Tonight (2018-01-16) was a budget study session for the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE) and Program Budget Advisory Council (PBAC).
Full disclosure: I sit on the PBAC, so some of these Observations aren’t exactly from the Audience.
This budget study session was at the Lima building. Agenda was the presentations from Lima (K-1), Transportation, and Facilities. They each spoke on what greatness they had done over the past year, and what they wanted to improve for next year. Along with that was a budget projection/wish list.
As it’s been a year since I was last at the Lima building, it hasn’t become overly familiar. Still has that nostalgia from when I was a student there, all those years ago.
As before, Lisa (Lima Principal) presented with a collection of her staff. No visiting other rooms tonight, which did help with the presentation time. Even if it is nice to have more exposure to where the kids are learning. Always balance, limited time vs infinite options.
An interesting point was a Maker Camp that sounds like it happened over the summer. Approximately half the Lima (K-1) students attended, which I think is an impressive turn out. One parent said her child reported they ‘played all day and learned alot’. Sounds like a successful project.
Interesting from the opposite direction, 24% of the second graders (last years first graders at Lima) have a ‘gap’ in phonics. While this was explained off as a weakness of the testing system, I found it disturbing. I’ve read various articles claiming too many people are functionally illiterate due to poor phonics skills. While I like to be wrong, this data looks to be supporting that unpleasant claim.
Bottom line, from a budget and program point of view, Lima didn’t want to make any significant changes. Some minor shuffling between budget lines, which they called tweaks. In this case I suspect they meant ‘to make a minor adjustment‘. From context, the various other times during the presentation the word ‘tweaks’ was used, I suspect it meant something very different. I should have asked, maybe next time.
Bill (Transportation) gave a pretty straightforward presentation. Had some ideas for improvement, as always, but did a good job impressing how much actual transporting happens every day. As usual, wants to buy a few school buses. That’s what happens when you have a replacement schedule, every year you’ll replace a portion. This years portion happens to be slightly higher then last years, six buses instead of five.
He (and helpers) also spoke about the Stand By Alternate Driver program, where he has more staff scheduled then is theoretically needed. The idea is to cover for the inevitable person that can’t make it, for whatever reason. Instead of having to track down a sub, the route is handed to one of the ‘standbys’. Good idea, if the data supports it. In this case, it looks like it does, and the program sounds like it is going well. Unfortunately, when asked Bill didn’t have the exact number of times a ‘standby’ wasn’t needed. While that number would have been nice (more information usually is), I can’t fault him here. Odds are he’ll get back with that.
Aaron (Facilities) managed to both take too much time with his speaking, and give an entertaining presentation filled with good information. If it wasn’t so late I think I would have liked it more. As it was, I was looking forward to the end.
It was pointed out, he has been on the job for three months. So a goal for next year is a full inventory of the HVAC system. Not the first time I’ve heard this planned, but it makes sense to want to know exactly what you are tasked with overseeing. Especially if parts of that system appear to be broken and/or obsolete. Easier to make those fixes if you know what is there.
He freely admitted to stealing ideas, understandable as we all stand on the backs of giants. In particular, next year he wants to try the ‘standby’ staff idea with cleaners. Much like with bus drivers, data shows there is always someone out for some reason. Why not have the ‘sub’ already on site? We’ll find out how this goes in time.
Which to be fair, is true about Aaron as well. Much of what he said sounded good and impressive (even if the quantity was a bit much), yet without the history to back it up it’s unknown if it was smoke and mirrors or something of substance. Time will tell, it always does. I, for one, am hopeful.
After that, the PBAC and BoE split up to discuss their thoughts on the presentations. Next week, Manor School…
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the January 16, 2018 budget study session for 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.