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The districts that have been in receivership in the State of California have a student population categorized as socioeconomically disadvantaged. While state receivership is triggered by fiscal insolvency, the school district in receivership is not performing to state standards according to the indicators on the California Dashboard (California Department of Education, 2021a). In order to return to local control and governance by a locally elected Board of Trustees, the district must meet its financial obligations and meet and maintain the Financial Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) review criteria. California Assembly Bill No. 1840 (Cal. 2018) shifted the power from the state level to the local county office. This shift infers that there is a difference in leadership at the state level and leadership at the local level, and suggests that more decentralized leadership, at the local level, will more effectively support the improvements necessary to move a district out of state receivership. By studying the leadership of a district governed by A.B. No. 1840 (Cal. 2018) and the impact of the decentralization of leadership of chronically failing or struggling districts, I learned the policy levers available to policymakers when this happens. The district must spend significant amounts of money to pay back loans and for costly reviews. This is money that is not going toward improving learning and school experience.

Thesis advisor: Martin Scanlan / District improvement research highlights the importance of central office leaders and building principals in reform efforts. A growing body of literature emphasizes the importance of the relationship between central office leaders and principals in the context of turnaround school reform. Drawing on research from Honig (2012), the assistance relationship consistently surfaced as a key element of success when selecting and implementing learning time as a turnaround measure. This study aims to explore the assistance relationship between central office leaders and principals in the selection and implementation of learning time. This qualitative study draws upon observations and document review to answer the research questions, and is one strand of a larger research project studying how central office leaders support principals through an assistance relationship in a district in receivership. This individual strand concludes that the selection and implementation of learning time opportunities, without consideration to the principals and without the assistance of central office leaders, can’t happen. This strand advances our understanding of how an effective assistance relationship can work in a district in receivership. I concluded that central office leaders and principals interviewed selected and implemented like learning time opportunities. Future researchers may continue to enrich this growing body of literature by examining these findings and testing all or some of the five key practices in a like district. The results, implications for districts in receivership, and future research are discussed. This strand’s findings can serve as a companion for central office leaders who are working with principals to select and implement learning time opportunities in order to improving achievement levels in underperforming schools and districts across our country. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

This bounded collective case study is an exploration of five school districts that have come under California state receivership and have received comprehensive assessments from the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team. It is detailed from the point of receivership through the initial comprehensive assessment report. Each case is situated within the timeframe in which each district had their budgets negatively certified, their request for a state loan granted, their receivership by the state declared and the initial steps toward recovery identified. The five California school districts chosen for this study are a sample of the population of school districts that have requested loans from the state of California since 1984. Of this population of thirty-two, seven have come under state receivership. Of these seven, five school districts have had comprehensive assessments mandated by the state of California and conducted by the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team. These five school districts selected as the sample for this study are: Compton Unified School District, West Contra Costa Unified School District, West Fresno Elementary School District, Oakland Unified School District and Vallejo City Unified School District. This study utilized the results from three data sets: district profiles which included demographic and financial data; the comprehensive assessment of the five selected school districts conducted by the FCMAT in the financial management area; and practitioner interviews at the district, county and state levels. The findings provide a roadmap for school districts in determining its risk of insolvency. The common demographic, financial conditions and fiscal practices are identified and how these conditions and practices lead to fiscal insolvency is presented. These conditions and practices have been organized into a high risk model that provides a hierarchy of predictors divided into primary, secondary, and independent risk areas that describe how these conditions and practices can be utilized as indicators of impending fiscal crisis. The systemic impact on fiscal solvency in the areas of; governance, human resources, facilities, and most importantly student achievement needs to receive further research.

La cessation des paiements, c’est sans aucun doute l’une des notions clés du droit des procédures collectives. Pour s’en rendre compte, il suffit de vérifier le contentieux qui en la matière est très abondant. Légalement définie au sein du premier alinéa de l’article L. 631-1 du Code de commerce comme l’impossibilité pou un débiteur de faire face à son passif exigible avec son actif disponible, cette définition, a été, à l’origine, l’œuvre d’une décision de la Cour de cassation rendue le 14 février 1978. Sous l’empire des dispositions antérieures à la loi de sauvegarde des entreprises, la cessation des paiements est un « curseur » qui sert de ligne de démarcation entre les procédures amiables et les procédures judiciaires. Un tel système a été dénoncé car il manquait cruellement de souplesse et d’efficacité dans la lutte contre les défaillances des entreprises. La loi du 26 juillet 2005, dans l’optique d’anticiper le traitement des difficultés des entreprises a mis un terme au système de « la cessation-curseur » en instituant la procédure amiable de conciliation et la procédure collective de sauvegarde. Toutefois, lorsque les « digues » que constituent les outils de l’anticipation n’ont pas pu enrayer le risque de cessation des paiements, le chef d’entreprise qui se retrouve dans une telle situation doit, dans un délai de quarante-cinq jours, demander l’ouverture d’une procédure de redressement ou de liquidation judiciaire. Lorsqu’il ouvre l’une ou l’autre de ces deux procédures, le tribunal saisi doit fixer une date de cessation des paiements. Cette date sera décisive pour la détermination de la période suspecte. De plus, l’ouverture des procédures collectives aura une incidence sur l’entreprise, elle joue sa survie, sur les créanciers dont le recouvrement de la créance est menacé, sur les fournisseurs qui craignent pour leurs relations contractuelles avec le débiteur, sur les garants qui craignent d’être appelés et sur la personne du débiteur elle-même. Sa gestion antérieure de l’entreprise sera scrutée et s’il en résulte des fautes en relation plus ou moins directe avec la cessation des paiements, il encourt des sanctions ou des actions en responsabilité. / Cessation of payments is certainly one of the key concepts in the law on collective insolvency proceedings. This can be seen by checking the litigation, which is very abundant in this matter. Legally defined in the first paragraph of Article L. 631-1 of the Commercial Code as the inability of a debtor to meet its accrued liabilities with its quick assets, this definition originated in a decision of the Court of Cassation issued on February 14, 1978. Under the provisions prior to the insolvency act, cessation of payments is a "cursor" which serves as a line of demarcation between amicable proceedings and judicial proceedings. Such a system has been criticized for being sorely lacking in flexibility and effectiveness in preventing business failures. The law of July 26, 2005, with the objective of anticipating treatment of company difficulties, put an end to the "cessation-cursor" by instituting the amicable conciliation proceeding and the collective insolvency proceeding. However, when the "barriers" formed by the anticipation tools have not been able to halt the risk of cessation of payments, the company director in such a situation must, within a period of forty-five days, request the initiation of a receivership or court-supervised liquidation proceeding. When either of these proceedings is initiated, the court must fix a date of cessation of payments. This date will be final for the determination of the suspect period. Moreover, the initiation of collective insolvency proceedings will have an effect on the enterprise fighting for survival, on the creditors whose ability to collect their debt is threatened, on the suppliers worried about their contractual relations with the debtor, on the guarantors who fear being called upon and on the debtor itself. Prior management of the enterprise will be probed and if faults more or less closely connected to the cessation of payments are revealed, sanctions or tort actions may result.

Appelés à s’appliquer concurremment pour traiter les difficultés d’une société, il est classiquement considéré que les relations entre le droit des sociétés et le droit des entreprises en difficulté se résument à des conflits pouvant être résolus en faisant prévaloir le « droit spécial » des procédures collectives sur le « droit commun » des sociétés. Cette analyse a perdu de sa pertinence en raison de la mutation du droit des faillites en droit des entreprises en difficulté dont la finalité, le contenu, et le domaine d’application ont profondément changé, ainsi qu’en raison de la contractualisation des deux matières. Ces évolutions ont induit une appréhension nouvelle de celles-ci. Sont en effet recherchées, tant par les sociétés en difficulté que par leurs créanciers, les potentialités de l’association du droit des sociétés et du droit des entreprises en difficulté pour organiser le rebond d’une société défaillante. Leurs relations en droit positif s’avèrent ainsi plus subtiles et plus complexes. Une synergie existe entre elles lors du règlement à l’amiable des difficultés, tandis qu’une véritable soumission du droit des sociétés au droit des entreprises en difficulté peut être constatée lors du règlement judiciaire des difficultés. Malgré des origines distinctes, des finalités propres, et des fonctions radicalement opposées, une logique anime les relations des deux matières révélant un corpus légal et jurisprudentiel utilisé pour le règlement des difficultés qui témoigne de l’existence d’un droit des sociétés en difficulté. / It is commonly understood that, when considering ailing companies, the conflicts that arise between concurrently applicable corporate law and insolvency law can be solved with “special law” that prevails over “ordinary law”. This understanding has lost some relevance through the transformation of “bankruptcy law” into “distressed business law”. The trend towards the use of explicit contracts in these fields is bringing about a change in their finality, content and scope. This evolution of corporate law and insolvency law is creating new apprehension on the part of both the distressed company and the creditors, with the result that both parties are looking for means to combine these subjects when organising the recovery of an ailing firm. Their coexistence in substantive law turns out to be even more subtle and complex. In the case of an amicable settlement of a dispute, a synergy exists between corporate law and insolvency law whereas when a settlement is imposed under court supervision, the prevalence of insolvency law over corporate law is notable. Despite distinct origins, differing finality and radically opposing functions, a common logic motivates the relation between corporate law and insolvency law revealing a legal corpus and case law as a testament to the existence of an “ailing company law”.

Part 1: ‘True Receivers': Rilke and the Contemporary Poetics of Listening In this part of this thesis I argue that a contemporary ‘poetics of listening' has emerged in the UK, and explore the writing of three of our most significant poets - John Burnside, Kathleen Jamie and Don Paterson - to find out why they have become interested in the idea of the poet as a ‘listener'. I suggest that the appeal of this listening stance accounts for their engagement with the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, who thought of himself as a listening ‘receiver'; it is proposed that Rilke's notion of ‘receivership' and the way his poems relate to the earthly (or the ‘non-human') also account for the general ‘intensification' of interest in his work. An exploration of the shifting status of listening provides context for this study, and I pay particular attention to the way innovations in audio and communications technology influenced Rilke's late sequences the Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. A connection is made between Rilke's ‘listening poetics' and the ‘listening' stance of Ted Hughes and Edward Thomas; this establishes a ‘listening lineage' for the contemporary poets considered in the thesis. I also suggest that there are intriguing similarities between the ideas of listening that are emerging in contemporary poetics and Hélène Cixous' concept of ‘écriture féminine'. Exploring these similarities helps us to understand the implications of the stance of the poet-listener, which is a counter to the idea that as a writer you must ‘find your voice'. Finally, it is proposed that ‘a poetics of listening' would benefit from an enriched taxonomy. Part 2 of the thesis is a collection of my poems entitled ‘Small Weather'.