On School Board Service: Jim Raney

One in a series of interviews with Fairfax County School Board members.

In his 36-year career with the Department of Defense, Jim Raney’s job was to improve the productivity and efficiency of the country’s largest employer.

So when he began reading about Fairfax County Public Schools in the press leading up to the 2007 election, he saw familiar issues: budgets going up at faster rates than the student population, weak long range planning.

“My daughter came up through Marshall Road Elementary School, Thoreau Middle School, Madison High School,” said the Lee District resident. “I thought we had great schools but I was concerned about the efficiency issue.”

Raney, 64, picked the right time to jump in the ring.

Shortly after he took office in January 2008, the national economy collapsed, launching communities into a recession whose effects are still being seen.
In Fairfax County, which runs the 11th largest school system in the country, the school board had to handle a budget facing major losses but the same needs.

“I ran on the slogan that we should be doing more with less,” said Raney, a self-described “one-term wonder.”

It’s a goal he says Superintendent Jack Dale and staff have executed “tremendously.”

“We’re educating 13,000 more students with the same or lower amount of resources from the state,” Raney said.

He said one of his contributions to that accomplishment was through encouraging and leading business case analysis, a tactic used in public and private sectors that involves brain storming problems, identifying alternative process solutions, developing the pros and cons of the status quo and alternatives and doing cost benefit risk analysis.

“I tried to use my [position] to create a more business-like school board decision making process,” he said.

Another milestone of Raney’s tenure was his work on creating the Fairfax County Facilities Planning Committee, a group of 13 county residents who develop and update annually a long-term strategic planning process for FCPS facilities.

During the passing of a resolution honoring Raney at the board’s Dec. 15 meeting, colleagues recalled Raney as a lone ranger on several issues, among them, raising parking fees for high school students, considering reverting all kindergarten classes to half day if the system needs the $33 million it takes to run full day programs down the road, and voting against the changes the system made to the grading system.

Raney’s amendment last budget season to raise parking fees, which was voted down by the rest of the board, had to do both with student safety and Northern Virginia traffic congestion, he said.

“FCPS has more than 15,00 buses on the road carrying 110,000 students every day. That’s a big demand on traffic congestion. We should be making it more expensive for kids to drive to school. They should be taking the busses that have to be on the road anyway," he said.

He was also likely the only vote against the improved grading system the board adopted, he said, which gave more weight to AP and honors courses.

“While what we implemented is a whole lot better than what we had before it’s not perfect,” said Raney, who added that listing both weighted and unweighted GPAs would be a more fair way to represent student achievement, and, offer more data points to measure their progress.

“It’s not perfect as a measurement because it’s like a ruler in which some of the inches are longer than others and that’s just not good measuring. We need to make it a more scientific scale,” he said.

How the board and state measures testing and performance is something else Raney has tried to improve, and likely one he’ll continue at the state level after his term ends Dec. 31.

“The best way to measure progress is to establish a baseline with how we’re doing with current content,” Raney said. “The problem is the state keeps changing the content and method of the SOL so you never have a firm baseline. ... So it doesn’t make sense to compare last year’s with this year’s percentages. That’s the challenge to get the state to stick to it long enough to demonstrate progress and it also needs to happen at federal level

The biggest challenge going forward for the board, Raney said, will be budget. Unfunded mandates from the state and federal governments have long been an issue, Raney said, and are only going to get worse.

With enrollment projected to grow to 189,000 students, the system will also have issues with the CIP budget, Raney said.

“I don’t think we have the land for all of the schools that we need to build. There’s got to be a closer relationship with the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors so we can build the schools we need to build,” he said.

For those that fill his shoes, Raney says pay attention to FOIA, safety and security briefings (“there are some crazy people in this county,” he said) but mostly, take time to appreciate the job you’ve got.

“Relax. Enjoy the job you’ve got. Engage your constituents and take it one day at a time," he said. "Every day is different; it’s a different challenge every day, every week.  Working with the public is a challenge but if you go with the flow you’re going to enjoy the ride. “