Board Meeting 2: March 18

First official meeting—3 hours long, I hope not because of my involvement. Plenty of responsibility—looking over NECAP scores, school budget (30+ pages!), amendments for about 20 policies, special education stats district wide, appointing truant officer (a state requirement), how to follow up on town meeting, discussion of bus costs and billing, and the inevitable executive session to decide on personnel requests related to difficult family medical issues.

I’m glad I’m good with numbers, as the numbers we receive can be difficult to interpret, and potentially misleading. NECAP scores are grouped by percentages within each category of proficiency, so that an addition at one end of the spectrum (for example adding 5 free and reduced lunch students who tend to score lower (and represents a 10% increase of overall test takers)), lowers the percentage at the other end of the spectrum even if other students do the same as the year before or even better! The other big question I have, that no one else seems to have looked at, is how do we compare to NH and RI who are taking the same test? Sure there are differences among these states, but are there any relevant patterns here? Seems like someone should look at this. (I did and we are more or less similar--NH is a tad higher, RI a bit lower.) Overall, it seems our scores on reading and math are okay, but regardless of the details of the testing or the reporting, writing here and statewide needs more work (which I imagine most adults could have told you without any state test results).

Our new finance manager seems super on top of things (apparently after spending countless hours making up for some messes she inherited). For some reasons that were discussed before I came on the board, we have a $200,000+ surplus. According to Vt Law, this either is returned to the taxpayers by lowering the tax rate or we have to have a special town meeting to determine its use. The former seems much simpler (and more popular?) than the latter (although it should be raised in town meeting some time if we should have some kind of surplus/rainy day/sinking fund for the unanticipated budgetary ups and downs from year to year). Although some expressed the surplus may make the board “look bad,” I figure anytime you lower people’s taxes, not many will complain. More significantly, the reason why this surplus exists seems to have some relationship to difficulties with the financial record keeping of previous employees. The district seems to have recognized this and acted accordingly in hiring the new finance manager who inspires confidence that this problem should not be repeated in the future. I hope the community can understand that mistakes can happen—not learning from these and addressing them is what can make the board look bad.

The other math exercise was reviewing special education student numbers. Again, a one year snapshot is pretty hard to interpret. If the number of 12^th graders with IEPs is twice the number of 9^th graders, is this a bubble that has gone through the system or do our numbers increase over time in high school? Why don’t numbers drop over the years as at least a few kids work their way off IEPs? Are there particular reasons our numbers are higher than elsewhere in the state/country? Do we really get border crossers who leave NH for VT because we offer better services (and do these services outweigh the perceived “tax advantage” of living in NH)? And is the drop in total number of SPED students in the district (from about 350 to 300 over 6 years) a reflection of better special education services or simply mirroring the drop of overall student population in the district as a whole? And most significantly (and incredibly difficult to answer), are lower SPED numbers a reflection of better teaching or worse identification or lucky demographics….???? The only useful numbers, I think, are to look at the same kids (or group of kids) over time to see if numbers go up or down or stay the same. This is not exactly the level of detail we on the board are looking at.

The toughest issues to me are the personnel requests for paid leave around very real health and family issues. My inclination is to want to be as compassionate and flexible and supportive as possible. As an employer, I have learned of the awesome responsibility you have to help make employee’s lives workable. Each individual circumstance deserves the kind of personal attention and consideration that reflects the uniqueness of each person. But then with schools, it seems so much is tied into a negotiated contract and state and federal laws that delineate conditions that apply to every employee without regard to individual circumstance. If there seemed more flexibility and personalization from all sides, it would be easier to respond on an individual basis. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the nature of the terms that get negotiated at contract time. So I feel stuck between wanting to support and honor our teachers (while remaining responsible to taxpayers) and the reality of a contract that too often limits the flexibility of schools to do what is best for kids and learning. Is there any hope to change this reality?