WNESU BOARD May 28

Doreen, the minutes recorder, gave this meeting a bad grade since it took so long--getting out just about 10 pm. What all takes this much time? We start promptly at 7, almost to the second, and have curriculum presentations on Literacy and Social Studies from these committees led by principals and including teachers from all grade levels. Literacy includes both reading and writing, but in truth, it is mostly reading, which is tied to a "research based" Reading First program that demands 90 min daily and a largely prescribed curriculum. Add this time to the 90 min math program, add in a few specials like PE or Art, a bit of time for lunch and recess and such, and at least for the elem level, it doesn't leave a whole lot of time for writing or social studies or science. I personally have some problems with the "research based" designation, esp since the recent research on these Reading First programs has raised significant questions about the efficacy of these programs. I know for my children, who were both relatively strong readers, and I have heard similar ideas from others, that the readings in the younger grades were uninteresting at best and more often gibberish that my kids despised. I am not sure this reading program is the best for all, but at least the attention to reading across grade levels and across the curriculum is valuable. Sadly, this does squeeze out writing too often. It sounds like the district has done well to coordinate around some common writing programs and protocols, and the desire to attend to writing more is there. To me, the best way to learn to write is to...write. Kids just need to write more often and in many forms and settings to see writing as expression and not just as a chore in editing and mechanics. I am not sure this happens nearly enough for all kids. The Social Studies group is beginning to detail (or map) their curriculum k-12 and they've developed a nice format to identify key learning goals, essential questions, and main ideas to teach. This will help teachers immensely in deciding on what and how to teach, and could lead to a solid criteria referenced, local assessment system to evaluate how students are doing on these goals. This is great work to be moving forward on--and somewhat remarkable that this hasn't been done in the past. This is certainly one of the primary benefits of the standards movement to at least get teachers talking across grades and across schools about what we want our students to learn and how we are doing on these goals. If this had been done better in the past, maybe we wouldn't have this national testing movement that narrows learning around these limited, easy to grade test formats. This all took long enough, but seems important to review, and then we got into the less thrilling discussion of employee benefit plans (ways to save money while providing the same or better benefits by switching from one provider (with real problems from the business perspective)), and an even longer discussion of the new 403b requirements that all employers have to do a bunch more paperwork to document plans, undertake more responsibility for their employees choices, and probably pay at third party provider to take on some of these responsibilities. We heard from the superintendent about the success of the high school in raising test scores through a variety of strategies, one of which was getting kids to take the test seriously enough to get off technical assistance. The other big time consumer was discussing the $1.6 million dollar disagreement of expenses frmo some years ago that was unveiled in a state audit. While the district seems confident that about $500,000 of this is solidly accounted for, there is about $1.2 million that the auditor may determine was misbilled. Since the district gets about 50% reimbursement from the state, this means the district would be responsible for about $600,000. The total special ed budget that year was about $6.7 million, so this is questioning about 24% of the budget. I was quite astounded by the cost of special ed per child--even using the arbitrary idea of dividing the cost by the total number of students in the district and this works out to about $5000 for every single student. If these services go to 30% of our kids, this is more like $15,000 per special ed student (and I am told one student that year cost something over $200,000). It is easy to think there could be some savings in the cost of these services, but I am also sure some budget hawks on the board have looked into this for some years. Finally, we approved the hire of a new director of Instructional Services (which I think means Special Education Director). I was a little uncomfortable with the board's role in this, as we just see a resume and a cover letter and are asked to approve the hire. I assume the hiring committee is enthusiastic about this new hire and she brings some real strengths, but I wish some of this was shared so we have some idea of what we are approving and what we might look forward to in this very important position. I guess next time I will have to be more adamant about asking for this, even if it is almost 10 pm and everyone is antsy to leave.