The evening of 2022-11-08 was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
Early in the meeting a gentleman speaking on behalf of NYSBA tried to convince the Board to rejoin that organization. He listed a number of benefits to the district, but that isn’t what stood out to me. I got the impression he was more focused on the benefits to NYSBA. In any case, the Board took no action tonight, but will likely be considering rejoining this group at a future date.
A number of BoE members had attended a recent conference/convention of some sorts and shared what stood out to them. The recent case around a coach and religion came up. Which I find interesting because, at it’s core, all education is religious education. After all, having pulled aside all the specific details of any particular religion, what are you left with? A belief system about how the world works, and your place in it. Do the same with education and what is it? Teaching someone how the world works, and their place in it. Thus all education is religious education.
The Annual Special Education Report and Annual Student Attendance Report were also approved. With no discussion.
I would have really liked to have heard something about the considerable increase in absentee students. The report appears to blame it all on covid, but something being said would have been nice.
Likewise I would have liked to hear something about the apparent flat rate of special education needs. Or is the average trending slightly down? While there was a bump compared to the previous year, if the covid monster was that bad, why is the trend still essentially flat?
There was a good amount of data, and between these two reports I’m sure some interesting conclusions could be reached. Unfortunately the Board did not discussion and thus no conclusions were reached (at least publicly).
In all fairness, Gene (Superintendent) did point at the reports during his portion of the meeting. But that was hardly a discussion, more of an endorsement. Unfortunately I did not ask this obvious question at that portion of the meeting.
As an aside on a completely different topic, I have decided I like the video better when it is of the whole room. Instead of being the dozen head shots as shows up in the recording. During setup for the meeting they were showing just the one camera view for a few minutes, which is when I came to that conclusion. Better to see the whole room in higher detail then each person as they are slightly out of sync with their speech. Of course, since us humans are fickle, I would likely decide the opposite if a change was made.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the November 08, 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.