Tonight (2017-10-10) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
“Open Forum” changed to “Public Comment”, with associated verbiage change. Had been discussed previously, but I believe this was the first meeting where the change was in effect. And most of the verbiage was not read, just the first line. Which I felt was a nice touch. As everyone in the room has come to enough meetings, reading the directions was irrelevant. I applaud the practicality of skipping unneeded words.
Last weekend was ‘Fall Weekend‘. This is an issue because apparently a number of people (teachers?) were not aware that this held any value for HFL. Thus the suggestion of renaming it to ‘Homecoming’ came up tonight. Which I personally think is a bad idea. Keep it Fall Weekend. If someone doesn’t know what that means, clearly they aren’t raving fans about this district. If/when they care enough, then they will get involved. Until then, it remains another thing that makes our district unique.
Health insurance was a big item of discussion tonight. Not health care, but insurance. HFL is part of a consortium, and is attempting to become self insured. This seems to be primarily motivated by finances, and saving money on taxes. Changes the perspective when approached from that direction. Not the first time I’ve heard this view point. Considering the school has been trying to become self insured for the last three years, odds are there won’t be any quick change here. Perhaps in part because the agency they need approval from (Department of Financial Services) seems to be taking their time.
There was also an interesting brainstorming session about what to talk about at next months mental health workshop. I generally find the ‘talking about what to talk about’ part of the show to be amusing. While I can understand the value, I think it would be better if they just talked about the topic, while having someone taking notes to be used for the future workshop. Eh, not my call here, it’s their process. On the plus side, did give Josh (student representative) another opportunity to make a nice speech. Not the first time he’s done this, and hopefully not the last. As usually, insightful comments on the topic. In this case, how we all need to know how to handle bullies ourselves, because running to the teacher isn’t a valid approach in the ‘real world’.
And mixed in with this was the plethora of minor details that I didn’t find interesting enough to note here. Always lots of those.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the October 10th, 2017 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.