Tonight (2019-08-27) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
As has become my habit the last few months, I show up early for these meetings and wander the construction site the school has become. It has been interesting watching things change week by week. This week I noticed the old cougar mural in the cafeteria is gone. Or mostly gone, the top foot or two is still around. The rest, well the wall it used to be on no longer exists. I did ask, and high quality pictures were taken before any demolition was done. So options are available, from the simple of sharing the picture to the more complex of repainting another wall to match. I like the idea of making a poster myself.
As often happens, the Board approves new hire’s during the consensus agenda, with little or no discussion. I can understand the appeal of this, from a streamlining point of view. One of those staff approved tonight was an Emily Mancuso. Apparently she is Gene’s (Superintendent) niece. Not that I think there is anything untoward going on, I’m sure everything is above board. But as ‘Democracy dies in darkness‘, pointing this out here.
Today was opening day for the staff, so we heard about how things went with that. Of particular note, a video shared at the event was well received.
Tonight was the annual report from CougarTech. Good to have students reporting to the Board, and the demonstration is fun to watch too.
While the tax rate was approved last meeting, it had to be re-approved again tonight. From the explanation given, Monroe County changed the tax rolls on a few large value properties, which meant some recalculating of the rates. End result should be negligible to the average resident (fraction of a penny was mentioned), but best to do this sort of thing right.
Salvatore’s Pizzeria provides the school district with about $37k worth of pizza each year. That would be alot for a pizza, but the individual price isn’t that high (per pizza price looks pretty reasonable). The school just goes through that much pizza over the year.
There was an amusing game of ‘Not It’ around the NYSSBA Convention. While everyone on the Board is going, no one wanted to be the Voting Delegate. In the end, Caralyn took one for the team.
There was a mini-workshop to decide what workshops will be held later this year. Revenue and Expenses, On-Line Learning Potential, and K-12 Integrated STEAM were the chosen topics. I look forward to these upcoming workshops.
The Board’s Code of Ethics was reviewed, and modifications will likely be approved next meeting. In particular, the double ‘that that’ in the last sentence of the first paragraph will become ‘to that’ and both ‘all’ in the attendance check-mark will be removed. Good changes, and I am thankful the Board has addressed this issue. Enforcement of these items is still lacking, but at least we should be able to get through the year without everyone on the Board being blatantly unethical (by their own standards). Instead they acknowledge life happens, and do their best.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the August 27, 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.