Susan Skalla attended the September 17, 2008 Waterford Graded School District Growth Committee Meeting.
Here is her report....
The meeting was facilitated by Chris, a school employee, and attended by citizens, teachers and principals. The purpose of the meeting was to get input of issues from the members, prioritize the issues and submit them to the School Board. Mr. Moyer and others expressed their concerns relative to the lack of identifying a mission statement and directives from the Board.. Chris, the facilitator, acknowledged the concerns and proceeded with the format of obtaining member input. Mr. Moyer eventually left the meeting expressing his concern of being uprepared for this meeting and that it was the same being unprepared for the community meeting last summer.
Example of issues to be presented to the School Board in early October include:
Are we using facilities to full capacity?
Could we have K-8 in each elementary school?
What are current and projected enrollment numbers?
What has changed since the last meeting?
Why is there a Growth Committee?
What will a student learn with 35 square feet that they can’t learn with 30 square feet?
Would the School Board consider implementing a committee to verify data received from administration before taking action on a proposal?
Evaluating elementary boundaries, as Trailside as excess space? (This was asked by a school principal)
Before the summer community meeting, the Growth Committee had a moving plan that was shut down, why?
The Growth Committee should be an independent entity and not tainted by board members and school staff.
After a discussion of the meeting format and the facilitator’s effort to take a vote on whether the group would vote to prioritize the issues that night or schedule a meeting next week to take the vote. The response from several people was for Chris to go back to the School Board and request they give the group directives so we may form as a true committee. As others and myself expressed, the meeting was a community input meeting and did not have any elements of a committee meeting.
Chris agreed to request the Board to address the following:
What is the Growth Committee?
What is the purpose of the Growth Committee?
Confirm if the members should be independent of any school employees and board members?
Susan Skalla
2 comments:
I think the statement "The Growth Committee should be an independent entity and not "tainted" by board members and school staff." is unfair and unrealistic. Remember that those people are also taxpayers and may share the same concerns and have every right to be involved.
I agree with the initial purpose of the Taxpayers Alliance, it is important that people in the community are involved and aware of the decisions being made that affect our taxes. However, it now appears that the group is focusing more on attacking the School Board instead of looking for solutions. I sincerely hope that some of the group members who are so vocal about what they think the School Board is doing wrong will consider running for election next April. It may be easy to critize and judge what the School Board may or may not be doing; it's another thing to step up to the plate and be a part of the decision making process.
I'm sorry........I didn't see an attack in Susan's summary of the meeting.
Maybe you consider pointing out that the district representative was unprepared is an attack.....or was it the tough questions mentioned by Sue, like "Why is there a growth committee and what is its purpose?" "What are the current and projected enrollment numbers?" I don't know.....you tell us.
Asking school board members - stewards elected to represent us (the taxpayers) - tough and direct questions is not an attack. Its called holding them accountable.
By the way, we have offered MANY MANY Solutions over the last 3 months. Here are some of them.
* You don't need to build or expand, your enrollment is going down.
* Remove the teacher day care from 4 classrooms and make those classrooms available for education.
* If they need to expand (and they don't) look at adding on to Fox River or the other schools - that were designed to be added on to - rather than sell a perfectly good school with prime real estate in the middle of the school campus area.
* Some classes like Spanish, Art, etc could be held in the Gym, Library or other locations.
This group is not attacking the school board. They have done many things very well and we have a great school district.
To suggest that the WTA is attacking the school board is asinine.
We are asking questions and we are putting them on notice that they will be fully accountable to the citizens in the district and can no longer be a patsy for the administration.
John Hanrahan
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