Cliff notes from the May 13 board meeting

As with my previous cliff notes, I apologize for the raw nature, and again, all times listed are elapsed video times.

boe May 13, 2013

Art Recognitions: 00:00 – 15:36
Service Awards: 15:37 – 27:53

public comment – 28:30
Chuck Jackson
Spoke about the DeJong-Richter Recommendations report. “What do we need and why do we need it?” There is a lot of information we do not have. Need more feedback on exactly what the weakness of each site are and why they are weaknesses. Be creative.
Recognitions: 32:19 – 38:29

38:28: Cheryl Camacho, Asia Fuller-Hamilton and Janelle Weinzierl going to Harvard for the summer:
http://www.gse.harvard.edu/ppe/programs/prek-12/portfolio/stl.html
Communcations 38:45
CFT (Cathy Mannen): welcome to new board members. Common goal to teach students.

Board members:
Stig: 40:20: important things going on. Facilities – very critical. Gotta move, waiting detracts from educational opportunities. Focus on best interests of school district, teachers and especially students.
Scott MacAdam: 42:07: mandatory board training. Enjoyed it
Kristine: 43:02: first year all the middle schools doing track and field, all three schools sending kids to state. Big kudos.
Ileana: 44:46: recognition from one of her schools, PBIS assembly, top scorers in Mathematics. Shout out to Robeson.
Jamar: 46:28: Marc Changnon taking all (45) students through a career program; graduation ceremony at the CPL, 30 grads. Shout out to Central. Shout out to 1-to-1 mentoring programs. Summarized involvement at Kenwood, including his adopted 5th grade class.
Laurie: 51:19: lots of diversity, learning the ropes.

52:47 Orlando – speaking about the Student Code of conduct.

54:06 Laura Taylor – High school graduation dates; can’t use Assembly Hall next year.

57:30 Future Facilities
Dr. Wiegand invokes a quote from “Great Schools Together”.

May 13th board meeting, taxes

I have uploaded the video of the May 13th board meeting:

http://www.cb-pta.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/board_meetings/2013-05-13-regular-board-meeting.mp4

And Meg Dickinson has her article from Monday night:

http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2013-05-13/board-asks-administration-plan-finding-site-new-central.html

There are several other sources around I have stumbled upon that I cannot link;

• Saturday NG Meg Dickinson article (print-only) about the taxes from a possible referendum (similar to the Monday night wrap-up but with much more detail)
• Today’s WDWS talk with Stephanie Stuart (for some reason, I can’t find any recent podcasts between Moline and Stuart, even from last month)
• Fox News aired a clip about taxes (how does one look for local news on Fox’s website?)

Notes from the April 22nd BOE Special Meeting

I took the time to watch the BOE meeting a little while ago and typed up some notes. Unfortunately, they are not yet formatted very well. Instead of delaying, I finally decided to just dump them here, and hope that readers will forgive the horrid formatting.

 

{the times listed below are elapsed times from the beginning of the video}

start at 5:02

spotlight on middleschool to highschool transitions: 10 minutes (music stops at 15:36 after all the credits roll *roll eyes*)
jamar brown – found it entertaining, found the whole thing very good, transitions are important

public comment:
laurie bonnett – only quotes from one vendor, are we reaching out and seeking participating from other vendors?

CFT:
Cathy mannen – thanks to the board for support of the early childhood center.

PTA Council:
Sheri Williamson – summer reading program, 300 books from UofI. Parent Resource Group.

Communications from board members:
Kristine – shout out about the amazing musicals past two weeks. Big praise for the stage design, acting, music, etc.
Van Ness – College Career Center; great facility, great idea. Shout out for the CUSF. Need to support them better.
Ileana – Make the College Career Center grow bigger – good stuff.
Brown – PSUs (?) at Novak, like a graduation thing. Lots of praise/congrats for many other events at other schools.
Stig – congrats to those who run board elections. Interesting thoughts about “supporting” more folks on future candidates, getting more folks to run.
Board retreat follow-up: how to make the school district a family-centered organization. hmm… not child-centered?

Asia Fuller-Hamilton & Joe Williams start with Transitions. jwtobe.org?? jw2b.org??
Jamar and Kristine mention how awesome this is. Kristine reiterates the pain/confusion of the first day. Mentions how awesome it would be for every freshman to have a mentor/guide. Joe says they are working on it.
Stig asks the same about middle school. He says why can’t we divulge as much information as possible BEFORE they come to school, and then handle the unknowns as they arise. A bit of discussion (even Wiegand intercedes); can the kids have the data before the first day of school? Lots of great things are happening in pockets, working towards making those things consistent in general.

Elizabeth DeGruy (no presentation, just reporting).
Stig asks a lot of questions and makes comments. Very engaged. Again, can parents have as much information as soon as possible? All about transistions. Importance of setting a first impression by making the first day in school a very positive one.
I think a question from the audience was fielded about “child time”? Yes, Sheri Williamson from the audience is given the floor. Awesome!

Tony and Cheryl are up at 1:05:40. Tony walks through the overview of the goals and “ideal reality”. Cheryl talks about the specific multiple recommendations. Elizabeth chimes in with SpecEd recommendations.
Stig asks how parents who are in these situations can reach out to a person (*not* a helpline). Maybe a FAQ?
Action Items:
Kleber announces the promotion of 3 assistant principals.
1:23:40
TALP – Orlando Thomas
Kristine wants to verify this is not fun, and that students don’t really have a choice once suspended.
student discipline procedure – lockman
confirming adoption for administrative reasons … ?? That’s not vague.

Kleber on adding an administrative position for overseeing the food department; one year appointment for a proof-of-concept.
Van Ness asks where the person will be housed. Kleber doesn’t really answer the question, saying they will be “everywhere.” Interesting that the Board is asked to approve the position even before the job description is finalized. Doesn’t that seem backwards?
Item A from Consent Agenda moved up – Champaign Telephone contract. curious, was this moved up in Executive session? Meg Dickinson mentioned that Phil Van Ness moved on it, but I did not witness it.
Brown asks, we will *never* bid out these jobs? Joe Davis assures the board that if they need to, they will. Who bids it out? “talk it out” with architects and superintendent.
Van Ness comes out and says he pulled it out of the Consent Agenda. Wants to make sure the board is putting things before the public. Likes that we are keeping this local.
Kristine mentions that consistency is very important.
Ileana: not exactly sure what she said, something about good for the community and taxpayers knowing.
Kristine, we don’t want everyone to know what the budget is….. interesting. In the context of bidding… they want contractors to bid competitively, not to the budget.

1:44:40 remaining items of the consent agenda

Board meeting videos

EDIT: Link corrected (hat tip to Chuck)

Video of the March 25th board meeting (usually works better to right-click and “save as”). Also, here are some stats on all the board meeting videos I have (the number in parenthesis indicates how many times the link has been clicked):

• March 25th, 2013 Special Board Meeting (0)
• March 14, 2013 Candidate Forum (25)
• March 11, 2013 Regular Board Meeting (18)
• February 25 2013, Special Board Meeting (2 of 2) (3)
• February 25 2013, Special Board Meeting (1 of 2) (3)
• January 14, 2013 Regular Board Meeting (Vimeo version) (9)
• February 11, 2013 Regular Board Meeting (Vimeo version) (4)
• February 11, 2013 Regular Board Meeting (TiVo version) (5)
• Jan 28th, 2013 Special Board meeting (49)
• November 27, 2012 Special Board Meeting (40)
• Nov 05, 2012 Regular Board Meeting (11)
• October 22, 2012 Special Board Meeting (70)
• October 15, 2012 Regular Board Meeting (72)
• September 24, 2012 Special Board Meeting (18)
• September 10, 2012 Regular Board Meeting (24)
• August 20 2012 Special Board Meeting (21)
• Aug 13 2012 Regular Board Meeting (19)
• July 7th, 2012 Regular Board meeting (103)
• June 11th, 2012 Regular Board Meeting (29)
• May 21 2012 Special Board Meeting (117)
• May14, 2012 Regular Board Meeting (78)
• April 23 2012 Special Board Meeting (34)
• 16 Apr 2012 Special Board Meeting – Public Candidate Forum (32)
• April 9th 2012 Regular Board Meeting (35)
• March 26th, 2012 Special Board Meeting (audio only) (36)
• March 26th, 2012 Special Board Meeting (low-res, web-friendly) (94)
• March 26th, 2012 Regular Board Meeting (135)
• March 12 2012 Regular Board Meeting (37)
• 2012-02-27-special-board-meeting (43)

en·gage·ment (part 1 of 2)

From the Free Dictionary *:

en·gage·ment  (n-gjmnt)

1. a hostile meeting of opposing military forces in the course of a war
2. a meeting arranged in advance
3. a mutual promise to marry
4. the act of giving someone a job
5. employment for performers or performing groups that lasts for a limited period of time
6. contact by fitting together
7. the act of sharing in the activities of a group

*the initial definitions at the top of the page are bogus; “the act of engaging”, something that engages… seriously?!?

Typically when I use the word “engagement” on this blog, I have in mind definition #7, one of collaboration and mutual involvement. It is with that thought in mind we gathered at Houlihans this past week for a fun and very tactile discussion of where to put a new Central High School.

It was a good trial run; I personally rather enjoyed working with such a large format, being able to draw circles, move the little red monopoly hotel around, etc. I even cut out a rough 1.5 mile radius polygon to scale, and it was HUGE – things like this really give pop to the details. Most significantly, in my mind, the options that we explored were totally independent of the ones “discovered” by the Public Engagement firm (there’s that word again) hired by the school district. I make this point because it is interesting that we (in general) have so many different opinions and so many different ways of making our opinions heard.

So one big announcement; we decided to postpone plans for March 24th since that is coming up way too quick. Instead, we are aiming at April 7th (location and time TBA, but probably 1-4:pm). This will give us more time to better prepare and advertise. We will be attending the March 25th Board Meeting to invite participation, as well as contacting the local media (press release?). Our plan is to do two more before the end of May. Note to self: generate a PDF which can be sent to schools and posted on websites.

I am told that the Steering Team has decided on their final recommendations to be made to Dr. Wiegand later in April, and those recommendations will be presented to the Board in May. However, after asking several times and several people, no one has shared with me what those recommendations are.

What exactly are we doing on April 7th?

photo courtesy of Chuck Jackson

Answering questions about the Feb 25th Special Board Meeting

Over the weekend, I posted a series of questions about the Feb 25th BOE meeting (tonight). Dr. Wiegand was kind enough to respond (and with comprehensive answers at that) and has given me permission to post her reply. The following has only been formatted so it looks better on this blog (a la “the following movie has been formatted to fit your screen”).

---

	For Paul Fallon: how many of the 216 people who responded favorably to 19A make up the 170 people who said they were less likely to vote for it in question 19B? Similar question for question 20A and 20B.
	(from Paul Fallon) Judy, I will have to get that data file from my office, so I will try to send it to you tomorrow or Wednesday. Thanks, Paul
	How long as the Teacher Evaluation Committee been in place?
	The Committee was established at the end of last school year to address the need for a teacher evaluation system that would meet the requirements of PERA (Performance Evaluation Reform Act).  The committee began working this school year during first semester to collaboratively develop an evaluation document and process.  In previous years this was not done in a collaborative manner.  The Administration would develop a document and then present to the CFT for feedback. This is the first time a process was used that had both Administration and Teachers at the same starting point.
	Where are the meeting minutes?
	The work done during each session was documented by Pam Rosa from CEC.  Committee members were then charged with sharing this with the groups they represent to obtain feedback.  Since this work was ongoing and part of an internal committee, minutes were not posted publicly.
	Does the board agree with premises put forth by the Consortium for Educational Change?

Review of Feb 11 regular board meeting

I was shocked that David Hohman posted the vimeo video right after the meeting! Kudos to his team. I am syndicating his video from my archive as well.

I had a brief chat with Scott Leopold prior to the meeting. He gave me an update on my request for the raw Fallon data, specifically to help answer the question of how many people surveyed changed their mind about wanting a $206 million “bond issue” once they heard their taxes would climb a bit. He mentioned that Mr. Fallon wants to delay in delivering that information until the February 25th special board meeting when he (Mr. Fallong) will be presenting and is able to deliver that information “in context.” Again, I don’t like that approach, but it is what it is.

Turns out it was a relatively short meeting – I think it clocked in at 53 minutes. The comments (both public and by the board) took up half that time. Since it is less than an hour, I highly recommend you watch it – the board members speak a bit and you can get a sense for where they are at and form your own opinion (as opposed to drinking my kool-aid *grin*).

The recognitions, as always, are a feel-good reminder of good things that are happening in our district. I wonder what it would be like if we also highlighted “challenge areas”. Right now, the folks that speak during public comment generally fulfill that role. But what if the district and/or the board had a running “leaderboard” of, say, the top 5 things they see as the issues of the month. Or year. They could even chart their progress against it; “Last month we identified and resolved these two issues, thus we are moving two more concerns onto the leaderboard for us to tackle this month.”

I gave the first public comment; I volunteered to deliver it since another representative was stuck at home with a sick child. I also sent this to the board and Kristine Chalifoux responded. So to qualify, I am not on the CB building council, and I do realize that the board has not made any official plans to expand CB – it’s all kinda up in the air at the moment.

Chuck Jackson spoke next about the need to be mindful and to intentionally “program” school for all kids. We have to pay attention (perhaps in different ways) especially to those who routinely are not well represented or spoken for.

The Board

Jan 28th board meeting

Video posted: http://www.cb-pta.com/wp/wp-content/plugins/download-monitor/download.php?id=53

 

This was a monster meeting – about 3 hours. The video has about an hour of black afterwards because I recorded on Tivo and I didn’t get it shut off soon enough. Also, you might want to fast-forward the first 10 minutes or so, as it looks like the Board came back from Exec session a little later. David Hohman is working on making the Jan 7th and Jan 28th videos on Vimeo (soon).

 

I don’t have the mental stamina to comment much (watching that thing really taxes me). I’ll be brief. The preview I did also covers a bit of stuff.

[PS - Houlihans tomorrow]

 

 

Cathy Mannen gave a statement on behalf of the CFT. The CFT typically does not say anything at Board Meetings, so my ears perked up when she got up. Ms. Mannen shared about the need to focus on appropriate assessments as opposed to standardized tests. I felt myself very much agreeing with her statements. I have asked Ms. Mannen if she is willing to share the short survey they did.

 

I didn’t really get the talk by Dr. Rice; it was obviously just for the board’s ears, about how to be board members. I was a bit surprised when Stig segued into giving public acknowledgement to the board member candidates that were currently in the room; he had them stand up and he even introduced them (Stuckey, Williams, Bonnett).

 

The committee presentations (Parent Advocacy, Transitions and 504 plans) were pretty much straight from the documents saved on BoardDocs; I was tickled that Tony Howard highlighted the weebly website. The irony is that Joe Williams pointed out how much overlap there is between the committees, but the committees don’t even know what the others are doing (at least, as a committee member, I didn’t have a clue). I mean, there is lots of sincere and good intentions, but it seems to me that a ton of work and research is silo’ed. How many people will even become aware of these Committees? (you blog readers have a slight advantage, I like to think *grin*) Much less what they even do. If nothing else, this is why I jumped on the opportunity to create a public website and a public google group for the Advocacy Committee – I want people to learn more about it.

 

Ken Kleber tried hard to make his AEEOO report interesting. It’s just hard. Or maybe I have horrible attention span. It’s good stuff to talk about it, but the meeting is already long.

 

Having said that,

Preview of Jan 28th board meeting

The Jan 28th board meeting agenda is up. [I still do not know how to deep-link it, but here is the URL for BoardDocs: http://www.boarddocs.com/il/champil/Board.nsf/public]

Looks like the new board members (former board members Arlene Blank and Phil Van Ness) will be sworn in right at 5:30 before executive session. Back in open session, one of the first items is:

Dr. Patrick Rice, Director of Field Services from the Illinois Association of School Boards will describe services and training options available to the Board.

That means almost absolutely nothing to me. I know that Board members are required by law to take various training (like OMA) and “How to be a Board Member”. Greg Novak has shared a humorous take on that in the past which I cannot repeat.

Dr. Wiegand will be introducing three somewhat new committees that formed as a result of the board retreats last year. The one I am part of, the Advocacy Committee, has a website (woohoo!!) and even a public-to-read email discussion list via google groups. I do not know much about the other two at all (Transitions?). What is very interesting to me is that the PDF they have on BoardDocs is a scanned copy of printed documents. Why? Why oh why oh why?!? You have to turn your computer left, right and upside down to read it. I don’t get it. Plus, the document for the Advocacy Committee is posted on our website in a true pptx form, which means it is searchable.

Next is the very wordy “audit and reporting system for Affirmative Action/Equal Employment Opportunity” (AAEEO). There is a monstrous 162 page report you can look at if you so desire. About half the document is charts and graphs, the latter half being some kind of analysis I think. Wow. I kinda feel bad for whomever had to put that together (Ken?).

And Educational Updates. I actually enjoyed this section. Back in October 2012 I spotted a brand-new Drupal website that Unit 4 was working on (and quickly locked down), so during David Hohman’s presentation, he is going to take some of the wrappers off. Exciting stuff. He stuffed it full of colorful pictures and a playful take so as to chip away at the boredom factor. Also, he has a “wireless proposal” – I am wondering if we can get some local folks to look at that, and maybe even urge the administration to seriously considering local vendors over distant ones. What do you think? Would you spend 2% more on a local vendor just because they are local? 5%?

Next up Dr. Joe Davis has a couple slides about bids for the proposed renovation projects (Robeson $2.7mil and Bottenfield $7.1mill). I am going to give Dr. Davis a break this time around and pick on the architects just a little. One thing that concerns me is that it seems Canon (and others) are putting a ton of resources into procuring new work, but they are not following-up much on old work. For example, I have to go back to Carrie Busey (but I am sure other schools have issues as well); brand new school with a really cool pod design. The new construction (right now) costs $1.3mil and breaks the pod design, and the proposed addition (some $3.5mil?) further breaks the pod design. No talks about how to fix it. And not to mention the punch list of outstanding issues – however, I am pretty sure that onus is on the construction crew, right?

 

Last of the major stuff, Dr. Wiegand will be sharing “Committee appointments”, a subset listing of committees and which board members are serving on them.

 

 

Jan 14th Reg Board Meeting: new school board members, new school attorney, lots of data

re: http://www.news-gazette.com/news/education/2013-01-14/champaign-school-board-chooses-blank-and-van-ness-new-members.html

It was an interesting board meeting tonight, although I fear “interesting” does not do the meeting justice. I don’t have the energy to write about it all now, so here are some highlights:

• Another bevy of recognitions, including plaques and commendations for Greg Novak and Gene Logas, presented to Donna Novak and Nina Logas respectively.
• Scott Leopold presented a veritable plethora of data and information about the targeted phone surveys (I hate using the word “quantitative”) and the latest update about the research efforts of Dejong. Overwhelming in fact.
• Agenda line-item 10.a was removed from the agenda and then put back on the agenda at 9:50 pm after basically everyone had already left (and the tv cameras had stopped rolling I am sure); Tom Lockman will be the new school district attorney. Vote was 4-1 – oh how I wish I could write more about that.
• As reported by Meg, a new (permanent) program for emotional disabilities/mental health was approved – board members asked some good questions
• Oh, also as Meg reported (*grin*), two new board members; Arlene Blank and Phil van Ness. A few other candidates were also in attendance and stuck around to the bitter end.

UPDATE: Meg wrote another article about Lockman:

http://www.news-gazette.com/news/education/2013-01-14/champaign-school-board-hires-former-board-member-school-attorney.html

Demographics and the Jan 14th Regular School Board Meeting

In preparation for the Jan 14th board meeting, Dejong has posted a couple PDFs about their work to date:

 

Source: DeJong-Richter

Historical and projected growth trends

GIS summary of current population densities

As such, Dejong will be presenting more details at the Jan 14th board meeting. In addition, a reminder that Scott Leopold has agreed to meet with us at Houlihans on TUESDAY (Jan 15th, 11:30) (not Wednesday). Sorry, Laura B, I know this doesn’t work for you.

The Jan 14th board meeting is going to be kinda wild. At 5:pm, the board will conduct interviews with a small subset of the 13 vacancy candidates in closed session, and it looks like the two newly minted board members will be sitting for their first board meeting. Looks like we have a number of recognitions again, mild policy change suggestions (nothing seemed outrageous to me *grin*), the DeJong presentation, new school attorney (no details), a new emotional disabilities self-contained program, a Change Authorization for the Kenwood project, a request to renew board representation on a list of 12 committees (including the heretofore unmentioned Choice Committee), and a bunch of consent agenda items mostly made up of more money being requested to fix things. The whole thing with fixing the Mellon Center entrance has me confused – it is way overdue, and now I get the impression it is over budget (unconfirmed)? What happened? Also, the changes for Westview say that there is a “contingency” budget – what is that?

In some ways, I apologize for questioning relatively small expenses, but I firmly believe that each of us taxpayers (and by “taxpayers”, I very much mean district employees and board members as well) have the obligation to scrutinize where our money goes. Having said that, I see that there is a “treasurers report” that lists recent expenses in the form of a check register, and monies for attorneys (a majority of which goes to Flynn, Palmer and Tague for “Real Estate Matters”, whatever the heck that is) and investments; I heard a rumor that Dr. Wiegand and Dr. Joe Davis are working on a way to make financial information more accessible (ie, understandable) to the common man, but not sure if we will see that on Monday or not.

Quick update

First, I have the recording from Monday night’s Special Board Meeting:

http://www.cb-pta.com/wp/wp-content/plugins/download-monitor/download.php?id=50

I am also trying a box.com account – see if you like this better (same file, just possibly faster download):

https://uofi.box.com/s/slshe4g7r2tj8e3tygan

I still have not yet had a moment to watch it all. I was actually at the board meeting for the first part of it, but had to leave when Cheryl Camacho [edit: sorry about the typo] wrapped up the Magnet programs. While that segment was a tad long, it was all very impressive! Representatives from each magnet school demonstrated what they were doing; we met the newly elected Mayor of Strattonville, heard various languages from Garden Hills and the board members got to play with a cool ProScope from BTW. At one point, Dave Tomlinson gleefully said that he could do this at every board meeting. Maybe we will see a new trend….  Cheryl posted a metric TON of presentations on BoardDocs – good luck reading all of them. She went over a few during the meeting, and I am glad she did not cover all of them. I felt bad for the kids that were waiting and waiting and waiting to go – I guess you could say I empathized with them.

So even though I

Who is going to the Oct 22nd Special Board Meeting?

I may have a conflict on the 22nd. Plus, I still want to get others involved in going and taking notes and maybe even speaking during public comment. Keep in mind that Special Meetings allow multiple timeslots for public comment, as opposed to Regular Board Meetings where you can only talk at the beginning.

I don’t see a text-version of the agenda available, but the photocopied/scanned agenda has a few items to note. The note about policy 500.01 concerning criminal background checks sounds heavy; glad that David Hohman will be sharing about the 3-day enrollment snapshot, curious if he is presenting raw numbers or fancy charts (*grin*); ratification of the tentative CFT agreement (when do we see the permanent one?); the Consent Agenda for new business has a bunch of money orders – I still don’t like how we are spending SO MUCH on “emergency” classroom additions at various schools. The last just shouts “you need a planner!!” But given the cards that we have, I don’t see much of an alternative. It is very interesting to hear that Unit 4 may reopen the old school building where FIC came out of (the name totally escapes me, up near 4th and Clark) – that is just extremely bizarre.

I am hoping BoardDocs is updated soon so we can read/see the various documents attached to the agenda items.

Again, who is planning to go?

Review of Oct 15 Regular Board Meeting

I was treated to quite a surprise when I arrived at the Mellon Center today; hundreds and hundreds of teachers will spilling out of the board room. I don’t see how they all could possibly fit inside there.

Meg Dickinson already spilled the beans: http://www.news-gazette.com/news/education/2012-10-15/updated-champaign-teachers-reach-contract-agreement.html - CFT reached a tentative agreement with the Board. I overhead pretty much the same thing while wandering around with the teachers and listening to a CFT rep (I always forget his name, but I see him at every board meeting). The folks outside were very excited to hear this, a very jolly feeling in the crowd.

[Download the video here: I got it off TiVo again, hence all the extra black nothingness for that last 30 minutes or so]

The Board meeting tonight was actually rather short. Which is always a good thing. I didn’t have my handy dandy notebook with me, so I am trying to get this down as soon as I can. The first part of the Agenda (Recognitions) actually took a bit of the time; a technical glitch with the Academic Spotlight on Centennial (not online, yet), but when we did see it I was very curious about the Instructional Coaching and the two clubs (African-American Club and Social Justice Club). Lots of cool things going on there. The other part of Recognitions was a long list of excelling students and faculty, most of which had an opportunity to shake hands with the board; National Merit Scholar semifinalists and commendations, National Achievement Outstanding Participants, and Those Who Excel, including one volunteer who is a Chemistry prof at the University (wow!).

I spoke during Public Comment (I wish I had rehearsed, I sounded like a fool); thanked the administration and the board for all their hard work, then urged them on two points. 1) take further steps to gather community input, especially in light of the upcoming “Futures Conference” with DeJong and the need to actually go out to people, not just wait for them to come to the Board, and 2) push the SES program (Supplemental Education Services – private and semi-private mentor/tutor services for those under Title I (free or reduced lunch) struggling academically) a whole lot more, as it is going very underutilized and it is such an awesome opportunity. I am kicking myself for not mentioning anything about an urban planner! Especially in light of some of the conversations that developed a little later during the meeting. I also wanted to thank the board for the “Adopt a school” idea, but alas…..

quick update: October 15th board meeting agenda posted

Making this quick – will add more info later. Board members are adopting schools (woot!). Dr. Wiegand also provides a bit of context as to why they are going down this route and suggestions as to how to connect.

School	Board Member
Barkstall	Stig Lanesskog
Bottenfield	Tom Lockman
BTW	Sue Grey
Carrie Busey	Tom Lockman
Centennial	Ileana Saveley
Central	Jamar Brown
Dr Howard	Sue Grey
ECC	Dave Tomlinson
Edison	Sue Grey
Franklin	Stig Lanesskog
Garden Hills	Ileana Saveley
Kenwood	Jamar Brown
Jefferson	Kristine Chalifoux
Novak Academy	Jamar Brown
Robeson	Ileana Saveley
South Side	Tom Lockman
Stratton	Kristine Chalifoux
Westview	Dave Tomlinson

Possible ways to connect with the school:

•  Copied on school email regarding good news and upcoming events
•  Visit classrooms
•  Faculty/staff meetings (on agenda to listen to concerns, etc)
•  Board Communications: Report on adopted school and highlight positive item

In my super brief glance at the agenda, the only other thing that stood out was the three candidates being appointed to the EEE committee (the EEE webpage is still really out of date, but at least a little better than over the summer).

BoardDocs

Adopt a school