Westminster and WNESU Mtgs July

Summer Meetings....It is amazing all the on-going details of running schools. It is hard to judge if this is inefficiency or smart oversight. From the board viewpoint, most of what we do is get reported to on issues we really have fairly little control over. At the Westminster meeting, we had a report on the food program, which serves a pretty high number of meals a day (somewhere about 100 breakfasts and 270 lunches), and has an overall cost to the school of about $10,000. But this tells us little about the quality of the food and areas for possible savings or increased quality. The assumption is the food program will lose money (or cost money), although the grounds for this assumption is simply that the private purveyor previously charged about $10000 for their less good food service but this included probably a fair profit margin. Could a school food program provide quality and even turn a profit that could compensate the food service director? Possibly, but without any form of compensations tied to savings or quality, there is little incentive for the food service to aim for these results. I wonder if there is a way to make the food service more like a private company where the director can pursue economic rewards from generating a profit in the program, without sacrificing quality (which is part of the reason this is't just a free market business in schools). Other reports to us on the cost of the fuel pump at the high school (over budgetdue to some special regulations with costs spread among districts), food service accounting, and hiring of school based clinician (that has to be decided now to reserve this time even though the exact needs can't be known until school opens). Then we spent inordinate time on individual contract issues--sort of the result of the very generous contracts negotiated with teachers and support staff, that include benefits not all that common anymore in the private sector ("cadillac" health benefits, a hefty number of vacation, sick, and personal days, etc). These contracts set a precedent that is then cited by other employees to be treated "fairly." It is hard to argue that one employee should not get some benefits when all others do get them, but it is hard to think that the school district is obligated to provide pay and benefits for every employee that is beyond those provided to the taxpayers in other employment who receive few of these benefits in terms of pay scale, raises, or benefits. Sadly, as the private sector becomes ever less generous with employees, the gap between what the school district provides and what the taxpayer gets wider, and ever harder for the taxpayer to be able to afford. Somewhere, this is going to hit the fan, but I don't know how you bridge the gap of perceptions where teachers express a continued feeling of being undervalued and undercompensated (which I believe, from looking at historical data, was much more a well founded argument 20 or 30 years ago than today, given the past couple decades of pay increases for teachers much above the rate of other job sectors). The WNESU meeting had few major highlights. More approval of contracts for central office, talking about how best to report spending accounts, trying to make check signing more efficient (but not less accountable), discussion of oil bids for the district, and possibilities for consolidating buses across the district (an assumed savings plan although I am not sure exactly what this assumption is based upon without more information). The best thing about this meeting was its relative efficiency (done before dark!).