The evening of 2024-12-10 was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
Topic of the evening was the Advocacy Workshop. But since the Board broke into groups for this, I can only speak to one third of the discussion. To be fair, the other two topics can likely be summed up simply. Graduation requirements are being overhauled. And the electric bus mandate does not appear to be possible.
The portion I sat in focused on Foundation Aid. If I remember the three key points right: Poverty should be measured by using anything but free lunch eligibility, as that requires signing up while all the other data is already provided for other reasons. Increasing Unrestricted Fund Balance to 10% is beneficial, although the fewer strings the better. Inflation should be calculated using northeast numbers, instead of the nation as a whole. All three of those points seemed reasonable enough.
Once again the math of the tax cap was discussed. How a limit of ~2% on increasing the levy and an average inflation of ~3% will be necessity, overtime, lead to diminished resources available to the District. As someone speculated years back, the tax cap might well have the outcome of breaking the public education system as it currently exists. Other municipalities have work arounds, but as the public at large vote for the school budget, those don’t apply here.
To be clear, I think the existing public education system should be phased out. But only if the replacement system puts more control directly in the hands of the public (maybe with a bias towards the parents). Any changes that centralize more control in Albany will only have worse outcomes.
Medicare costs came up, but only in so far as that is next largest piece of the State budget, after schools. Amusingly enough, another system I think should be phased out. For those of you who have not noticed the pattern, I am in favor of smaller government.
The other two topics, graduation and bus fleets, will apparently be discussed at the Boards mid year retreat.
There was a gift to the High School of 750 $5 Dunkin Donut gift cards. Unless math fails me, that is $3750 in total. Apparently no strings attached, just need to be used by the end of the year, when they expire. The cynic in me wonders if this might be a marketing expense, from Dunkin Donuts point of view.
Time again for the annual Urban Suburban report. Sounds like the program is going well, but our distance from the city means students arrive late and leave early. Less then ideal. Ironically, this was one of the concerns brought up before joining the program. In any case, next year may add up to 9 new students to HFL through this program. It was reaffirmed this is a net positive to the budget, but exact numbers were not provided.
Another Capitol Project update, which also means pictures. Pictures weren’t amazing this time, although I did find the wood floor interesting.
Perhaps more importantly, there was a hiccup involving asbestos on the third floor. Long story short, someone ‘oops’ed and a hole was cut into the roof which dropped asbestos into the third floor work area. Which led to an immediate pause of work. As was described, the work crew knew what they were looking at and walked right out, as required by the Department of Labor. In any case, the area is sealed off, so no risk to anyone at this point. And apparently, no real risk even if it wasn’t, as this is ‘non-friable‘ material. So now there is a delay in work while the mess is cleaned up. More information available on the District website.
As an aside, the construction equipment on the front lawn is not involved with the third floor work. It is for a drainage project that starts as soon as kids are out for Christmas break.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the December 10, 2024 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.