Miami School Negotiations

Today school management and administration tasks are increasingly becoming complex in nature. As a result, the administrators are faced with a daunting task of ensuring that there managerial approach addresses all stakeholders issues by involving them in solution finding mission. This is no different from the scenario of Miami School which needs to redraw its school boundaries. In such occurrence, the issue becomes a social dilemma in the sense that various stakeholders need their competing views to be satisfactorily addressed.

For instance, redrawing Miami school boundaries due to student population influx has witnessed the parents as major stakeholders to be unhappy and express their concerns. The parents concerns that deem it necessary to structure negotiation modalities and strategies to address them are: increased travel time, impact on property values, quality of education, the resultant social impacts on children, and crossing cultural and economic boundaries. These concerns by parents are essential in relation to quality education of their children and ought to be addressed.

In this regard, this paper shall discuss the implications of the parent’s concerns, determine who are the stakeholders, identify best negotiation strategy to be employed and evaluate the impact of cultural and ethnic difference on decision arrived at. Impact of Parents Concerns The issues that have been raised by the learner’s parents in regard to redrawing of school boundaries, on first site they imply that the parents are against the rezoning idea.

The five strong reasons that have voiced by the parents that create a controversy are: crossing economic and cultural boundaries, crossing cultural and economic boundaries, quality of education, social impacts on the children and the likelihood of increased travel time. It should be noted that the parent’s fundamental reasons in objection to rezoning are valid and very important. For instance, the issues concerning quality of education is crucial and critical to parents as parents do not know the teachers who will be involved with their children after rezoning and this make them to be worried (Sebenius and David, 2007).

For example, some parents need to get their children in schools with adequate teachers capable of providing one-on-one time with their children, and very close to the family themselves. The parents fear that if rezoning is successful, their students can go to a school that is so big, and as a result the teachers will not be able to give that one-on-one time with their children (Sebenius and David, 2007). As a consequence, the students to these new schools may not have access to the same educational standards as the previous school which they were attending.

Secondly, the parents resist change in boundary as they understand it will lead to increased travel time. The parents conceptualize that as the district is spreading across town the more its geographical coverage and people increases. Therefore, driving to the school becomes hectic as some parents shall be forced to leave almost an hour earlier before school starts. Alternatively, many families may have to move into the city or closer to the school, in order to have appropriate travel time to get to class.

Third, the parents are concerned with the district crossing cultural and economic boundaries. This is in the sense that they fear what are their children likely encounters in the new schools which have been successfully safeguarded like interaction of low and upper class children and its consequences on their ideal future of their children (Sebenius and David, 2007). Fourth, parent’s dispute redrawing of the boundaries due to perceived increase in property values that may challenge family welfare sustainability.

For instance, moving to a city nearby school means increasing demand for goods and services that in turn influence their value to ascend and also negative influences like pollution find their way. And lastly, the social impacts on children due to rezoning can bring about destructive outcomes. For instance, redrawing boundaries exposes students to an influx of cultures or the social class or racial or ethnic diversity that changes the social environment under which the student interact and learn. This can be in terms of aculturalization, drugs and peer pressure can change child’s social context.

The issues voiced by parents are worth study curiosity to establish their remedies and impact on the quality and access to education to their children. However, it must be understood that Miami School have their set of issues. School issues include: travel time as the school is required to take time to get school buses out on the road to pick up every child. Additional of resources may be required such as school buses. Overcrowding in school with respect to adequate space to learn and hiring of additional teachers may be necessary that translates to financial expenditure.

Therefore, it is worth this study curiosity to identify the stakeholders in the negotiation. Stakeholders Sebenius and David (2007), defines a stakeholder as a person or group of people who share some kind of interest in a decision. First stakeholder is the school. The school has interest in what the parents’ believe is the right thing to do. Since the district is on the line in this situation, they have to make the right decision based on what the parents will let them do. The school will have to spend much of the taxes that the people of the city and state have paid.

They will probably have to buy extra buses, people to drive the buses, extra teachers, cafeteria servers, and maybe even extra room to hold such a huge influx of students. The second and direct stakeholders’ in the Miami School issue are the parents. This is because the parents are the people who make the ultimate decision for the school. Since the rezoning issue has surfaced, many parents are upset at the school for taking such a large area and consolidating the school. Their voices are heard through school board meetings and around town as the board members are socially involved (Barry et al.

2006, p. 65). The parents are upset because they believe that the rezoning affects the quality of education, travel time, crossed economic and cultural boundaries, property values, and the children. The children are the ones’ that are directly affected by this decision and since they are minors and cannot make such decisions’ on their own, the parents have to make that distinction for them. Negotiation Strategy To achieve success of the outcomes, the issues of the stakeholders have to be addressed rationally.

The negotiation strategy that it would be best to implement this negotiation is the integrative negotiation strategy. This is because, this strategy always comes out win/win for both sides, taking into consideration of both sides (Barry, B. et al. , 2006). In using this strategy, four fundamental steps are used to arrive at an agreement “identify and define the problem, understand the problem fully, generate alternative solutions, and evaluate and select the solution” (Barry et al. 2006). In a systematic way using integrative strategy, both the school board members need to have a plan.

Their planning needs some kind of systematic process in order to fully understand the issues and understanding of the parents’ involved. Before the meeting, they must “define the issues, assemble issues and defining the bargaining mix, define the interest of the parents, define their interest and any opening bids, assess constituents and the social context in which the negotiation will occur, analyze the other party, plan the issue presentation and defense, and define protocol” (Barry et al. 2006). Thereafter, there is need to understand the parent’s position in order to plan to counter any objections.

If they are totally planned and have answers to any questions asked, things will run much smoother and faster. Both parties both understand the problem. After the parties have define the problem is to understand the problem fully, both parties have to understand the interests of each other. At this point, Sebenius and David (2007) state that interests underlies concerns, needs, desires, or fears that motivate a negotiator to take a particular position. Thereafter the parties need to have to create some of alternatives that both parties agree and understand.

Because parents are complaining of quality of education, the alternatives drawn can include: teachers to send home reports on the teachers showing biographies, pictures, and or any kind of information to gain teachers confidence. Another alternative can be school to build extra facilities to hold many more classes. About increase in travel time, the school can possibly have other facilities around the city to make it easier for traveling purposes. The issue of crossing of cultural and economical boundaries can be considered as an opportunity for students to learn from other diverse people as opposed to destructive perception.

The concern of property values, the school and its environs can be countered by the placement of control measures, sufficient transport etc. The last phase involved in integrative negotiation strategy is the evaluation and selection of solutions that suits and is the most appropriate to both parties. In this case, among the alternatives provided; the most suitable and appropriate solution that can be given priority is provision of extra facilities around the school and the city. This shall ease the teacher’s inadequacy by recruiting other teachers to meet healthy teacher student ratio.

On the other hand, the travelling town shall minimize then parents do not need to worry about having to move closer to the school. Impacts of Ethics and Culture on negotiation Based on the population characteristics and structure in respect to diversity, cultural and ethical has impact on the decision arrived at or the process of deriving the decision. Evidently, the issues that parents raised such as crossing of the cultural and economic gives an insight that the parents are culture and ethnic sensitive.

The aristocrats would not prefer their children or students to interact with poor students; thus become a big impediment to the decision derivation. However, it is wise to let children play, learn and grow while interacting with other to prepare for interaction at higher levels such as workplace, sports and other social events (Sebenius and David, 2007). Therefore, Miami School ought to do everything in its power in order to help every parent out, but there is no means that can to make everyone happy.

In conclusion this paper has discussed the implications of the parent’s concerns, determine who are the stakeholders, identify best negotiation strategy to be employed and evaluate the impact of cultural and ethnic difference on decision arrived at. However, the negotiation should be involving and participation to be people centered as opposed to imposing the idea. References Barry, B. et al. (2006), Organization Negotiation: Boston, McMillan. Sebenius, J. & David, L. (2007) Negotiation Dilemma in Management: New York, Free Press.

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