We had our regular voting meeting last night. Here is a summary of what happened:
1) The vote on the Construction Manager for the High School Project was delayed to next Tuesday at 7pm. We are in negotiation with the final two candidates and expect to have those negotiations wrapped up late this week. After negotiations with each CM are complete, the Board will evaluate the two proposals and vote on awarding the contract on Tuesday. In fact, the meeting from last night was not adjourned, it was simply put into recess until Tuesday in anticipation of this decision.
2) A number of policy changes were adopted including one that will allow the Board to direct surplus budget funds into a special retired teachers healthcare fund. This fund had typically been part of the District's general budget but because of a change in law, we now have to carry this fund outside of our general fund budget. I posted earlier about the benefits of this decision here.
3) Class size at Washington again was talked about. There is a fourth grade class that has 27 students in a single classroom. This is the largest class size in the District this school year. There is a meeting currently set up for this Thursday to talk about ways to address the issue. After the meeting last night I told Mr. Allison to not be afraid to bring to the Board any proposal he thinks is necessary to help our students in that class. In this case, this particular group of kids have been in classrooms with an above average number of students in every grade so far.
That's all for now. I will post again once we hire the construction manager.
James
