Hewitt said it best in his book: "High consumers of information are always going to be out there prowling for data and opinions. The party that organizes to meet the demand wins in the long run."

John Hill is superintendent of the Plymouth Community School Corporation, 611 Berkley, Plymouth, IN 46563. E-mail: [e-mail]. Dan Tyree is the district's assistant superintendent.

Reading Clayton's Blog

You can read Clayton Wilcox's blog, The Classroom, at this address: www.sptimes.com/classroom.

Wilcox recently asked the blog's participants for their thoughts on his inclination to eliminate anonymous postings to reduce what he called "the silly back and forth that seems to go on" and to require individual registration and the use of a screen name before someone could post a response.

He also asked: "If there were a live blog discussion where I participated in a discussion rather than simply reading it, do you see a value in that type of forum and which night of the week or time of day would be best for you?"

Wilcox received almost 100 responses during the first 48 hours, including several that inappropriately targeted individual school employees. Wilcox's immediate reaction was his decision to delete all postings that attacked the character of a teacher or school-based staff member by name.