The Board of Directors for the Pagosa Peak Open School met for an afternoon work session yesterday, from 1pm until 4pm, to begin a SWOT analysis. Much of the analysis involved discussions about data.
SWOT analysis is a popular strategic planning technique used by organizations to identify ‘Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats’ related to business competition or project planning.
Pagosa Peak Open School — affectionately known as PPOS — is a tuition-free public school, authorized by the Archuleta School District in 2017 as a ‘charter school’. Colorado was one of the first U.S. states to establish legal standing and tax funding for charter schools, as a method for encouraging innovation in the typically-tradition-bound education industry.
Since opening its doors in 2017, PPOS has grown from Kindergarten-4th grade to Kindergarten-8th grade, and has doubled its enrollment.
Although PPOS is authorized by the Archuleta School District, and although PPOS has a very close working relationship with the District, there are definitely elements of competition involved. Competition around enrollment (Colorado public schools are funded based on number of students served) and competition around test scores (PPOS is finishing up its required CMAS testing this week.)
Disclosure: I currently serve on the PPOS Board of Directors, but this editorial reflects only my own personal opinions, and not necessarily the opinions of the PPOS Board as a whole, nor the opinions of the PPOS staff and community.
SWOT analyses dates back to the 1960s, with the concept first introduced in a textbook, Business Policy: Text and Cases, written by four colleagues at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. The book quickly became the most popular business school textbook on the subject of strategic planning and strategic management.
The afternoon work session at PPOS was open to the public, and was led by local consultants Natasha Bruss and Ashley Wilson, focusing on the elements of the PPOS strategic plan that’s been developed over the past couple of years. The process started with a narrative discussion about the school’s history: the small group of community members who researched and wrote the charter, and populated the ‘funding board’… the start-up years… the transition to a new school director… the ‘Pandemic’ and its effects on education… and the current state of the school.
As mentioned, much of the discussion was directly related to data, and I will be discussing, in this editorial series, how the education industry uses data to drive its attempts to improve outcomes.
And why, in some instances, that could very well be exactly the wrong way to guide improvement.
Before I get into the topic at hand — my love/hate relationship with data, as one member of a seven-member school board — I’d like to take a couple of detours, to help us consider the ways we are using data to drive decisions, in Pagosa Springs, and in the world, in general.
About 11 months ago, the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners and their staff approached the Pagosa Springs Town Council and its staff with an idea.
A sales tax increase, to be placed before the community’s voters in November 2022. Did the Town Council like the idea? Was this something the voters would approve?
The discussions between the two local government arrived at a couple of conclusions, based on what appeared to be common sense. One conclusion was to hire Colorado consulting firm Magellan Strategies to survey the taxpayers, and use the data to determine whether the voters would support the tax increase.
The survey was made available on the Town website, and Magellan Strategies also contacted a certain number of registered voters directly.
The first questions ask if you are a registered voter, where you live, and how likely you are to vote in November.
The next six questions ask our impressions of the County and Town governments.
Are they doing a good job, with the money they extract from us?
And right now, where should they spend the extra money, if we decide to increase our taxes?
12. As you may know, Archuleta County and the Town of Pagosa Springs are considering a potential ballot measure this November to provide additional funding for county and town services. Knowing this, would you prefer that the ballot measure be a sales tax increase or a property tax increase?
- Sales Tax
- Property Tax
- Unsure or No Opinion
The way you phrase a question can seriously influence the way the data turns out. In relation to the question above, a person might have an opinion, and might be very sure of their opinion… which might be that they are opposed to both types of tax increase… especially if their government is not going to tell them what the additional revenue would be used for.
But the survey didn’t allow that option.
If I were designing a survey to get honest, meaningful results, I would have allowed a fourth choice:
- Sales Tax
- Property Tax
- Unsure or No Opinion
- No tax increase of any kind, thank you
When the data came back, our local leaders learned that only 4% of the voters surveyed “Strongly Agreed” that “Archuleta County is fiscally responsible and spends taxpayer money wisely”. Only 27% “Somewhat Agreed” that the County was fiscally responsible.
But the Commissioners and the Town Council were also shown some conflicting ‘data’.
After making a series of arguments that seemed to support the idea of a sales tax increase, Magellan asked the voters, if the election were held ‘today’ would they vote in favor of a 1.5% sales tax increase?
62% of the voters surveyed said, yes, they would “Definitely” or “Probably” approve the tax increase.
This appeared to be real data. And in fact, it was “real data”. Magellan had spent a lot of taxpayer money collecting these numbers, and the Town Council and BOCC decided, based on this data, to move forward with a ballot measure.
Unfortunately for everyone, the data had very little relationship to reality. When the ballots were counted, only about 27% of the voters supported the tax increase. One of the worst losses for a tax measure in recent Pagosa history.
Tens of thousands of tax dollars had been wasted on a failed campaign.