CCSD 46 Board Notes 1/16/2007

Below are my notes from the January 16^th school board meeting. As always please send me any corrections or additions and my comments are in [italics].

Keith Surroz was not present.

Public Comment

• Beth
  • Wants band and choir restored
  • Employment aids stability
  • Opens door for those of lower socioeconomic status
• Carol
  • Restore band and chorus to what it was 3 years ago
  • D127 has a fine arts requirement
  • Limiting now because of cost
  • Restore for all
• Maria
  • Restore band and chorus
• [I decided not to speak at the meeting and to share my thoughts here instead.
  • The cost being paid by parents is less than parents pay at some local private schools.
  • Band and chorus were cut by the previous board as a tactic to intimidate parents to vote for a referendum. This board restored band and chorus as an extracurricular activity at a reasonable cost.
  • Band and chorus are not for every student. The cost to restore this will cost over $200,000 that could be spent to help all students instead of a small percentage of them.
  • Band instruments do not have to rented, they can be purchased via ebay, local music stores and other parents selling used instruments. Personally, I have bought my kids instruments at greatly reduced prices (10%, 32%, 20%) using these techniques.
  • To help those who do need financial assistance, start a music boosters club. The high school boosters are willing to help start this.

  ]

Superintendent/Board Reports

• Jill Rohrer
  • Attended the assembly at the Middle School
  • Appreciates music
  • Supports the arts
• Sue Facklam
  • Wished everyone a Happy New Year
• Mark Hannon
  • Nothing at this time
• Karen Wienert
  • Nothing at this time
• Cheryl Davis
  • Attended the assembly at the Middle School
  • Neat to see school spirit
  • Impressed with the student behavior
• Superintendent Correll
  • Showed off calendar with pictures by students at Frederick and Middle schools
  • Correction to the Daily Herald article about the bonds. Said the comment about board not following procedures was incorrect. Stated there were other incorrect statements as well and was taking those up with the paper. [I had already pointed out some corrections to the article here.]
  • Need decision about class size in February so administration could figure our staffing
  • Publicly thanked Kristen for calling the board about school furniture. John Lubrich had already visited and was taking a truck to pick up furniture soon. [This is being donated from the old Brainerd school.]
  • 83 Showdown will be Feb. 6
  • Union fee negotiations next year [I am not sure exactly what this is. If you know, please contact me with the explanation.]
• Kristen Coe-Peek
  • Thanked Shawn Oakley for contacting her with the donation of the furniture.

New Business

• Carl Baxmeyer Presentation
  • Geocoded all the addresses they could; problems with spellings, etc. [They could have gotten the remainder of the address geocoded by utilizing the GIS department of Lake County]
  • Discussed several options about who would attend Madrona [This has been FOIA'ed.]

  Option	Go to Madrona	Stay in Current School	From Area
  1	619	686	1
  2	640	665	1, 2
  3	879	426	1, 2, 4
  4	937	368	1, 3
  5	751	554	1, 2 (K-4) 1,2,4 (5-8)

  • Option 5 provides the most relief in 5-8 and least impact
  • Jill – Can this be put on the website so the community can see this? Without it they don’t have any input.
  • Sue – No
  • Cheryl – No
  • [Why won't the district put this information on their website? Why don't they want input from the public? If the district is only going to look at the Prairieview area, this is a pretty simple task. This could be easily done in Excel. The software being used by Fanning & Howey is overkill and cumbersome for this task it appears.]
• Technology Report (View the presentation)
  • [These are some of the comments made that were not in the presentation]
  • Utlrakey is used starting at third grade
  • Had to restart all database entry on August 21st. Powerschool database was corrupt and could not be recovered. [Why was there no backup? Why was it setup this way? A backup is one of the first tasks that should be setup. Was anyone held accountable for this failure?]
  • 838 computers installed and functioning; network more stable because of the OSX upgrade
  • Did a live video chat with Lori Abrahams
  • Students creating Podcasts [Might be cool for the students, but is the helpful for them in learning the basic education subjects to prepare them for later life? I would venture to say that none of these kids will ever be able to make a living off of making podcasts.]
  • Rob Depke
    • Has a masters in Library Science
    • Had a budget this year for the first time in 3 years [So the board is putting more money back into the schools without the need of the last referendum. The library is also something that affects all students in the school and should be a higher priority than paying for band and choir.]
    • Need to purchase library automation software for Madrona
  • Introduced Superintendent Correll’s blog
  • District website now has a page for each school and a Community Partners page
  • Jill – Thanked the Tech Committee, Dan and Ellen

• Band/Choir Discussion
  • Ellen – Take 3.5 – 4 FTE to bring back band and chorus (65 K per FTE)[$227,500 - $260,000]
  • Jill – If added back, what will happen with Science Olympiad and sports?
  • Ellen – Nothing since High School does not require credits for those.
  • Jill
    • Maybe have 5-6 pay as you go, 7-8 by the district
    • High School may be fee based
    • Other districts make extracurriculas pay as you go
    • Not opposed, but it doesn’t affect all 4000 students
    • PMA coming in Feb., need to get questions to Dan about this
    • Need to make sure budget would be balanced for the next 2 years
  • Ellen – Will get info
  • Sue – Important to bring back, but concerned that it won’t be able to sustain with sustainable revenue and not interest
  • Jill – North pays subsidy to Central for woodworking, what about something similar
  • Ellen – Looking at sports, it is cost prohibitive; Madrona will be in a different league
  • Ellen – Madrona principal interviews on Friday and hoepfully on agenda for first or second Feb. meeting
  • Cheryl – PMA discussion at next meeting

• Architect Results/Choice Discussion
  • Arcon #1
  • Ruck Pate, Fanning and Howey, Gil-Cohen were even
  • Cheryl – “Is everybody okay with that?” [Her tone was dismay at the results and not at all what she expected]
  • Jill – Comfortable with Arcon
  • Jill and Sue – wanted to keep private concerns expressed only to the board and not in public
  • Cheryl – Action item at the next meeting

• Naming of New School Choices
  • Choices were Skyview, Parkview, Springline, Campbell, Park East & West (Suggested before the meeting by Amanda Schoenberg, Prairieview Principal)
  • Cheryl – Parkview
  • Sue – Campbell, Park East & West
  • Karen – Skyview, Campbell, Park East & West
  • Mark – Parkview, Park East & West; worried about zipcode and school name
  • Kristen – Skyview, Campbell, Park East & West
  • Jill – Skyview, Campbell, Park East & West

• Curriculum Update – Lynn Barkley
  • Gave Language Arts pilot update; going well
  • District Report Card will be in paper in February
  • Still shoing warning becuase of second year, but all schools passed
  • Science and Math rollout in Feb.; will be available to the public
  • Jill – How will you get meaningful answers and information from parents about pilot?
  • Ask generic questions only; will get the board the survey [How does asking generic questions of parents with students in the pilot get useful information back on the pilot's performance. If there is not true scientific study results, the pilot is nothing more than a feel good way of pushing a progrm into the district whether it works or not.]
  • Kristen – What happens if there is negative feedback?
  • Only gotten 1 negative comment so far
  • If all came back bad, they would change
  • Most k-4 programs are very similar, so the final choice may come down to cost [If they are only looking at curricula that is similar, how can they make an informed decision. There are alternative curricula out there that has been scientific tested. Visit the Illinois Loop for more information on the types of curricula available.]

• Class Size Discussion
  • Ellen – Recommendations in the board packet
  • Kristen – Most efficient to put this into the PMA discussion
  • Sue – Make sure classroom space to accomodate the size; will we add a section if the numbers come out to a fraction?
  • Jill – Contract has a range (In memorandum of understanding)
  • Ellen – K-2 (22)
  • Kristen – Can PMA do scenarios (Ellen – yes)
  • Mark – Should we have a PMA meeting only? (Sue agreed)
  • Ellen – Workshop; need to decide on issues sooner than last meeting in Feb.
  • Sue – Option 2 (Cheryl) – Have PMA on Feb 5th and action on 12th
  • Ellen – Will try to get PMA soomer if possible [PMA meeting held 1/25/2007]

• Board Packet Discussion
  • Karen – Likes hardcCopy
  • Cheryl – Likes hard copy, want to take notes on it
  • Sue – she prints some already – Action, New Business
  • Kristen & Jill – like electronic format
  • Jill – Keep electronic format, order copies to be printed if needed
  • Mark – fine the way it is
  • Jill – Discuss sharing board packets with the the public (future agenda item)
  • [I sent a letter to Superintendent Correll requesting the board look at the current board policy and allow the public to see the board packets before the meetings. This was last October and I did not receive a response. I sent a copy of the letter and a new request to the entire board this time. Again, I reiterated my offer to give them my script to link the board packets on their website. I still have not received an official response about my free script offer. The future agenda item is the only action to this point. I am amazed sometime by the lack of transparency. Until such time as the board wants to be transparent, I will keep provinding the board packets at D46News.com.]

• Enrollment
  • + 135 since last year

• Agenda Items
  • Band & Chorus
  • Architect
  • Gifted
  • PMA
  • Action – Scoll Board policy (Sue & Jill would like to see the changes made to review)
  • Boundaries
  • Classroom Size

• Future Agenda
  • Vision
  • Board Packets for Public
  • Board Minutes [The current minutes are not indepth. The tape quality is never good. All of this seems to be on purpose to keep information down and to allow backtracking later. It is a shame that community members provide better notes to the public than the public bodies themselves.]

• Public Comment
  • Ursula A
    • Encouraged lower class size above K-2
    • Look at studies to see impact if size drops from 34 to 27 [I have asked for a copy of these studies]
  • Mike L – What is the cost benefit analysis of the technology program