Tonight (2020-03-10) 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.
The start of tonight’s meeting was delayed, as the Board was interviewing people for their vacant seat. I heard there were 11 applicants for the single seat. I do wonder how many of them will run at the next election, since only one of them can fill the current vacancy. Regardless, the meeting started just before 8PM, instead of the 6PM the other budget meetings had started this year. In turn, that meant the meeting ended just shy of 11PM. Still, better then midnight, which has happened in past years.
On the plus side, someone had put together a slideshow/video and left it playing. By the looks of it, it was of Manor school activities this year. Doubt they were expecting it to be the filler it was, but it was a nice touch and good prelude to the first presentation.
Manor school gave the first presentation. Nothing struck me as truly earth shattering here. Mostly continuation of trends and plans from past years. Their explanation of their growth goal is improving. Not quiet there yet, still sounds a bit convoluted, but they are getting better at explaining it. Or maybe I’ve just heard the explanation enough times it’s started to sink in?
The Habits of Mind are continuing, as habits tend to. A community activity called ‘restaurant week’ was mentioned, as were the frequent in school assemblies. I do wonder about assemblies in years past. I’m sure they had them, but were they more/less frequent? Are these filling the same time slot with similar material, or has something significant been lost? I suppose the argument would be that if anything was lost, it was replaced with something better. Which may even be true, my ponderings aside.
The second presentation for the evening was from the Central Office. For the most part, this group covers the things that are commonly used by all that don’t have their own place. Retirement, training, etc. As was pointed out, the Central Office serves those who serve the students. Or as dad likes to quote “Make sure your servant’s towel is bigger than your ego.”
A Potential Energy Performance Contract was discussed, that while having a budgeted cost of $3.5 million, should have no local tax impact. Such a claim always sounds false, as the money has to come from somewhere, and government can only get money by taking it from someone else. This time though, it might actually be true, as it sounds like the savings on electrical costs should cover it. Seems like rather high savings, but the idea has been discussed in the past, with a response then of ‘it’s not cost effective now’. Looks like now it is.
After that was a short rollup/status presentation. From that, it looks like the expected levy limit (and by extension, increase) will be about 2.86%. Given with the standard disclaimers about how that number could still change before the election rolls around. But it gives us a rough enough idea for now.
After that, as usual, the BoE and PBAC went their separate ways for discussion. When that finished, and I returned to the audience, the Board had already discussed the Capitol Project Update. Only mentioned here in case you, like me, enjoy looking at the pictures.
As with other recent meetings, the imminent collapse of civilization was discussed (yes, I am exaggerating). Was an interesting contrast here. There seemed to both be greater concern, while also less panic. Almost a sense of inevitability, tempered by the knowledge that fear will only make things worse. Or to toss in another quote “the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself“. The job needs to be done, and we will persevere. One way, or another.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the March 10, 2020 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.