Tonight (2018-01-23) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE), and before that the Program Budget Advisory Council (PBAC).
Full disclosure: I sit on the PBAC, so some of these Observations aren’t exactly from the Audience.
This budget study session was at the Manor building. Agenda was the presentations from Manor (2-5) and Library Media Services. They each spoke on what greatness they had done over the past year, and what they wanted to change for next year. Along with that was a budget projection/wish list.
The quartet of Librarians (Tammy, Julie, Alicia, and Wendy) started the night’s meeting with their presentation. While there were some nice bits, overall I wasn’t very impressed. I had a sense of it being better ‘soon’, and that all that is needed is time to explore. Which reminded me too much of past library presentations. While things are always changing, and refinements are always possible (if not always practical), at some point you have to DO. Constantly looking towards the horizons may be nice, but doesn’t get a whole lot done.
One of the library departments goals for next year is to update their “collections to reflect a more diverse and inclusive society”, which I find rather disturbing. The focus should be on having the ‘best’ collection possible, within the constraints imposed by reality (financial, physical, etc). ‘Best’ would be, in the context of children education, those materials most likely to teach, with a bias towards also being entertaining (to draw the kids in). A bias towards a social/political agenda, stated before any educational goal, implies the educational aspect is less important then the social/political agenda. Which when applied to children could be rephrased as indoctrination and/or brainwashing. That the particular agenda leads to cultural suicide doesn’t help the matter any.
On a possibly related topic, a graphic from a Bloomberg article was shared. This graphic showed the likelihood a particular class of job would be automated. Interesting, and potentially worrisome. It was pointed out how ‘teachers’ were in the ‘least vulnerable’ category. Which may be why the education system has some of the problems it does. People employed in this sector feel ‘safe’, and safety brings with it a measure of complacency.
Enough about the library, while I was not overly impressed, they do seem to do the task assigned to them well enough.
Next was the Manor contingent, lead by Jeanine (Manor Principal). She had a fair sized number of people with her, much like Lima last week (or Manor last year). I will give them credit in presenting, as a group they did well. They rolled right through some technical challenges, and had a mother there to pull at the heartstrings. From a presentation point of view, well done. Content on the other hand, I was less impressed.
While many of the other presentations included various ‘buzz’ words, Manor was the highest to date. Ironic in that one of the presenters spoke about building a vocabulary for her students. While everyone in the room was speaking English, a vocabulary for the PBAC would have been helpful.
A new evaluating system was presented. At first glance, it looked nice, if convoluted. It rates all the students on a 12 point scale, with the aim of increasing each student one point (or ~8% improvement). As it was explained, it felt like reinventing the wheel. If the existing grading system isn’t adequate, fix it. Don’t make a new system altogether. It looked to me like either they are trying to adapt to a changing situation, or are trying to obscure that they aren’t adapting. Possibly relates back to ‘jobs least likely to be automated’?
Manor’s big request for next year is an additional 300 hours of curriculum writing time (which would occur during the summer). As explained, this makes sense. Unfortunately, it sounded too much to me like they wanted to be paid to do the work that needs to be done to do the job they are paid to do. Which doesn’t sit well with me. If I’m paying you to do a job, and you can’t because prerequisite work isn’t done yet, then why don’t I find someone else to do the job? Or make it a requirement of the job and let you figure out how to get it done? I’m sure there are good and rational reasons why it needs to be done the way it is, but, as mentioned above, it didn’t sit well with me.
After that, the PBAC and BoE split up to discuss their thoughts on the presentations. While next week will be Middle School, the BoE did have a regular meeting after their discussion. I missed the first part of that, but was able to observe most of it.
Apparently, as it is exam season at the High School, feeding kids is a hot topic (go figure). From context, it sounds like many schools don’t feed you if you’re account balance is negative. It sounds like HFL has a policy about not letting kids go hungry. Even if their lunch balance goes negative for a short term, they will get something (while the reason for deficit is tracked down). And even when the cafeteria is closed, like it is for exam week, a variety of healthy snacks are made available. Good to know, don’t want kids to starve.
Someone in the business office (Cindy?) had the bright idea of investing some of the money in the bank account in CoD‘s. Low risk, low return, but better then having it just sit in the bank. Wouldn’t want to gamble on the stock market, but finding a use for money that is waiting to be spent seems prudent.
Amusingly enough, Gene (Superintendent) informed the BoE of a new regulation. Turns out, if a board policy requires something happen, he has to make sure it does. And inform the Board of the details. In this case, changing the ‘Out of School Suspension Re-Entry Plan‘ so that it better reflects existing board policy. Confused some of the Board for a bit, as they thought this was regulation from the state. Instead it was regulation from them, in a round about way.
And I believe the last item of note (before executive session) was a discussion on suicide. In particular, how another school had poorly handled an instance, leading to an outbreak. While no concrete plans were produced, the topic did get itself moved to the top of the policy committees plate. I think I’ll listen to ‘The Suicide Paradox‘ again, and if I think it’s relevant, pass the reference along.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the January 23, 2018 budget study session (and regular meeting that followed) for 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.