Tonight (2019-11-12) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
First off, it came up at various times and in various ways that the public at large feels uninformed on the current construction and the capitol project it is part of. Accordingly, pointing out there was a presentation on that tonight. If you too want information on this topic, look at tonight’s presentation and/or the District’s website. And for those of you new to the internet, the blue words are links, click on them for more on that topic. Current project is ‘Phase II’, not to be confused with the potential next project of ‘Phase II.V’.
As usual in these capitol project reports, there were pictures. I found the one showing construction progress of the path in the High School courtyard of interest. Back when the initial landscaping was being done, I asked if there was intent to make a more permanent path. Apparently I asked the wrong people, because those I asked had no idea. As the path is now being laid, looks like that was the plan all along.
Social Studies and Music departments gave a presentation on their program evaluations. While interesting, I do wonder how this will impact the budget process. The bulk of these reports felt like much of the presentation on these topics, which would be occurring in about three months. Did they happen tonight because they won’t be part of the budget presentations? Will the focus in three months be the dollars and not the other aspects (ie things discussed tonight)? Or will there be a high degree of redundancy? Eh, I’ll find out in due time.
I don’t have much to say on the Social Studies presentation. They presented, it felt overly buzzworded and light on content. But that’s just me, so read it yourself if you feel the need.
Music presentation was more interesting. Recently the Moosters had met, and at that meeting they discussed this presentation, with an intent towards having a group at tonight’s meeting. While I’m not sure how Music Boosters, Music staff, and who showed up overlaps, but from a numbers point of view, they were all there. According to the presentation there are 10 music staff in the district. And there were about that many extra people in the room, even if only Mark, Ken, and Joelle were presenting.
As for the presentation itself, the music department continues their tradition of impressive presentations. They focused on the hows and whys of what they do, which in retrospect seemed to be directions for how to replace any of them. And in all fairness, succession planning is prudent in any organization. How better then to give their employers directions should the need ever arise.
While I heard it more in Social Studies then Music, both groups talked about curriculum maps. Not the first time I’ve heard about these, but I have yet to see one. Or if I have, I was not aware that was what it was (which in many ways is even worse). One of these days there will be a presentation that says ‘we updated our curriculum maps, slide A is the before, slide B is the after’. But that was not tonight.
The discussion on the NYSSBA convention from last meeting continued, and it will most likely continue at the next meeting as well. I really have only one thing to say on this, and it’s only tangentially related. Gary made a comment about how one of the sessions he went too didn’t have many numbers, so he didn’t learn much there. That had me thinking, what is the purpose of public education? Are we focused on having all our students get out with a certain amount of knowledge (facts, figures, etc), but then they are on their own? Or do we teach them how they learn? So that they know how they need to go about learning anything they might need for the rest of their life (whatever that might end up being).
No answer to that pondering here, but I think it goes to the heart of what schools do. Or should be doing, depending on how you want to run with that.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the November 12, 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.