The evening of 2025-06-10 was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
The meeting started off with the Hall of Fame presentation. As expected, we’ll have some new inductees before too long.
After that, was the recognition of Cougar Pride Award recipients. Which brought a good crowd of people. And the Board did the rotating speakers again, which I thought worked well. In any case, it was a nice event. Even if I find it amusing how everyone disappears directly afterwards.
There was a Public Hearing for the Smart Schools Bond Act. Looks like the school wants to spend ~$600k on infrastructure. Which, absent a complete redesign of how schools are run, will need to be done at some point. The only part I can really take objection to is that this is a bond. Which is to say, I expect the State to borrow money to pay for this. I can’t fault the district for taking this approach, as it should save local taxpayers some money (or at least push off the expense). But it is also debt, which I think is a bad idea in general. As ever, we do our best in an imperfect world.
On the flip side, I found out the Sports Boosters have a mutual fund. Which was a bit surprising, but indicates to me they are rather forward looking and plan ahead. At least when it comes to fiscal management. Good job.
Gene gave an informative Superintendent’s report, as he does often enough. While he covered a variety of topics, a couple stood out to me.
Over the past year, Gene has had 44 ‘stop everything’ events. While he didn’t go into detail, nor should he, the number is a reference itself. While he didn’t give past data points, he portrayed it as being high. So credit to him and his staff for managing to keep everything going. Even when crisis’s occur.
And he also addressed my concerns about the Code of Conduct including a placeholder section. Plan is to swap that out once the Board formally adopts a policy. While this doesn’t fit with my understanding of Public Hearings, it does sound like a reasonable and well thought out approach here. As with so many things, perfect is the enemy of good enough. But at the same time, don’t want to ignore due process just because it’s convenient. Always balance.
On that note, the Code of Conduct was approved, complete with placeholder. Also no discussion during that agenda topic. But between the discussion at last meeting, the available summary, and how well Gene had just covered the changes, I think that was appropriate.
Another Capital Project report. Besides the pictures at the end, not much of note.
Next years meeting dates were discussed. Which is one of those boring background tasks. But the discussion here showed it’s also an important one. After all, if you don’t plan schedules out right, you run into problems with deadlines. Logistics for the win.
It was time again for the annual ‘who wants to be a board officer‘ show. There was alot of ‘if the Board wills’. But I’ll predict Stephanie for president and Lynley for vice president. Tune back in on July 8 and find out how wrong I am.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the June 10, 2025 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.