Tonight (2018-06-26) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
The meeting was on the longer side, to such an extent a comment was made that new board members can’t be told how long meetings will be. Gene (Superintendent) apologized for the delay, as the Board met in executive session before the public meeting. The topic? His annual evaluation. As no one mentioned looking for a new superintendent, it must have gone well enough.
Delay aside, there were three presentations, plus the regular sort of agenda topics. Which in turn, led to the tidbits I found of interest, which are shared below.
Graduation was last weekend, and the student representatives commented on how “exciting” it all was. Ironically enough, they did not sound very excited. More exhausted. Which I find understandable. Whoever ends up doing their job next year will have big shoes to fill, although I’m sure they will manage.
On the topic of graduation, anecdotes from RIT says they felt HFL was their ‘favorite’ graduation to host.
Lima will have a new principal next year, Allison Cimmerer. She was not in attendance, but should be for the next meeting. I hope Lisa does well in whatever adventure she is off to next.
Bernie has retired. I was shocked to hear this, as I fulled expected death to be the only thing to stop him. Still, nothing in this world lasts forever. And he has done his job for a good long time.
HFLEA‘s contract was approved, with no discussion. The approval I expected, especially with 4+ union members in the room. But with absolutely no discussion? That I found a bit surprising. There was more discussion about the agenda then this. Not that I am complaining, at least this time the contract was made available to the public. As it should be. When you work for the government, and by extension are a public servant, that sort of information should be public knowledge. I wonder if sharing the individual teacher’s salaries was intentional or not.
The sports boosters are buying replacement scoreboards. Not the first time this group has stepped up to help, and there is a decent cost here.
Time for the annual Interscholastic Athletics Year End Report. Mostly same old here, we have amazing students and most of them are also amazing athletes. Although, buried in the ten page report was one unpleasant note: There were ten Code of Conduct violations. Comparative history was not provided, but of note: All ten incidents were related to ‘vaping’. Alcohol is out, or at least better hidden.
An amusing bit of Catch 22 came up involving hiring new teachers. Per state law, teachers can’t be hired without their certificates. Which, again per state law, can only be found on a state managed website. Which requires the teachers Social Security Number to do the lookup. Which, apparently, is illegal to require of someone, who is not staff at the time. Wouldn’t be the first time laws required one thing, even as they made that same thing illegal.
As tonight was Mike’s last Board meeting, a recognition event was scheduled. Ironically enough, he was not in attendance. Nor was he the only one, only five of the nine members were present. While I think Mike did a good job on the Board, his absence was unfortunately all to common. At least there were cupcakes to eat in his honor.
So that’s all of tonight’s interesting tidbits, mostly out of order. Which leaves us with the three larger presentation.
First up was the report on the Phase 2 Capital Project. Put simply, there is a projected $-2.8 million gap between the budget and the bids. Want to make it clear to the public, this is not new debt or anything similar. This is a projection. Steps have already been taken to keep the project on-budget. In fact, after deferring a number of items, they are projecting $0.6 million available.
Much of this correction was made by cutting out the bulk of the middle school work. Or to paraphrase Gene, the one building without things falling off it can wait. It is possible, if unlikely, that some of the items deferred can be done by the time the project ends. All depends on what surprises crop up as work progresses.
The higher then expected bids were blamed on a number of reasons. The first being the impact of recent tariffs. Have to find a way to blame Trump somehow, I had to struggle not to laugh. The other reasons mostly pertained to a lack of skilled workers (phrased in various ways). As the schools task is to teach, they have significant influence on what profession students move into. Thus I, again, had to resist laughing. Considering how dry governmental meetings tend to be, there can still be plenty to laugh at.
Despite all this, they are still expecting the construction part of the project to start November 2018. If all goes as planned, it will be done two years later, by November of 2020.
Second presentation was on the Urban-Suburban Program. Full disclaimer: I have been, and continue to be, against the program. Mostly due to jurisdictional reasons. Having said that, the staff are applying their usual skill and determination to this program.
Interviews and selection process is all done, and we are expected two new fourth graders and one new third grader from this program. Bill (Transportation) believes he has busing worked out, but wouldn’t be surprised if the first few days were a little late. To be fair, that tends to happen most years (to various degrees).
I am tempted to ask for a copy of the ‘criteria’ they used to decide on who to interview. Doubt I will though, I tend to have more important tasks to chase. But I could imagine it being an amusing read.
And the final of the presentations was a workshop on ‘Code of Ethics’. For anyone interested, the current ‘Code of Ethics’ can be found in Policy 6110, and the linked Regulation Info.
Personally, I think this is one of those things where the weaker the better. Not saying there shouldn’t be anything. We should all strive to do the right things for the right reasons.
Having a policy that includes verbiage about being kicked off the Board if you don’t agree with the policy (as some of the proposed ones do) seems dangerously close to a ‘religious test’ for office holding. If that sounds bad, well there is a reason the federal constitution forbids such a test. Yes, ‘ethics’ isn’t technically ‘religious’, but the two can be blurred easily enough that I don’t think that is a road we should be going down.
Likewise, requiring agreement, with disagreement leading to expulsion, could be interpreted as denying any future Board the ability to update this policy, as things inevitably change.
Although, I am a bit surprised this is being pushed. Verbiage for review speaks of not holding investments that would impair performance on the Board, or receiving (even indirectly) compensation for their Board service. Yet tonight I heard there is a union president, teacher, and college professor on the current Board. All working in other municipalities, but this could easily create the appearance of a conflict of interests and/or partisan politics. Both of which are on the ‘do not do’ list. So yeah, I’m surprised people that would be kicked off the Board, if the proposed changes are made, are even considering making them.
To the presenters credit, they did bring pretty hats and kept their presentation short. I even heard someone took a picture of the Board with their hats on. I wonder if I can find it.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the June 26, 2018 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.