Tonight (2019-07-09) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
This was the annual organizational meeting, which means a long agenda with many items. I will give Gene (Superintendent) credit though, he kept an eye out for items that could be streamlined. I applaud him (must remember to inform him of such next time I see him).
As happens at these meetings, the Board picks their President and Vice President. This year they chose Carol Bellavia for President and David Francis for Vice President (so I was only half right with my predictions). I think this is a good way to do it. Carol was Vice President, so moving up fits. And having a new person for Vice President increases the overall experience of the group.
As for the many approvals, not much to say. While details always change, it’s mostly the same year after year. For example, this year the question about benefits from memberships was asked by David. I’m sure someone else will ask it next year.
After the organizational portion of the meeting, but before the regular business portion, was public comment where I commented on the Code of Ethics. In particular, how every BoE member has missed a meeting, and is thus unethical by their own standards. While I don’t think missing the occasional meeting matters, as life happens and we are all busy people, that no one seems to care about this poses potential problems.
First, if all on the Board are obviously in violation of it’s own ethical standard, how many of them are also less obviously in violation? Or put differently, at what point does persistent ethical lapses lead to less concern about additional ethical lapses? Does missed meetings lead to accepting bribes or other more worrisome ethical failings?
Second, if the Board considers ‘life happens and we are all busy people’ a valid explanation for their own breaking of rules, what happens when the students use the same logic for the Code of Conduct? Is the Board, by it’s own actions, teaching students that rules can be safely ignored? That actions only have consequences some of the time?
As usual, I doubt I presented myself well to the Board. Hopefully they didn’t take it too personally.
The business portion of the meeting was pretty short, really only one item led to much discussion. That item was a potential change to the capitol project for the new parking lot: The idea of putting in empty conduit (but not wires/equipment/etc) to allow eventual addition of electrical vehicle charging stations. Considering the high school parking lot is scheduled to be replaced next summer, there is some logic here. Details to ponder, and there is time before a decision has to be made.
Tangentially related: The high school cafeteria looks very different tonight…
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the July 09, 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.