Tonight (2017-10-24) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
If the Urban-Suburban program had not been on the agenda, the meeting would have been about half an hour long. Instead, it was about three (3) hours long. Besides that major item, there were a few smaller items of interest.
The descriptive text of the ‘Public Comment’ portion of the meeting has recently been reworded. That text now takes up ~38% of the agenda, by word count. Or put slightly differently, over a third of the agenda is informing the public how the board (elected servants of the public) will listen (but not respond to) their boss (the voters). As humorous as it is sad (if a bit ironic).
There were cupcakes tonight. This happens when they celebrate particular thing. This occasion was ‘School Board Recognition Week‘, as decreed by the governor. Not complaining, as cupcakes are a nice bonus for attending meetings.
Program Budget Advisory Council (PBAC) members were approved. I’m on the council again, which means I’ll be missing the board side of a few meetings. Of note: the board is looking for more PBAC members. Despite there being six (6) members on the group, considering past years, odds are only half of them will show up at any particular meeting. Hence the request for more members. Anyone interested should email Bruce Capron: bruce.capron@hflcsd.org
As usual, a couple policies were up for discussion. This time Social Media and Fraternization. Nothing directly of note with the policies, but the discussion around them. In particular, there were questions about how certain policies are ‘flagged’ for frequent review. Bottom line, they aren’t. So there will probably be a change in procedure (as opposed to policy) to better keep track of ‘important’ policies.
Before getting to Urban-Suburban itself, the conversation around it did bring some highlights.
Once an agreement on next steps (for Urban-Suburban) came around there was some difficulty with arranging for everyone to be at the next meeting. And the one after that. But, hopefully, the December 12 meeting will have everyone in attendance for the next step in this discussion/process.
A few times Robert’s Rules of Order were referenced for needed steps. Motions were made, and dropped. Points of Order were brought up, and ignored. Worked out in the end, but was most amusing watching it play out.
And with that out of the way, the nights main topic: Urban-Suburban Program.
First up was a recommendation from a committee. TLDR, the Committee says join the program.
During/after the presentation there was some discussion on the report itself, and later the board discussed what they felt were appropriate next steps. So much was said, I’m sure I have the order of details wrong. So instead I’ll just dump observations and misquotes.
The program has been going on (in other school districts) for over 50 years. Has me wondering if perhaps it’s a failed program that should be scrapped? Or maybe it just takes that long to get results.
Assuming HFL joins the program, we may get up to 15 additional students from it. More likely we would get 3 (or less). In the end, that’s up to us. Regardless of if we join or not, we can expect to loss 25 students each year, for the next handful of years. Net loss in students, so decreasing enrollment will have to be addressed at some point, independent of this program.
Interesting paraphrasing (ie tried to quote, but couldn’t write fast enough): “For a certain group of students, I cannot offer special treatment” In a context of treating imported students differently then native ones, however you want to define ‘differently’. “More like us then we realize” In the context of how the potential imported students (and their families) are people too. I found this particularly ironic as ‘diversity’ is a selling point of the program, yet we have more in common then we don’t…
My feelings on the program: It will (and already has) unnecessarily split our focus. In the name of ‘diversity’, we are divided. It also seems all about ‘feel good’, while being an attempt to prove we are not racists.
On a more logical note, it raised some interesting questions: I’ve mentioned before if importing from Rochester is good, then wouldn’t importing from elsewhere be similarly good. But what really struck me tonight is how this goes to the underpinning of ‘Public’ education, in contrast to ‘Private’ education.
Public education has a defined geographic region (ie Honeoye Falls-Lima), and offers service to all students in that region. From that they gain the authority to tax the region to pay for this education. Private education takes payments to accept students, and accepts students regardless of place of origin (generally speaking). They have to charge because they can’t levy taxes to fund their operations. So what happens when ‘Public’ becomes ‘Private’? At which point do enough students cross region lines that the underlying jurisdiction falls apart? Perhaps more importantly, as technology changes, at some point does it not even matter, as the entire ‘education’ system has outlived it’s usefulness?
Which I guess is a good time to discuss the feel of the room: There was tension at the table. People clearly were showing stress. Which says to me they weren’t ready to make any decision. With how low of a ‘mission critical’ issue this is, they felt far too stressed. Some people were clearly in favor, and ready to vote tonight. Others seemed more inclined to delay indefinitely. Hopefully the board as a group can come to terms with whatever is bothering them by the time they take action in December.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the October 24, 2017 meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education.
As has become the norm for this group, Agenda’s and similar information can be found at HFL’s BoardDocs page.