July 9, 2007

The regular Board Meeting began with introductions of Dr. Jim Leary, the new Interim Superintendent and the 2 new student representatives. I missed the names of the student reps and, of course, they were not listed on the agenda so I will try to get that information at a later date. Also introduced in the audience was Bob Haley, the new principal at Lakeshore School. Pres. O'Brien also took a few minutes to thank Bill Klaus for his years of service as the Superintendent and wish him luck in his service as the new principal of Northstar.

DIGRESSION: Mr. O'Brien also noted that they forgot to recognize Dr. Gregg Butler's retirement and giving him a plaque at GB's last meeting. Maybe they didn't bother to say "good-bye" and "thank you" since they didn't think he was really leaving (?!?!) A community member reported to me that she heard from an administrator's wife that GB never even cleaned out his office after he retired! Word on the street is that he basically continued business as usual at work waiting for the official "annointing" when he would just move his office next door when Klaus left. Then when he did not get the Interim Sup. job, he cleaned out his office and left in the middle of the night! My husband's comment: "Just like the Baltimore Colts!"

Comm. Cummins noted that a local healthcare provider had done a community survey about issues that are of most concern and coming in 2nd place, just behind the local economy, was concern about public education. So, we are most definitely not out of the woods with the community.

Int. Sup Leary offered to conduct a session for BOE members about board functioning. Date is set for Aug. 6th at 4:30 p.m.

The Public Comment session was led off by Dr. Maureen Mack (sp?) who was commenting on the upcoming search process for a new superintendent. She encouraged the BOE to look to the future and to cast a very wide net for candidates. She also indicated that the search committee should include all of the school district partners from the community and internally (teachers and other staff.) The candidate pool should be sufficiently large and diverse and if we do not have the candidates who meet our requirements to seek help and restart the search if necessary.

I used my few minutes of comments to AGAIN seek to build ways to allow for MEANINGFUL COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION relying on the examples presented by the ECCF. When starting up the ECCF they sought to gain participation by 24 families and got 62! With the Women's Circle their goal was 50 women and they got 162. "If you build it they will come." Pretty simple but it doesn't seem to be catching on with BOE members. I also encouraged the BOE to involve community members in the Superintendent search from the beginning of the process. Thirdly, I commented that Pres. O'Brien's comments about a Conflict of Interest Policy having a "chilling effect" was not reasonable because if there are more ways to get involved there can be more participation for many people. I also indicated that many community members who would not publicly state their concerns about Board conflicts have done so to me and will simply vote their opposition at referendum time. Finally, I commented that the discussion about Little Red seems to have not gone anywhere in 3 months and that this discussion cannot take place in isolation without the entire planning process or the result would be just one more short term, incremental decision that leaves the public distrustful.

JJ Henricks commented that it is a big loss to the students of the district that many AP classes were cut, especially the loss of AP History. This is the kind of thing that she and her husband and many others investigate before deciding about a community.

A staff member from WASB gave a presentation and suggested timeline for the search for the new superintendent and WASB's availability of resources to help in that search. The fee would be under $10,000. She said that posting the job on the internet gets it broadcast very widely but that current board members and community members are key resources to identify potential candidates as well.

Mr. Jim Kling gave a sobering presentation on the extensive staff cuts at each school and grade level. Unfortunately, there were not adequate copies of his material for the audience nor were they put out ahead of time to be included in the Public Comment portion of the Agenda. Hey, folks, come on back on July 23rd and comment at that point!!

Board members discussed the seriousness of the cuts and resulting increases in class sizes. It was noted that due to the extremely short time frame between the failure of the referendum and the teacher contract deadlines, there was little time to plan or even discuss how cuts would be made based on programming priorities. Sad, sad, sad. More than a year ago the BOE faced a budget deficit of $7 million and just decided to take the whole thing out of the fund balance. Even that alarming move did not motivate the leadership to plan at all. So the next year they have 3 weeks to solve a $9 million problem.

Under "Other Business" Pres. O'Brien attempted to clarify some legal details about the Wisconsin State Supreme Court ruling against the Tomah School District to have more informative agendas to communicate to the community. He spent several minutes shuffling papers and mumbling incomprehensible fragments of sentences that were unintelligible to all present. At the end, no one knew what the point he was trying to make was, other than "don't hire this guy as your attorney" when you are relying on clarity in front of a judge.

There was also a comment about the state budget from the Assembly being $85 less than Doyle's. Brent Wogahn repeated several times that "equalization aid" just means "property tax relief" and doesn't give any more $'s to education. Again, not very informative to us average bears in the audience.