Dec. 17, 2007 BOE Meeting

I was unable to attend this session so Adam Shiel, who is a faithful presence at most BOE meetings, took notes and passed them on to me to post on the blog. Thank you, Adam!

Maria

12/17/2007 Working Session
Review proposed ECASD Charter School Policy.

The proposed policy can be found at

http://www.ecasd.k12.wi.us/charterschoolpolicy/charterpolicystatement.pdf
This is a summary and omits some of the debate and isn’t in chronological order.
Both Commissioners Cummins and Keener didn’t like point 8. Cummins had gotten several emails saying it would be nice for every other school to have this too and wouldn’t be fair for the charter schools to have an inside track to the school board. This point was dropped from the policy.
Commissioner Cummins thought that point 6 was too vague. Mr. Van De Water suggested changing the wording to “opportunity for resources.” The intent is to have program driven budgeting, which means funding can vary from year to year depending on the needs of the program.

Point 7, regarding providing transportation, was the subject of a lot of debate. Commissioner Faanes was concerned about committing the district to a large financial obligation in the future. There was some discussion as to if transportation would be provided at all, since open enrollment students are required to provide their own transportation. The consensus was that transportation should be provided since it excludes the part of the population that can’t provide their own transportation and charter schools provide a different educational opportunity than a conventional school, where as open enrollment students are choosing between the same program offered at different schools. Deputy Superintendent Buttler recommended that policy say that the area of enrollment for charter schools be the entire district. This wording would cause the least disturbance to the existing transportation policies.

For reference, state law required parochial students to be transported by the district at tax payer expense.
Two items were referred to the administration: have the proposed charter school contract template be reviewed and to verify with DPI as to whether the BoE should be able to appoint members of the charter school boards.

At the end of the meeting there was a brief discussion of some of the charter school guidelines produced by the committee (Not online, as best I can tell), but time ran out and the board needed to have a brief closed session.




12/17/2007 Regular school board meeting

Meeting came to order.
Announcement from close session: four points of Dr. Klauss’ contract were clarified, all retirement related. The rest of the contract remains intact.
There was report on the Flynn Elementary Responsive Classroom. The principal Kim Hill and 3rd grade teacher Amy Detrick gave an overview of the program and demonstration with part of Ms. Detrick class. I’m not sure I can do justice in this space – contact me if you’re interested.

Announcements:
1. Winter break from December 22, 2007 until January 1, 2008.

2. School board nomination papers are due January 2.

3. The appointment of a school board member to the Montessori Board was skipped due to discussion in the previous working meeting.

Deputy Superintendent’s Report:
1. The central office is closed December 24, 25, and 31, as well as January 1.

2. The district received an award for excellence in teacher induction. There were twelve districts in the state given this award. The four criteria used for judging were the support to, the mentoring program, orientation activities, and seminars provided to new teachers. This work is done almost exclusively by current teachers.

Superintendent’s report:
1. Received a request from the Institute for Wisconsin Future for a date to meet with the ECASD BoE, county board, and city board to discuss options and ideas for revenue generation. The other two groups have agreed to meet on January 17th from about 4 to 5PM privately with a public meeting the next day. No site has been chose yet. The public session with be a forum for asking questions and sharing ideas.

2. WASB superintendent search update. The board will review credentials of candidates January 28 and 29, possibly extending to the 30th if needed. Need to choose six. Board members can come in on their own to review the credentials, but the credentials are not available to the public. Interviews will then be in the second week in February. Just for reference, there are 12-15 other districts in Wisconsin looking for superintendents.
No public comments.
Minutes and employment report approved.

Financial report from 7/1/2007 to 11/30/2007 approved.

Payment of bills and net payroll for November, 2007 approved.

Approved motion to extend administrators contracts. This was for the 09-10 school year. It didn’t include financial terms, and I’m not sure it included a commitment for a specific job. There was some concern by a couple board members that this was so far in the future and would limit options for reducing administrative positions. By the current contracts, layoff notifications for 08-09 would have to be given by Jan 1, 2008. With the current contracts, one full time position could be eliminated after the contracts were approved. There are also three probationary principals that could contractually be eliminated.
Approving the contracts doesn’t prevent the restructuring of the administration, but it sounds like any positions eliminated would have to be paid through the end of the contract or some separation package would have to be negotiated.

Adjourned to committee meeting.
Approved three year contracts with the cooks and custodians. There were minor changes to each contract, but the most significant was the increase in salary and benefits (aka total package) the groups agreed to. Both agreed to increase

2.5% for 07-08

3.6% for 08-09

3.6% for 09-10
Both groups had previously approved the contracts, so these are now in effect. Back payments should be made by the end of the year. Commissioner Craig noted that these were below the QEO. President O’Brien thanked the groups for their cooperation.

Discussed public input policy.
1. There’s still a 30 minute limit

2. Community members will be allowed to ask questions, request clarification, or request relevant information from the board after board discussion of “items for discussion”.
3. Language allowing public to provide relevant information as removed.
Needs assessment update will be going up on the web site along with a note of how the data was collected and how to interpret it.

Discussion of community survey:
1. Have talked with two groups that do phone surveys of registered voters in the district.
2. One (and maybe both) would survey 400 people for a confidence interval of +/- 4.5%
3. It’s likely the board would develop the questions to use, but not sure what the right number of questions to use is. Lacross put their survey results up on the web so that might be a useful resource.

4. Not sure on the timeline.
Presentation of staffing decisions at high schools, by the principals (Tim Leibham and Dave Valk? Sorry – I didn’t get their names). The presentation was extensive, and I’m not sure my description here is going to do it justice. Feel free to post corrections, or pass them to me and I’ll try to get them posted.
1. Registration runs from October to December. Staffing decisions are from December to February.
2. 228 courses are offered, the same at each high school. Course changes can be made until sometime in October.

3. After the have enrollment, the principals start with the classes with the smallest enrollments that can’t be combined. I’m not sure exactly when they stop.
4. Then generate staffing sheets. Average class size is now 27, up from 25 previously.
5. There was some concern on the board about a “consumer driven” approach to what classes were run. There hasn’t been any revision in this scheduling system in at least 15 years (when one of the principals joined. He hasn’t done it any other way).

Legislative update
1. A study comparing public versus private school results was published. Both types of schools produced the same results

2. Head start has been reapproved. Eligibility has been increased to 130% of the poverty level from 100%.
The Clear Vision community planning group will meet again January 3 and 24.

Communication to the Superintendent/Board President

1. The public comment session for the Little Red study group will be January 3.
Adjourned to closed session.