Tonight (2019-01-22) 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.
Manor school gave their budget presentation tonight, and at least two people said it was the best they have seen. While I thought it was good, I wouldn’t go quiet that far. There was a definite positive feel among the group, they seemed happy with some recent changes and their impact. In particular the roll out of Professional Learning Communities, Habits of Mind, and Integrated Units.
I was impressed by the way they juggled staff around to make the Professional Learning Communities work. That it gave the students some ‘activity time‘ sounds like a bonus.
Early in the presentation they teased student accomplishments in a variety of categories, which had me wanting to see samples. Then they had us go to some classrooms to see just that. I wonder if that was the planned effect. Either way, the samples were good, but I think having more (both in samples available and time to digest them) would have been beneficial. I know there are laws about student confidentiality, but it is harder to evaluate the program without being able to really see the work. Maybe they can get a few students (and their parents) to waive that for a wider sample selection?
For next years goal, they are aiming for a 1 point increase on the ‘Manor School Literacy Scale’, a continuation of last years goal. They forgot to mention this was a 12 point scale, although that detail is in the provided overview (along with a Glossary). That it wasn’t directly mentioned during the presentation is somewhat understandable, as they live it all year. They were very enthusiastic with the goal, but if felt off to me. Can’t quiet put my finger on why. At a guess, it’s the focus on literacy. When I was a student in the building, many a year ago, I had no problem with literacy (or at least that’s my recollection). Yet they are acting like ‘literacy’ is a new thing.
Also couldn’t quiet put my finger on some of the numbers offered. Need to talk to Bruce (Business and Operations) some more about average salary percentage increase, because some of the numbers don’t make sense. Either that or there’s ~7% salary increase at Manor. More likely I’m failing at table reading, hence the ‘talk to Bruce’. Maybe I’m not that good at this ‘literacy’ thing.
With the end of Manor’s presentation, the PBAC had their discussion, which meant I missed part of the regular BoE meeting. I got back in time for Gene (Superintendent) to announce there was no nested presentations in his report.
Which meant I missed ‘Public Comment’ as well. Usually not a big deal, but there was a collection of Boy Scouts in the audience. Would have been interesting to hear any comments they made. Likely they were there as part of a merit badge, so they may not have commented.
Other then that, wasn’t much else to the rest of the meeting. Audit committee reported on various financial details, but bottom line was ‘all is good’ and ‘Cindy (Treasurer) is amazing’. Both of which are good to hear, and, thankfully, nothing new.
One item of note was that Caralyn wasn’t at the meeting. Which makes another violation of the Board’s Code of Ethics. For whatever that is worth…
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the January 22, 2019 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.