Thursday, November 13, 2008

Ad Hoc Committee

Last night the board approved a resolution to create an Ad Hoc Committee to consider grade configuration issues in the district. The scope is laid out in the resolution:

A task force appointed by the School Board President be established to discuss the issues relating to the enrollments and grade configurations of the 4K through 8th grade schools in the Monona Grove School District. An analysis and recommendation(s) will be provided to the School Board by the end of the 2008-2009 school year. The committee to be comprised of 2 School Board members, 3 administrators, 1 staff member from the Cottage Grove elementary schools, 1 staff member from the Monona elementary schools, 4 Cottage Grove citizens, and 4 Monona citizens.


John Kitslaar also announced the committee citizen membership.


The committee agenda for yesterday's meeting can be found here:

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

It sure would be nice to get the documents this committee receives posted to the net.

Anonymous said...

Peter, can you please post the meeting agenda attachments to your blog so that the general public has information to review?

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Peter, is there a way to find a list the specific questions and the variety of solutions that the board is discussing? Thank you.

Anonymous said...

I am worried about this committee turning itself into a forum for public comment.

Why is someone using a gmail email to gather comment? Are thee emails public records and can we all see them? Will the ocmmittee consider anonymous emails? Why is the CG PTO maintaining a webpage on the topic? Shouldn't the info given to the public be on a district wide webpage? Did the committee itself agree on this process for gathering input or is this being done by just a few members? The above post does not make that clear and it is not signed. Is it from the committee or from an individual? I am confused. Maybe this committee needs to step back and first talk about how, when and where they will be communicating with the public?

Anonymous said...

Weird, I was always told that PTO is NOT to be invovled in political type of things.

I am happy to c it has changed.

Anonymous said...

I think the Cottage Grove PTO thing is weird too-- Peter, please explain. Although when I went to the page, it was not political at all, just the mandate of the committee and the list of folks. So, that seems fair.

Also, why are the minutes of the last two meetings not posted. I understand that the minutes from the Nov meeting have to be approved at the December meeting, but can't they be posted on the district website as tentative until that time. It is mentioned that there are 21 solutions, but no list.

Seems to me that the district could easily link an information blog to the school district website for comments- not anonymous- about this topic. They could just go to the commitee. Then it would not appear to be run by one community or the other....

Anonymous said...

In the past, I discovered that political has been defined as informing citizens that there is a change in policy, process and that a process exists.

I am happy to see there is a change in policy.

Peter Sobol said...
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Peter Sobol said...

I removed the comment above about the committee because it requested comments to an email address but did not identify by whom these emails would be received. It implied that this is related to the committee but provided no identifying information. If the commentor would please contact me with identifying information I will be happy to repost the information if appropriate.

As far as the CG PTO's involvement, a quick check of their website shows this is purely basic information about the committee that is reproduced from the district website. This is just information, not advocacy, and is a perfectly appropriate role for a PTO to play.

Anonymous said...

I think this committee needs to be more organized in its communication strategy or this whole think has a huge chance of tanking. The post you removed was likely from a committee member, but if individual committee members are off doing their own thing this could derail the process. Fine for PTO to post stuff, but better yet for the district to maintain a web page with all the documents and info.

Anonymous said...

"This is just information, not advocacy, and is a perfectly appropriate role for a PTO to play."

Peter-it appears the e-mail is from CG PTO.

Anonymous said...

"This is just information, not advocacy, and is a perfectly appropriate role for a PTO to play."

Peter-it appears the e-mail is from CG PTO.

Peter Sobol said...

I talked to the author of the Email and it was not from the PTO, nor did the author post it, or intend for it to be posted here. It was posted here by an unknown third party who has yet to identify themselves.

Anonymous said...

"I removed the comment above about the committee because it requested comments to an email address but did not identify by whom these emails would be received"

Well, now that you know who wrote it-what does it hurt to post it again?