Artvoice: What do you count among your successes in your first year in Buffalo?

James Williams: As a new superintendent coming in, changing the culture of the system as well as the culture here in Buffalo. I’m very pleased with the way the teachers as well as the administrators and the support staff have really adjusted to our work, despite some of the challenges we were facing because of union issues.

I’m very pleased with the work we accomplished this last year. First we came in and we put a three-year plan in place—a three-year achievement plan focusing on reading and literacy. I looked at the 28 lowest-achieving schools in our district, and we focused on them. We closed Seneca High School down as a vocational school and we opened it again as a math-science-technology high school with the assistance of the College Board and the Gates Foundation.

When I came here in July of 2005, there were about 1,300 eighth graders who had passed, based on the criteria used here in Buffalo, with As and Bs on their report cards, but when we looked at the state data, those students were “intensive” students on the state exam—“intensive” indicated they were two grades below in reading. So I put a plan before the board—this was part of the hiring process—that we should not move those students to ninth grade because they were geared to drop out of school.

So we retained those students. They had to take English language arts and math at the eighth-grade level, although we moved them into high school and they took other high school classes. And then they all had to attend summer school to take those English language arts and math classes at summer school again. I was very pleased that, out of 1,300 students, 1,191 attended summer school and 85 percent of those students were successful and moved to the 10th grade.

That’s a major change in the culture here. The key part will be to track those students and see how many of those students will graduate in the next three years. That’s what we’ll really look at, because under the previous structure they would have probably dropped out of school. Number one, they would not have passed the Regents exam; in New York you have to pass five Regents in order to graduate from high school.

If you look at our data from last year, 40 percent of our students did not graduate from high school on time. In the State of New York, we have probably the worst graduation rate of any state in the country—and it’s extremely low among African-American male students.

AV: You’ve talked about putting an end to social promotion in general.

JW: We cut out social promotion in this district. When I talk about a change of culture, this is what I’m talking about. We cut out social promotion; we brought in a three-year assessment plan, so we start to look at data through a different set of lenses.

We had an extended school day for those [prekindergarten to second-grade] students who were not on grade level; they’ve never had a summer school for [prekindergarten to second-grade] students. And those students who were intensive had to come to summer school, and we received great data from that, where 100 percent of our pre-kindergartners moved on to kindergarten, 72 percent of our kindergartners reached their benchmark and will move on to first grade, 15 percent of our grade one students—these are the students who attended summer school—15 percent reached their goals, as well as 40 percent of our grade two students.

Historically in this district those students would have just moved along through the system without any type of intervention strategy. We intervened and added 20 more days to the school year to work with these students, to try to get them on grade level as we moved them though the system. And we’re going to track these students all the way through, because this should have a major impact on our overall state assessments, and we should begin to see improvements in our system starting next year as we progress through the grades.

AV: Those all sound like positive developments. What about your public spats with the teachers union and particularly with BTF President Phil Rumore?

JW: I’d like to talk about unions in general; there are more unions here than just BTF. Obviously the teachers are the largest union here.

My issue is that we still function, from a union standpoint, on a 1960s model. Change must occur now. It’s not the union’s fault that over a period of 25 to 30 years someone in administration has negotiated these types of contracts. I give the unions credit, they’ve negotiated some very good, challenging contracts. But those contracts sort of hinder the development of this community as well as the school district.

We’re hoping that we can get our unions to see that we have to change some of the structural things in those contracts. We cannot continue to operate this system with multiple health carriers. We cannot continue to operate this system where 180, 182 days are considered sufficient for our students. We are not an agrarian society anymore; we are in a highly global, technological society, so we have to adjust our academic programs to deal with that. Our union contracts, especially with the BTF, are geared toward an agricultural model, a manufacturing model.

AV: You’ve developed a reputation for brashness and for taking a hard line with unions. How do you convince teachers to cooperate in making the kind of changes you’re looking for?

JW: One thing I can say: Our teachers, despite those challenges, have adjusted. They worked in our extended school year program. We have an extended day program for our seventh and eighth graders who are over-age; the teachers worked in that program. I just see a positive attitude among our teachers and administrators when I travel around the schools. This morning I met with all of our prekindergarten teachers, and I saw enthusiasm. I met all of our first-year teachers—we have over 200 new teachers coming into this district.

We balanced the budget this year with no layoffs. First time in seven or eight years that has happened. We balanced the budget with no layoffs, and we ended up hiring additional teachers this year. So despite the differences of opinion, despite the contracts, I see people caring about our children and moving forward despite those challenges.

AV: You’re in contract negotiations now with BTF. What will constitute success for you?

JW: Number one, we have to have a single health carrier. When I came here, the board had made a decision to move to a single health carrier, because we have to contain costs. When you deal with multiple carriers, you have no leverage to negotiate lower costs for healthcare.

AV: What kind of savings would that mean to the district?

JW: About $1 million a month—about $12 million a year in savings. We’re hoping to drive that down even lower.

We want to put a package on the table; we have put a package on the table. We have a solution to a contractual settlement here, but obviously it’s not in the best interests of the BTF.

There’s a two-step process we have to go through. The first step is you have to go through the control board. I’m very pleased with the control board because they’re willing to work with us. And then the next step, if we can get the control board to support what we’re doing, then we need to go to the state and get a funding stream to make sure we have consistent revenue in order to compensate our employees.

In order for that to happen, there are some things in the contract that I want to change. We need a longer school year. I’m not talking about a longer school year without paying teachers, but we need to talk about it. We extended our school year this year 20 days, and we paid our teachers. You didn’t hear any pushback from anyone.

AV: BTF says that the proposed raises don’t match the proposed increase in working days in the school year.

JW: Whatever the issues are, we need to sit down and talk about it. Where else in the country do you work 180, 182 days and make $50,000 or $60,000 a year? We’ve got to change. Let’s sit down and talk about compensation based on what we can afford and how we can improve the quality of education. If we can improve student achievement in this district and move this district forward, the legislators in this community will support public education whole-heartedly. We will begin to challenge charter schools. The reason charter schools exist is because we didn’t do a good job in our school system.

AV: What is your position on charter schools in Buffalo? You’ve been a supporter of them in the other cities where you’ve been superintendent.

JW: I support charter schools; I understand why they exist. Also, I like the challenge. If they’re doing it better than I’m doing it, then I want to do better in a different way. What I’m finding out is that parents like charter schools because they’re in school longer—some charter schools keep kids until four or five o’clock in the afternoon. If you’re a working parent, that fits your schedule. How much are we paying charter school teachers? I don’t know, but they seem to be happy.

We have to adjust our system to meet the challenges out there. Right now we have a big challenge with the global market. Globalization is a big challenge with this country. It’s challenging education. Do we sit back and let China and India and other countries excel academically? Do we sit and here and complain about a 1960s contractual issue? I say let’s become aggressive and begin to look at this global society that we’re in, and in order to do that we need to change the way we do business.

All of our high schools will have AP classes this year. When I came here last year that was a big discussion for parents; if you wanted a good education you had to go to Hutch Tech or City Honors. We’re changing that. All of our ninth graders will take the PSAT this year, because I want to get some scholars out of this district; I want to begin to focus on the SAT tests.

AV: You’ve dealt with striking teachers before, and there is some talk of a city-wide strike to protest the wage freeze. What’s your reaction to that possibility?

JW: Let’s say the control board lifts the wage freeze. Where am I going to get the money? Speaking only for the school system now, where am I going to get the money from to go back to the old system of step increases and raises? We don’t have the money to do it.

The control board is not the problem. The problem is that we have a structural budget process in Buffalo and we have a political public policy issue in this state that is forcing these things to happen. The Taylor Law should be revisited. Those are the things that this community should focus on. It’s not the control board. If the control board could lift the wage freeze tomorrow, in the school system I will still not have enough money to do what the current contract will call for.

AV: Would you say negotiations are going well?

JW: We have agreed not to publicly talk about negotiations, but we are meeting.

AV: How is the $1 billion school reconstruction program progressing? Can you give us an update?

JW: That is going very well. We are opening seven new schools next week: Waterfront, School 6, School 82, School 91, School 84, the math-science-technology school at Seneca and Academy School at 44. Those are beautiful schools. We did a walkthrough last week and we are very pleased.

We’re also opening up All-High Stadium; we’re doing about an $8 million renovation there, all new Astroturf. I understand you have not had a night game in Buffalo since 1950. They’ll have lights there now.

Now phase three of the reconstruction project will start, and there are nine schools in phase three: City Honors, South Park, Riverside, Burgard, School 76, School 45, School 43, School 27 and School 32. Then next year Bennett High School should be ready and renovated, along with Hutch Tech, which should be moving to its new building next year.

The economic development in this community though the school system is unbelievable. People are saying there are no jobs in Buffalo, and I don’t believe that. There are plenty of jobs in Buffalo, but you have to have a certain academic preparation in order to get the jobs. I met with the Niagara Medical Group a couple weeks ago and with Roswell, the Bio-informatics Center. They have about 8,000 jobs there, and they’re saying they cannot find people locally. And then we look at the Blue Cross-Blue Shield building downtown, Independent Health and Kaleida—there are plenty of jobs there, but you have to have the professional preparation to get them. There are no jobs for high school dropouts, for drug addicts and criminals, for guys wearing their pant around their ankles, with tattoos all over their bodies.

That’s the cultural change I was talking about. We’ve got to change the way people think about Buffalo and the future of Buffalo.