Tonight (2018-09-25) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
Rhonda (Board Clerk) has produced a nicely colored calendar of the Board’s meetings and various activities. While nothing in it is truly new, it is a nice presentation. Did point out how at least one Board member has been absent for each meeting this year. This continued tonight, although there was an attempt to video-conference him in (didn’t work for whatever reason).
Gene (Superintendent) shared about recent and upcoming school activities. Fall weekend is coming up before too long (expect a newsletter soon), and with it the new members of the Alumni Hall of Fame. I know one of the new members, and recognized a few of the other names. Doubt I’ll see them the weekend of Oct 13, but it would be nice to catch up with old acquaintances.
Bruce (Business and Operations) gave an update on plans for the upcoming budget season. As an aside, it’s always budget time: we’re coming up to it, in the middle of it, or have just left it. As said before, changes to budget creation method sound promising, but too soon to judge. Some questions stood out to me on the implementation details. ‘Guarantee’ showed up multiple times in the plan (in regard to curriculum), but I couldn’t tell what that meant, nor what results in failure there. Isn’t much of a guarantee if failure doesn’t have repercussions. Also didn’t seem to be anything about doing less. There are frequent pushes (internally and from other sources) to do new things/add program, so if there isn’t a method to discontinue/phase out/stop then eventually there will be problems. Budget time seems a logical place to look at that, as it’s planning for next year, yet that seemed missing.
It also came up that enrollment 1-12 is predictable, but K is not so much. Live births gives a ballpark, but apparently we are ~30% over that. Bruce concludes that means people are moving into the district after their children are born, which seems reasonable. Overall enrollment is projected to be stable, but there is a degree of uncertainty.
Bruce is looking for people to join the Program Budget Advisory Council (PBAC), so I am passing on that request here. Was actually an interesting conversation on this, as it was pointed out that people generally join in when personally asked, but that blanket requests tend to not get results. Fits my personal experiences, I’m on the PBAC because Phil (former Director Pupil Personnel Services) asked me to join. Also on what other Board/Committee’s I am because someone asked me directly. So you, person that took the time and effort to find this website and read this posting: I’m asking you to join the PBAC. Email Bruce at bruce.capron@hflcsd.org.
With those presentations/reports out of the way, the bulk of the meeting was a workshop on what the Board’s Goals for the year are. The sort of thing that, while it took a decent amount of time, doesn’t have much I can share here. Having said that…
Three goals, and the most discussion was on the one about ‘communication’. The other two, governance and superintendent relations, where relatively quick. Perhaps ironic, although I got the impression most of the Board wanted to avoid the governance discussion.
During the communication discussion, 6 groups were identified that the District communicates with: students, staff, parents of students, non-parents/parents not yet enrolled, parents whose children have graduated, parents of private/home schooled students. Much discussion on how to interact with students and their parents, less so the other groups (although none were ignored).
It was interesting how the newest Board member (Dave) shared his difficulties gaining information before he joined the Board. In particular pointed out how the website does not communicate well with the public, and how efforts to secure the campus pushed him away. As someone in the non-parent group, I’ll agree to both of those assessments. Considering how often this weakness of communication comes up, sometimes I wonder if it’s not a design flaw built into the system itself.
During the superintendent relations discussion, Gene said the Budget Vote was his Super Bowl. Much of the year builds up to it, but as soon as it’s over it’s time to plan for next year. Which led to discussion on the Board adjusting some of it’s scheduling practices, so that they would better mesh with Gene’s. After all, doesn’t work that well when he needs to be done planning and into acting, as they want to start planning. It’s a credit to those involved things go as well as they do, but hopefully next years scheduling tweaks will improve that process. Which, as with everything done well by government, should be completely invisible to the public at large.
Workshop complete, it was on to ‘new business’. Much of which was motion, second, done. Feel free to read details on BoardDocs. Only one item I consider worth noting: approval of a Code of Ethics. One of the 12 points in this code states Board members shall attend ALL meetings. Interesting as the previously mentioned calendar made it clear that has not happened for any of the Board’s meetings yet this year. So at question time, I asked what this means when the next absence occurs, which will likely be next meeting (10/9, for those of you interested). Is the absent member immediately removed from the Board, for violating the Code of Ethics? Or is this Code more of a ‘guideline‘, and ethical lapses are expected from time to time? As expected (unfortunately), the Board did not answer my question. We’ll see what happens when they fail to live up to their own rules.
Which brings us to the most interesting part of the night: the lawnmower. As I type this, there is an automated lawnmower wandering the courtyard of the High School. Aaron (Facilities) arranged a free test period, to see if it’s worth the investment. Only been a few days, but he said if it goes well he’s buying one for his home. It is a logical progression from the automatic vacuum cleaner, so it comes as no surprise. At the same time, it was amusing to watch it trundle along.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the September 25, 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.