Category Archives: Change Management

Governor’s Chronic Absenteeism Task Force – Part Three – Vital New State Roles

By James C. Sherlock

A compilation from https://www.doe.virginia.gov/data-policy-funding/data-reports/data-collection/special-education

I have found in 18 years of reporting on education in the Commonwealth that each school, each school division and each region is to some degree its own ecosystem.

Taking the example of chronic absenteeism, an individualized assessment of causes could be attempted:

  • if a single school‘s chronic absenteeism can be adjusted statistically for differences in its demographics (race, ethnicity, economic status, English learners, IEPs, etc.) to its division norms, and
  • if that school is a statistical outlier from its division good or bad.

But those are very big if’s because of the complex algorithm that would be required for comparing.  And the results would apply only to that specific school.

I have sometimes compared divisions‘ statistical performances on absenteeism and SOL pass rates against state norms, but usually at the extremes.  There are too many variables to sort among the bulk of them.  At the division level, the variables are as great as at the school level.

Regional differences are there, but causes are hard to pin down beyond differences in demographics and cultures.

That said, and to some degree for that reason, I offer two new state roles for improving school attendance:

  1. marketing, which is either not now done at all or done ineffectively, to increase parents understanding of the value of school; and
  2. investigations and enforcement, which are done sporadically across the state.  That is because of both the time and expertise investigations take and current laws that require schools to involve the court system in enforcement.

Those recommendations are not budget neutral.  This is a budget year.  They are tailored to draw Democratic support.  The time for them is now.

Given the time necessary to prepare proposals, it will likely take a special session to address them.

The chronic absenteeism crisis, appropriately designated by the Governor, rates one.

Continue reading

William and Mary and the Chinese Communist Party – Dangerous Allies – Part 2

Courtesy U.S. – China Economic and Security Review Commission

by James C. Sherlock

The College of William and Mary first contracted with the Chinese Ministry of Education’s Confucius Institute (CI) Program in 2012. Despite all of the public warnings about the dangers listed in Part 1, it extended that contract in 2016 and did not cease until 2020, when threatened with sanctions by the federal government.

W&M’s hosting of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) continues today.

This is Part 2 of a series that will explore those dangerous alliances and recommend changes in that college’s approach to what the United States considers the biggest foreign threat our nation faces, China.

The creation of the new William and Mary Confucius Institute (WMCI) was unfortunately timed.

In 2012 Xi Jinping took full control of both the Chinese Communist Party and the Peoples Revolutionary Army. The CI’s became part of Xi’s United Front Work Department.

The Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community in 2012 never saw it coming. The intelligence community, seemingly always fighting the last war, was late to an understanding of the true China threat, at least publicly.

So it would be unfair to criticize William and Mary for not having done so.

But by 2016, when William and Mary signed the renewed contract with Hanban, there were plenty of warnings. See Part 1 for a list. The University of Chicago closed its CI in 2014.

WMCI. WMCI was not an informal arrangement, but a contractual one. The WMCI was under dual governance that gave the Chinese authority over the appointment and firing of the American director of that organization.

The director was Dr. Hanson, whose rosy view of Hanban and the Chinese government we watched on a YouTube video in Part 1. Continue reading

Youngkin’s “Bromance” with Petersburg’s Mayor

by Kerry Dougherty

They tried. Lord knows they did their best to find fault.

But even the leftie Washington Post was forced to hold its nose and admit that Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s commitment to his signature program — “Partnership for Petersburg” — is genuine and getting results.

For more than a year, Youngkin has been working with local and state officials, the private and public sectors and especially with Petersburg Mayor Sam Parham to turn that city’s fortunes around.

Petersburg is a city in distress. It’s riddled with crime, grinding poverty and the worst-performing schools in the commonwealth.

A hopeless example of urban decay, some would say, and on the decline.

In a lengthy story this week, The Post wrote about the friendship that has blossomed between Youngkin and the African-American mayor of that troubled city. Continue reading

The Virginia State Budget and the Rising Costs of Registered Nurses

by James C. Sherlock

I was asked yesterday by a reader about the relationship between nursing homes, rising registered nurse salaries and the new Virginia budget agreement.

Good questions. Virginia’s workforce includes nearly 70,000 registered nurses.

The state pays its workers, but it also pays its Medicaid share for private sector nurses. Pay for private sector workers is based upon market conditions. The market wage for registered nurses nationwide increased dramatically during COVID.

Perhaps the only good thing to come out of that mess was that registered nurses, of whom Virginia has 11% fewer than demand calculated by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, got very large pay and bonus raises, and the new wage points appear to have stuck.

If the laws of economics work here, that will over time increase the number of nurses if we can educate and train them in the required numbers.

The latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for all states show that the median wage for an RN in Virginia was $79,700 a year. In Northern Virginia portion of the D.C. metro area, the median was $92,800.  The underlying data are a couple of years old.

Wages and bonuses can vary a lot among Virginia hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies, nursing school staff and government employees, and are higher or lower depending on specialty. The private sector offers $10,000 to  $20,000 signing bonuses paid out after the first year.

Employers of course must pay payroll taxes and other expenses related to employees, and thus their costs will generally exceed $100,000 per RN.

Virginia RNs are still underpaid compared to national figures. The mean annual wage for America’s 3 million registered nurses in May was $89,010 compared to Virginia’s $79,900.

The federal Centers for Medicare/Medicaid Services, aware of some of the questionable business models of bad actors in the nursing home industry, published last week a proposed rule to both increase the minimum number of RNs in nursing facilities and to require all nursing facilities to reveal every year how much of the Medicare and Medicaid payouts go to salaries and related expenses.

So, Medicare and Medicaid costs will go up yet again. Continue reading

Virginia Has an Opportunity to Take the Lead in Nursing Home Technology Insertion to Improve Care with Existing Staff

by James C. Sherlock

A pending new federal rule defining strong nursing home staffing minimums has finally accomplished something that I thought unlikely in my lifetime.

It has in a single stroke aligned the interests of patients and their loved ones, nurses, nursing homes, state and federal governments, and taxpayers in finding ways to make existing nursing home staffs more efficient and effective.

That alignment brings the miracle of the loaves and fishes to mind.

It takes some explaining.

  1. The value of the new regulations to patients and loved ones and nurses is clear. Better quality of care for patients and better working conditions — less stress and better job satisfaction — for the nurses.
  2. The nursing homes and their lobbyists oppose the new rule, but it appears that it will happen. They face a significant shortage of registered nurses in Virginia and competition for nurses from hospitals with deeper pockets. So, they very much want to somehow reduce the new minimum federal requirements.
  3. The state and federal governments, and thus the taxpayers, will inevitably see demands for Medicare and Medicaid payment increases to pay for the new staff. So, it would benefit taxpayers and the national debt to reduce those ratios as long as the desired levels of care could be maintained.

One answer to address all of those interests is extensive automation of processes in which nurses are involved. Just some of the requirements:

  • Integrate electronic health records (EHR) and nurse support apps for real-time data entry on mobile devices;
  • Remotely pre-screen, prioritize and automate alert and alarm workflows;
  • Alert to medication administration requirements and help prevent medication errors;
  • Enable nurses to notify the appropriate responders to crises with one click on a mobile device.

Continue reading

Scandal in Plain Sight – Virginia’s Failed Regulation of Law-Avoiding Nursing Home Owners

by James C. Sherlock

One of the most important and heart-wrenching decisions families make for their elderly loved ones is whether they are able to keep them in their homes as they get older and sicker.

Sometimes that is not feasible for a long list of reasons in each case.

More than 30,000 Virginians live in nursing homes.

Both the federal government and Virginia regulate them.  The Virginia Department of Health, for both the Commonwealth and the federal government, inspects.

We should be able to expect patients to receive at least basic standards of care. A high percentage in Virginia have not .

In a five-star system, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) rates 98 of Virginia’s 289 nursing homes at one star – defined as much below average. More than a third.

Nationwide, only the worst 20 percent receive a one-star rating.

The last time I reported, in October of 2021, those figures were 54 one-star facilities out of 288. Nineteen percent.  So some of our nursing homes have gotten precipitously worse.

The ratings are backward-looking a couple of years, so the measured declines discussed here did not start recently.   By definition of the way that Medicare compiles records and assigns scores, some have been bad for a long time.

People have suffered and died from the lack of proper care and effective oversight. Continue reading

A Fool’s Errand Finds Takers in Charlottesville

by James C. Sherlock

As an experiment, I went to the UVa Ed School research page and searched “all topics” for “Charter Schools.” The response: “No research items found matching your search.”

So, I expanded the search to “Charter” and got the same response.

I then investigated what should have proven a promising lead.

The Partnership for Leaders in Education (UVA-PLE) is a unique joint venture between the highly ranked University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and School of Education and Human Development.

Darden is involved, so it must be professional, businesslike, right? It certainly claims so.

UVA-PLE combines the most innovative leadership advancement, practical expertise, and proven methodologies from both business and education to demonstrably improve educational and life outcomes for our nation’s students.

“Proven methodologies” it says.

Now take a look at “UVA Partnership for Leaders in Education – Exploring New Frontiers for K-12 Systems Transformation” published by UVA-PLE in February of this year.

It is a 28-page word salad unblemished by any assessment of the pedagogy of charter schools, especially the most prominent and successful K-12 public school operation in the United States, Success Academy in New York City. Continue reading

UVa Takes on A Daunting Task – Reforming Its Own Management and Administrative Structure

By James C. Sherlock

A favorite topic of mine is management and administrative overhead in state government institutions of higher learning.

While a major university is a very large business with significant management and administrative needs, the overhead numbers seem higher than necessary.

Overhead has certainly grown over the last few decades at a rate far in excess of the increases in tenured instructional and research faculty and students.

This excessive overhead is expensive in multiple ways including:

  • very high dollar costs;
  • the time that line academics consume for meetings with and reports to the leaders, managers and administrators; and
  • general slowness of decision cycles.

To investigate, I singled out the flagship University of Virginia for an informal audit.

The University, to its credit, has decided to take on the task of streamlining and rationalizing its management and administrative structure.

That castle will prove very difficult to storm.  Yet a siege may take literally forever.  The defenders are powerful, well-entrenched and well-provisioned.

Continue reading

Major Actions to Reduce Corporate Overhead Offer Lessons and Opportunities to Virginia Government

Courtesy Wall Street Journal

by James C. Sherlock

The chart above shows that management and administrative overhead growth has been a trend not limited to government. The difference is that corporations are making quick and decisive strides in reversing the trend.

It is axiomatic that government should minimize overhead to maximize efficiency in delivery of services. And to lower its costs.

Efficiencies need to be found:

  • to maximize value for citizens;
  • to speed decision-making;
  • to minimize administrative consumption of the time and attention of front line workers; and
  • to restore freedom of speech suppressed by government bureaucracies assembled for that purpose.

All senior government managers would sign up for those goals — as theory. But execution is hard. Internal pressures against change are seldom exceeded by external ones that demand it.

An excellent report in the Wall Street Journal makes an observation that they may wish to consult for inspiration.

Companies are rethinking the value of many white-collar roles, in what some experts anticipate will be a permanent shift in labor demand that will disrupt the work life of millions of Americans whose jobs will be lost, diminished or revamped partly through the use of artificial intelligence.

‘We may be at the peak of the need for knowledge workers,’ said Atif Rafiq, a former chief digital officer at McDonald’s and Volvo. ‘We just need fewer people to do the same thing.’

Continue reading

Tuition, Room, Board and Fees Up 7% Next Year at Tech – Zero Cuts in Massive Administrative Overhead

Letitia “Tish” Long

by James C. Sherlock

From The Roanoke Times

Faced with inflationary pressures and state budget uncertainty, the school’s Board of Visitors voted unanimously to markup overall student costs by about 7%, increasing tuition and fees, plus room and board.

It was not an easy decision, said Rector Tish Long.

”This is one of the most important and most difficult decisions that this board has had to make,’ Long said. ‘This is a very difficult decision, and we did and continue to take everyone’s comments into account.’

Rector Long did not mention how easy it was to not cut administrative overhead:

  • No data required;
  • No difficult discussions;
  • No strained decisions;
  • No dispirited looks from the University President;
  • Let’s break for lunch. Early.

Tech’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, who would be the one to recommend cuts, is enthusiastic about that school’s “Administrative Transformation” project.

He notes that he has an Administrative and Professional (A/P) Faculty job architecture project underway. Alas, the obstacles include:

Currently there are over 2,400 A/P faculty positions with over 1,800 unique titles. This lack of structure creates inconsistent pay and titling practices — which can unintentionally create pay equity issues — as well as makes it difficult to benchmark salaries to the external market.

It makes it quite difficult to make cuts when the University COO has no idea what all those people do. Continue reading

Virginia Needs a Top Mental Health Research Hospital – UVa is Positioned Provide It Statewide

UVa Hospital

by James C. Sherlock

The Commonwealth has an ambitious and promising program to improve behavioral health services to its citizens.

One thing missing among the six pillars of that program is a top mental health research hospital system.

The top-rated mental hospital in the United States is Mass General Brigham’s McLean hospital. Many of the doctors are Harvard Medical School faculty.

Of the remaining top 40 on that list, none is in Virginia.

Virginia’s two leading mental health research hospitals are both associated with the University of Virginia medical school and UVa Health.

  • INOVA Fairfax Hospital, partnered with the medical school; and
  • the University of Virginia Hospital in Charlottesville.

There is an opportunity, if the Board of Visitors and Virginia Health choose to exercise it,

  • to invest in bringing one or both of those facilities into the ranks of the best mental health research hospitals in America; and
  • to expand UVa Health at the Wise campus to spread the benefits to that part of the state.

That, in turn, can help the state deal with its mental hospital problems. Continue reading

A More Appropriate Management Model for State Mental Health Facilities

Central State Hospital Petersburg

by James C. Sherlock

I always find it disturbing when state agencies operate institutions that they are also responsible for regulating and inspecting.

It almost cannot work.

I have brought this up with regards to the VDOE operation of a virtual learning program when that same agency oversees private providers of the exact same services.

That is small ball compared to the issues at the state’s mental health facilities.

Now we have a very recent tragic example at Central State of decades-long problems at state-run mental hospitals including overcrowding and inadequate staffing.

A 2021 Associated Press article used Central State as the leading example of overcrowding. The reporter wrote, prophetically:

Virginia sheriffs are reporting being stretched thin after responding to psychiatric emergencies that require them to hold people and transport them for treatment.

‘I’ve had deputy sheriffs tied up for days at a time,’ John Jones, executive director of the Virginia Sheriffs’ Association, told the newspaper in an interview on Tuesday. ‘We’re at a crisis point.’

Now seven sheriffs deputies and three Central State staffers are charged with murder in that same scenario.

I view the current management model in which a single state agency oversees, operates and inspects its own facilities as untenable.

There is a proven alternative. Continue reading

Virginia Emergency Management During COVID – A Well-Documented Scandal

By James C. Sherlock

The National Incident Management System Preparedness Cycle

We could see it wasn’t right as it unfolded.

Virginia’s flawed response to COVID was slow for all Virginians.

Fatal for some.

But the public just saw the broad stroke external effects.

  • We saw executive orders that seemed sudden, sweeping, and disconnected from the information we had. It turns out that often the governor himself was operating in an information vacuum.
  • In the pandemic’s early phases, the Commonwealth finished last or next to last among states in crucial responses like testing and vaccination program rollouts.  Everything seemed to be invented ad hoc rather than from a plan.  It turns out that was true.
  • There was a prescient and well-drawn pandemic operations plan that had been produced by a contractor, but virtually no one in the administration knew what it required, and certainly had never practiced it in any meaningful way or fine-tuned it based on realistic exercises.  When BR found and reported on that plan in 2020, it was pulled from public view.

It is important to make sure that doesn’t happen again, whether in another pandemic or in a cyber attack, hurricane, flood, mass shooting, kinetic terrorist attack, nuclear plant emergency, or something else.

In response to my request, a very cooperative Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM) FOIA official has provided a remarkable and profoundly disturbing two-volume series detailing a running history and operations analysis of what happened inside the government.

It is titled “COVID-19 Pandemic History and After Action ReportVol. 1 (covers 2020) and Vol. 2. (covers 2021) hereafter referred to as the HAAR.

It was compiled and written under contract by CNA, a highly regarded federal contractor, who had people on site in Richmond during the COVID response.

The HAAR describes and assesses a series of widespread and seemingly endless internal and external government breakdowns that compromised the health and lives of Virginia’s citizens.

Management turmoil in the state government during COVID was so extensive as to be almost indescribable by any group with less talent than the CNA team.

The HAAR documents that Virginia’s COVID response was hamstrung by a lack of operations management experience in the leadership.

I understand that with authority comes responsibility.

But the governor, his Secretary of Health and Human Resources, and his Health Commissioner were effectively the chain of decision makers during COVID.  All three were physicians.

But that is one reason we have a civil service.

Virginia’s civil service failed to prepare for its roles in emergency response long before Ralph Northam was governor.  HAAR documents the complete inability of the bureaucracy to plan, organize and equip, train for, exercise and execute emergency plans.

It is clear to me that without capable civil service support, no administration would have fared well.  I hope, by exposing this deadly failure, to prevent the same thing from happening again tomorrow.

I will make strategic recommendations here in this first part of what will be a series on this issue.

Continue reading

Government Actors Try to Deflect, Deny and “Move On” from Failures During COVID

Courtesy CBS rendering of two CDC spring of 2021 survey findings about American high school girls reported Monday, Feb 13, 2022

by James C. Sherlock

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is in full self-defense mode.

CDC and the left backed, indeed insisted, upon social isolation during the pandemic.

Now they deflect and deny agency in the consequences. They continue to try to insulate themselves from the catastrophic educational and mental health effects on children and adolescents of that social isolation.

A weakened CDC Director is pledging to overhaul the agency and its culture, a backhanded admission of the unimaginably bad performance of CDC during COVID.

The entrenched bureaucracy that is that agency and its culture is admitting nothing. They are counting the days until she leaves.

So, if experience counts for anything, we pretty much know how the CDC “overhaul” will work out.

Virginia is due for the same sort of review of state actions during COVID.

The Northam administration stumbled badly at nearly every new turn after failing to either exercise or implement Virginia’s own pandemic emergency plan. Which was excellent and predicted nearly exactly the course of events.

Then they tried to cover up the existence of that plan itself.

I am not sure that such a review is forthcoming. If it is, it will be preemptively be declared political. It must be done anyway.

The federal government, under progressive management, is “moving on.”

Or trying to.

I hope Virginia government does not make the same mistake. Continue reading

A Sharper Image

by Jim McCarthy

Bacon’s Rebellion has crested to the fully emancipated age of 21 (birthed in 2002). It seems appropriate now that the platform assume some contemporary dress to revitalize its imprint and impact upon state, regional, and local public policy as a “non-aligned portal” in Virginia’s (indeed the world’s) eyes.

For some years, conservatives have enjoyed utilizing a kind of Morse code (perhaps Esperanto is more apt) to depict foes on the left with pejoratives – libwits, snowflakes, among a few – which sadly lost their cachet in a short time. A search on the Bacon Rebellion’s site reveals that the term “woke’ has not been prominently featured since an article on December 19, 2022, suggesting perhaps a high-water mark for the term.

At the same time, the Republican National Committee, following its recent meeting in California, announced an effort to rejuvenate “election integrity’ as a campaign theme for 2024, likely to complement emerging proposals from its U.S. House majority to force spending reductions. While strict adherence to traditional values is highly treasured, free market competition demands change. The following is offered as an updated masthead for BR:

The raffish, roguish gent hints at an early 20th century iconography, sufficiently ethno-American to satisfy enduring conservative tastes. The addition of a “Sister Sheila” companion for universal audience acceptance might also be in order.

Jim McCarthy, a former New York attorney, resides in Northern Virginia.