June 18, 2007 BOE Meeting

Another series of magical moments at the ECASD BOE meeting on Monday night! For those of you not in attendance but who are interested enough in the process, I will give you my color commentary. Others who attended are certainly free to post their own comments or clarify mine.

The Agenda for the June 18th meeting was not posted on the ECASD website until Monday morning but I was informed that it was posted at the Main Office so any interested community members were welcome to get into their cars and drive down during working hours to look at it. One more obstacle to timely and easy and meaningful community participation in the process!

The meeting started out, as usual, with NO INFORMATION about agenda items available for any of the public attending the meeting. So even if you had managed to get an agenda, you had no supporting documentation to inform yourself about the "Interim Public Comment Policy", or the "Budget Adjustments", or the "Transportation Contract" or the "Appoint Montessori Board Member" or the "WKCE Results" were! But there is still the expectation that Public Comments are to occur at the beginning of the meeting before any information is presented.

Carol Craig did a yeoman's job of attempting to open up a slightly larger window of opportunity for public participation by drafting an Interim Policy that would give the public up to 30 minutes (twice that proposed by Pres. O'Brien) to comment as well as allowing comments on topics not on the Agenda (these were prohibited by Pres. O'Brien's policy). But still there is the obligation to sign up 5 minutes before the meeting begins, no repeating or supporting previous comments as that would be duplicating, the public is expected to "collaborate" before the meeting if several people have the same concerns, and there is a time limit of just a couple of minutes per person. I expect that the next development is that the public members in attendance will be expected to wear the equivalent of a dunce cap with the Scarlet Letter "P" for public emblazoned on it.

I used my allotted 3 minutes to stumble through my list of suggestions to ask for additional avenues of MEANINGFUL community participation such as having some sub-committees of the BOE that could include public member and that all information given to BOE members for decision-making and information be posted on the ECASD website in a timely manner (say, by 5:00 p.m. on the Thursday before the Monday meeting) so that the public can inform themselves. I also objected to the fact that the interviews with Comprehensive Community Planners is being done in Closed Session next week, thereby completely excluding the community from participating in the first stages of this vitally important process. (More on that in a separate blog posting.) Also, there is a Work Session scheduled for 5:00 p.m. on Monday, July 9th to discuss the Conflict of Interest policy as well as setting up a ECASD Foundation: NO public comment will be allowed. I noted that BOE members were busy writing down all of my suggestions in order to give them serious future consideration. NOT!!!

There was a motion to approve budget adjustments but nobody in the audience had a clue what they were for. Mike Bollinger made a point to acknowledge that these were due to gifts or something from the community but, again, it was too high level or classified or complicated to share with the peons in the audience or those watching PAC TV.

More motions and approvals for CESA stuff, student representatives, and reductions in co-curriculars as discussed at the last meeting. The transportation contract is up for renewal and the owners of Student Transit were available to give an overview of some of the operating details, etc... and how routes are made fairly efficient. After the presentation Bollinger made a lengthy and glowing commentary on how Student Transit is voluntarily foregoing their contractual entitlement to a 2.8% CPI adjustment factor which amounts to a $118,000 savings next year for the district. Bollinger repeatedly commented about how this exemplary, voluntary was so valuable coming from one of our community "partners" and is a wonderful example of how we can all work together during these difficult times. There is no doubt that his remarks were intended to shame the employees, and especially the teachers, back into the naughty corner for objecting to his pay freeze proposal from the previous meeting. Again, more discussion in a separate blog on this topic.

Don Johnson then gave a lengthy presentation on the WKCE results from testing the 4th, 8th and 10th graders and compared them to previous years. Again, the audience just had a shaky and poorly copied overhead projection of massive amounts of data to follow, and no comment was allowed anyway, so it was difficult to follow if the overall news indicated good progress (I think so) with some setbacks in some areas. At one point Johnson noted that "the teachers deserve the credit" for some of the significant progress in student achievement but Mr. Bollinger, surprisingly, failed to acknowledge the incredible work on the part of the ECASD employees in helping meet and exceed academic benchmarks for our students.

There was a fairly lengthy discussion about the requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and that in several years the expectation is that 100% of all the students in the district will be expected to achieve proficiency in every category of Math and Reading. No exceptions. At this point, Commissioner Wogahn, not wanting to miss an opportunity to make one of his "out in left field" remarks said that since the ECASD only receives a small percentage of its funding from Federal dollars we should consider forgoing those funds and avoiding the mandates of NCLB. (The amount is approximately $8 million per year and Wogahn said that is just what they cut from the budget this year. The implication being: "No biggie. We can do that.")

I am not kidding. He proposed that the ECASD essentially become "secessionists" from federal funding and avoid federal mandates. After the rest of the BOE caught their breath and audience members picked their jaws up off the floor, Klaus gently pointed out that the district cannot opt out of participation, only the state can. And that the state would NEVER do that since 70% of DPI funding is federal. What about that arrogance that we are so special and can do things and write our own rules. This coming from a Board member in an organization that can't even get an Agenda for a public meeting posted online in a timely manner or make copies of information for members of the public.

Legislative Issues were summed up by Pres. O'Brien were that the NCLB legislation is coming up for re-authorizatin and in WI the budget is in Joint Finance and probably won't be done before July. Carol Craig buzzed in to notify him that the WI State Supreme Court had recently ruled against the Tomah School District for failing to provide adequate information in their Agendas to inform the public and encourage participation according to the mandates of the Open Meetings Laws. Klaus indicated that it referred to mostly Closed Session items (it did NOT) but said he would be sure they are in compliance.

Klaus passed out a schedule about the interviews with Community Planners for the Closed Session which is in the "if I told you I would have to kill you" category for the public. Commissioner Cummins asked if it would be OK if the public had questions for the interviews if they could e-mail them to the BOE. The irony of EXCLUDING the community from the beginning of the process of "Comprehensive COMMUNITY Planning" would be laughable if it were not just a sad, sad statement about how out of touch our leadership is.

That's all folks. Please post your own comments or correct me if I have an error in my reporting.

School Board meetings are rebroadcast during the week following the Monday Board meeting on Public Access Channel 12 on Tuesday's at 1 p.m., Wednesday's at 8 a.m. and Friday’s at 7 p.m. or tune in to 101.9 FM during the same time as the rebroadcast to hear the meeting