Tonight (2018-02-27) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE), and before that the 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 in the BoE room (which is in the High school). Agenda was the presentation from K-12 Art, and Central Office. They each spoke on what greatness they had done over the past year, and what they wanted to change for next year.
I can’t really say much on the K-12 Art presentation, apart from they were very enthusiastic. Seemed good enough, no glaring issues jumped out at me. From my point of view, art is like pornography: I’ll know it when I see it, but not where I should spend my focus.
The Central Office presentation got interesting. Mostly because of how some of the topics interconnected and rolled over into the Board meeting that occurred later. Ignoring those larger issues for the moment, there were still a few interesting tidbits.
The school is almost at the point of one computer device for each student (aka 1 to 1). Might happen next year, if not the year after. Raising the inevitable question of taking them home with the students. In turn, leads to the issue of using them off the schools internet filter. I’ve seen both sides of this issue over the years, but I think Gene’s (Superintendent) response was a good one. To paraphrase: With all the devices out there, they already have unfiltered internet, we might as well use this opportunity to teach them something, and there will be evidence left on the machine should it ever matter. While I could argue on the details, broad strokes I agree. Any filtering/censoring system will get it wrong as often as right. So if failure is guaranteed, might as well plan to use that failure for what benefit you can get.
It was pointed out that the ‘standards’ for educating have changed four times in the last six years. So yet again, the district wants to spend the time to adapt to the new changes. Which prompted me to ask the question as to why it matters? At a fundamental level nothing should have changed. History still happened, math still works, science does it’s thing, etc. Some slight tweaking for recent changes might be necessary, but not massive rewrites. To summarize the answer I got: Revisionist History. Or put differently, white males played too large a part, so the tests have been adjusted to lower their impact. In that context, rewriting curriculum would be necessary. But it doesn’t address the larger issue, should ‘history’ be changed in this manner or not?
It was pointed out, that normally an organization as large as the school (from a staff point of view) would have a full time ‘Human Resource’ employee. HFL has a part time employee. While they are looking for budget neutral ways to move that to full time, to paraphrase Gene again ‘students needs take priority over adults needs’. While I appreciate the sentiment, and generally agree, at some point those adult needs impact the students if not handled properly. Are we at that point here? I didn’t hear anyone claiming we were, nor do I. But this is the kind of thing that isn’t a problem until it is, at which point it’s a disaster.
After that, the PBAC and BoE split up to discuss their thoughts on the presentations. This should mark the end of the Budget Study Sessions (for this school year). I believe the PBAC presents their Budget Recommendations to the Board at the March 13th meeting.
Budget behind us, for the moment, the shorter of the two significant issues was the Urban-Suburban Program. Tonight the implementation plan was shared with the Board. All in all, I thought it was a decent plan. Seems like a good enough way to go about this particular project. Was a fair sized amount of discussion on the board around various details, but at the end they seemed OK with the plan.
One question in particular stood out, it was about the amount of time spent on preparing for this program. I thought it was a beautiful question. If there was too much time spent, then it was a waste of time that could have been better spent elsewhere. If too little time was spent, we won’t be prepared for what will happen. The answer wasn’t as good, it seemed to try to not answer the question.
One thing that struck me as this plan was being discussed was what it implies about the underlying function of education. In particular, there was a listed target of “Racial diversity to be 15% other than white“. Regardless of the value of such a target, that it exists implies the district considers altering the demographics of the population it serves part of it’s function. Which in turn says the ‘public servants’ aren’t happy with the public they serve, and are trying to change them. Not what I consider a good situation to be in. Unfortunately, I view this as yet more evidence that ‘public education’, as a system, has outlived whatever use it may have once had.
The other significant issue was the intersection of ‘Mental Health’ and ‘School Security’. While both were addressed separately during parts of the meeting, they are interrelated and it showed in the conversation. While the Board was already discussing these issues, a recent event in a southern state has increased the focus on this topic.
As has come up at previous meetings, there is a sense that the students in the district have a variety of mental health issues. Anxiety was mentioned, but I’m sure there are others. This leads to attempts to address the issue at hand. Clearly worthwhile, but in the big picture of things I believe that it won’t matter. I think a better approach would be to find the underlying cause and address that. Much harder, but also much greater benefit.
While I can’t claim to know the underlying cause, I can wildly speculate. Along that line, I think school itself plays a large part. Effectively, it’s where the nations minors spend their waking hours. Yet we keep having this same problem, followed by cries of ‘never again’. While I would argue a certain degree of unfortunate events is part of the cost of life and living in this (mostly) free society. But if one is serious about ‘never again’, I’ll point out the Dysfunction poster: The only consistent feature of all of your dissatisfying relationships is you.
If this keeps happening at schools, then maybe the schools are at fault. It’s surely not the hammers fault, nor the nails. They are merely the tools used. Much like pills are used in other contexts.
Ironically enough, I heard what may be the solution to this (and many other) problem tonight. ‘Instead of childproofing the world, worldproof the child’. As the world is literally made of weapons (which can be combined to make more deadly weapons) and populated by madmen, it can not be made child safe. Not without getting rid of all the people, including the children. While I can appreciate attempting the impossible, as often the journey has it’s own value, in this case I think preparing the child for the world is a better option. And part of that is that the world is mad. And until the child is ready for the world, it’s the responsibility of us adults to protect them (hence the term ‘Responsible Adult’).
Towards that end, I actually see a simple (in theory) way to address this issue. As everyone on the Board has taken an oath to uphold the constitution, and that Constitution forbids infringing on carrying weapons, then the general public should be encouraged to arm ourselves as we visit the school. Any law, policy, or similar that forbids such action is unconstitutional, and any governmental authority attempting to enforce is in violation of their oath of office (which means they are no longer a governmental authority?).
All that being said, the school should encourage us all to hang out on campus to our hearts content. Parents join your kids on the playground, grandma have lunch in the cafeteria, uncle join the shop class, etc. If at any given moment there are a sizable number of people on campus, who may (or may not) be armed, that have a personal overriding interesting in protecting the young, the worlds madmen may decide to go elsewhere.
Not a perfect solution, none will be. Cowardice may get me in the moment, and I pray I’ll never have to make the choice, but given the choice of tossing my life aside to save family, I know what I would want. I have to believe the community is full of people that share that believe.
One last tidbit: April 11 7PM at the District Auditorium (Middle School), there will be a Public Presentation on Opioids. For anyone interested.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the February 27, 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.
For those wondering why a particular event caused by a particular person wasn’t named, only alluded to: Any evil idiot that chooses to kill children in a school no longer deserves being named (or even talked about directly). Much like suicide rarely makes the news, despite happening about twice as often as murder. Granting them fame and positive attention increases the odds of copycats, only mentioning them as the losers they obviously are should hopefully discourage repeats.