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
Friday, August 24, 2012
Saturday, August 11, 2012
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
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
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