Tonight (2017-11-14) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
Nothing stood out as earthshaking at this meeting. Always something going on, but this was one of those regular events. Which is good, excitement is overrated.
During the superintendents report, Gene mentioned A Community Together (ACT). Apparently this is a group created by a number of districts, including HFL, to help promote involvement in education. While it sounds nice enough, this doesn’t feel like a worthwhile organization. If public education is doing it’s job right, it should be blatantly obvious to all. If it’s not, then it would need public relations groups to ‘encourage active involvement’.
A presentation on graduation survey data was given. This has been requested multiple times over the years, and it sounds like no one had thought to ask the High School improvement team. Turns out they have been paying Lifetrack Services to gather data for the last decade. So tonight a report on that data was given. While I was glad to hear about this, it felt like the data gathered may not be of much value. I think it would also be useful to ask students 8-10 years out, as by then they should have completed any college education and have moved on to employment. Still, some is better then none.
The district is looking into refunding Bonds, in an attempt to save money. Worthwhile idea, if the numbers end up supporting it. Unfortunately, it sounds like this is part of the state aid trap. If I heard Bruce (Business and Operations) right, any district that doesn’t do this often enough is likely to lose some of their state aid. Yet again, can’t serve two masters.
There was discussion on a solar exemption opt-out, but action was deferred. The board expressed a desire to gather more input before acting. Having seen this issue come up at the Town already, it feels like the whole process should be streamlined. Schools should be focused on education, not solar farms. Too many taxing authorities.
Ari (Community Education Director) presented on Summer Recreation and Community Education. Sounds like there will be renovations to the swimming pool at the high school this summer. So it won’t be available for summer recreation or similar activities. Plan accordingly if you want to swim.
Minimum wage is becoming an increasing challenge in both finding staff and keeping costs down. Mentioned here because of how much of the summer rec program pays at that rate.
Amusingly, Dogs visit the school regularly. This is worth noting as there was serious debate about allowing the police to bring in their dogs. Turns out there is a dog training class offered through Community Education. Although, from other sources I suspect this training will be moving off campus before too long, as I believe they are building their own facilities elsewhere.
Which leaves us with a detour towards the end of the meeting. One of the board members found an interesting use of BoardDocs, and had to share it with the rest of the board. Nothing wrong with that, but I found it humorous how they went from school business to technical training.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the November 14, 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.