October 15th My view on the Luna Laws

Our board meeting was mostly just about reviewing policies. One note Mr. Tubbs estimated we saved maybe as much as $70,000 going to the four day week.

At the end of the board meeting we were asked about what we thought of the three propositions. I said some of what I thought about it. After listening to a podcast from a KID radio show where Mr. Luna talked about the new laws, I felt compelled to write a letter to the Pioneer and Morning News. I had to reduce this in half to make it fit in the Morning News. I have not heard from the Pioneer. I get so tired of Luna blaming the school districts and teachers for many of the problems. He has a way of not telling the whole truth, so I thought I would tell some of the other side the way I see things.

After I wrote this I found out if these laws are repealed it will cause a lot of problems that will have to be resolved. The requirement for online classes and technology is now law. If the proposition is repealed it will remove the funding, not the law. I think they will have to pass new legislation to remove the law. Schools can not afford an unfunded mandate like this.

Another concern brought to me is about the pay for performance. With many plans in place setting up the guidelines, if the law fails, it will be very hard for schools to figure out what to do if their plan is under contract with the teachers, and then  they don't end up with the funding. I can understand there will be challenges, but I still maintain these are bad laws. I compared it to what I think of Obama care. Some of Obama care is in place, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be changed.

I think if the legislature and the Department of Education would have worked more with teachers and school boards they would have come up with a better plan, and we wouldn't have all the conflict we are dealing with now.

If you have any questions after reading this let me know. Good or bad I guess I say what I think.


Propositions

I am on the Firth school board and wanted to address my thoughts about the propositions. I am basically neutral on Proposition one. I don't think this proposition effects our school very much either way. I want to mainly address the other propositions. I would strongly encourage a no vote on each of these. Prop. 2 pay for performance. They make it very confusing so it's very hard to understand. Basically all schools are evaluated and put on a bell curve, just like some grades are given out in school. The top of the curve schools get a full share of funding from the state. It works it's way down. The lower the evaluation goes the less money is paid, until the lowest get nothing. One thing to keep in mind. No mater what a district chooses to do, a teacher can only get one full share, no more. So if the school is at the top level they will all get the same amount of money. If a district wants to reward teachers for performance, the rewards have to go to a group of teachers teaching or doing the same thing, and only if the school as a whole does not qualify for a whole share. So for example you want to reward the school math teachers because they raised student achievement. But in this example the school only qualifies for half a share. The only way to reward the math teachers is to take away from the teachers who received a half a share, so they will get even less, and give part of their share to the math teachers. Is this fair? What if one math teacher is poor and the all the others are excellent, but because of the weak teacher achievement isn't high enough, then no one will get extra performance money. This can put teachers against each other. Administering this from the state must require a lot of extra time and expense that could be used to raise all teacher's pay.

Proposition 3. To me this is the worst one. Requiring all students to take two online classes will be a real challenge for a small district like ours. I have a hard time believing the state will really provide all the funding for this program. For one thing there is no new funding to replace the teachers we had to cut, because we received less funding from the state and federal governments. Our total funding has dropped $746,000 since the 2009-2010 school year. Now we are supposed to come up with the teachers to help with the online classes. I believe many students will struggle with this requirement. I think it would have been good to offer online classes to those who want to take them, but not to make it a requirement. Since the classes are going to be provided by teachers outside of the district, the funding for these classes will have to follow. There is some ways to mitigate some of this expense, but not all. I don't think funding will go back into the district to replace these lost dollars.

There are so many half truths out there clouding this issue. I recently heard Tom Luna on the radio. I want to set straight a few things he said. He talked about increasing school funding. Schools are paid by a unit of students, for the M&O budget. The older the kids the less kids it takes to make a unit. We used to get about $24,000 per unit. Last year we received $19,626. Each district's state funding for teachers had been based on the number of these units. If we chose to have less we wouldn't save any money, the state would just keep the money. If a district wants more teachers, they would pay for them through a supplemental levy. As the state reduced school funding they made some changes to how this works. The state didn't change the number of units, or teachers we qualify for. They gave districts discretion to lay off a certain percent of the teachers, and can now use the money saved to supplement the drop in the M&O budget and other budget cuts. So by laying off teachers, we look like the bad guys not the state. He talks about funding going up for this year. They raised this budget $80 per unit. Not much of an increase.

He claimed when the districts received federal stimulus funding, that we probably used much of these funds to hire more teachers. So it wasn't the states fault that since this funding is gone that now districts have to lay off teachers. We didn't hire anymore teachers. We used most of the money to help replace part of what I think was a 7% teacher pay cut the state imposed. The rest helped pay for an increase in insurance costs. He also doesn't mention some state funding was lowered when federal money came in.

He says class sizes are determined at the local level. He also says the Students Come First laws don't effect class sizes. Because of less state funding we have laid off I think four teachers. So some of our class sizes have gone up. The only way to maintain class sizes is through supplemental levies, which we don't have. Some of the reduction for funding of teachers may have come first, but most of the new money for education is going back to Students Come First, not used to restore teaching positions or our M&O budget. Others talk about funding for Proposition 3 as an unfunded mandate that will lead to higher property taxes. Well in this sense it is. Because the state chooses not to restore these funds, many districts are depending on supplemental levies, which in fact have raised property taxes.

I have nothing to do with any union. I am as republican as anyone can be. But these so called Luna laws are a big mistake. Thanks, Brian Esplin

September 13th Board Meeting

This probably wasn't one of our most interesting meetings, but we did go through quite a few things. Casey was out of town so John conducted the meeting.
One of the main things we went over was the audit report. Mr. Morgan Hatt reported on the audit report. I haven't had time to go over it in detail. But I will go over some highlights. We had budgeted for a $232,357 deficit in our general fund budget. Our deficit ended up being $28,879 or a difference of $203,478, much better than what was budgeted. The non general fund budget revenue from property tax, state, federal and other local taxes exceeded expenditures by $120,747. This money will go into our contingency fund, leaving the balance at the beginning of this school year at $800,000. I think maintaining this amount in our contingency fund is very good considering that our general fund revenue is $646,866 less than it was at this time in 2009. The administrators and everyone else who helps manage our school expenditures have done a very good job. One item I noticed was that our transportation costs dropped $20,000. I asked now that our audit is done, if they can give us better information about how much we saved on the four day schedule. I think they will have that for us next month. A couple more things of interest. Our best average daily attendance over 28 weeks was 696 and we spent $7,083 per student. I think this is about an average amount for our size of school. Idaho is 49th with only Utah lower, in how much the state provides per student. I asked if the schools he audits spends this much per student without an override levy. He said either they have one or as one school did, they took $500,000 out of their plant facility fund to get by for a year. He questioned the legality of what this school did. The state lawyers didn't agree with the school lawyers. He has not done very many audits yet.

Scott Jolley presented the ISAT testing results. The elementary and high school met AYP. There are several segments of how they divide up the kids for testing. The middle school missed AYP for the economically disadvantaged in math by less than one percentage point. If Idaho gets exempted from No Child Left Behind laws like they think they will, this process will change. They will go to what is called the STAR Status program. Basically a scale from 1 to 5. Scott thinks if they go to this it will be easier to make improvements. They have plans now to improve where things are deficient. Some highlights of the test results. In the 3rd grade 96% were advanced or proficient. The middle school met AYP in the two categories they missed last year. The high school continues to reach 100% graduation rate.

We then went over several policy updates. We had gone over most of them at our work session. We needed to change the length of the school day. We talked about the use of electronic devises and other media. The absences allowed was changed from a number to a 90% attendance requirement. We spent quite awhile talking about our board goals. We will go over them more at our next meeting with Casey back. We are setting goals to have more work sessions. Setting a date each year to review the districts overall financial situation. I had suggested that we review our goals more often. I also suggested that we publish a district newsletter maybe quarterly. This could be put on the web site, and maybe have some to give out at the back to school night or parent teacher conferences. If you haven't checked it out the web site looks a lot better. There are more goals and details. If we get them set I will provide more information next month. One thing I don't think we have done very good at  is, we should ask patrons, what goals would you like us to have? We need to evaluate ourselves as board members better and ask for suggestions of what things you can see that we as board members or the district need improvement on or goals you would like us to work on. If you have suggestions let me know.

There was a paper given to us by the teachers  requesting us to add some things back into policy to define some things for their benefit or protection, since there is no real collective bargaining agreements anymore. We will probably have a work meeting to go over this in detail and will probably need to discuss some of their requests with a lawyer.

We then had public comments. There was a concern about soccer presented, but it was somewhat mitigated because April and I had responded to him and tried to answer his concerns since our last meeting and he thanked us for doing so.

I asked afterwords if anything had come up requesting a discussion about consolidation. I was told no. Maybe my letter to the paper quieted things down about this issue. I do believe trying to be proactive in communication does bring about positive results.

That is all I can think of for this blog. I am off to Chicago Monday for one of my other board meetings. I have a major issue at that meeting I will try to defend and will have to in front of about 100 staff and board members. If you have any questions or comments let me know. Thanks, Brian

Consolidation Response Letter

The letter below is what I submitted to the Pioneer in response to the conversation I had with Mr. Price from Shelley who is encouraging consolidation, and from what was said in Wednesdays paper.

Another point I didn't state in my response was when I talked about how I did not think Firth patrons would support this idea in part because of the cost. I mentioned how when we tried to pass two different override levies, that were not for very much money compared to this, that they had both failed. His response back to me was something to the effect that. If the Firth board would approve the consolidation, then since Shelley patrons out number Firth patron by such a wide margin, it wouldn't matter what Firth wanted to do. Shelley would then have enough votes to pass whatever funding that was needed without Firth support. Needless to say that sure didn't go over well with me. And I think points out a big problem with the idea of consolidation. Losing control of how we are taxed, and how the Firth patrons would be treated. I think at some point unless the state comes through with more funding we will need to pass an levy. But I would never want to force the issue like he suggested. We will need to approve one with the purpose well defined, not through force or some kind of trick.



Consolidation

Being a person that doesn't shy away from expressing my opinion, I felt compelled to respond to the article about consolidation.  I am on the Firth school board and I am one who would have to be convinced that we should consider consolidation.  My wife and I met with Mr. Price a couple weeks ago where he presented his groups ideas and we discussed it for about an hour and a half. 

To me there are many more negatives than there are positives, especially for the people from Firth. Talking with Mr. Price and reading the article I get the impression that they think it is a bad thing for Firth to be so small, and the outlook for slow growth, if any growth at all, is also a negative thing. To me that is a very positive thing. I guess I'm one who thinks if you want to send your kids to a big school then you should live in the cities, don't try and make Firth into a big city school. 

During our discussion I mentioned that we had an AG program with some classes in welding. He seemed intrigued by the idea to make Firth into some kind of trade school. I tried explaining to him our program is small. The classes are held in a very old facility with very limited space. They have keep it pretty well maintained, but I don't think there is room for many more students. If the idea is to greatly expand Firth into a trade school, all new facilities would have to be built. 

I know we don't provide every elective program they offer in larger schools, but that doesn't mean we don't provide a good education. Besides our success in athletic achievement over the last several years, we have won many academic awards also. Almost anyone who wants to participate in a school sport can. I would guess as a percentage Firth has a lot higher number of kids involved in sports, than have the opportunity to participate in Shelley. If you have ever attended a Firth state football or basketball game, you would think there are more Firth fans there than live in the district. 

I think getting support from Firth to help fund the growth in Shelley is also  very unlikely. In recent elections where Shelley and Firth have jointly voted on bonds, that were probably perceived to help Shelley more than Firth, they failed because of lack of enough support from Firth. Currently our school bond debt will be paid in full on June of 2014. I don't believe Firth patrons would like to bond for the level of debt to build a new library, auditorium, and community center. Let alone building a big technical school or future north Bingham county high school. 

As we are now we have a lot of empty classrooms mostly in the elementary. So as far as facilities are concerned there is no pressure to build anything new, like they have had to keep doing in Shelley. Also most of our class sizes are small. There are very few classes in the elementary with more than twenty students, most have even less. I believe Shelley's elementary classes are quite a bit bigger. 

I think it was a couple years ago the state was offering to fund a consolidation study for Bingham county. Firth's share to do the study was several thousand dollars. The state would pay for the study we just needed to agree to participate. There was no support from the board, even under these terms to participate in the study. They did the study anyway. I don't think the results from that study indicated many advantages for consolidation, and some obvious disadvantages. 

One more area of concern, I could continue with more, is the matter of board representation. I don't know for sure how the numbers would break down, but I would think with a five member board, Firth area would have only one board member in a consolidated district. Maybe part of another. So if we agreed to consolidation, in most ways Shelley would have complete control over the former Firth district. 

I was not invited to the meeting referenced in the paper, as the article claimed I was. Which went on to say because no one showed up no one was available to give their opinion about consolidation. Well now you now have mine.

As I say after the blog I write after our school board meetings. If you have any comments or questions let me know. If there are those in our district who support consolidation and you would like to tell me why you think it would be a good idea let me know. 
Thank you, Brian Esplin.  My school email is. besplin@d59.k12.id.us

August 9th 2012 Board Meeting

Missing last month's board meeting, makes it seem like it has been a long time since I have written a blog. I understand last month's meeting was over very fast, something like twenty minutes. I enjoyed my time with my wife and daughter in Orlando at the FCCLA competition. The girls did very well.

A lot of this month's board meeting was spent talking about the board training April and I went to August 2nd in Rigby. So I will mix in what happened at the board meeting with some information I received at the training.

Our first matter of business was to elect a Vice Chair, John Monson was elected. So in case you missed it last month Casey Park will serve as board Chairman and John will serve as Vice Chair for the next year.

Christine Nelson was presented as the new first grade teacher. Sharolyn Peterson, a former FHS graduate, will be the new high school English teacher.

The next topic was the board training. I first went over some information and mixed in some questions that April and I had that came up at the meeting.
Some of the information:
ISAT tests have a pool of 150 questions to choose 30 from. Core Standards testing will have 4000 questions. Grades 3-10 will be tested. Another reason to be prepared for Common Core is after next year the Pay for Performance will be based on Common Core testing. Some schools are adding as much as a week more to the school year to better prepare for this new testing. They told us about an Ap you can get for your smart phone or computer put out by MasteryConnect. It is very detailed, but anyone can look at it to see what will be expected.

At the training  they talked about how we need to reinforce positive things going on at school. They recommended every year that each board member sign a Code of Ethics statement. I provided a copy of the ethics statement to each board member. We have not done this since I have been on the board.

They recommended we set our Board Goals in a June work session. Publicize our goals in July, ask for public input on what they think of our goals, and revise and adopt our goals in August. Then follow up in January and May to see how we are doing. It was also recommended that we connect our board goals with our agenda. This board meeting is the first time we have talked about our goals this year. I think the training recommendations are good, hopefully we can follow this process in the future.

Another recommendation was to be sure we re-ask questions to the administration that come up, even if we have been given the answer. That way we are proving we are doing our do diligence as board members, by informing the public. I have tried to do this most of the time, and think it is important and I'm glad they affirmed this procedure.

Now for some of the questions. We asked about Pay for Performance and if we are going to come up with our own plan, not the State's like we followed last year. If we want something different we need to decide this by September 1st. This will be talked about in a work meeting next Thursday, August 16th at 8:00 pm in the High School Library.

I asked when do we need to go over the Superintendent Evaluation Component for Pay For Performance. I think we usually go over his goals in January, but with changes coming I think we need to get started figuring this out. I gave Mr. Tubbs some information about this process. I'm not sure when it will be on our agenda.

I asked  about the Idaho Leads Group, and if any consideration had been give to join this group of 49 districts involved. I didn't find out much about this at the training. It has something to do with helping to figure out the development of the new state standards coming. I didn't find out anymore about this, because Mr. Tubbs hadn't heard anything about it. He will find out more.

At the training I asked what is the best time to ask questions as a board member, if the topic isn't on the agenda? They recommended adding a Reports and Recognition Section to our board meeting. Casey was concerned that doing this might violate in some way open meeting laws. I stated and asked if I was right, that it's okay to ask questions and have some discussion, as long as no board action was taken by what was brought up. Mr. Tubbs said I was right. Most questions I have are about how we are doing on certain things and want an update, or items that I think should be discussed at a future time. Casey plans on contacting board members the week before board meetings to see if we have items we would like on the agenda. This would help and has never been done in the past. Many times we don't get our board meeting information until two days before our board meeting, which makes it hard to review and suggest anything for the agenda.

Another agenda recommendation was to add a Student Involvement Section, items like a presentation, success story, and awards. They also recommended a few minutes of board training. I guess they used to do this before I came on the board. I don't know if these agenda ideas will be incorporated.

I asked if we had a published List of Procedures, and if we did, could I get a copy. Mr. Tubbs said some are in our policy manual, but some are not. He is going to get that information. This also kind of goes along with the district Strategic Plan. They talked about this at training and April and I knew nothing about it. He was asked about this ahead of time and provided a copy for us. The committee has been given the responsibility of reviewing the Plan.

I handed out some more information at the meeting. There is two handouts about what every board member needs to know about Governance and Team Operations, and about the district. Some of the governance is about protocols. I don't know how all these things have been done, and would like to have more discussion about these handouts.

One last handout and information from the meeting was about doing a Board of Trustees Self Assessment. We are doing a lot more evaluations of everybody at the school, I think we should do this assessment. It was suggested to me that we fill this out how we think we as individuals are doing and how we think the board is doing. I suggested we use this to help come up with our board goals. It was determined that we fill this out how we think the board is doing, turn the assessment into the district office and have the board clerk compile the information anonymously. We will do this before our work meeting next week and talk over areas that we need to improve on. After looking this over, I think it won't be hard to find needed areas for improvement.

Well on to the rest of the meeting. Mr. Gee reported on what had been done to prepare for the Common Core Standards. He talked about some training and conferences the staff had participated in. They are working on this and will throughout the year to be ready to start teaching to these standards next year. I hope they will be ready. One concern I brought up is needing to know what curriculum we will need to purchase to be prepaired for this. Curriculum is very expensive, and we need to know this as soon as possible. They are not sure yet what we will need.

A few weeks ago I was looking through our Online Policy Manual. Most meetings we get policy updates from ISBA to consider. These policies are more generic state policies that need changed, by new laws or changing a little language. There are other things that are more district specific that we need to update. The policies we did update last year have mostly not been updated in our Online Manual. Mr. Tubbs said they would work on doing this. After reading through a lot of our policies online I came up with a list of policies that I think need reviewed.
-1. The length of day and teacher requirements of the school day need re-defined to match up with our current schedule.
-2. We need to either change our policy towards President's Day being a school holiday, or revise our calendar to take President's Day off.
-3. I think since it is likely we will need to move teachers around each year to accommodate changing class sizes with limited staff, we need to review policy how this should be done, with, if possible, a specified date each year to inform teachers when they will have to change to give them time to prepare for the changes. In our manual it just says before the start of the next school year. Sometimes it might not be determined until the beginning of the school year, but most of the time changes coming should be known long before then.
-4. As I understand it our policy states we are supposed to have new hire recommendations presented to us before they are actually hired. If this isn't how we want to do this then we need to change our policy accordingly.

The plan is to go over some policy changes at our Work Meeting, including our new Phone Use Policy. I think we need to figure out how to review our policies. They gave us ideas of how to do this at the training.

We then had Public Comment. There was some concerns expressed about having short term goals to reach our long term goals. Concerns about not having all the teachers at parent teacher conferences. It was suggested we send out emails to inform parents about the conferences.

Concern was expressed about what will be required for Senior Projects, a new requirement starting this year. I think we will go over this more in the future. Concern about our Common Core preparations. Another patron also expressed concern about the new soccer program. Mostly how this might impact other sports.

We then went into executive session and talked about some personnel issues. I think we left about 11:00, much longer than last time. I know this is very long, but if you like to know the details of what went on, now you know. I will probably write another update after our work session next week. As always if you have questions or comments let me know. Thanks, Brian

June 14th Board Meeting

You can tell it's summer time by how few people attended our board meeting. I think besides staff there were only three others that attended the whole meeting. I hope more than that take the time to read my blog.

It was a very short meeting, but I have some follow-up information from our last meeting that I will include also. One of the first things we did was approve the resignation of Joe Rodriguez, the IT guy. He is going to Grangeville. He will be hard to replace. We also approved the FCCLA to go on their national competition to Orlando.

Julie Cederberg, the district secretary, presented the district budget for approval for next school year. She had a paper prepared with the budget outline. I won't get into all the details that I detailed in my last blog. If you haven't read it, please do, I spent a lot of time coming up with information and explaining every budget detail so all can better understand. Please encourage everyone who has an interest in our school funds to read it. The main thing that I haven't stated before is where it looks like we will end up and what is being budgeted for next year. Julie is estimating we will spend $100,000 of our last year's contingency budget. Last year we planned for a budget deficit of $232,000, so we will do much better than we planned. A couple reasons it is better is how well our budget has been managed by our Administrators and we had been told there might be another hold back of funds last year that didn't happen. It's always good to plan for the worst and have things turn out better. We will have more exact budget details of our last year's budget after our audit in August.

The budget for next year is very close to the same. We approved spending another $100,000 out of our contingency fund for next year, leaving at the end of next year about $600,000 in the contingency. One cost increase is a 3% increase in insurance, which I think is smaller than expected. The main reason we are able to cover the increased insurance cost is because a teacher left from the elementary and we chose not to replace her. As I explained in my last blog the state has plans to restore more funds back to the Maintenance and Operation's fund, if the economy improves enough. But I think we will all believe it when we see it. One fact you might find interesting. Our budget has dropped $746,000 since the 2009-2010 school year. It's amazing we still have a contingency fund balance.

I then reported on the last committee meeting. Basically we had talk about the district budget and I referred everyone to read my blog to get a detailed explanation. We will not have a committee meeting this month.

I emailed Mr. Tubbs some follow-up questions from our last board meeting a couple days before the board meeting, that I thought needed discussed, he then replied in an email back to the board the answers. None of this was on the agenda for discussion. I asked more questions at the meeting to again follow-up from the answers he provided.

I had asked if they had a chance to look at the drug use, cell phone, and dress policies. He said the management team has met twice to look at all three policies, but hasn't had time to get a committee together to review them. They plan on having recommendations back to us by fall. If anyone has ideas of how these should be changed let Mr. Tubbs know, he is very open to suggestions. I told him last night, whatever they come up with needs to be better enforced and uniformly enforced.

I asked if we are getting lined up for the Common Core Standards. He said yes that several staff members have had training concerning the common core. They are looking at the curriculum to see what we need to do when purchasing new curriculum for next year to cover any gaps.

I asked about Pay for Performance in the email and at board meeting. The administration is working with the teachers to figure out if our plan needs changed from the state plan we followed this past year. Mr. Tubbs plans to go over this at our August meeting. He asked for suggestions from us if we had any. Last night I made the suggestion that we reward someone, if they would take an aggressive role in writing grants. I think we could get more grants if this happened. I also suggested if possible for the teachers that are volunteering so much time for free, coaching and running other extra curricular activities, to get a little extra. I think there is still a lot to do before this issue is finalized for next year.

I asked about the technology. Basically we will watch and see how this works out for the other districts that are starting this program for this next school year, to help guide us in what we do later on.

I asked if we have received grants for the bleachers. He said not yet, but are still working on getting two of them. I asked if we are working on grants for other things. He said yes Keith Drake received a grant for a cooler to use in his class room. As I said before we need to have someone more involved with writing grants.

April and I are going to a regional board training in August at Rigby. I think it will be a good program. I wish the whole board was able to go. I will report on it after we attend. We also qualify for some free training that we might do after attending the regional training and can decide what we might like to learn.

I asked if we knew the results of the ISAT tests yet. The state has had some computer problems so the results are not out yet, but will be soon.

I also asked about the attendance issues with the state to find out if the problem was resolved yet. He thinks it should be, but is still waiting for more information.

I asked at our meeting last night if they had decided what repairs and maintenance to do. Mr. Tubbs gave me a list of all the projects and the cost breakdown, I won't list them all here, but there is a lot to do. A lot of painting projects. The total student occupied fund spending if everything is done adds up to $142,000. $120,000 of this is the new bleachers. Which by the way we were give a drawing of them, and they will look very nice. They will be mostly blue, with black and white seats spelling out on the upper side Firth and on the lower side Cougars. The projected expense for non student occupied is $17,700. A big part of this is for the berm work at the middle school and some asphalt repairs at the elementary and high school, and some repairs around the baseball field.

We approved a policy update regarding the evaluation of certificated personnel.

I have a feeling like I left something out, but can't think of what it might be. This blog starts the second year of me writing a blog about board meetings. Overall I think this is the 38th blog I have written. I hope many feel it is worth the read. It provides me with a journal of what happend in the past that I can go back and refer to. I will be with my wife and daughter in Orlando at the FCCLA competition during next month meeting. So if you want to know whats going on you will just have to go to the meeting and find out. I don't like missing meetings, but I need to support my daughter. Without me there the meeting will probably go a lot faster. I was kidding my wife with giving the committee report and all the other comments and questions I seem to almost always come up with. That they need to put an item on the agenda just for me to ask my questions and provide comments. I think July is when the board leadership is voted on. I hope you all have a good summer. As always if you have comments or questions let me know. I wish someone could write a blog about next months meeting so I could find out the details of what happens. Thanks, Brian

Basics of our district funding

To all my blog readers, I am going to try and explain the school budget in a way everyone can understand, at least as close to as well as I understand the budget. I am starting to write this while I am on vacation in Jackson. I had hoped to publish this after our budget work meeting, but lacked some details I wanted to have before I could explain things very well. I called and got more answers to the budget questions that I had, but was advised to wait to publish anything until after the budget details are published on June 7th a week before the board meeting. There is some concern if I publish something different than what the final budget is, it would be inappropriate, and could cause some problems. So I will wait and publish this after that date, even though I am going to write most of the information while I have time, and then I will go back and edit numbers where it's necessary.

 First of all I am not going to try and publish exact numbers. I don't think that is necessary to explain the budget. As with many budgets, especially my own business budget, no budget ever comes out exactly as planned. There are many variables in how we get our funding. When you depend on most of your funding coming from the state and federal governments, there can be many variables. Things like how many students we have and how high our attendance is can make a lot of difference. So consider the numbers I write as estimates, I will give more exact numbers and more details as I learn them later. Even the amount of students that qualify for free and reduced lunches effects our funding. We are going to get a grant again next year to pay for an afternoon nutrition break in the elementary, which really helps those kids make it through the longer four day schedule. We qualify for this because of the percentage of students that qualify for the free and reduced lunches. This also effects the money we get for aides under the federal funded title 1 program that helps educate disadvantaged students. So it is very important to have patrons fill out the paperwork to see if you qualify for this aide even if you choose not to participate. This fund is about $98,000 and can only be used to help disadvantaged students. These funds used to help pay for summer school. This fund is less than it used to be, and no longer is enough to cover the summer school program, so we were forced to cut it. I hope at some point we will be able to come up with the funding to bring this program back.

 Since I started with federal funds I will continue with them. Another fund is called the Title VI-B School-Age fund. This fund goes to the students identified as having special needs. There are about 80 students identified for help under this program. Many of these students have problems reading. Students are tested to see if they qualify for help and a plan called an IEP is written to determine what help is necessary. The school is required by law to provide whatever help these students need even if we don't get enough federal dollars to pay for it. There are some students that require one on one aide that we have to pay for. The money we receive for this program doesn't cover all the costs we have, and can change from year to year depending on what the needs are. The funding for this program is about $167,000. There is another similar program for preschool children ages 3-5. This past year we had 11 students in this program. They have been identified as learning delayed. This funding has been about $17,000.

 Another federal fund is called Perkins Vocational Education. This is a program for vocational education, or also called professional technical education. I understand many years ago we used to have certified nurses assistant education which was part of this program. This fund is only $8,000.

Another federal fund is called Title II-A Improving Teacher Quality. This fund helps to maintain small class sizes in grades K-3. It can also be used to better train teachers teaching those grades. The money we get is about $30,000. For us we use this money to help fund a teaching position.

 The school food service is partly funded through Federal Funds. The lunch ladies do a very good job managing the lunch program. There has been a lot of changes in nutrition programs with more to come. With the Federal Funds and what is charged for the meals this is a self sustaining program. We used to have to supplement this partly with General Fund dollars, but that hasn't been necessary for at least the last two years. The only cost is the requirement by the state for us to pay the FICA taxes for the lunch employees. The cost of this is $6500.

 All these federal funds can only go to their intended purpose, we can't use them in other areas, and in some cases require us to supplement them from our general budget funds.

 Now on to the state and local funding. There are two Plant Facility Funds. One for Non-Student Occupied Funding and one for Student Occupied. We are required to put 2% of the value of our buildings and I think other fixed assets into these funds. I'm not quite sure how this is calculated but it amounts to somewhere between $165,000 to $180,000 each year. Part of the funding comes from the ten year Plant Facilities tax levy we passed last year for $95,000 each year. The major expense out of this fund is for buying buses. A bus costs over $80,000. We used to buy one bus a year, but in recent years have bought one every other year. Last year's audit report listed the Non-Student Occupied Fund at $650,000 and the Student Occupied Fund at $290,000. The Student Occupied (SO) Fund is what we used to buy our high school bleachers. They cost around $121,000. Each year the Administrators come up with a wish list of repairs and replacement projects, that are funded with these funds. Other examples of SO funds are desks and tables for class rooms, new carpeting and painting. There are many projects that need done in restrooms and locker rooms. There are also some projects that need done in the school kitchens. We try to maintain a good balance to cover major expenses that might come up like roof repairs or replacement, or what you might call the dreaded elementary boiler failure.

 Some examples of Non-Stuendent Occupied expenses are work that is needed around the baseball and football fields. Whatever we decide to do with the area between the high school and seminary building and any work on asphalt, or painting asphalt. The elementary needs work done around the play grounds. The middle school needs work around the berms to prevent water from getting into the school. These items will be prioritized and it will be determined which projects to complete this year. But to restate, we are required to fund it at these levels, and the fund can only be used for these type of projects. The Plant Facilities Levy money makes it a lot easier to fund this account, so the $95,000 doesn't have to come out of the too little general funding we get.

 Another state fund is called the Vocational Technical Fund. This fund helps pay for the Professional Technical Education programs, like the Ag programs, clerical, consumer homemaking and child care programs. It also includes technology and informational training, and the equipment to run these programs. We get $34,000 from this state fund. Not near enough to provide all the funding necessary for these programs, but it helps.

 We also have some funds that help support the Drivers Education Program. We get $125 per student and charge the students $75. This has been provided three times a year. Years ago we used to have a car provided rent free from a car dealership, but no more. I think this is basically cost neutral, but the car is very old and I don't know what we will do when it's too worn out to use anymore. I understand the cost for private lessons is around $300.

We also have a Property Tax Bond for the middle school. It is for about $250,000 each year, and pays off in June of 2014. As I have stated before I had hoped we could get by on our budget without trying for another levy until our bond pays off. At that point I hope we can propose a levy for about the same amount to better restore our funding, maybe bring back programs we have cut like summer school, and to bring our contingency funding back up to better levels.

The major part of our state funding is for our teachers and administrators. We are funded 1.1 teachers for every unit of students we have. I have explained what consists of a unit in the past. We have 41.5 units that can fund about 45.5 teachers. But because of funding cuts, the state allows us to reduce our teachers by, I think, up to 9% and use that extra money to help fund our Maintenance & Operation budget. This next year we will have 41.5 teachers. We are funded 3.1 administrators and have 3. Our teacher payroll is about $2,232,000. Our administrators are funded at $182,000 and we pay out $208,000. Because we have tried to keep from dropping our teacher, administrator, and other staff salaries too far. We pay out a total of about $78,000 more for all our staff than we get reimbursed for. I think the staff has had a series of pay cuts over at least the last three years, because the state keeps cutting the funding. We have tried to cover the cut from last year of about 1.67%, partly by reducing staff and using some of that funding to supplement the rest.

 Now I finely come to our General Maintenance & Operation fund. This is an area where we have had major cuts from the state. This is only about 10% of our total budget. This is used for general funding, salaries, benefits, supplies, training, textbooks, classroom equipment, administrative costs, utilities, maintenance, general upkeep, and transportation. We used to be funded about $24,000 per unit. This past year it had dropped to $19,626 per unit. If you heard on the news from Tom Luna that they have funded our schools better for next year, this funding will go back up by only $80 per unit or a grand total of $3,320. Shouldn't we all be grateful, but I digress. The M&O estimate total for next year is about $818,000. This is often referred to as our discretionary funding. But in reality most of this isn't really discretionary.

 The state provides us a benefit apportionment that provides the FICA and Persi benefits for our staff which is estimated at about $403,000. We have to pay for the rest of the benefits, like insurance, from the general fund and that amount is about another $460,000.

 Another big chunk of the M&O budget is for electrical and other utilities. Also for garbage removal and janitorial services. The budget for these services for next year is estimated at about $360,000. This fund is also used for textbooks, computers, and other things I mentioned earlier. So as you can add this up, the M&O budget isn't nearly as high as it needs to be. As I have said in the past, Senator Bair says they will eventually get this funding back up to the $24,000 it used to be. But if they don't increase it more than $80 a year it will take a long time to get there.

 We are also projecting a transportation allowance from the state of $185,000. The state reimburses us 85% of the cost from home to school, and only 50% for shop supplies and other costs. They don't provide any funding for field trips, athletics, or any other activity.

 We get a token amount from the state that is supposed to replace some of the property tax funding we used to get through AG taxes. This amount is estimated at about $17,500, and is added into our M&O Budget.

 As far as I know this is the total funding and where it goes. This is very long, but I hope for those interested you found this informative and now better understand our budget. There are other things like depreciation and other details I still don't understand, but this should explain most things. Last year we had a deficit budget of $232,000. I don't know the details of how we ended up, and until our annual audit in August we won't know the final numbers. But I can say we did much better than projected. Everyone needs to give our management team a lot of credit in how the budget was managed. We have a history of being conservative as a board and administration and being that way has really helped prepare us for these lean times. I can't forget the help we get from the PTO and all the teachers and patrons that donate their time and money to help our schools. We will still have a negative budget, but not really bad. If I remember right from what I have read, we are one of only a handful of districts that don't have a levy. One comparison to make is with Aberdeen. I think they have close to the same number of students that we have. I think for at least the last two years they have approved a $600,000 levy for each year, and are projecting a contingency fund of only a few hundred dollars. We started the last school year with over $800,000 in our contingency fund. Thanks again for your support. If you have any questions let me know and I will try and answer them. If you have comments or other input, I would welcome that also. I wish I could publish this tonight. Other than some editing I actually finished this at 12:30 a.m. on May 30th. I don't think what I have said would be a problem, but since I told them I would wait I will. Brian

 Last night I received the budget notice from the district office. If there are differences in what I was given last week and what was sent to me last night, they aren't much different. I have provided a lot of details to explain our budget, but keep in mind all my numbers may not be exact. I was given an estimate of what we will use out of our contingency fund and about where our budget ended up this year, but I will wait until after our budget meeting next week to provide those numbers, in case the board does something different that might change our budget for next year. This information is something I have wanted to understand and share for a long time. Thanks again. Brian

May 10th School Board Meeting

If you looked at the agenda before our meeting you would have thought this would have been a fairly short meeting without much to discuss. But as it turned out it was one of the longest we have had in a long time. By the time we got out of the executive session it was almost midnight. Much of the added discussion came from patron input that April and I received at our cottage meeting. For those who were at the cottage meeting, at the end of it I said we wouldn't overlook their concerns, that they would be brought up at the board meeting. I believe between the regular board meeting, and the executive session, we discussed everything that was brought to us at the cottage meeting, and in some emails or other communication.

Here goes my summary of what was discussed. There wasn't a report from the Excellence in Education Committee, because we had the last meeting the week before our last board meeting. I did bring up the items we intend to discuss at our meeting next Thursday. We plan to develop a mission statement, so we can better define the purpose and direction of the committee. Mr. Tubbs will also present some information about how our school funding works. He will go over all the sources for our funding and how it's spent. We should learn how much is discretionary, and an idea of how this funding has changed the last few years. Since our budget isn't quite defined for this next year, we won't have exact numbers to work with, but I think we can have a good discussion.

We then discussed the calendar options. There was a lot of opinions expressed about the calendar. We were presented with four options. Two versions would move the last day of school into June, with a later starting date, or more breaks during the year. Two others were presented, option #1 was just about the same as the one the calendar committee recommended last time and option #2 that has us starting on August 20th and ending on May 23rd, also there will be no student days on any Friday. The way option #2 reduces the days to fit between those dates is mostly achieved is by adding 7 minutes to the daily schedule and also having no day off for Presidents day. There were two parents that expressed concern about starting on the 13th, and a suggestion that we reduce spud harvest to one week. I had talked to a couple farmers, not my family, that said if we reduced the harvest break to one week, we might as well not have a break. They wouldn't want to hire kids for just one week. We also can't afford to have students miss much school, it really can hurt our funding. Since the calendar committee still recommended option #1, I made a motion to support this option but got no support. So option #2 was presented for a vote and  I supported it along with three other board members. Mr. Cook also preferred option #1, and had concerns about making the school day longer. Option #2 also has more scheduled teacher inservice days on Fridays. I do think this is a good compromise. The high school hours for next year will now start at 8:00 and end at 3:59. I hope the later time won't hurt too much.

We then had a presentation by David Schiess. The city of Firth received a grant to improve Center street. The road that goes from the highway between the seminary building and the park. The project will end at the intersection in front of the school. Mr Schiess is proposing the school district take this opportunity to make improvements, between the seminary building and the school, and to tie into the new road that will be built. He is recommending we take out the old trees, remove the old asphalt, put in french drains and sidewalks. Then it would be repaved with a stripped parking lot and a better defined road through that area. He also said the road in front of the Ag shop running along the park is school property. The city road was vacated many years ago. So he wondered if we would want to control access along that road. There was quite a bit of discussion about this idea. He at first didn't have a cost estimate of the project, but later came up with some estimates. He said the surveying would be $1800, removing the trees and asphalt $5000, putting in sidewalks and gutters $5000, two catch basins for $2000 each, gravel fill and pavement would be $40,000, design of the project would be $18,000, and they would need a contingency fund of $20,000. He quoted this very fast, so I might have this a little off. The total cost would be around $80 to $100 thousand. The pavement alone would be about $20,000. There was discussion if it were to be just graveled, and maybe paved later. Maybe some volunteer work could be done to remove the trees. Maybe the city would help with some of the work. The project for the city won't start until next year, so we have some time to think about it. Much like the fund we are using to buy the high school bleachers, there is another fund for outside improvements, that could be used for something like this. Mr. Tubbs didn't know at the meeting just how much this fund had in it but it is a substantial amount. There are probably other areas that could use some improvements around the school. We will have more discussions about this idea, how much this fund balance is, and if we think this is the best use of these funds. There was also some discussion how much might be saved doing some of the work in other ways, or not doing all that was suggested.

Wow this is already long and I haven't even started talking about the cottage meeting yet. I have been out of town most of the last two weeks. April had done some research about district policies and had given Mr. Tubbs a list of the questions we wanted him to answer at the meeting, so he could be prepared to respond.

The first question was about cell phone use. There is a growing problem about kids using them in class. There was a report of someone googling answers to tests during class and texting answers. The policy we have is dated back to 2005. Cell phone use has changed a lot since then. The policy is that if a cell phone is used during class the teacher confiscates it and returns it at the end of class, if this happens several times the phone is taken to the office and parents are called before it is returned. Different ideas were discussed at the meeting but no real answers. The management team will discuss this further and come to the board with some recommendations.

Dress code issues were then talked about. Some  examples given were girls with too short of pants or skirts and to reveling of tops being worn. This policy is also old and probably needs some updating. Part of the policy is to have the student change into something more appropriate or have a parent bring some different clothing. Maybe just more inforcement is needed on both of these issues. This will also be discussed among the management team.

One other policy issue that I asked Mr. Tubbs to address is the drug policy. I asked if the recent use of prescription drugs was dealt with correctly and fairly. He stated the basics of what happened. He admitted that he should have informed the board about this issue at the time. He stated the policy and procedure that was used and assured us that is was followed appropriately. One reason he gave for not providing us with the details is, if after the administration suspends students or other punishment, the student can then appeal this judgement to the board. So it's in our best interest not to know a lot about the issue.

We asked about Pay for Performance. He said the school is using the state plan this year. I asked for more details of what exactly the state plan is. He is working with the teacher representative to see how the teachers would like us to allocate this fund in the future. We are going to get some information from some other schools to get an idea of how they are setting up their plans. I think the board needs to be informed of what they come up with and have further discussions on this matter. We need to have this done by September.

April also asked about getting more training to understand our school budget. Mr. Tubbs provided an outline of the school funding that I think he will present in our committee meeting. Maybe I will write another blog about the information provided at that meeting next week. She also asked about the savings of the four day week. Attendance was also talked about. I thought we were told our attendance had improved, but the handout we received was mostly the opposite. 2011 we had 74 kindergartners with attendance at 91.89%, this year there are 60 enrolled with 94.18 % attendance. Grades 1-6 last year had 356 students with 92.76% attendance, this year there are 339 students with 90.27% attendance. Grades 7-12 last year 334 with an average of 98.54%, this year 341 with 96.45%. There was a question if this information was correct, I believe there is an issue of our numbers not being the same as the states numbers. I am a Little unclear as I write this what the problem is and will have to investigate further. I didn't see this information before the meeting. Bottom line if our attendance is much less it means less funding.

I then asked some more questions that I had from the cottage meeting and other input I had received. I asked how our plans for technology were proceeding. They are getting ideas in place, but are waiting to see what might happen with the legislation this fall. I asked about concurrent college credits and having the state pay for them. This was something Senator Bair had told me about. I was told the students have to have all their credits for graduation earned before the state will step in and pay for the online courses for college credits. Students can do this on their own before graduation requirements are met, but the state won't pay for them.

It was asked if we have a grant writer in the school. Mr. Tubbs said some of the administration had written grants, but it didn't sound like there has been much time dedicated doing this. They are trying to get two grants to help pay the cost of the bleachers. One of these had expired before the grant was applied for and they are still waiting for word on the other. I asked if maybe this could be one area we might provide a pay for performance incentive to encourage someone to take on writing grants. I think if we had someone with the right skills writing for grants we could acquire more funding for the schools.

It was asked about the problem of not having administrators in the buildings when they were needed. The biggest problem with this issue is the lack of administrators. With Mr. Tubbs both Superintendent and Principal and Mr. Gee both Principal and Athletic Director, they can't be everywhere. This wasn't talked about a lot during general session, but I might add without going into details because it was during the executive session, that this issue was talked about a lot during executive session. We will work on some ideas that might help improve this situation. But again, it's mostly a funding issue.

I brought up the concern about some classes may be behind on the lessons because of the four day schedule, and the problem that being behind might lower ISAT scores. The administration wasn't aware of any problems with this, but I think they will check into it.

Title 1 Funding was talked about some and how this money is used. This funding comes from federal funds and has been reduced. We use most of these funds for our Aides. There was a concern brought to me that the lower grades didn't have enough Aides to always be available to help in the classroom when needed. Not having a summer school program and also not having enough Aides for the younger kids, is a big concern to me. But sad to say this is another issue where lack of funding makes it hard to improve. I don't know what has been done for sure myself, but I wonder if there would be a way to get more parents involved in the classroom to help these kids.

Common Core Standards were briefly mentioned during the meeting, and I remembered to follow up and ask more about it later. This is where several states are getting together and trying to establish common  grade level material. So a student can move to any of these states and receive the same education in whatever grade they are in. They are working on this, but I think have more to do. One concern about this is we are supposed to be on the same material, we might need to be using the same books, which would require us buying different books than we currently are using or newer books. And as you might guess books are very expensive. As far as I know, I doubt the state will also provide the funding for these new books. I hope to hear more about this as they work on it. At some point in the future the schools will go to different testing based on these Common Core Standards.

I also brought up a board training session that the ISBA is putting on August 2nd in Rigby. The topics they plan on teaching about is many of the items I have just talked about, and more. The cost is $70 each if we sign up for this soon. I think it would be very worthwhile for us to attend, and I think most of the board is now planing on going. I had been told also we qualified for some private training in our school. Mr. Tubbs will check on that also.

We are going to have a budget work session May 23 at 7:00 in the high school library. By then we should have the budget information we need to establish our budget for next year, and know how we will end up this year. I think we will need to have a serious discussion about where our funding stands, and if we need to try for another Levy to provide funding for the things we are lacking to better educate our students. If anyone would like to sit in on our committee meeting next week to better understand how our school budget works you are welcome to attend. All these meetings are open meetings to the public.

There was a first reading of a new policy update regarding Evaluation of Certified Staff. Part of it includes an evaluation from parents. There was a concern brought to me about how many of these evaluations would be put into the teacher's file and how they would be selected. There was a concern with the way it had been done it might not be fair to the teachers. There is also a problem getting evaluations from parents especally in the high school, and concern in some cases only parents with complaints would fill out an evaluation. This is all part of the new education laws that were passed last year.  I am not sure how exatly this will be changed, but there will be improvements made to this process.

I might add that other items that were brought to our attention at our cottage meeting, and in private were also discussed in depth during the executive session, that is mainly why it went so late. All I can say about these things are, you have to trust me that I want to see improvement, and will keep doing what I can to see that the other concerns brought up will improve.

Sorry this is so long I hope you made it to the end. There was a lot discussed. Thank you for your input. I got asked how I learned about some of the things I talked about, and if the concerns I brought up came from more than one person. I told them I have been getting quite a lot of input, and that some of it was generated from the blog that I write, and the fact that I respond to the input I get. I think of the board members only April reads my blog, maybe I'm wrong, but doubt it. I feel like my blog is getting read by more all the time. I think word is spreading. It is providing a way to get information out to those who can't attend the meetings, plus hopefully provide a way for those who choose to, to be able to respond. Thank you for the response. I always welcome ideas and concerns you might have. If I don't hear these things, I'm not able to help improve them. Thank you again, Brian

Reply to Anonymous Patron

I wrote a reply to this comment, but somehow it was erased. So I decided to make it a new blog so it can be seen easier.

I hope you look back and read my comments. I can understand how you might not want to identify yourself on my blog, but I wish you would email me on my school address. If you did and wanted your comments kept private, I wouldn't tell anyone who you are. It is hard to address you concerns not knowing anymore details. I don't think any student should be bullied for any reason, including differences in religious beliefs. I would hope that any teacher or administrator would stop this from happening if they saw it. But not knowing any details it is hard to know how to address your specific concerns.

When I hear comments like, accounting for past spending. I would like to ask in what ways do you think we haven't spent money appropriately? When I hear the board needs to make a lot of changes but no details are given. I would like to ask. What changes do you think we should make? If you think the board doesn't try and respond to problems that you see going on but you don't make us aware of them, what can we do?
If you can't attend board meetings, you can still contact me or the administrators or other board members. I always respond to emails.

If you have followed my past blogs, you should know some ways I have tried to change things for the better. A couple things. We now have a lot better committee structure. We meet each month and discuss things to bring to the board. We have made many cuts to save money, including going to a four day week, and laying off teachers. Adjusting to the cuts has caused some problems that we have had to deal with. There are still more adjustments to make.

Again I would welcome you comments in a private email. Thank you, Brian

Cottage Meeting April 25th

I was happy to have a good group at April's and my cottage meeting. Not counting myself there were 18 in attendance. I started out talking about my meeting with Senator Bair, which I have talked about in the previous post. I talked about not really knowing yet how our this years school budget would end up. I talked some about the things we have had to cut, like summer school, and with less teachers how we can't offer as many electives as we would like. I asked as we look forward are these the kind of things patrons would be willing to fund a Levey for. I really don't like the idea of not offering summer school anymore. I understand how summer school can help some kids get caught up in their reading skills. I know this from experience. I was young September born boy. I was also very stubborn and hated to read. I would just pretend to read in class which worked for awhile. Probably just long enough to get me behind in school. I remember having to go to summer school in Shelley to take reading lessons from Mrs. Berg. I can't remember how many years I had to do this, but it did have the desired effect on me. I am still not a big reader, but I was able to improve my skills to catch up with my class. If I hadn't had the opportunity to be in a summer reading program, I probably would have struggled all through school.

Well back to the meeting. We have three high school teachers teaching in the middle school to cover the reduced staff we have there. Because of this we can't offer as many electives as we would like to in the high school. I hope at some point we are able to receive more funding so we can provide more opportunities in the high school. If not before, I hope when the middle school bond levy expires in I think 2014, we can ask for a levy to better fund our schools. The bond is for I think $250,000 a year. That much would go a long ways toward improving our funding.

I talked some about my concerns how the online program might be harder on our budget through lost ADA funding. Having to pay someone outside our school to provide these classes. And the challenge of having someone able to help the kids with these classes.

We talked about the stories going around about someone in the high school selling prescription drugs. There were a lot of stories but not much facts. I hadn't heard anything from the school directly about this. There was some concern about if our school policies were followed dealing with this issue. But again, I didn't know so I couldn't comment. I have struggles to get information on matters like this. I think I should be well aware of these type of issues so when asked I can respond appropriately. I do have an update on this matter. I talked to Mr. Tubbs and he filled me in a lot more. My understanding is at least one student was giving some pain medication to other students that were complaining of being in pain. I don't know if any money changed hands or if the students involved truly understood how illegal this is. The police were called in, and they investigated this issue, so it's up to the authorities how this is dealt with. I would like to think this would be a good wake up call for these students, to set them straight.

There was a lot of comments about the discipline problems in mostly the middle school. Students seem to have little respect for some of the teachers and substitute teachers. There was talk of fights going on during the school day, and complaints that not much was being done about it. I won't get into a lot of  details that were brought up regarding this, but there is a growing concern among many how bad this is getting and what to do about it. There were stories how cell phone use in the high school is getting out of hand. A lot of students are texting in class, and someone said a mother called her daughter on her phone during class. The teacher would ask for the phone and the student would refuse to give it to her. There was concern that a lot of these problems were caused because of a lack of parent involvement and  the lack of discipline and respect taught from their homes. There was a discussion of ideas of how to teach kids to have more respect for others. There was also concern about what the school policies are on matters like this, and if they are followed, and if discipline is applied fairly between students. April and I plan on studying this better ourselves to see if we need to have better defined policies. There was also concern brought up how many times when a school administrator was needed to deal with these issues they were not in the building. I think most of this problem is because of the multiple duties our administrators have.

There was a suggestion that Title I money could be spent to better educate parents about discipline matters in the grades K-8. I need to understand more about this funding. I have been reading some information about the use of these funds that was sent to me. I do know this money has been cut too. I will have questions about this during our next board meeting, so I can understand how we use this fund.

There was also a concern about the school dress policy. Some were saying kids are coming to school dressed very inappropriately, and that not much was being done about this. I need to find out how the school handles this also and if we need to encourage better compliance and enforcement.

I asked about the school calendar for next year. Those present seemed to support the original plan that was presented by the calendar committee. There were many objections to the idea of going to school after Memorial Day.

There was concerns that in some classes  teachers aren't getting through the curriculum fast enough, especially math classes. Those who brought this up think it is because of not adjusting very well to the four day schedule. This is very important in many ways, one being that students need to be at a certain point in the year before they take the ISAT tests. If they are behind they won't understand all the concepts that are tested.

Another follow-up from my last post about Pay For Performance. When I talked to Mr. Tubbs, he assured me what we have done following the state plan this year is okay. There won't be an issue of not developing this plan further as a district. If we want to do our own plan which I think we do we will have to work on this pretty soon for next year. Some of what Mr. Tubbs said about this is very different than what Senator Bair said. I plan on investigating this further to better understand how this works and reconcile for myself the differences in what I was told.

During the meeting some parents expressed concern their children were not getting the proper help they need to succeed in school. They felt the school was slow to react to resolve the problems they were having. I hope this situation will improve and will try and encourage a better response to these parents.

There were a couple more things brought up in private that April and I plan on dealing with during a board executive session.

I feel like it was a good meeting and I am glad we did it. I think most present thought it was worth their time. I assured everyone we would follow-up on the concerns that were brought up. I think the input we received will provide a good board discussion at our next meeting. Thank you. Let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. Brian Esplin

My Meeting With Senator Bair

I thought since I said I would provide an update after meeting with Senator Bair, that I better get it done before I forgot a lot of what was said. I didn't take very many notes during our two and a half hour lunch and meeting. So here goes.

My wife and I met with Senator Bair and his wife at Tommy Vaughns. I had my topics for discussion broken down into two main items. The funding issues and my online concerns. I asked him if he had read the article questioning the consitutionality of the way schools are funded. He said that he had. I went over the premise that because poorer schools have to tax at a higher level than rich schools that it wasn't constitutional. First of all he disagreed with that premise. He even quoted a state supreme court case he said confirmed that it was constitutional.

I later found out after my emails I had sent him that he was so nervous to meet with me that he woke up at 4:30 and spent several hours going over things he thought I would ask him. He even printed a copy of the Students Come First Legislation and other documents to back up what he was telling me. The pile of papers he printed are at least an inch thick.

He told me how small schools get a better funding formula than large schools. He said it's because small schools without more help from state funds couldn't afford hiring all the qualified teachers we would need to  teach all the subjects that need taught. He also said that if we were funded the same as the larger schools we would probably reicieve 30% less money than we get now. But I had pointed out the difference in the tax base per student, for example Firth at $226,000 and Blaine County at $4,000,000 and said that it is a whole lot easier to fund levies for the extra funds needed, and how much less of a tax they would need to have than us. He didn't disagree.

He gave me a paper that had all the cuts in the state budget that were made over the last few years. Public education was cut 10.3% far less than many other things had been. The state budget had gone from a high of $3,000,000,000 to a low of last year at $2,250,000,000. He said they would have had to increase the sales tax 2% to make up the difference in the public education budget, and that would have been too big a burden on the state economy. I can appreciate their concern about raising the sales tax that much, but don't overlook the burden and need for schools to then have levies to fund schools. I brought up what Senator Goeddle had said in the article implying that schools should be funded okay and only need levies if they wanted to fund something extra. And how he had said "just throwing money at public schools does not result in better education". He did agree that Senator Goeddle shouldn't have said that. He mentioned how schools have had levies for a long time before this financial problem. I pointed out how that was true, but that levies were used a lot different before. Levies used to be for the extra things beyond normal funding. Things like paying coaches more and offering a lot of extra electives. Now schools use levies to just try and fund schools to maintain basic education.

On this subjet I was trying to make him understand how in the media, and especially from Tom Luna, they make it sound like they have done well with funding schools and make it look like districts just can't live within their means, and ignore the burden levies have on the community.

I then got into my concerns about the online requirements that are being implimented this next year. He is a very strong proponent of this plan, so I had a hard time convincing him any different. But he at least acknowledged my concerns. I tried explaining how it just isn't the same to have a teacher teaching an online class, compared to having a teacher teaching in the classroom. He said there will be many ways to offer online classes that are not all online, or use the system that allows the students to see the teacher and the teacher to see the students. But he did concede that it isn't the same thing.

I asked him about the reduced funding for schools and teachers to fund this program. He didn't seem to think a lot more funds had been dedicated to this, but admitted that some had. I said at least the plan was a lot better than what Mr. Luna first wanted. He wanted at first for there to be a requirement of four classes instead of two. And for there not to be allowed to have a teacher in the room while they students were taking the class, and some other crazy ideas he had. At first he wanted the students to be able to take whatever class the student chose to take, now instead the school has control of what and how the classes are taken.The Senator explained Mr. Luna was a big idea guy, but he had others around him that took his ideas and made them more workable. I talked about how his ideas sure have a way of making people mad at him, and how he seemed to have no problem reducing teachers in schools to pay for this.

I talked about how I was concerned about the average or below average student succeeding taking these classes. He said there was a remediation plan for students that struggle to do somthing different, but I don't know yet what that alternative would be.

I tried expressing my concern about how do we help these kids taking these classes with less staff, and if we were able to provide the help necessary, how does that save money. I can't remember exatly how he answered this. He went into the idea how soon, the plan was for schools to get back to the same teacher funding formula we were at before. He explained that a teacher unit used to be funded at $24,000, but because of the cuts, it was reduced to $20,000 a unit. For us this meant the loss of three teachers last year. During our conversation he talked up all they had done to restore teacher salaries back to the grid, where they actually have hope of getting a raise sometime in the future. But acknowledged how they haven't done anything yet to restore the unit funding. From what I have read most of the surplus funding at least for this next year, if there is any, will go to fund the online program. I haven't read anything other than a very small amount going to discretionary funds. He said it all depends on the economy, but by the next budget they have plans to start restoring the unit funding, so eventually we should be able to hire more teachers.

I asked him about how I thought cheating would be a major concern. He didn't really say this wouldn't happen, but he explained with how the school manages this we should be able to prevent most of it. It will be up to the district for example, to decide if we let the students take the laptops home. The method of the classes offered could help prevent cheating. He also said the computers will have a chip in the hardware not the software, to filter the content they can access or download on the computer, which sounded like a good idea. 

He said they had done piloting of this program in a few schools, I think Sugar Salem was one of them. He also referenced four big Texas school districts that had implimented an online program.

He talked with excitment with how this would be a tool for students to take conncurent college credits, and how this would save a lot of money. The state also plans on paying for the students to take these courses. The students can graduate early and start college with having earned credits for their college degree. He thinks the computers will save schools money for text books. Curriculam is a lot cheaper for a computer than buying a text book.

He did bring up some concerns for me. After the legislative session last year when they presented the pay for performance plan for the schools, we were told we needed to have a plan of how to impliment this plan. Things like how to reward hard working teachers with this money the state will give us if we meet certain state required goals. Because of the short time between finding out about this, and the time the state wanted to know what our plan would be, we were given the option of developing our own plan or going with the state plan, we were advised to go with the state plan so we did. Senator Bair said we should have submitted a detailed plan. In the state plan there is guidlines and suggestions of how to use the money, but no real plan as to axactly how this is to be done. He questioned if we haven't done this correctly, we may not even qualify for the money to be given to the school. I need to find out about this from Mr. Tubbs, but haven't had the chance yet to do so. I was given the impression from Mr. Bair that if we haven't done this right we may already be too late for this years funding. I sure hope this isn't the problem that I am afraid it is.

I also found out we should have submitted a technolgy plan. Detailing how we plan on implimenting the online program and making a request for what our needs will be for computers and the other technology we might need. He said most school districts had submitted their plans. I haven't heard anything about this yet. The administration may be working on it, but it hasn't come to the board. So good or bad, if I understood him right we won't be very high on the list for funding. He did say Snake River decided with the uncertanties with this legislation that it may be overturned by the voters this fall, they voted to not submit a plan until this issue is decided.

There was some other concerns that I need to find out about. But as I try and think of anything else, I believe that pretty much covers my conversation with Senator Bair. He said he would be happy to meet with Mr. Tubbs and talk over issues with him. He said he has never met him, and would like to. I will try and encourage them getting together. I am glad I brought my wife with me and not Mr. Tubbs. My wife had some good imput and I appriciated her support. I think we had a more open conversation, and I learned a lot more than if I had brought Mr. Tubbs. I also think I built a relationship with him. If there are other things that come up in the future, I think he would listen to what I have to say. We talked about a dairy issue that had been put aside. He said when this issue came back up I would be one of the first people he would discuss it with. So in this aspect I think it was well worth my time engaging him in a good debate over school issues.

I was going to write about the cottage meeting in this same blog, but this is very long in itself. As I am finishing, it's after 1:00 in the morning so I am tired and will try and write about the cottage meeting in the next day or two. I am going to have my wife do some editing of this, and since she was there, I will have her remind me it there is something she thinks is important that I may have left out. Thank you, Brian Esplin