The evening of 2023-01-10 was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE), and Program Budget Advisory Council (PBAC).
Full disclosure: I sit on the PBAC, so some of these Observations aren’t exactly from the Audience.
The BoE portion of the meeting was before the Budget session, and it was rather straightforward. To such an extent they were surprised how quickly they worked through it. I’m sure that was fine with everyone, I’ve yet to hear complaints about meetings being too short (too long, yes).
A replacement Assistant Superintendent for Instruction is being looked for. It sounds like there are 20 applicants already, so a good pool to pick from.
There are apparently traffic pattern issues at the High School parking lot. Which is amusing as a recent capitol project was supposed to fix this.
Before getting into the budget presentations, there was some general overview of the process. This years Budget sessions are formatted differently then the past: The presenting department creates a short video and then has a question/answer bit afterwards. The intent is to streamline the process, which it appeared to do reasonably well. And videos can be easily shared, should anyone in the public be curious. Likely be on the budget portion of the website before too long (although not yet there as I type this).
The considerable impact of inflation was stated. While it sounds like this is manageable this year, if these rates of inflation continues it will likely have a significant negative impact on the District. Just the way the math breaks out when you have a tax cap of 2% and inflation exceeds that by a decent amount. Something will have to go, either inflation or program.
Apparently there are 17 administrators in the district, and 10 of them are new this year. On the other side, ~25% of the teachers have less then 4 years experience on the job. Which also means ~75% of the teachers have more then 3 years experience.
Lima’s video was nice. It’s always fun to see kids being kids in school, and much of the video had children as the backdrop. Some in classes, while others looked like lunch or games. I can’t be sure, as the focus was the speaker, but it made for a nice touch. On the other hand, I felt the video was too high on lingo, with not enough budget.
While watching the video I did notice the size difference between the staff and students. Which meant staff were usually looking down on the students, literally. No idea if this actually means anything, and completely understandable as we are dealing with 5-6 year olds. But it did stand out to me.
There was an interesting bit of math that came up. Apparently the District predicts Kindergarten numbers by looking at the live births for the appropriate year and multiplying by 1.35. It seems odd something that simple would be reliable, but apparently it is (at least reliable enough). In any case, this method predicts adding 2 classes of Kindergartners next year.
There was a question around why teachers need to learn new methods to teach reading. You would think, with all the history of teaching reading, we would have a method that works. But apparently the standards change, requiring new teaching methods. Make of that what you will.
Facilities and Transportation were a group again. As Bill has retired, Bob has taken the lead position. Even joked about being the new Bill. Which does highlight one benefit of having the two departments so closely knit: the more experienced department head can help bring the other up to speed.
From Facilities, what stood out most to me (and judging by questions asked, the group as well) was the Student Support Partner positions. Looks to have been added mid year, so not part of last years budget. Which is worth highlighting, as otherwise the salaries can be misleading. They cost ~$30k each, not ~$70k. In any case, Student Support Partners sound like a hybrid of security guard and father figure. Not how it was described, that is my summary from the longer discussion.
From Transportation, what stood out most was electric buses. Or more specifically, the complications of switching to them. Right now all the buses use gas, although there are a few electric trucks/etc used by Facilities. And keeping those charged is enough of a challenge. The existing infrastructure on site could not handle charging the bus fleet. Current projection is they would need to be charged 4 times a day. And the electric company hasn’t committed to providing enough electricity to do that. They are still in early stages of this transition, so still much to explore.
But the challenges listed did have me thinking. In order to provide the electricity to power their electric buses with any reliability, HFL might have to start producing electricity onsite. The simplest method of doing so would likely be burning (natural gas, etc). Which would be an ironic outcome of switching to electric vehicles. Mind you, this is speculation on my part.
And yes, they are still looking for bus drivers. So if you (or someone you know) is looking to drive kids around, Cindy wants to hear from you.
As an aside, while the videos were nice, as I write this I noticed a down side. No power point slides to reference after the fact. There were a couple of images in the videos that I remember the gist of, but not the details.
With the presentations complete, the PBAC and BoE separated for their discussions. When the PBAC had finished, the BoE had either left or was in executive session. Either way, the public portion of the meeting had concluded. Next Budget Session should be at Manor on January 24.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the January 10, 2023 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 will likely be available soon.