School Board Meeting 10/26/2021
The school board met last night and discussed strategic planning, budgeting, and the recent racial harassment issues at the high school. One common element throughout the discussions was the board’s recognition of the need to engage various groups in systematic feedback via mechanisms like separate climate surveys for students, parents, and staff that ask questions relevant to each group. This has been something I have been promoting during my campaign, as well. It is incredibly important for the board to have a broad understanding of the situation on the ground in order to make informed decisions and to evaluate how effective policies have been, and I’m glad there is more focus on that issue.
The budget surplus that was reported in September is planned to be spent on staff bonuses. Recognizing the efforts of our staff is extremely important, and providing a one-time salary increment goes some way towards that. Like many of you, I have heard from staff that they are burnt out. For the mental health of our staff and for staff retention, it is extremely important to find creative ways to address this problem, but bonuses are certainly a start. Greg Anderson (no relation) asked whether any other alternatives related to reducing the burden on staff were considered (particularly around increasing the substitute pool (see discussion timestamped below)). While some Covid funds have already been allocated to address academic and emotional/mental health struggles in students (e.g. one math specialist and one counselor through 2024), I would also have liked to see more discussion on whether some of the surplus could be productively used for more direct immediate support of students.
The discussion around anti-harassment was a good start to addressing some of the issues recently experienced at the high school. We all need to do our part. See the timestamp below for more info.
Timestamps:
- Beginning of visioning session with Ed Elements
- Discussion of indicators of success for students and staff (retention was mentioned by multiple board members when discussing indicators of success with staff, also trying to get more holistic measures of student success)
- Discussion of what “IB for all” means
- Discussion of measuring success in students
- Discussion of the needs and concerns about emotional and mental health among staff and students
- Discussion of fiscal transparency
- Discussion of recruitment and retention (exit interviews and climate surveys mentioned)
- Discussion of what immediate change board members desire
- Legislative advocacy and priorities (a bit detailed to excerpt, but pushing for the restoration of state funding for support staff (e.g. assistant principals and para-professionals) was discussed)
- Pandemic funding requests (here’s the document; big ticket items for the future include hiring 2 clinical psychologists for 4 years and HVAC improvements)
- Employee salary enhancements (document) ($2000 bonuses for staff and long-term hourly employees with half of that dispersed in December and half in March)
- Substitute discussion: substitute pool is utilized at an average daily amount of 17 percent. Dr. Noonan said that this suggests we have way more substitutes than we need, but that they just are not taking the jobs. Covid seems to be one of the main reasons given (especially at the elementary level) for not taking a substitute opportunity. Dr. Noonan said the schools just sent out a survey to our substitutes so that the schools understand the situation better.
- Monthly budget monitoring report (y’all need to stop when the buses are picking up kids; as of the end of September, the schools have collected $25,200 from violations)
- DEI discussion (included discussion around hate speech, instituting a more regular climate survey, communicating with students and wider community more clearly)
