Last night (2021-09-28) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
As I was unable to attend the meeting as it occurred, I watched the recording afterwards. For those of you who care…
There is now an intro animation on the recording. Nothing earth shaking, but it does make it clear what you are watching. Not just another online video of zoom heads. I think it’s a nice touch.
It sounds like a student representative to the Board will be coming back. Keeping the position filled can be a challenge, since students age out every few years. Still worth having, as the various representatives have offered good feedback over the years.
There were multiple recipients of the Cougar Pride award. As the video was too small to see them, I’ll point you at the first few pages of the Superintendent’s report.
Sounds like one of the Middle School students went missing. No details were offered, apart from it having been resolved. Which is fair enough. So long as the student made it through alive and intact, the public at large doesn’t need to know more. Of interest here was how they are putting together a process to prevent similar events from happening again. Always important to learn from our experiences.
Was an interesting bit about students right to speak while off campus. Inspired by a recent court case. While HFL was not involved in any way (which is good), they were looking at what could be learned from that situation (even better).
There was minor discussion around cannabis. Sounds like it is essentially a non-issue, as it is treated much like tobacco. Which is to say, effectively outlawed on campus, regardless of what is going on elsewhere.
Unlike the past few meetings, there was only one comment from the public. A woman spoke about natural immunity and how it could be leveraged as a way to keep more kids in school longer. In other words, if you’ve already recovered, why spend all the time in quarantine. Seemed reasonable to me, but I don’t see this making any difference on campus this year. Judging by their actions, the Board has taken the stance of letting others debate elsewhere, and just follow any orders handed down to them. From a purely educational standpoint, I can see the value to that. Keeps the focus on what they can do. From a societal viewpoint, I question the wisdom. After all, as Nuremberg (should have) taught us, ‘only following orders‘ isn’t a valid defense. (Not accusing the school of being national socialists. Highlighting the historical example of why blindly following orders is dangerous.)
Once again it was time for Cougar Tech Robotics team to give their presentation. One of those groups that it’s great to hear from, because they are always being impressive. Had the interesting line of “not alot of robotics is actual robotics”. Highlighting how much of the program is about writing, speaking, and other skills. Even if the robot is still important.
There was a very interesting discussion about the public comment portion of the meetings. Current policy reads as ‘shall’, and thus a public comment portion of the agenda is required. They are considering changing it to ‘may’, thus allowing them to have more flexibility if the situation warranted it.
When I saw this topic in the documentation, I was a bit concerned. But the discussion really did a good job covering things. The Board made it clear that they wanted comments from the public, the value in hearing from people. Even as they acknowledged that the business meeting is for conducting business. At some point, too many comments could interfere with business, yet also showing the need to hear from the public. While I know I disagree with the Board on a number of issues, this is one of those where they illustrated how well they handle most topics.
Unfortunately, the audio cut out before the discussion ended. From how the recording presented it, I suspect Rhonda’s connection crashed, and she didn’t start the microphone back up when it was restored. In any case, while the agenda was essentially done, they still talked for about half an hour. Presumably continuation on the public comment discussion.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the September 28, 2021 meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education.
Agenda’s and similar information can be found at HFL’s BoardDocs page. While a recording is also available.