About last night...

State Senator Miller kicked off the evening with a discussion of the state budget issues and its impact on school funding. Among concerns that school boards have with the new budget are provisions eliminating the QEO in 2010 and the mandatory arbitration provisions this July. I asked Senator Miller about my concern that the QEO is an integral part of WI education funding formula, and eliminating one part of this system without comprehensive reform of the entire system could create significant difficulties. Senator Miller agreed with the need to examine the entire system, but that comprehensive reform usually has to wait for favorable fiscal times.

The Board received the recommendations of the Ad Hoc Grade configuration committee but didn't discuss it much. I'll put up a separate post with my view of the recommendations when I have time.

The Board also discussed our transportation policy as it relates to day care providers. Recently there has been a stir over a decision not to continue to provide transportation from Cottage Grove Elementary to Kids Safari day care in Cottage Grove. Our current policy allows students to be dropped at a day care facility instead of their homes if location is on a route and there is room on the bus, essentially the policy is designed to provide this service to the public if it can be done at no additional cost to the district. Because of the large number of KS students an additional bus run is needed to provide this service. Currently we do this run using our reserve bus, but this practice is not sustainable because the reserve bus is needed if there is a breakdown anywhere in the fleet.

Some are concerned about equity issues because we do service other providers, such as Learning Ladder - but we can do that because there is room on a bus that goes right past the Learning Ladder location anyway.

The board forwarded the policy for review by the policy committee. My two cents is that the policy should be amended to allow the district to provide this service to the day care providers, but to charge our actual costs. This allows us to leverage our capabilities and cost structure to the benefit of the district's residents, but continues with a principle of no net cost to the district. It also provides us with a way to fairly accommodate any other requests. I would certainly support efforts to try and minimize or eliminate these costs through re-arrangement of our service when possible.

In other significant news we were pleasantly surprised by the preliminary new budget estimates from PMA. They showed that the additional reductions in state aids (~215,000) will be offset by new, more accurate (and more positive) open enrollment projects. We are now conservatively estimating about 65 new OE students in.

More important than any of the above was the presentation about the New Teacher Mentor Program in the district. This is a key program that help build the skills of teachers new to the district as a way to strengthen student learning (which is, after all, our core mission.) Studies show that this kind of classrom mentoring is one of the most effective ways of improving student achievement!

This week in meetings part 1)

Wed 5pm: Business Services Committee meeting. Items of note:

V) Energy Performance contract with McKinstry. Once more into the breach.

VI) 2009-10 budget update and preliminary budget proposal: This will be the first detailed look at the proposed budget reductions for next year. This is a discussion only, nothing will be approved

VII) Approval of district transportation bids: Bus service (currently provided by Badger Bus) is run with 5 year contracts. The current contract ends this year and we have solicited bids for the next 5 years. We will also make a recommendation concerning continued district operation of routes in Cottage Grove or if those should also be contracted.

VIII) School start and end times: To reduce transportation costs we will discuss a proposal to adjust the bell times for the CG 5th graders.

IX) Walk Zones: Change the 5th grade walk zones to match the 6th grade walk zones district wide. Currently siblings in the same building might be in the situation where the 5th grader is bused while the 6th grader walks.

Coming up...

The September Business services meeting will be held tomorrow (Monday not Wednesday!)

The biggest items on the agenda will relate to the transportation issues in Cottage Grove, where an unexpectedly large enrollment (especially 4k) and various issues related to the new schedules have created needs to be resolved.

We will also be discussing a proposed administrative review of our facility usage fees which haven't been updated since 2003. The fees are set to cover the direct costs to the district resulting from the use of these facilities.

The 2008-2009 original budget will be presented for approval.