The evening of 2023-01-24 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.
As usual, the Consensus Agenda as approved. And as has happened the past few times, Carol Bellavia abstained. I took the time to look into it and it appears her daughter has been hired as a substitute. I have no objections here, appears to be proper process from what I can tell. I just put two and two together and felt like sharing my amazing math skills.
A number of bicycles are being disposed of. If I was (or had the spare time to learn to be) more mechanically inclined, I’d be tempted to ask for all of them. See if I could salvage a functional one from all the broken ones. But I’m not, and from discussion it sounds like they have already done that to the extent they can. Still, that is a decent pile of bikes.
The PTA presented, and it sounds like they are very busy. Accordingly, they are looking for additional members. Even as covid appears to have increased membership counts. If you can afford the dues, I’m sure they would welcome even more members.
First of the budget presentations was from Manor. The video presentation method continued, although I think they went a bit overboard with the Blue’s Clues parody. Which shouldn’t have come as a surprise, Joelle (Principal) is nothing if not enthusiastic.
She did note the importance of communication. Which is something I like to hear, as more of that solves many a problem between people. As opposed to talking at/past/over each other, where no communication occurs. Of course, won’t solve all problems. But good to have it encouraged.
Second budget presentation was from Special Education. Apart from the kids in the video, who stole the show, what stood out to me the most were a few of the statistics. ~92% of the special education students are handled in district (ie not sent out). It was apparently ~80% a few years back. And ~11% of the student population receives special education services. Which means less the 1% of HFL students are outsourced due to special education? I cannot confirm, but that’s what the math appears to be telling me.
On a technical note, both the Manor and Special Ed videos appeared to be played through a local video player (looked a bit like VLC, but interfaces are customizable and a video player is a video player). As opposed to streamed from an online source. I like to see this as it renders the playback immune to internet difficulties. Mind you, most video players can be pointed at online hosting, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt here.
Where I have a harder time giving them that benefit on is an item I noticed in the minutes from the last meeting. Apparently, after executive session the Board re-entered public session to approve a Settlement Agreement. Unfortunately, the available documentation has no information on what this Agreement covers. And while it was after the executive session, it’s only speculation that this Agreement covers the same litigation and student discipline issue.
To be clear, I almost don’t care about the litigation/discipline issue itself. While my trust in government has steadily decreased over the years, I don’t think this Board would do anything that absurd here. Yet from what information I have available, they issued a blank check. Sure, they know what it covered, but from where I’m sitting there are no bounds to it’s potential scope.
Was it to pay out millions of dollars? Cover up criminal actions of staff? Change the school mascot to a goldfish? I have no evidence to support any of those. But more importantly, I have no evidence to discredit them either. What I do have only confirms there was an agreement, with Case No 10209717, Gene (Superintendent) is charged with carrying it out, and legal counsel appears to be involved. Everything else is a wide open field of speculation.
As mentioned above, I don’t think they did anything crazy. My point is the public does not appear to have any way to verify that. We have only our trust in the Board, whatever level that is at. Trust can be good, but we should verify too.
I left a comment for the Board essentially saying the above. But due to the structure of the budget meetings, and my being part of the PBAC, I was not able to give them said comment myself. I am hopeful this issue is merely an oversite and that at least the general bounds of the Agreement will be made public soon. I look forward to watching the recording of the portion of the BoE meeting that occurred after the PBAC left the room.
In any case, and as the above implies, when the presentations completed, the PBAC and BoE separated for their discussions. When the PBAC had finished, the BoE had either left or was in executive session. Looked more like left, but I’ve been wrong before. Next Budget Session should be at High on February 07.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the November 22, 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 will likely be available soon.