School Board Exciting Meeting!

Wow! What a difference a little public input makes. In what I am sure was the most exciting board meeting I've been at, there were about 20 real live citizens at the meeting, motivated by a very tentative suggestion that we look at Winter Sports spending and its best use. The first sign of the excitement was exchanging our regular quiet library setting for the more lively old gym. And even before the regular agenda got underway, the time for public comments actually had a public, and hence some real concerns were raised, mainly to discuss the widespread confusion about the "snack policy" at school this year. As expressed by parents, there is a lot of confusion about what is allowed or prohibited and kids are coming home saying they weren't allowed to eat this or that snack they brought in. The board assured the parents there wasn't a board policy about snacks, and the principal communicated that this was really a class by class rule. This raises reasonable concerns about inconsistency between teachers of the same grade or if you have one child in one grade who can eat some snack and another child with a different teacher who cannot. Even more significantly, it seems whatever the rules are, they should be communicated clearly with parents. The sense from this meeting was that parents were more than open to having some restrictions on what snacks were acceptable. But they justifiably felt strongly that the rules should be made clear to students and parents before they were enforced (and it would be nice if the teachers helped educate students on the reason for the restrictions rather than just make edicts). Attention to this kind of communication from school to parents and the community seems to me the most crucial factor in engendering community support for schools. I think parents can support all sorts of school practices if only they felt informed and were able to understand the reasoning behind school practices. The one outcome of this discussion was clarifying the process for parents to bring concerns to the school. The first step if it is a concern with a particular class or teacher (according the school policy) is to go to the teacher directly. If this doesn't resolve things, then one goes to the principal and then the superintendent and then the board. The important thing is that one does raise these concerns and they are brought to the school in some fashion. As a board member, I am surprised how infrequently concerns one hears about our schools are ever brought to the attention of those in school. Without these concerns being raised, the standard response from school officials is "I haven't heard about this problem," or "There is no record of this being a problem." If we as a community want to improve our schools, it is incumbent on the public to bring their concerns to school officials. The winter sports discussion showed the power of a few vocal community members. This was put on the agenda merely to begin thinking about this $15,000 line item and its best use. Feeling that the downhill ski program was threatened, ski advocates showed up to express how much they valued this ski program for their children and themselves. This chance to appreciate winter in Vermont and to be outdoors was cited as a great value of the Winter Sports program. Hearing no dissenting voices, the board was led to pass a motion on the spot to reaffirm the Winter Sports program for this winter. This was an example of how a few voices, whether or not representative of the greater public, can carry the day. The board really has no way of knowing if the 20 or so people at the meeting reflected the whole community view or that of a small minority. But in the end, it doesn't really matter as these are the voices that were heard and in the absence of other voices to propose alternatives (that might not compromise the commitment to winter sports but might achieve the same goals at a lower cost in both money and personnel time), the existing program stays in place. The rest of the meeting was less eventful (a good portion of the crowd left after this agenda item was resolved). Some discussion about the need for buying a bus (happily, we will explore the relative merits of used vs. new), energy savings ideas (the school is actually pretty efficient but there are some small changes that could offer savings we will be looking into), and planning for next year's budget (to be worked on prior to each board meeting for a while). The one other big issue was giving authority to the WNESU board (which includes 3 Westminster board members) for district wide curriculum ratification and to give the District Special Education Director some input into non LEA Special Education spending decisions. There was an understandable reluctance to relinquish authority to a those further from our school. In the end, the board supported the curriculum approval for at least 4 years to see how it works and to give the SPED Director this authority that is apparently common in all other districts. With the curriculum, we were assured this would not prescribe particular texts or packaged programs but merely focus on goals and objectives and desired outcomes. It does seem this district needs more clarity and consistency about what we expect is taught and learned. But the point was made we don't want to be told by some committee or administrator what programs we have to use or what textbooks we need to buy. The Superintendent threw out the idea of 60-40--60% of the curriculum would fall under the district wide agreement, and 40% would be determined by teachers or in individual schools. I write this here so we can keep track of this as we see how this district wide authority is exercised. Come to some meetings--it makes them much more fun, and part of the community!

Welcome Back

I apologize for being slow in updates here. (Though I wonder if anyone is reading this at all). Part of this is due to the summer slump in meetings, part due to my absence from the few meetings that existed. Rather than reviewing every agenda item, let me make share some general impressions of board business: 1. The board has a lot less power than anyone seems to think. The biggest role of the board, it seems, is as an oversight body to make sure nothing really stupid or illegal happens. We are supposed to check financial report, sign warrants, approve hiring (based often on very little information), approve policies (usually mandated to us from above), hear reports (and maybe even comment on them although what happens with our comments seems minimal). 2. The biggest "decisions" the board makes relate to requests from teachers and staff (which are surprisingly common) for variances from the contract (being paid for sick or vacation days, getting extra paid days for unpaid leave, etc.). These are pretty uniformly rejected, as the contract negotiations seem so protracted and specific on garnering the most benefits the employees can get, it is hard to see why the employer should make special exceptions to go beyond the contracted agreements. 3. The other big decision point for the board is around creating the budget (which I haven't been part of yet), but even this seems like it has limited impact, as it most expenses are probably fixed for the most part--there is little room to raise expenses significantly, and any attempt to cut significantly in any area would likely be met with strong resistance about undermining the quality of education for kids. 4. "Silver bullet" ideas are often much more attractive than doing the lower profile, less disruptive solutions. The biggie this year is energy savings/money savings ideas. The two ideas being floated are 4 days weeks and closing schools in winter. These seem massively disruptive to me, and mostly involve cost shifting from the school budget to family budgets. I hope the public is smarter than this and can see how cutting school one day a week only shifts costs to families to pay for transportation and childcare for their own kids. Before we go to this drastic step, how about setting back thermostats at night, lowering temps in the day, turning down heat over vacations, turning off lights more, reducing transport costs (esp by changing sports leagues to be more local (nothing more than 40 miles away except for state playoffs) and pairing trips for boys and girls teams), etc. ? 5. A suggestion has been made at the district level to consolidate control of the curriculum at the district level. On one level, this seems logical and prudent, esp if it means just coordinating general goals and learning objectives. But on another, it is worrisome to think this might mean defining for all schools (and teachers) specific books, programs, and teaching methods. For example, might this mean we would mandate from the district level that all schools use a reading program like Success for All, that is increasingly being discredited at a national level? Might this push us closer to "one size fits all schooling" or will this help be more organized and consistent in assuring every child is achieving the common goals we value? It would be nice to hear from stakeholders on this one.