Budget Time

As we approach budget time, it is interesting to see the outside opinions of the board's actions. State officials are prodding for lower spending (and ignoring the inflexible increases of contractual raises for teachers and higher health costs), parents feel threatened by almost any change in staffing, and school employees believe any job cut will hurt the education of children. What is most interesting to me is what I believe is the complete integrity of board members in acting with all good will to do what is best educationally without the emotional sidelights of vested interests. In looking at the shrinking size of the school and the consequent shrinking size of classes, my feeling is that as class size gets too small, you actually hurt educational quality and the experience of children. My standard example is a class size of 10-12, with maybe 3 girls and 9 boys. Let's say 1 girl is above grade level and another girl is way below grade level. The 3rd girl is absent, and who does either girl have to fit in with that day? This problem is extended in all sorts of ways in terms of academic and social learning for all sorts of kids. And although individual attention sounds good on the surface, it is possible to almost know kids too well, as teachers try to individualize expectations so much that one kid is expected to do a little less than another, and another a lot less and another more....Sometimes it may help to have reasonably high expectations for every kid and hold these relatively steady to try to raise all kids to this level, without adjusting expectations for each child in a small group. And yes, there can be classes that are too big and standardized education is problematic, but neither of these are likely to be the problems at Westminster Schools any time in the near future. One other problem I think may occur is having too many adults in a classroom for the number of kids. Again, it always seems more adults in the classroom are always better, but this is not always true. Different adults send different messages for kids, making it hard to be consistent. There is the old problem of going from mom to dad to get an answer a kid desires. And the teacher must spend time to communicate with other adults in the class about tasks, responsibilities, and expectations that might be a net gain when all works out but can be a frustration when teaching styles and belief systems don't coincide. Given all these factors of class size, I, and I believe the other board members, were led to look at reducing staff in a way that resulted in a more educationally optimal class size of somewhere nearer 14-18 (still small by any national measure (and minuscule by international comparisons where class sizes can reach near 3 digits in some places!). While it turns out this also lowers costs was incidental (and, admittedly, a valued bonus), budget was in no way a driving force for any board member that I saw. Once the numbers were crunched, then the real hard part came where it is emotionally wrenching to reduce staff. No matter who the person, it hurts to take away a person's livelihood. Schools cannot be employment agencies just keeping people on when not needed, but both causing someone to lose their source of income and having someone leave the school community is really hard, even if totally justified. Then there are what seem really non-sensical rules about who is laid off based on nothing to do with teacher quality and exclusively based on when someone was hired. Although a very experienced teacher may have lost their energy for teaching, their position is guaranteed while the younger, in many cases more energetic teachers, are the first to be let go. In the case of Westminster, there may not be these exact circumstances, but to have this as the general and inflexible rule in schools can really work against what is best for kids in terms of keeping the most effective teachers. Now that staffing numbers are more clear based on class size, now comes the other tough decision about how to configure classes and the issue of the West School. It seems many are jumping to assumptions about what will happen, and in classical psychological fashion, we all tend to focus more on the downside losses than the upside gains. There are lots of potential configurations that can encourage attention to individual children, continuity of programs, connection of families to the school, and developmentally appropriate education. This is being worked on by the teachers and I hope they can look at what is best for the kids even if this means some changes in established patterns. As much as I liked and advocated for the mini school idea, I also think it is probably advisable to change the school structures every decade or two unless everything is working exceptionally well just to continually rethink why and how we do things. At Westminster, despite our many strong points, I am confident we can say not all is working superbly. Although we to have an admittedly challenging population in terms of demographic "risk" factors, so do lots of other schools that show better results by some measures. I am hopeful that new configurations and arrangements can promote a stronger professional community in the school, with more shared work and shared expectations, and greater continuity for all children in gaining the kinds of educational experiences in all respects that are needed to be prepared for success in school and beyond. We are a small school by almost any measure, and I believe we can keep a strong sense of community as we work together to do what is best for all kids. I believe reductions in staffing will improve educational outcomes as teachers are led to work together in new ways with attention to all kids. And, happily, we can do this while lowering educational costs, and hopefully pleasing taxpayers (and the state officials).

Welcome Back--Oct 7

I am not really sure anyone reads this so let things lapse a while (with little public unrest that I heard). I guess a lot has happened on the board over the summer and at the same time, not much has changed. I am never too sure the board has much say on anything--most of what we do is get reported to and asked to affirm decisions made elsewhere in the system (by the state, feds, superintendent, teachers, etc). Big decisions, like spending of the $1 million plus Stimulus funds, wasn't even presented to us for input, decided internally by the administration and reported to us in the broadest possible terms (and defended afterwards for its priorities that were (somewhat inaccurately) portrayed as not focused on kids). The biggest potential decision of the recent past (and possibly affecting the direction of our schools for decades) involved what to do about BF Middle School. Unfortunately, the process for considering options for this was not very broad minded (we all know change is hard and vested interests do a lot to "protect their turf"). The one option that seemed most attractive to the committee working on this was the lure of building a new school. Ignoring estimates of costs and the burden on taxpayers, and idealizing what a new building could be (probably somewhat different in each person's mind), this had an obvious appeal. Perhaps the biggest problem with this idea (beyond the cost, the problem of location, supporters of the current site, etc) was that it would lock the district into a single, one size fits all school for decades to come (if not forever). For a district that has struggled with quality issues at various times in the past, this is a tough future to support. (Even ignoring the issue of why the same staff and practices would be markedly different in a new building), even if the new site improves things for some period, what assures future leadership (at the board or administration level) will continue improvements? To me, the biggest problem in public education are the many effects of what some call the school monopoly. Having to serve every kid in a town and with no competition, there are all sorts of negative effects, from the challenges to the school to try to be all things to all people (which is an impossible place to put educators in) to the inflexibility for kids for whom the forced school is not working to a lack of incentives for some educators to provide better services to all sorts of bureaucratic regulations to try to improve quality and efficiencies in the absence of real feedback mechanisms from "customers" (whether students, families, taxpayers, etc). Add to these problems the struggles of getting the boards from different towns to work effectively together, and the feelings of the Westminster Board moved unanimously against the idea of partnering for a new middle school in a permanent relation that would remove the choices enjoyed by many in our district. To the more mundane, and current: Lots going on at Westminster to try to improve academic results. Apparently spurred by not meeting AYP (according to public statements from teachers and the principal), the teachers are motivated to work together on improving student performance. While this test score scare seemed a motivator for action, it feels like the buy-in from the teachers to unified efforts to improve academic results is related to good leadership in presenting this problem to the teachers and letting them figure out and own the solutions they will pursue. The most concrete step is bringing in a common reading program (4 Blocks) across the school. Combined with the weirdly named Response to Intervention approach to looking at student results at the individual level and actually intervening to address struggles (!!!), there seems an increased attention to higher expectations for students and, most importantly, to actually working with each child towards their achievement and trying to keep individuals from falling through the cracks. The other "issue" is the boil water order despite our state mandated $100,000 new back up water system. Apparently, this new system isn't as flawless as promised upon first use. The hope is that the lingering bacteria problem is merely left over water and once all clear this time, in the future our back up system can assure we won't have bacteria problems in the future. We will see. The one other idea of note was a rare instance of openness of the central administration to publicly admitting the depth of problems in the district accounting practices that have plagued us for years. Instead of talking around the issue, we finally heard the problems are deep and carry over from long ago. Once this was acknowledged, the board was able to direct the administration to come up with a plan to solve, once and for all, the past problems so we can get this behind us. Although this will take some short term funding, it is widely felt among the board that we support the plan to address this (finally) according to the administration's recommendations. If this doesn't improve the business office situation, then the administration, and the board, deserves to be held accountable. Although it is a bit embarrassing to acknowledge failings, it is a lot better in my mind to be transparent and to make positive steps to address problems. No system is perfect and more openness about challenges allow the public to not only be informed, but to help solve problems for the good of all.

Westminster Board Meeting June 4 and WNESU Mtg late May

Y'all are getting your money's worth out of the board member at least in terms of time. Another two meetings out after 10 pm! What took so long? Hard to say for sure--Principal's Report about lots of efforts to improve school results (partnering with preschools for all kids), professional development with outside consultants, RTI (monitoring system for student progress for identified students), need to look at a "core curriculum" for reading (agreed upon program school wide); Superintendent's Report on her goals (improving performance of SU office, reduce sped costs, complete curriculum development process (finally!), ensure better teacher supervision and evaluation) and the budget bill that will freeze school spending next year!; action planning committee work on new action plan; talk about getting rid of old bus (gifting to fire dept for practice); explore how to spend $17,500 of Microsoft legal settlement funds on new computers (PC laptops or notebooks?, shift teacher macs to fill out cart of younger kids, some new machines for west school.... The real time consumer was the Special Education Report from Sharon Reynolds. This was a wade through countless paperwork reflecting the complexity of all this process and accountability. She has made much progress of getting the house in order but the amount of paperwork to track these services is simply overwhelming. I raised a question about if we have looked at "working smarter" rather than "working harder"--looking at ways of structuring things differently rather than just get better in a system that has a long record of inadequacy (not just in our district but nationwide). There are schools in the nation and even in Vermont that do much more to individualize options and opportunities for all kids. I would like to see a more bold vision and leadership for this in our district. Simply doing the same old thing better, as we know from our own history here and educational research nationwide over decades, has a poor record of real improvement (see, for example, Fullan's New Meaning of Educational Change, now in its 4th edition). There were also some interesting stats in this report on comparisons of SPED costs and numbers statewide (WNESU ranks pretty poorly, but this is close to a lot of other districts in So Vt). Big variance from one district to another, with little explanation of why. And looking at trends of sped categories over the past 20 years, it is astounding how much some categories have doubled (such as autism, developmental delay, other health impairment (up 10 fold))(while overall population has fallen) and others have dropped more than half (deaf, speech impaired). Again, no one could explain this. A big issue that is on the table is the Article 6 Committee from Rockingham looking into the idea of building a new middle school and if Westminster wants to be a partner in this. I implore any interested community members to be involved in this discussion which would mean the end of any choice for 7-8 graders. Knowing how many have taken advantage of this choice opportunity for middle school over the years, I would think there are many who have an interest in expressing their views on this. Board members are remarkably responsive to public opinion, even if expressed even by a small number of individuals. I encourage your participation and views. One last note was the unexpected expense that may be imposed by a couple students moving into the district who have to be in out of district placements. This is just a shock to the budget but something that by law we just have to pay. WNESU meeting was a breakthrough with actual talk about learning and education! Curriculum work was presented by Science and Literacy. It is still shocking that none of this existed before, but the work done on these has helped identify essential learnings and set up a structure where teachers district wide can share in best practices. The board enthusiastically endorsed this effort and hope it can actually be used by teachers to improve learning for all students. There was then the regular boring stuff, interrupted by some heartfelt sensitivity by some Rockingham Board members to ask they are not looked at so critically by others. They are working diligently under a lot of challenging circumstances and rightly point out derisive remarks don't really help at all. There was also a fair bit of interchange about personnel matters and how these can best be addressed to value district employees appropriately and help each person work towards contributing most effectively to the well being of the district.

Westminster Board Meeting May 7

Having canceled the second meeting in April, this set a record for time--out at 10:18! We began with a report from Rockingham's Article 6 Comm., led by the hired consultant (they paid him to drive down to tell us this stuff?). The basic idea they have is to build a new middle school building somewhere near BFUHS high school. Without a partner district, they apparently are not eligible for any state funds. The cost figures are not made very clear, but the numbers $4-10 million were thrown around. Seeing Westminster paid $3 million for our gym and other renovations, it is hard to see the real cost being below $10 million for a whole building. They are asking if Westminster would be interested in a joint partnership for this school. I have problems with this idea on at least 3 levels. 1) It will invariably raise costs to our district. We will be obligated to pay for the new construction (a cost we don't incur currently with choices we have). More significantly, the costs of sending students to BFMS has almost always been significantly above the costs we pay for our choice students. This has saved our district well over a million dollars over the past decade. Given the per pupil cost history at BFUHS and BFMS, it seems almost certain this will continue to cost considerably more than when we pay for choice schools. 2) At a time when nationwide and in the state, there is clear energy for greater choice and options in our public schools (including support from the state commissioner of education ) http://www.vpr.net/episode/45974 and towns like Whitingham and Wilmington are trying to dissolve their joint agreement, why we would want to lock into long term agreement is hard to understand. I hear many more people who wish Westminster wasn't locked into the BFUHS agreement than wish we were in more agreements that constrain educational options. Especially given the history of struggles within the Rockingham board and schools, this doesn't seem like the ideal partnership. Go to the Article 6 meeting May 18 at 5:30 at BFMS to learn more. 3) Philosophically, I don't believe we are ever best served by "One Size Fits All" schooling. There is just too much research out there showing the limits of the "one best system" fraught with the "predictable failure of educational reform." Our Westminster parents have consistently chosen to take advantage of the choices for middle school. There would need to be a very strong educational justification (with assurances of quality) to consider losing this freedom of choice. In this discussion, some mentioned the value of a "community school." I think it is all too easy to idealize the possibilities of something new and unformed. We all have a picture of the ideal school we might create. But the history in this area should make us circumspect of creating an ideal that suits all our individual pictures. More importantly, I don't think there is one "ideal school" that works for all. Again, there is a ton of research and experience showing the real challenges of being "everything to everybody" in any organization. This was just the first 30 minutes of the meeting! Then financial report (should be a surplus but this will be offset some by overcharges from the Middle School(!)); principal report (fresh fruit and vegetable grant truly high quality food for kids (and locally sourced!) but a mess with getting reimbursed from state folk; lots of info about writing program and progress in this arena); superintendent report (still working on local assessment plans (going along with curriculum development to start focusing on learning (finally!); WNESU meeting report (great price for oil--less than $2/gal!; a lot of time spent on discussing evaluations of administrative leaders). Good news was hiring of Colleen Grout for art (and regretfully having to say good bye to Janelle). Also had to accept the resignation from David Hull (5th grade), losing our one male teacher. Then approved water project bids (required by state) and repairs for gym entry (a waste of money because we cut corners to save a little when it was first built and now are paying a lot more to fix effects of freezing). Finally, discussed efforts to expand preschool in the district both with more slots funded in the district and support for private providers and partners to become STARS certified and thus eligible for public funding and certification of quality programs. There was some more at executive session related to the evaluation of the superintendent. Her focus goals of curricular improvement, reduction of SPED costs, better systems for supervision and evaluation, and improved management at the SU level seem the right intentions and a more proactive stance to educational quality in contrast to the more reactive, fire fighting modality that sometimes seemed more common in the district's past.

April 2 Westminster Board Meeting

A good natured meeting, maybebecause I missed the first 20 minutes as I rushed back from Keene where I was teaching a graduate school class on the Psychology of Learning. I walked in to the principal’s report and the announcement of community playground building dates of June 13 and 14. Given my past commentary on the role of Home Depot in Saxtons River’s playground effort, I guess I better try to make this. The other topic was going over NECAP test scores some more. Not surprisingly, our scores can’t keep up with the rising expectations of the arbitrary 100% by 2014 standard. Especially when you look at subgroups, such as kids on free and reduced lunch, our scores are not meeting the cut scores. Of course, all these expected scores are somewhat arbitrary and there remains a huge question if it is possible to get 100% of students at grade level. Given the special needs of some students, this may not be realistic. At the same time, it isn’t clear we can’t do better overall with higher academic expectations. The one other news item is that there is a local assessment program being developed to find assessment methods to supplement the NECAP and to fit better with our goals and curricula. This seems an “about time” idea, but apparently even this seemingly obvious school need is hard to develop and agree upon, so this is still in progress. In reappointing faculty, we learned that a few staff haven’t gotten their certification documentation in. There is no wiggle room on this for the administration, so no matter how good a teacher, if they don’t do their cert stuff, they cannot be rehired. This is a shame as it may mean losing great people, but it seems everyone has done as much as they could to support these teachers to get recertified. Finally, we spent about 15 min to sign the 5 different loan documents for the water project (all required by the state and funded by the state). Why this is all so complicated was beyond all of us but we signed and signed and stamped with the official stamp and had the town clerk sign and ….. The most interesting part of the meeting was working out the Principal’s new contract. For working year round, he gets paid shockingly little more than teachers. And in an innovative idea, we made his pay increase next year largely related to incentive pay for reaching certain goals about school quality and academic improvement. It is refreshing to model this idea of tying some pay to incentives and this should be interesting to see how this plays out.

WNESU Board Meeting 3/25/09

The first meeting after town meeting is officially the “Reorganization” Meeting to vote in new officers and committee assignments. Apparently, at least one citizen complained that the chair is not rotated among the towns (as she claims was the original intent). The implication is somehow the chair has special powers and exercises them in the advantage of individual towns. I have certainly never witnessed either (any power in the chair (or not much in the board as a whole for that matter) nor any effort by the chair (or any board member) to particularly advantage their town). It always seems to me that we are of one community, representing the best interests of taxpayers and kids in this region (as it should be). So, we basically renominated the same folk for the same positions (such is the case that anyone willing to take on one of these titles is not opposed by a slate of competition). The Superintendent’s Report included a $3 million grant for Safe and Healthy Schools (loads of probably good ideas, slim chance of getting this competitive grant, but probably elicited some ideas that are worth pursuing somehow—of course, piece meal efforts can have limited impact, so this balance of trying small efforts (often costly in time and energy) versus either doing something comprehensive or not at all is the question of effectiveness and commitment of resources. Although it can look good to make any effort, no matter how small, I tend to be more concerned that these can have such minor (if any) results and lead to program creep and distractions that can lessen quality elsewhere. The school calendar was presented. Two big problems: 1) February break is tied to Springfield, making us, I think, the only district in the state who takes the week off when Vt is full of tourists instead of the following week when there are all sorts of deals for Vermonters and families. And all these families that have commitments with the rest of Vermont schools (or most of NH) have this annoying situation of having different vacations for kids and parents. We were told this schedule is determined by the regional superintendents (but why Springfield rules this and Brat doesn’t follow wasn’t clear to me) and we have no say in it. And the reason we go with Springfield is that we have about 25 kids at the tech center there and about 8 in Brat. So for a net of 17 kids, we are stuck with a vacation week that I heard countless complaints about and supposedly can’t do anything about this. Let’s encourage the state ed commissioner to make a statewide schedule to get Springfield on board with everyone else. The other schedule issue raised was the short lead time for break before Xmas. The schools are closed Dec 24, which can really cramp families who may need to travel to be together for Christmas eve. Again, we are told this is determined by the other superintendents (are these supes just powerhouses who roll over ours???). Not the best idea for families who may celebrate the holiday together. Other agenda items: Created a committee with reps from every board to look at spending of Medicaid moneys (I am on this committee but don’t get all the issue yet—somehow there is a chunk of money (like more than $400,000) that is sitting around and needs to be expended. I don’t get why this is sitting around but I guess I will learn. The other heads up was about new requirements from the state for early ed admissions. We are being directed to make admissions decided by a lottery to be fair to all kids. There are many questions about this, mostly what to do with kids who may live closer to one program than another or if need comes into the equation at all. Apparently, there are about 15-20 more kids who want to be in this program than we have space for, so the idea of adding a site would cover everyone (as we probably should, given the benefits of early ed for later success). Finally, the finance head presented this attractive idea of getting a consulting firm who supposedly can get super good prices for energy resources. These guys work with Dartmouth and GE and other big entities and advertise getting prices as low as like $1.78 per gallon for Springfield for next year. This idea of pooling purchasing and skipping middlemen seems wise and the pricing sounds like a potential big savings. But, given the recent economic surprises nationwide, I think whenever you hear about a deal too good to be true, you have to do pretty strong due diligence. I hope we check for assurances that the oil is guaranteed, the price is guaranteed, and the company has the resources to back up their promises. These guys seem very reputable, but so did Enron or Madoff or Lehman Bank. We can’t be so afraid of being burned to do nothing that is wise and saves money, but I think we hopefully have learned as a nation that you got to be pretty careful to check things out before jumping at an opportunity. And yes, the next meeting is planned (again) during school vacation. This is a continual struggle for board members (whom are almost non-existent) with kids in school who may actually use the time their children are off to spend time together as a family.

Westminster Board Meeting March 19

Happily, the school (through the action planning committee) has developed a survey sent home to parents. Maybe not a perfect instrument, but something that is a start to getting some parent feedback about the school that can serve as one benchmark for school improvement over time. It would be nice to have something that is also completed by community members without kids in school, but it will be hard enough to get these surveys back that maybe we don’t have to go there yet (survey return rates can be as low as 2 or 3% so the results of such a survey need to be considered in light of response rates).

The other big news from the principal is the hiring process of Maggie Nowers, long time Office Czar at Westminster Schools. Undoubtedly, this transition can be a real challenge for the school. Maggie is irreplaceable in many ways and probably a huge amount of information is filed in her head. Hopefully, she can help with the transition. At the same time, this is an opportunity to look at how some things may be done differently (like ways to save paper and other resources through some use of technology or streamlined processes). Keep your fingers crossed.

The superintendent reported on the stimulus package (as much as is known so far). This is the kind of stuff that can drive fiscal conservatives a bit crazy. Not much is known, what is known is filtered through state officials who are not portrayed at the local level as the sharpest tacks in the box, and the direction of use seems to be to spend money on things that “improve education” but don’t have on-going expenses and doesn't just offset pre-budgeted expenses. While surely there are some expenditures that will have real educational benefits, nothing specific has been on the board radar for using these funds (although buying computers or books or class materials seems both stimulative for the economy and have long term benefits for kids). Hopefully the board will hear some of these plans from the school before too many decisions are made about spending these unexpected resources.

The big excitement at this meeting, at least by turnout, was the issue of “transitions.” In what passes as a public crowd, there were about 6 parents who showed up (although given the title, I am not sure how they could tell what exactly the focus was). What most of these parents wanted to talk about was complaining about their experience with the middle school they felt they had to have their child attend (although why they didn’t see any other option as viable was a puzzle to me) and then suggesting the idea of having a 7-8 program at Westminster (it should be noted one parent did defend the middle school with observations of the positive experience for her child). This then slid into a discussion about the costs and benefits of a 7-8 program at Westminster (that, of course, given the context, had little grounding in anything beyond opinion). I raised the point that if we are looking at questions about the current system of choice, this group was less than representative and that the history of what parents choose shows a pretty good number who seem to value having choices. No one who chose another option was at this meeting (as the agenda item was not stated as a question about eliminating choice). This is another one of those slippery areas for the board in considering if we are representing the whole of the community, parents of school kids as a whole, the best interests for education or kids as a whole, those who show up at a meeting, …???? I sense a tendency to overweight the very small number who show up at a meeting, although we do much too little to ensure diverse views might be aware of the issues at hand and encouraged to participate more visibly.

I don’t know if we got anywhere on the questions of transitions, except to hear that some people are not happy with the experience at the middle school, others are happy with this, and the conclusion that different kids have different reactions to any particular school experience. For me, this underlies my belief that more options are better than fewer since we can never really be all things to all people. Others seem to believe that having a “seat at the table” in a monolithic system (like someone on the school board) can address concerns and shortcomings. Unfortunately, my experience on the board and around schools makes me skeptical about how much influence a board can have, or even a principal, in changing teaching practices in a way that can best serve all kids.

The meeting ended on a more upbeat note with the principal evaluation where the superintendent rightly acknowledged the many strengths of Steve Tullar and his persistence in trying to improve learning at the school in the face of all sorts of elements in “the system” that make these kind of improvements much more difficult to achieve than most of us would want.

Westminster Meeting Feb 5

Not much of big news as we progressed through the principal's report (new NECAP test scores--some positive trends in certain grade levels, less positive trends with other grades, surprisingly little attention to the scores by anyone in particular), superintendent report, financial report (how much can we encumber funds for all year to nail down fixed and predictable costs?). The most exciting issue was a resolution concerning working with Rockingham Article 6 study committee on 7th-8th grade issues. The vaguely worded resolution suggested "cooperating in all matters affecting the 7-8 grades..." and to "combine efforts in order to reduce costs and increase the resources for our ms students." There was general agreement that we should try to be part of the conversation as Rockingham makes decisions, but when it got to the more particulars of how closely we should combine efforts, there was a bit more differences of perspectives. Personally, I don't think the history of our experience with BFMS is that it necessarily reduces costs (remember the ex post facto adjustment bill at town meeting a few years back for overexpenditures there?) or increase resources (note the staffing cuts in foreign language, music, etc over the years). Nor do I think our families have "voted with their feet" to combine with Rockingham in all matters affecting our 7-8 grade students. In fact, the majority seem to decide against this being the option for their children, and I don't see how it benefits our community to take away this choice and tie us to any single school that may work for some kids but like any single school, is unable to serve the best interest of each and every child in a region. This is not a criticism of BFMS or any particular school, but a belief based on my experience in many schools and the reading of ed research that raises important questions about "one size fits all (or most)" schooling. It is my belief, esp for ms/hs age kids, that the needs and interests and learning styles are too diverse to be well served by a monolithic institution, and at this age the student need for individuation leads them to be more likely to benefit from some degree of choice. It is also my strong belief that I don't want to promote a private system of education that skims off certain students or allows those with more resources to have even greater opportunities. But within a publicly accessible and fair system, we best can serve our community's children in the middle and high school years by having options that might connect better with the diversity of our kids. There was also a student matter reported in the press about a bus driver dropping off a child without parents at home. While this was an unfortunate incident, I worry that we expect perfection in schools that is just unrealistic in human lives. If we are so obsessed with never doing anything that is a mistake, we can get so hemmed in to do very little but meeting what is required and predictable. This is a tough balance, but schools are ultimately human places and we have to embrace some of the uncertainties and missteps that occur in a complex system dealing with fallible humans. Thankfully, this incident didn't cause any injury or harm, and we learn how to be more diligent in looking out for the best interests of all.

Budget Approval

It is impressive the thoroughness and thoughtfulness of the board in reviewing the budget and looking for savings wherever possible, even after going over this a bunch of times before. The overall picture is very good for the taxpayers, with a net drop in spending, even though the number of students is up slightly and there are the regular jump in staff salaries (but a smaller than usual less than 2% increase in health insurance rates!). The biggest savings are in special education, partly the cost of one out of district placement that is moving up to an expense for the high school, and then a drop in students needing services. Whether this is a trend or a result of better work or just the luck of the draw, it is saving about $200,000. Some other small cuts here and there offered more savings, which was then offset by increases in salaries, bus sinking fund (to reflect the increased costs of new buses), energy costs, and a required upgrade to the water systems at both schools. The biggest controversies (or potential ones at least) revolve around whether to budget for continuing the same winter sports program and whether to add funding for foreign language instruction. Winter sports is in the budget still, although there is some sentiment that it is a costly program, the relationship with Ascutney unreliable, and this is a big headache for administration and teachers that might not have all that much educational payback. The overall cost for the program is over $15,000 for the ski program and then another $2000+ for transport. At least some feel that there could be a high quality winter sports program done in other ways for considerably less money and significantly less hassle for all involved. At the same time, it is clear that some parents feel strongly about the value of the downhil ski program. The sense of the board was that we hope to get broad input from the community about this expense and learn what direction the whole community would like to see this take. Foreign language isn't in the budget but is in the school's 5 year plan. The board felt without a long range plan beyond a one year expense, we didn't want to allocate money at this time. Again, the hope is to get a much more clear picture of what this program would look like over time (for all grades, what level of immersion, what language, progression through the grades, etc.) before we began spending for this. While it would be great to have young children learning foreign language (when they are most able to assimilate this), if not done well, I think this can be just a sinkhole of costs for a little diversion from other academic time. It all depends on how it is done. We hope to look into this before next year's budget. Once again, I am impressed by the business manager's command of the numbers (to the penny off the top of her head) and the seriousness of all in being responsible to the taxpayers and the kids. It feels like y'all are well represented.