The School Board held a meeting on Thursday night to finish the discussion involving the formation of the Community Advisory Board. The motion passed 5-3.
There is a great discussion amongst community members regarding the pros and cons of the idea happening over at BlogLebo and I suggest that you get involved in the comments thread over there if you have anything to add (or subtract as the case may be).
The thing I will take issue with on that comment page is the unfair characterization of the meeting on Thursday night. This meeting was a continuation of the meeting from October 19th. Our Board President made a judgment call on the 19th and determined that the Board as a whole was not prepared to vote for the motion that was before it. Before bringing that meeting to a close he was clear to the members of the Board what he expected to happen prior to the reconvening of the meeting on Thursday night. He did a couple of things:
1) In anticipation of the motion passing on the 29th, he directed Dr. Steinhauer to advertise to the community that we would be accepting letter's of interest to be a part of this Community Advisory Board.
2) He asked all Board members to submit any changes they wanted to see to the motion in writing to the Superintendent prior to this Thursday's meeting so that those changes could all be seen and reviewed by Board members prior to the meeting. This was done in order to avoid to kind of confusion that happened at the October 19th meeting when some members of the Board made a number of motions to amend the original motion on the table.
3) He directed the solicitor to review our contract with the architect to determine if the amount that was being charged by Celli-Flynn was reasonable. At the time, Celli-Flynn was going to charge more than $30,000 for the first meeting and upwards of $20,000 for each meeting after that (see story here). This resulted in our architect substantially reducing the charges associated with this process.
When Board members received their weekly packet, it contained in it all the changes that were requested by each individual Board member. In the end, the President and Superintendent included in the final motion those changes that they thought the majority of the Board would support. For example, the two changes I requested were that, 1) the CAB have access to all previous project documentation (this was not made clear in the original motion) and, 2) that the CAB be able to continue their work if their suggestions were taken under consideration by the Board (the original motion simply said the CAB was disbanded after their December presentation). These changes along with the changes requested by a few other Board members were added to the resolution seen on Thursday night.
Some change requests were not added to the resolution. however, Board members were given the opportunity on Thursday night to get those changes in if they so desired. If you watch the meeting you will see that one of board member Sue Rose's recommendations did not make the resolution that was shown to the public. She requested at the meeting that her change be added to the motion. It did not get the votes required to become a part of the final motion. That process is good board leadership (setting expectations as was done at the Oct 19th meeting so that all Board members may be aware of changes that might be requested) and good board membership (following board procedure to get your requests heard and considered by the board). You can read the final motion at the District website here.
There are some things that I have disagreed with the Board president about in the past, however, in the case, he got it absolutely right.
My hope for the CAB is that the group will do what its purpose in the resolution says it should do:
1) Review the design according to the design criteria established by the Dejong group
2) Make recommendations to the Board that will save money (I am not talking about changing paint schemes here)
3) Determine if there was anything overlooked by the process that has been followed by the Board thus far that could potentially be costing us money
Contrary to what was said by some members of the public at the meeting, there is not a single board member who wants to start this group in order to delay the progress of the high school project. Accusations like that are just absurd. There is community buy-in on a high school project. This is something I have learned since I first got on the Board. We simply need to make sure we are collectively buying-in to the right project.
Thanks for reading.
James
