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”.

Notes from the April 8th BOE Meeting

Stig opened the meeting to give special mention of Dave Tomlinson’s last day on the Board, and to open the floor for Board comments praising Dave for all his work over the past few years. Stig honored Dave with a plaque, after which Dave shared how he feels best about advocating for teachers.

No public comments.

Board member comments
Tomlinson: talked highly of the early childhood center, good news about not RIFfing anyone. (note: RIF = Reduction in Force, a practice of letting staff go with the hopeful promise of being hired again)
Jamar: good stuff at college and career center, good “state of the district” address at Carrie Busey, good feelings all around at address; talked about how Dr. Wiegand met all her goals and is changing the perception.
Chalifoux: go vote tomorrow
Van Ness: one positive and one negative. positive = “Gold card” thing, college and career center. Negative = some schools still have no Proximity A – 1) either get rid of Proximity or 2) give every child Proximity A, the 1.5 mile thingy is IRRELEVANT (his emphasis).
Chalifoux: “Gold card” thing is good; asked about doing a REALTORS brunch. Wiegand responds that we are doing them, and in fact one is scheduled for May (if I heard correctly).
Stig: acknowledges present candidates again.
Upcoming events (among the many events, I focused on one)
May 6th, special board meeting to swear in new board members

Item D moved up to the front.

Future facilities presentation:
Steering Team Co-Chair Bruce Knight started; lots of background provided; enrollment projections need to be looked at annually.  I ask (and have asked previously) “who is going to do that?” More on this in just a little bit. Most dense population around Garden Hills. Population shift moving north and east.

In discussing the “opinion polling” by Fallon, Bruce Knight says a majority of they “yes” votes came from low-propensity voters. So his solution is to get more people to vote. I wonder about that; to me, it essential to make sure folks are first educated properly about the issues (and candidates where relevant). In addition to the above, the majority of “yes” votes came from the younger generation, while the majority of “no” votes came from those who are older. Are the older folks just stodgy? Are the younger folks just naive? We cannot really assume anything – we just don’t know.

Given all the

The State of the District

Yesterday, Dr. Wiegand delivered her “State of the District” address to a group of 25 or so gathered in the Carrie Busey library. I asked for the powerpoint because I cannot find it online, and Dr. Wiegand sent it to me this afternoon, along with a promise of providing even more information. However, the powerpoint has a bunch of extra information hidden in the notes already – I recommend you take a look at the notes on each slide.

 

The Address has 6 goals and associated action steps. Here are the goals:

1. The Superintendent will foster high academic achievement, wellness and well-being among all learners in a safe, supportive environment.
2. The Superintendent will align the District’s priorities and resources through a community-involved planning process implemented through focused action plans with regular progress reports.
3. The Superintendent will retain, hire, and support highly qualified faculty and staff that will best serve the District’s diverse student population.
4. The Superintendent will effectively and efficiently engage parents and other community stakeholders resulting in strong partnerships.
5. The Superintendent will leverage the strength of the District’s diverse population to create a rich academic and social environment in each of the District’s schools.
6. The Superintendent will revitalize, build, and maintain facilities that are safe, sustainable and allow equitable access to programming across the District.

 

These are really good goals. In fact, as I was reading them I was reminded of the many promises and statements made by board members, especially the candidates. Dr. Wiegand is jumping in and setting the bar rather high, which is awesome! The Action steps sound reasonable, practical and relevant – again, read the notes because the bullets on the slide are often reinforced with extra information I found helpful.

 

Here is Meg Dickinson’s excellent writeup, focusing on “challenges and progress”:

http://www.news-gazette.com/news/education/2013-04-05/unit-4-superintendent-sees-challenges-progress.html

 

There is also a WICD clip but it didn’t really say much.

 

In other news (sorry to bury it), the agenda for the April 8th Board meeting was finally published. There are a metric ton of items in the Consent Agenda (wow!). The only item in the “New Business” that I cared about at the moment was “Future Facilities Committee Update: Bruce Knight & Kristine Chalifoux”. I have asked several Steering Team Members about the “final” report that DeJong will give to the Superintendent, and I consistently hear that such a report is not yet ready. Which makes me curious about the presentation by Kristine and Bruce Knight – I wonder what the update is (since no document is posted on BoardDocs). Here is the text of the extra information we can see:

One of the goals of the District’s Strategic Plan, Great Schools, Together is to, “revitalize, build, and maintain facilities that are safe, sustainable, and allow equitable access to programming across the District.”  Through the use of the 1% sales tax revenue, the Board of Education has been able to address a portion of the facility needs in the District.  Existing facilities that still need to be addressed include Dr. Howard and South Side Elementary Schools and Central High School.  Current enrollment trends also indicate a need to evaluate the capacity of our middle schools and how best to deliver educational programs.

On September 10, 2012, the Board contracted with public engagement firm, Dejong Richter, to begin the process of working with the community to find out what their expectations are for some of our older school facilities, and to engage in dialogue on the prospects for a new Central High School.

This evening, Future Facilities Co-Chairs, Bruce Knight and Kristine Chalifoux will review the work done this year and discuss next steps in the process.

 

Side note: Yes, Great Schools, Together lives. Just don’t go visit the website that looks like it came out of 1995 and was last updated in 2008.

I believe the next steps are:

• Steering Team approves the final report to go to Dr. Wiegand (soon!)
• Dr. Wiegand presents recommendations to Board in May

We will see how far off I am.

Keep in mind that Chuck Jackson and I are holding a very relevant charrette on Sunday, April 7th – we feel very strongly that there is much more work to do in thinking about what to do with Central, and we feel strongly that any recommendation to come out of the steering team at this point is not going to be satisfactory. In fact, several board member candidates at the March 14th PTA Council forum offered similar comments. Please note, after talking to a couple steering team members, I am not trying to cast them in a bad light – I truly believe they have worked hard to understand and make good guesses.

State of the District: April 4th, 7:pm, Carrie Busey in Savoy

re: http://www.news-gazette.com/news/education/2013-04-03/wiegands-state-district-set-thursday.html

School district Superintendent Judy Wiegand will visit the Champaign PTA Council’s meeting Thursday night and give a “State of the District Address.”

The meeting is open to the public and is set for 7 p.m. Thursday at Carrie Busey Elementary, 304 Prairie Rose Lane, Savoy. Wiegand will also answer questions after her speech.

“We have found this is a wonderful opportunity for parents and other attendees to ask questions in an open environment,” PTA Council President Anna Simon said.

 

For all those who have frustrations, questions, concerns or just want to witness one of these things, please come on out. I am still looking around to see if they have posted the speech online (or if they plan to afterwards).

Extension of Superintendent contract: email to the Board

Here is an email I just sent to the Board and Dr. Wiegand:

 

Good evening,

Meg Dickinson reported in today’s newspaper that there is an agenda item to extend the superintendent’s contract from 2016 to 2017.

I am including Dr. Wiegand on this email because I think she has done a fantastic job; I have mentioned this publicly and privately on several occasions. I have absolutely no doubts that she is deserving and that her performance has been stellar.

However, allow me to remind you of two previous contract extensions, also covered by the News Gazette:

2009: http://www.news-gazette.com/news/education/2009-02-24/champaign-superintendents-contract-extended-2013.html

2010: http://www.news-gazette.com/news/education/2010-02-25/another-year-added-culvers-contract-champaign-schools.html

Granted, Culver wasn’t Wiegand. Totally different ball game. But look at what the board members at the time said:

“With the election six weeks off, and three board seats up, this was the wrong time to extend his contract,” he said. “The incoming board has lost any control. … It kind of negates the whole point of an election to a certain extent.”

 

“The three board members voting against the contract extension did so because they don’t agree with having a contract extended beyond three years, not because of any dissatisfaction with the superintendent’s performance, they said.”

I urge you to hold off on voting in favor of this contract extension. Again, this has more to do with giving freshly voted-in board members (next month) a chance to have some say and not “locking them in”. There is time to extend the superintendent contract after April – no need to do it now.

Finally, I have the highest respect for Dr. Wiegand. I think she is doing an awesome job and I am personally very glad we have her leading the team. My message this evening has absolutely nothing to do with her role as superintendent.

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?

“Everything You’ve Heard about Failing Schools is Wrong.”

The subject of today’s post is from a recursive series of quotes; Dr. Wiegand’s latest newsletter highlights an Atlanta Journal-Constitution (ajc) educational blog which is highlighting an essay by University of Georgia professor Peter Smagorinsky about the bane of how media often portrays the dire plight of the public education system and he manages to ring the bell of anti-Bill Gatian assessments. Dr. Smagorinsky refers back to “The Manufactured Crisis”, which sounds like myth-debunking work aiming to de-teeth the many klaxons of war-mongering politicians.

I have asked Dr. Wiegand what she thought of the piece, since, to be honest, most of it is very general for me. I do acknowledge that Dr. Smagorinksy paints a very salient point; “to show one example of the perils of making judgments about people based on media images and accounts.” Which makes me wonder, what does the media hope to gain by pointing a crooked, shaking finger at tax-payer funded public schools in the first place? Does it really help to round up all the riff-raff and get people complaining? We will see what Dr. Wiegand says.

Obviously, there is a time and a place to disclose, or even uncover, the chinks in the armor, the weakest link, as long as the intent is to patch it up and make it stronger. On the flip side, there is also a time and a place to acknowledge all the many awesome accomplishments and positive direction, as long as it is not used to whitewash a rotting interior. Having said that, let us take a look at a few things.

On the “Pro” side, Stephanie Stuart (Unit 4 Community Relations), and Lynn Peisker before her, has done an excellent job of highlighting many positives; if you watch the Unit 4 website, the Unit 4 Facebook page or the twitter feed, you will find a frequent stream of recognitions, awards, certificates and accomplishments. Just today Dr. Taylor was recognized for receiving the McKinley Foundation Social Justice Award. Stephanie always collects success stories that are going on each school, as evident at each board meeting during “Recognitions”. Stephanie also co-hosted a “twitter chat” last week; the transcript is a little challenging to follow, but you can see how she (and Dr. Wiegand) interacted with various “chatters”.

On the “Con” side,

The big push: Unit 4 hosts Community Dialogs on Tuesday, Feb 12th

There is a deluge of email, Facebook updates, tweets, radio spots (tv spots?), flyers and word of mouth about the Community Dialog this coming Tuesday at the I-Hotel. If you are one of the few folks who has not heard about it, I would be very curious how they missed you. They have arranged bus rides from several schools, translators for three different languages, and even a literacy activity to keep the youngun’s occupied.

In every message I am seeing/hearing, the school district is emphasizing the importance of feedback and input from the community. There are two sides to this coin.

On the one side, I think this is totally awesome! For too long, the school district has given the impression of operating under the guise of its own expertise. That landed us with a costly Consent Decree, and now we have too many kids and not enough seats, not to mention buildings that are horribly behind on maintenance. Oh, and a selection of schools that, for the most part, has not tracked with the shift in demographics. So, kudos to the district for seeking the voice of the community. I have really appreciated how DeJong (via Scott Leopold) has been quite open about the data they have collected and has kept us generally up to date on what is happening in the Steering Team meetings (which are also open to the public). Scott has been really great about talking to people, even to the point of carving away some time to meet us at Houlihans (hard to knock that, eh?).

And now the other side. Scott and I have agreed to disagree on how to present the options to the community. For me, I think it would be best to put the current options up on the futurefacilities website now (actually, last week would have been better…), since the Steering Team has already discussed and pretty much voted on what we are going to see. Scott has argued that he wants unbiased and virgin thoughts during the big reveal at the I-Hotel on Tuesday, so that the options may be presented objectively and in context. Obviously, there are pros and cons both ways. Sine this is my blog (cue evil laughter), I am going to expand a little on some issues with this approach.

We as a community

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.

 

 

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.

Demographics and Opinion Research and Community Discussions, oh my!

On Monday, December 17th, Unit 4 held a Steering Team meeting facilitated by Scott Leopold of DeJong-Richter. And then again today at Houlihans, we had an informal and lively discussion with Scott Leopold about DeJong and their ongoing work. I am going to try to encapsulate my own thoughts, which I confess are somewhat influenced by those in my circles, and I will depend on those of you who attended to give voice to the things you thought were important.

 

The Steering Team meeting was a little odd, me being an outsider for the most part, even earning my own seat in the peanut gallery (we met in the Dr. Howard gym, and the “observers” four seats were against one wall). Scott gave a short presentation to get people thinking about the Results Report (a presentation he knows he has to get online soon *grin*). The first thing that occurred to me is that over half the room was Unit 4 people. “Why is this a bad thing?” you might ask. It is not necessarily bad in and of itself, but consider that the purpose of the Steering Team is to take all of the research from Fallon and DeJong and present two grandiose ideas to Dr. Wiegand and the Board. I should clarify, two grandiose ideas for a tax referendum in 2014 that does something with Central. My fear is that the opportunity to think outside the box is going to be severely limited. Not that the people in the room are stupid (trust me, I often feel like the low man on the totem pole), but that the concept of change is very difficult, and I can only imagine how much more difficult it is when it directly impacts your job. So maybe I too worried, maybe there will be some awesome untraditional thinking. Maybe. But one of the common themes I heard at the Steering Team meeting, and even an observation made today at Houlihans, is that folks are reading the report and saying “Hmm…. the majority of folks want what we already have” in terms of grade configuration and class sizes.

 

Perhaps one major issue with the way the questions were asked is that I think they were answered very “Either Or”. Do you want to have all K-5, or all K-8? There was no way to blend the answer (kudos to those who answered “Other” *grin*). Because some of the early talks, and statements by Dr. Wiegand, mention the possibility of doing a mixture. How does that come back into the conversation? “What is the ideal size of a classroom?” Well, it depends, doesn’t it? What kind of teacher are you going to have? How many teachers? What is the classroom like? What kind of students? Sorry, but not all classrooms are created equal.

 

I give credit to Scott for

Thoughts this week about the school board

Walking in reverse direction down the path of my thoughts of the school board this past week:

Who are we?

I subscribe to a feed of the Wake County School District blog, and just this morning is a post about the new school board chairman of the Wake County school district (which, by the way, is frickin’ HUGE!). What is fascinating about his “acceptance speech” is that he casts an identity for the school board that unites it with the community; he readily acknowledges the rocky road they have been through (you think Champaign has an issue with Schools of Choice? Ha!) and the challenges going forward.

“We the Wake County Board of Education will provide the kind of exemplary leadership that is expected of us by this community, and I intend to lead us in that direction. I ask my colleagues around this table to join me in this commitment and this effort for we are Wake County.”

2013 Board Candidate John Williams, III

I am going to be reaching out to candidates as I find out who they are. Last night I had a great facebook dialog (be sure to click the tiny “See More”) with Mr. Williams. I am impressed by his convictions and desire to tackle some big issues. Better yet, not just desires but ideas on how to make them come to fruition. I asked him further about two points (getting the community to show up at meetings and pedagogy); he responded to the first by admitting there is a lack of community participation that is not solved by free food, the need to build relationships and the need for more open communication; to the second he agreed there is no “one size fits all” and very much wants to move away from lecture-laden approaches to engaging the students more thoroughly. What’s cool is that I see a number of excellent teachers already doing this. Hearkens me back to the Sir Ken Robinson video shown at the Futures Conference. Having said all this, don’t take my word for it – go read about John Williams yourself, or better yet, ask him some questions of your own.

As I find out who other board candidates are, I am going to make it a point to drop by and get to know them. Laurie, I have some questions for you next. *grin*

Transparency

I already shared how I attempted to address the board at Monday’s board meeting. Dr. Joe Davis was kind enough to follow-up with me (and CC: Dr. Judy Wiegand). He mentioned Gene Logas’ previous efforts to spell out “Where does all the money go?” I agree that this is a good first step in breaking down the complex tongue of finances, but it only goes so far (it is, after all, a first step). I responded with an example of Jess Bachman’s now famous “Death and Taxes” poster which gives an awesome overview of the Federal Budget. On top of this, I followed up with a member of the Promises Made Promises Kept (PMPK) committee; here is an excellent example where the district communicates a ton of information to a group of people that is open to the public, but the public has next to no clue what is going on because 1) very few community members attend the PMPK meetings, 2) the “transparent” reports take a REALLY long time to make it up on the website. In fact, the last one I can find is from December of 2011. So, first hurdle is to get this information in the public sphere, second hurdle is to get these reports so that we the common people can understand them.

Transparency is not about pointing fingers. It is about collaborating towards a common goal. As John Williams implied, accountability is a good thing, when done right. It helps all of us.

[PS - I hope that a letter-to-the-editor I submitted on this topic is printed soon]

More about 2013 Board Candidates

Meg Dickinson wrote an article on Tuesday in the aftermath of Tom Lockman stepping down from his position on the board. One particular quote of Mr. Lockman that I really like is:

I truly believe that public education is the most critical aspect of a community’s ability to succeed and develop…

Most. Critical. Those are big words, ones that should challenge our community. But back to Meg’s article about the candidates. She relates the Stig Lanneskog intends to run for the 2-year slot. She also says that seven people to date have checked out petitions from the Mellon Center. Note that the petitions actually come from the County Clerk’s office and that the Mellon Center merely provides the forms as a courtesy; since the forms are downloadable from the internet, there is no telling the maximum number of people that have expressed an interest. On top of that, just because someone picks up a packet does not mean they will get all the signatures and actually submit it by December 26th. What is most curious to me is, of the people that have picked up a packet, we only know about three (Ileana Saveley, Laurie Bonnett, John Williams and Stig Lanesskog). Personally, I really want to find out who the others are because I want to meet these people who are so interested in the school district that they want to serve on the board, which is not all fun and games. Very worthy, no doubt, but a sacrifice none the less.

December 10th Board Meeting

Yesterday there were quite a large number of recognition.  First up was the talented Likith Govindaiah; perfect SAT and ACT scores. Wow! That makes my head hurt. Lots and lots of other things going on, including the cute “skin care” line from BTW sponsored on WCIA. Justin Uppinhouse was present along with some Edison parents for the Edison Academic Spotlight. And then we jumped into commentaries.

I happened to go first. I intended to address the board about Transparency and Accountability, using two specific cases; one was a challenge to have a Unit 4 5th grader able to understand the finance reports, and the second was about how the committees are not well known, nor what they are doing. I fear I totally bumbled what I wanted to say – I had a number of anecdotal stories and illustrations, by I lost ‘em while at the podium.

Next up was a gentleman speaking about the School Resource Officers and a challenge of his own. He cited a recent NYTimes article about SROs (which I have been unable to find), and shared his own thoughts about how SROs are not academic officers.

Lynn Stuckey was next and final; she shared her angst about how hiring Dejong is (was?) a foregone conclusion, that we are merely repeating Great Schools Together.

I apologized if I oversimplified what these citizens spoke about. I was able to record the show on my TiVo, but I cannot get it off to post online. I am told that Unit 4 will be did popping it up on Vimeo “any second now”.

And then I

Champaign Schools now on Vimeo

I didn’t catch this in last week’s district newsletter (it’s mentioned in a little blurb on the lower left), but Unit 4 is slowly starting to spread the word that they have a presence on Vimeo. To make it bold and explicit, here is the link:

http://vimeo.com/champaignschools

 

Looking at the Portfolios link, I even seen a Board meeting. Woot. There are also other videos about Core Curriculum, Academic Spotlights and Grade Level meetings (not sure what the last is).

 

I also noticed on the latest “To the Point” District newsletter (4 pages) they are now including the Vimeo favicon along with facebook and twitter. The newsletter is an extremely upbeat take on all the recent changes going on, highlighting recent construction (Garden Hills, BTW, Carrie Busey and now Westview), massive deployments of technology (smartboard, plus training via Instructional Coaches), the Novak Academy and also some of the recent academic achievements, noting perfect scores on the SAT and ACT. And to wrap it all up, how the public engagement firm DeJong-Richter is helping the district to collect the communities opinion and how to address future growth. But read it for yourself.

Nov 26th Special Board Meeting

I got the meeting off TiVo again; unfortunately, my upload connection is crawling along at 23kps (*egads! is this 1996?*), but the video will be posted soon video is now posted. The good news is that the entire meeting was a super brief 37 minutes, and I was able to stop recording after 45 minutes.

A significant portion of the meeting was used for comments (from the public and school board members). It was quite interesting to see that the folks from the girl’s Central Soccer team showed up in numbers and had comments lined up from various folks including parents and students. Very impressive. It was also quite impressive to see how they acknowledged the work already begun by the board and the district administration; you could tell there was a sense of “hey, they heard us!”. I thought it was also really cool to hear how student athletes have been very active in serving the community and take their grades very seriously. Board Members spoke very highly of the recently christened Novak Academy and Jamar shared how 9 students will be graduating, filling a void where those students probably would not have been able to graduate in the “normal” system (my words). Jamar also shared some good things going on at Kenwood, including a recent bonfire with weenies and s’mores as a community-building event. Sue Grey introduced a couple students who talked about community service projects and how they decided to raise funds for United Way, presenting a check to a representative of United Way (not Sue Grey).

The next part of the meeting was a presentation about the 3rd-party audit, with Dr. Joe Davis beaming because of the “highest rating” they got. Does anyone else think that the “highest” rating should be something a little more spectacular than “unqualified opinion”? I mean, what if the teachers had “unqualified opinion” stickers they slapped on your homework? Anyway, I