Tonight (2019-03-26) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
This was also the meeting where the Program Budget Advisory Council (PBAC) makes their recommendation to the BoE. As I sit on the PBAC, I was with the group presenting. While you are welcome to read the full recommendation, I would summarize it as ‘continue what has worked in the past’.
Which means continue taxing to the maximum allowed by law, continue using reserves as a buffer, continue equipment replacement schedule, and once all that is done, look at new things. I will freely admit I do not like the increasing of taxes, but I can also understand the math that the school believes means they have no other options. And I will agree, if your view is only a year out, it does make sense. Unfortunately, there are other factors at play, and I believe that they will cause trouble down the road. But as the PBAC’s charge is next years budget, such long term planning fall outside the task we were assigned.
With the PBAC recommendation, there was also an update on what the current budget projections look like. Again, you can read it if you would like. Two points stood out to me: Debt is down (which is a good thing), and there is currently ~$600k in deficit (which is a bad thing). I’m sure the deficit will be addressed before the budget vote comes around (as it always is). There was also considerable discussion about the budget, and both what impacts it and what it impacts.
As tonight was a ‘workshop’ meeting, there was a workshop on Schoology. I found it both interesting and amusing. Schoology itself didn’t impress me that much. It looks like a nice tool, and I can see it being rather useful. But I’m not the type to get excited over a hammer, no matter how flashy it is. Hmm, on second thought, I guess I am. Anyways, Schoology felt nice, but still in need of polish. Didn’t seem to use screen real estate very efficiently, which is unfortunately a common problem (I’m looking at you Microsoft). But if there is nothing better, the best tool is always best, no matter how bad it is. No, the tool was fine, it was the details that amused me.
The way the presentation was done, the Board members logged in as students, and thus experienced the site as students would. Good idea, and mostly well done. But one of the links that was shared had popups that disrupted its use. Not a big deal, many sites do this, use browser extensions and move on. Except the school apparently doesn’t do that, at least not as a standard practice. Maybe the more experienced users do, and just don’t bother to educate their coworkers (which is an amusing idea on its own).
Next amusing bit was in how the training on Schoology tracked fractional people. I can understand a position being fractional, as Full Time Equivalent (FTE) is a thing. But for training? Either there is a person there, or there isn’t. So the idea teachers only being a fraction of a person was amusing (shades of the 3/5ths compromise?).
But the most amusing part was the poor security practices. If I wanted to, I could log into Schoology as any of the Board members. For that matter, so could you. The directions were part of the presentation, which was made available to the public, as the open meeting laws require. Now the directions didn’t actually tell you any usernames or passwords, but they tell you how to find the usernames and passwords. Now this was only for a demonstration, and apart from trolling school staff, there is little/no potential for damage. Unless the username and password theme is reused elsewhere, in which case the school has a rather large problem.
Other then that, wasn’t much of note during the meeting. The website overhaul is continuing. The public notice for BoE candidates will be published soon (you, person reading this, should run). There will be a budget workshop next week, 4/2, to figure out how to balance the budget, so it can be adopted the week after, 4/9.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the March 26, 2019 meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education.
As has become the norm for this group, Agenda’s and similar information can be found at HFL’s BoardDocs page.