The evening of 2022-05-03 was the Public Budget Hearing and Meet the Candidates event for the Honeoye Falls-Lima School District, all wrapped in a full fledged Board of Education meeting.
Wrapping things in a regular meeting was different, first time I can recall this being done. Previous years this event has been a ‘non-meeting’. Reason for the change was not stated, but there was business to discuss. In my opinion, nothing that couldn’t have waited until next week. If I had to speculate, someone decided since everyone was there, might as well make it a meeting.
Bruce (Business) led us off with the Budget Presentation. Nothing really new for those watching along through the process, but to summarize: Tax Levy increases 1.98%, total budget $57,224,420, vote May 17. Foundation aid is up ~10%, which helps. Will be interesting to see if that continues or if that’s a one time boost from the State.
After that was the ‘Meet the Candidate‘ event, which took up the bulk of the meeting. Five candidates running for three positions. They each gave a short speech about themselves, and what they brought to the table. Then it moved to a question/answer session.
As the questions were asked, certain trends occurred in the answers. One that stood out was that politics has no place in education. Which was amusing in that a number of the questions themselves were clearly politically focused. And ignores the basic fact that politics is an outgrowth of any gathering of sufficient number of people. We may not want politics to interfere in education, but denying that it does is to deny reality. Ironically enough, I think denying reality is the root cause for most of our political problems.
Another was the idea HFL follows the law. Which should be obvious, except it raises the questions of ‘what law’ and ‘how to rank contradictory law’. Does a recommendation from say the Department of Education hold the same weight as say a law signed by the President? Can a policy from say the Department of Health overrule say the US Constitution?
The worst question of the evening was one on sex education. I say this because it came across as being hostile to one candidate in particular. Credit to Caralyn for calling the questioner on it.
And the best question was on awareness of national issues, and how to keep them from causing disruptions here. A valid concern, considering what has been happening at some other districts. While the scale hasn’t shown up here, I’ve definitely seen hints of that sort of insanity. Is it a slower start here? Or are we managing better and ‘hints’ is all we’ll have?
Fittingly enough, the last question of the event was from a student. Wondering on how to improve parent awareness on curriculum. The cynic in me feels it was a coached question, but it’s also a fair one. No silver bullets were proposed as answers, but everyone did come across as in favor of the idea at least.
Overall, I think all the candidates did a good enough job presenting themselves. All had their strengths and weaknesses, as you would expect. But only time will tell how many of the things that were said turn out to be useful and/or relevant.
Which brings us to the normal portion of a meeting. Of which there really isn’t much to say. Potential new principals are being interviewed. The idea of promoting the Civil Service system, and by extension improve potential employee pool was mentioned. And that’s all that stood out to me on this section of the meeting.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the May 03, 2022 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 of the meeting will likely be available soon.