December board meeting wrap-up

In the public appearances section of the meeting MGEA representative Kevin Mikelbank noted that in consideration of the status of the ongoing negotiations the teacher's union has suspended their "work to the contract" job action, and that teachers would now participate in activities such as writing student letters of recommendation.

Update: I misinterpreted Kevin's remarks above.  Although teachers will now write letters of recommendation they are continuing other aspects of the "work to the contract" job action

After the remaining preliminaries, the board heard first from PMA financial consultants who perform a 5 year budget forecast for the district each year.  This year's preliminary model assumes zero enrollment growth and $200/year increase in the revenue cap - in all likelihood we will see a smaller increase.  Even so, the preliminary projections show a deficit that increases $700K to $1M each of the next five years, and unless a miracle occurs in the state budget process it will quite probably be worse.  Ugh.
Two other financial items were on the table last night: 
The annual audit report from the firm of Rielly, Penner & Benton LLC.  Again we received an "unqualified opinion" -indicating a clean audit with no significant discrepancies or issues.
The second item was the overpayments made in the last two years to some of the teaching staff.  It was reported that a total of 45 teaching staff were overpaid a total of $27K over the last two years, and 8 retirees a total of about $4500.  The problem relates to calculations of longevity as they were effected by a negotiated one time "step freeze" to salaries in the 90's.  The overpayments were the district's mistake:  both the paychecks and the salary information sheet distributed to the teachers were incorrect.  The error was brought to the administration's attention by one of the teacher.  The board agreed to not pursue recovery of the overpayments, considering the relatively small amounts involved, the fact that it was a district error and costs and effort to recoup.

The board heard not one but two presentations from Deb Lyons (perhaps the hardest working person in the district"?).  The first was a rundown, with Christa Macomber on ongoing continuous improvement efforts in each building in the district, including discussion of academic and behavioural issues with data and goals. 

Deb's second presentation concerned a proposal for a consulting agreement with Brenda Clark and Matthew Fail to provide assistance in "implementing a systems approach to continual improvement focused on strategic planning at all levels of the district."  The proposal, which includes a plan and timeline for the next 18 months include all levels in the district in training and implementation of plan driven continuous improvement processes.  The total cost of the proposal is about $50K and would be funded out of already budgeted professional development funds and revenue from the district's recent "Aligned by Design" training sessions that attracted participants from around the area.

Brenda Clark is Author of "Running all the Red Lights, A Journey of Statewide Educational Reform", and former Associate Superintendent for Education at Iredell-Statesville School District in North Carolina (where she once held the title of Chief Quality Officer!).  Brenda has already participated in training sessions in the district and has our confidence.   I support this proposal because it provides a definitive timeline and goals, and provides access to significant expertise that we will need to get these things done.

The board also discussed disposition of the Monona school properties.  As you know, we will be voting on the proposal for consolidating Maywood and Winnequah on December 21st.  The board appeared to be in consensus on moving forward with selling the Nichols property.  The next step is to call a special meeting of the electorate to get approval for the sale.  This will indicate our seriousness to proceed with any proposals.   If we were to sell Nichols we would have to find a new location for the current occupants, including the administration and MG21.  Although I would suspect we will have plenty of time to consider this issue, there isn't any pressing reason to vacate the property until an agreement is reached.