I have some updated information since our board meeting that I wanted to post. As you know from my last post about our discussion on the field trips, I didn't like how this decision was made and thought the board should have had input. I called ISBA (Idaho School Board Association) and asked if the board should have discussed this issue and made the decision about field trips and not had the policy changed by the Superintendent. I found out my thinking was right we as a board should have decided this. In the Idaho code for responsibilities of board members it says. The board of trustees of each school district shall have the following powers and duties. Under the list of duties at no. 12 it says. To supervise and regulate, including by contract with established entities, those extracurricular activities which are by definition outside of or in addition to the regular academic courses or curriculum of a public school, and which extracurricular activities shall not be considered to be a property, liberty or contract right of any student, and such extracurricular activities shall not be deemed a necessary element of a public school education, but shall be considered to be a privilege.
After finding this out I decided to call Bart Cook the board chairman. I explained what I found out and requested this issue be put on our next board meeting agenda on November 10th so we can discuss this in open session and get public comment. As I said in my last post I have a dairy board meeting and convention on that date and didn't think I would be able to attend. Since this came up I will miss the end of that meeting and come home in time to be at school board meeting.
Since the board meeting I have talked to some patrons and a couple of teacher about this issue. I was told by them they were told having no more field trips was a board decision, which it was not. I didn't know this had been changed until the day of our last board meeting.
I also found out the PTO fundraiser they had at the beginning of the school year raised about $3500 and they had intended to give most of this money to the school to help pay for the field trips.
I have some ideas that I want to propose at the board meeting. One is to have the school district budget committee, which I am on review the field trips, discuss each one they have had in the past, consider if they are appropriate, the cost, and ways to fund them, and to decide if they should be modified to do something less expensive. Then after their review, present what they decided back to the board to make the final decision. Another idea is to have the committee work with the PTO and others to determine what money there is available for field trips, ways to raise more money without putting a burden on the patrons, then give each grade a certain amount of money for field trips. From there the class teachers working with some interested parents can decide what field trips or activities to spend their allotted amount of money on. I feel an approach like this should be acceptable to most patrons.
You can ask my wife and she could tell you I don't always remember things like I should, but I do remember some of the field trips I went on in Firth elementary school over 40 years ago, and I would bet if you asked old timers like me what they can remember from their elementary years, I would bet going on some of the same field trips would be a big part of those memories.
I don't have a list of the field trips they have gone on in the past. I talked to April about this issue and she is going to get a list, and what the cost has been in the past from the school so we can go over this at the board meeting.
I would encourage anyone interested in voicing their opinion, or just to hear more about this issue, come to the November board meeting. If anyone would like to talk to me about this issue or any other send me any email or give me a call. Thank you, Brian
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Friday, October 14, 2011
October 13th School Board Meeting
This was another very poorly attended meeting. I think counting the administrators, and newspaper reporters there were fifteen people in attendance. Maybe there are some that would have come that are still in the potato harvest. Maybe it's a good sign that patrons think things are going good and don't feel the need to come. Or lastly maybe there are those out there that just like to wait for my blog to tell them what happened and that's good enough. It does make me wonder why we have the meetings in the high school auditorium with so few in attendance.
Well here goes my summary.
We approved the audit report that was presented at our last meeting. As I said last time the auditor was very pleased with how things looked, and thought our business manager did a great job with the financial records.
Jeff Gee presented some results of a survey that is on the district web site about the interest the students might have in wanting to have other sports or activities that are not currently offered in our school. It is a good survey but so far there has not been much response to it yet. I would encourage everyone to have a look at it. This was done mostly with the idea in mind if there was interest in starting a girls soccer team. There was a couple girls that went to Aberdeen to participate with their team and they had a lot of fun and did well there, but the families would much prefer having a soccer program in Firth. Later in the patron comment period Paul Jensen presented some information about the idea of having a soccer team. He said he himself had a list of 19 girls in high school that would be interested in having a soccer team. There is no 2A soccer program in the state so if we had a program they would compete with the 3A teams. North Fremont and Aberdeen have 2A teams now that compete against the 3A teams. The most that can be on a team is 18 so it sounds like there is enough interest in soccer to consider starting a team. There had been concern that this would hurt cross country, but Mr. Jensen said he talked to a coach and he said in some ways it would help the cross country. In North Fremont the soccer team basically is the cross country team. Another concern that came up and kind of leads to the next item of discussion is that the only place big enough to have a soccer field is behind the elementary.
The cemetery board presented a proposal to the board to buy some ground, up to .66 acres, the school owns by the cemetery so they can expand the cemetery. They don't have any more plots to sell, and are having a hard time coming up with more ground to expand on. One of my concerns is if we sell them the ground, will it make it so we wouldn't have enough room for a soccer field. They offered to pay somewhere between $3000 and $5000 for the property depending on the size we would sell them. Later in the public comment period there was some comments made in support for us selling them the property. We discussed this issue in executive session. After our discussion and when we went back into general session, we decided we need more public input and needed to know if this would interfere with a soccer field, we will discuss this more next month and would like to know what patrons think about this. Another issue in having a soccer field that I didn't mention is it would mess up the AYSO fields also, so they would have to be moved somewhere too. At the end of her presentation about buying the property for the cemetery she mentioned they could acquire the land by eminent domain. I think the threat of that kind of bothered some of us. I hope a resolution can be found without going that far.
We discussed the school board meeting procedure and changed it a little from the draft so we will vote on it next month. I think it is a good plan that most patrons can support. When it is approved it will be posted so all can read it at the meetings.
We went over our school board goals again. April thought we needed to emphasize that our number one goal is to provide the best education to the students as possible, and I agreed with her so they are changing the list a little and adding another item so it to will be discussed again next month.
We went over a couple first readings of board policy changes. One requiring those wishing to run for the school board to have the ballots in nine weeks before the election instead of five that it used to be. And another policy about providing public records to those who request them.
We then had public comment which I already talked about. One other concern was a request to get feed back sooner on the four day week. I think they will try and get some feed back at the parent teacher conference coming up.
We then went into executive session and discussed the cemetery proposal and Mr. Tubbs goals.
After we went back into general session a few more items were discussed. I asked how many students we got from open enrollment the administrators thought 15. I asked if there were any issues with these students, and I think so far it has been positive without any problems, which was good to hear because I know there was concern we would have problems. I was always a strong supporter of open enrollment, as long as we followed the guidelines set up by the administration.
One last issue that I brought up was the change made regarding field trips. I had heard and it was confirmed at the meeting that the school will no longer have any field trips even if they were able to get donations to go on them. The only field trips allowed will be educational field trips that directly relate to the class work, like the FCCLA or BPA might need to go on. I wasn't aware of this change until it was told to me by a patron. The explanation given by Mr. Tubbs was it wasn't fair to some groups to go on field trips that could get donations and not let others go on them that couldn't get the money. He is concerned also with the four day week, having kids miss class time. And also he thinks that is what the patrons want. He thinks failing to pass two levies in part meant patrons thought spending money on activities like field trips was a waste of money, and patrons didn't like the idea of groups asking for money for field trips. He said things can be brought into the school but students would not leave. I can understand his concerns on some of these issues, but I strongly disagreed going this far. I especially have a hard time denying the elementary students going on their year end field trips. I wish this could have been brought up sooner for discussion, and we would have been allowed input into this change. I do want to emphasize this is my opinion, I do not speak for anyone else. The school used to get funding from the state to support field trips, but that was completely dropped last year. I do hope sometime in the future the state will better fund schools and some of this type of funding can be restored.
Well it is late and I again have said a lot more than I thought I would. If you have and questions or comments let me know. Thank you. Brian
P.S. I may not be able to attend the next board meeting. I have a state dairy board convention going on the night of the next meeting. So if you are one that just waits for me to write my blog to find out what went on at the meeting, next time you probably better go and find out first hand what is said.
Well here goes my summary.
We approved the audit report that was presented at our last meeting. As I said last time the auditor was very pleased with how things looked, and thought our business manager did a great job with the financial records.
Jeff Gee presented some results of a survey that is on the district web site about the interest the students might have in wanting to have other sports or activities that are not currently offered in our school. It is a good survey but so far there has not been much response to it yet. I would encourage everyone to have a look at it. This was done mostly with the idea in mind if there was interest in starting a girls soccer team. There was a couple girls that went to Aberdeen to participate with their team and they had a lot of fun and did well there, but the families would much prefer having a soccer program in Firth. Later in the patron comment period Paul Jensen presented some information about the idea of having a soccer team. He said he himself had a list of 19 girls in high school that would be interested in having a soccer team. There is no 2A soccer program in the state so if we had a program they would compete with the 3A teams. North Fremont and Aberdeen have 2A teams now that compete against the 3A teams. The most that can be on a team is 18 so it sounds like there is enough interest in soccer to consider starting a team. There had been concern that this would hurt cross country, but Mr. Jensen said he talked to a coach and he said in some ways it would help the cross country. In North Fremont the soccer team basically is the cross country team. Another concern that came up and kind of leads to the next item of discussion is that the only place big enough to have a soccer field is behind the elementary.
The cemetery board presented a proposal to the board to buy some ground, up to .66 acres, the school owns by the cemetery so they can expand the cemetery. They don't have any more plots to sell, and are having a hard time coming up with more ground to expand on. One of my concerns is if we sell them the ground, will it make it so we wouldn't have enough room for a soccer field. They offered to pay somewhere between $3000 and $5000 for the property depending on the size we would sell them. Later in the public comment period there was some comments made in support for us selling them the property. We discussed this issue in executive session. After our discussion and when we went back into general session, we decided we need more public input and needed to know if this would interfere with a soccer field, we will discuss this more next month and would like to know what patrons think about this. Another issue in having a soccer field that I didn't mention is it would mess up the AYSO fields also, so they would have to be moved somewhere too. At the end of her presentation about buying the property for the cemetery she mentioned they could acquire the land by eminent domain. I think the threat of that kind of bothered some of us. I hope a resolution can be found without going that far.
We discussed the school board meeting procedure and changed it a little from the draft so we will vote on it next month. I think it is a good plan that most patrons can support. When it is approved it will be posted so all can read it at the meetings.
We went over our school board goals again. April thought we needed to emphasize that our number one goal is to provide the best education to the students as possible, and I agreed with her so they are changing the list a little and adding another item so it to will be discussed again next month.
We went over a couple first readings of board policy changes. One requiring those wishing to run for the school board to have the ballots in nine weeks before the election instead of five that it used to be. And another policy about providing public records to those who request them.
We then had public comment which I already talked about. One other concern was a request to get feed back sooner on the four day week. I think they will try and get some feed back at the parent teacher conference coming up.
We then went into executive session and discussed the cemetery proposal and Mr. Tubbs goals.
After we went back into general session a few more items were discussed. I asked how many students we got from open enrollment the administrators thought 15. I asked if there were any issues with these students, and I think so far it has been positive without any problems, which was good to hear because I know there was concern we would have problems. I was always a strong supporter of open enrollment, as long as we followed the guidelines set up by the administration.
One last issue that I brought up was the change made regarding field trips. I had heard and it was confirmed at the meeting that the school will no longer have any field trips even if they were able to get donations to go on them. The only field trips allowed will be educational field trips that directly relate to the class work, like the FCCLA or BPA might need to go on. I wasn't aware of this change until it was told to me by a patron. The explanation given by Mr. Tubbs was it wasn't fair to some groups to go on field trips that could get donations and not let others go on them that couldn't get the money. He is concerned also with the four day week, having kids miss class time. And also he thinks that is what the patrons want. He thinks failing to pass two levies in part meant patrons thought spending money on activities like field trips was a waste of money, and patrons didn't like the idea of groups asking for money for field trips. He said things can be brought into the school but students would not leave. I can understand his concerns on some of these issues, but I strongly disagreed going this far. I especially have a hard time denying the elementary students going on their year end field trips. I wish this could have been brought up sooner for discussion, and we would have been allowed input into this change. I do want to emphasize this is my opinion, I do not speak for anyone else. The school used to get funding from the state to support field trips, but that was completely dropped last year. I do hope sometime in the future the state will better fund schools and some of this type of funding can be restored.
Well it is late and I again have said a lot more than I thought I would. If you have and questions or comments let me know. Thank you. Brian
P.S. I may not be able to attend the next board meeting. I have a state dairy board convention going on the night of the next meeting. So if you are one that just waits for me to write my blog to find out what went on at the meeting, next time you probably better go and find out first hand what is said.
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