Oct. 13 meeting, the late update

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October 17, 2010 by pastperfecthistories

So sorry I’m late getting to this. I get sad when I see the blog stats spike from people obviously wondering what happened and where am I? Busy. Sigh.

But, better late than never, right?

To backtrack, Sat., Oct. 9 the board (minus an ill board Pres. Kitt Ceronie) had a retreat where we discussed district issues and set goals for the year. Needless to say, it was a needed meeting where we could all just talk and hash out ideas.  It went fantastically. If all parents were like those that serve on our board, kids would all do great in school. We did talk about how to MAKE parents be more involved, but alas, that isn’t a problem we can figure out how to solve.  If you’ve got ideas, we’re open.  But, our goals for this year:

1.  Select a stellar superintendent.  2.  Increase mastery-level passing on all state assessment test.  3. Restore pride in MMCS.  (We figure a lot of stuff falls under that last one including increased communication with the community and other government entities…)

I’m excited to see how the year goes and how everyone — the board, staff, teachers, parents — can help us meet those goals!

Ah the meeting…meeting, meeting, meeting…

1.  We had an audit.  Audits are one of those seriously important things that are about as exciting as watching paint dry, seriously.  Unless, of course, there’s a problem. Fortunately for us, there were no glaring problems. We are actually in decent financial shape, I think to the large credit of our business administratorCarolyn Benedict.  Trust me when I say the financial situation looming for the state (slashed aid to schools, property tax caps) will hit us hard. But hopefully, we’ll be able to weather it better than most for a while.  Hopefully?

2.  As you recall, we hired BOCES to conduct our Superintendent search.  This week, Dr. Glover & Co. brought us a schedule that sees the new superintendent on starting July 1, 2011.  I actually like that start time. Ed Orman is doing a great job as an interim and having his consistency through the year, I think, will be good for the school.  Look in the MM Shopper and the school website for a survey of needs to fill out. This survey asks a variety of questions that will be used to aid the search such as, “What are the three most essential experiential considerations in hiring a superintendent? and What, in your opinion, is the single greatest need of Mt. Morris Central School?”  There are six questions and we’d appreciate all the feedback we can get.  Hopefully, the form will be up on the website soon since it is due Nov. 1.  The schedule has some data compiling and staff and board meetings through November and then collecting applications and resumes through March 4.  That seemed like a long time to me, but there are holidays and budget sessions in there, so perhaps it’s for the best.  March gets crazy with applicant screening, the board narrowing the applicants to six semi-finalists and then questions and community stakeholder groups formed and doing interviews and on and on and on.   The schedule hasn’t been set in stone, but when it is, I’ll ask that it gets posted.

I think one of the most important parts of this process is the community/staff involvement. Dr. Glover is fond of reminding us that at the end of the day, board members are elected and it is our obligation and ours alone to choose the next superintendent. For the record: I understand that. I’d still like to have as much involvement as possible.  At our retreat, we kicked around the idea of having one large stake holder group composed of parents, teachers, staff and administrators, the idea being that a candidate would not be able to tailor an answer to a specific group and that together, those people would see a candidate through different eyes.  Dr. Glover pointed out we could not have as many people involved in that case.  Board member Laurie Howe suggested rather than just having a group of parents or teachers having several different groups with a mixed membership.  I kind of like that idea, but we have until the end of February to stress about that.  However, we did discuss in our retreat allowing a member of each committee to report their findings to the board, and I’m excited about each group having their voice — not just a survey — be heard.

Going a step further, Dr. Glover told us about a search they did in Brockport where the community was involved even more, in a way that I actually like.  On our calendar, the Board actually sits down and narrows the candidate pool to the top six or seven candidates. In Brockport, the Board actually had representatives of its stakeholder groups in on that level of selection.  Obviously, I like that idea.  So, we’ll see how  it goes…

2.  After years of haggling, the school district and village reached an agreement on repairs and upkeep of the baseball fields at Bellamy Park.  The fields needed work. In fact, a soil analysis on the field read “this is one of the worst infield mix results that he had ever seen.”  At any rate, the school and village will be splitting 50/50 the material cost to repair the fields and will use labor from both village public works and the school’s building and grounds crew to make the immediate repairs and ongoing maintenance for at least the next decade.  Cost to the district:  Just under $3,200 for the clay and field saver materials.  What a deal, eh? (Kudos to Ed Orman for getting this deal done.)  I don’t know how to express board member Monica Brill’s joy at this deal going through.  She gets to sit through baseball games this year without eating dust or having to wash her car afterward, and I suppose if I were her, I’d be pretty excited, too.

3.  I’m super excited about this!!  You may recall I wrote about the possibility of adding a second after-school bus that would allow an extra day of detention AND the addition of tutoring services for students in need of help.   HS Principal Mark Valentino has been working on the project. He said they’re hoping to make it mandatory for students — perhaps in all grade levels — with grades under 70%.  He is working to arrange tutors from SUNY Geneseo. He also said an alum from the class of 1961 said their class may make a donation to the project, which Mr. Valentino suggested could be used to provide transportation for the SUNY volunteers.  Basically, the details are all being ironed out, but as soon as they are, we’ll have a tutoring program up at the school!  Cost to the district for a year:  $5,040 for the bus. (If you’re curious where the money for this and the baseball fields is coming from, we had budgeted $30,000 for a building condition survey that ended up only costing us about $5,000.  Money saved = money for this important stuff.)

4.  We (and by “we” I mean Mr. Orman and Mr. Mike Murray) wrapped up the plans to open our fitness room to the community.  The hours will be limited, there are rules and there will be a small fee. But we hope it will fill the void some people felt in losing our community exercise center.

It will be open Mon.-Thurs. from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. and Sat. from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Sept.-June. Summer hours may change.  The room will be closed Fridays, Sundays, legal holidays and all school vacation days, etc.  Cost will be $1 per person per visit or $75 for a whole school year, unlimited use. Other rules are pretty typical: wear exercise clothes, don’t wear muddy sneakers. And, thank you insurance company, everyone must  sign an assumption of risk form and have their doctor sign a medical clearance form.  That’s the in-a-nutshell version.  Questions? I defer to Mr. Murray.

5.  We are also hiring another special ed teacher. I know, we cut one from the budget last year to balance it. I asked the same question. As you know, special education is very expensive.  We apparently had money set aside to send a student to a different location and just realized it would be a better use of the same money to keep that student (and a few others) in-house.  I’m always concerned about where the money comes from and in this case, it was budgeted. It’s just being used to hire a person rather than to transport one.

6. Finally, Mr. Murray announced the inductees this year to the school’s athletic hall of fame. (I will apologize up front if I spelled any of these incorrectly.  I did ask, but I’m nervous about a few.)

Being inducted during the Dec. 10 game against Perry will be:

Chuck Fowler, Class of 1976; Jim Gulesano, Class of 1981; Anthony Merola, coach in the 1950s; Gary Better, Class of 1967; and Nicole Geitner, Class of 1991.

And that’s really it…for this week.