Bear in mind… these are live notes. These are just notes from when I was sitting in the meeting. I may or may not write on some of these later.
- Missing again, Mrs. Hier. Very interesting that she has the ability to write editorials to the newspaper but she can’t be here. [Later Mrs. Wreford was asked about it, Freudian slip she said something like "Mrs. Hier will be back when she is willing... ur, able to attend." Oops]
- The meeting started off on a great pace. By 8:00 PM most of the business was done. Awesome.
- They created a new subcommittee for the Sinking Fund projects. Hey, if this saves us some cash I’m all about it!
- Mr. Beck said bout goals, “I’m aware that it’s March 10th and we have not finalized goals for the 2007-2008 school year, but I don’t think that is something to be concerned about.” (Not to sound rude to Mr. Beck, but it is March 10th. It’s too late for goals. Let’s work on some goals for 2008-2009 and beyond.)
- I’m witnessing a fundamental communication breakdown here. The board just won’t agree on anything. Sometimes it is silly to witness. I keep waiting to see one party or the other reach out to find some common ground. See my next point.
- Mr. Stoback is doing his best to teach the difference between a goal and a value statement. I think this is mostly a discussion of the group not speaking the same language. I keep going back to this thought… the board really needs to read Good to Great as a team. (Mr. Chesney’s point at the last meeting… they are a team, like it or not.) It seems that the root of this fundamental disagreement is that they don’t speak the same language. With all of these great managers… let’s get on the same page.
- Mr. Chesney seems to really grasp why each goal needs to be measurable. There was an interesting comment made by someone. (can’t remember) The comment was that if all of the buildings already have goals, why do we need to do all this goal setting at the district level? Again, there is a disagreement on the vernacular again. A district wide goal can trickle all the way down to the student. From the board to the administrators to the teachers to the staff to the students and parents… everyone can get on board with a common goal. We are all in this together… we need to rally around some common goals. This really reminds me of the church before we restructured. An organization has to go in the same direction to succeed!
- Community Survey: This has been talked about for a while. Mr. Beck keeps referencing that the community survey is important and that it hasn’t been done since 1994… and yet I have no idea what the purpose of the survey is. I think the cost makes no difference… $2500 out of a $48 million budget is nothing. But at the same time there hasn’t been a clear point demonstrated to the community.
- 360 Review: I don’t understand why neither the community nor the staff will be involved. It seems they are spending $1500 for something that doesn’t really mean anything. It’s not part of his full evaluation, will be limited to about 15 people total. I dunno enough about this to know if its a good thing for Mr. Beck or not. I know a lot of people are negative about him, I think he’s got a hard job and he’s doing well to balance his own personal goals for himself with those of the community and board.
- Board maneuvering: Late in the meeting the majority did a well-worn stall technique. Mrs. White wanted to discuss a procedure policy for dealing with complaints against the superintendent. Mrs. Wreford said, “We have an attorney sitting here on the clock, there’s no time for that.” When the minority wasn’t pleased by that response, Mrs. Wreford brought up something that had already been addressed in the agenda prior… the superintendent’s evaluation and they talked about it for 15 minutes. Why won’t they just address the issue at hand? These distraction techniques need to stop.
During public comments:
- Linda Palmer- asked questions in regard to Superintendent and Asst. Superintendent’s access to individual students score and attendance records. (No idea what the back story is on that, but I’m interested.) She also mentioned the lack of visitor parking at the high school. (Mr. Beck had no real response, deferred to the HS principal.)
BOMBSHELL WARNING: She made comment regarding a committee called “Our Kids Count” for the Sinking Fund. (I wrote about this mailer on January 12th 2008) As of January, 3 donors paid for the mailer that went out to ensure that the Sinking Fund passed. Two of them were the contractors who were hired! They paid for about 95% of the mailing that I wrote about earlier. Conflict of interest? You think? Isn’t that against the law somehow? At the very least the public needs to know they were duped.
Zoe Wagner- Desiring to know how many letters have been received in regard to the situation with Mr. Winters. (Board has no comment, later counted to say they received five letters.) Mrs. Wagner is being argumentative… However, the point reason she is doing so is just to bring things into the public which are previously kept in subcommittee.
Kristen F. – High school counselor made a great comment in regards to the hard work that is going on at the building level. This is a good sign for the future… I need to say this more often… people at the building level do a great job!
