A Long Strange Trip is Beginning..

Wednesday’s meeting had some news. We reviewed the board goals and had a presentation. The goals session was fairly uneventful. But the presentation had a few surprises.

It was regarding the new grade point average to be implemented this coming school year and the steps our district is taking to ensure our athletes and extra curricular students that fall below the GPA requirement receive intervention. I’m OK with that. I had some concerns that we were focusing on “participators”. By participator I mean the kids that participate in something, anything, which requires a GPA standard. By focusing on these kids I felt we were ignoring a larger part of our student population that does not participate. I was assured that this is just one of 13 legs of what will be our new intervention program. I have two problems with it.

One is that it requires hiring a new employee. No salary was suggested and a cost benefit analysis was not provided. The presenters indicated that there was an analysis done, so I look forward to reviewing it when it is provided. The second problem I have with the approach is that invention will take place before school. Now I’m no teenager but I do know one thing about being one. Getting up early sucks.

The reason for before school intervention was this- These kids have practice and games, and other activities that start right after school. In order to participate they will have to come to before school intervention. OK. So you have a carrot for this small population of our schools. What about the rest of the kids, the non-participators- that need intervention? Yes a small percentage will come if threatened by parents and teachers. But a large portion will not because they lack the parenting and discipline that is required to better ourselves. In school intervention is the common sense approach. Require that an intervention class replace an elective if your GPA is below a certain standard.

I’ll be honest, I’m tired of tax money being spent on sports and extra curricular, while the gifted programs in our district and, more importantly the gifted and talented children, are offered very little in terms of their special needs. The current proposal for intervention smells like an Activities Office program to me. Oh yeah, the new Intervention Specialist will be under the command of our Athletic Director. This should be about raising grades and bettering yourself, not ensuring eligibility. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the intervention, just the approach offered.

Final tidbit- we gave the superintendent his evaluation. If you want some funny reading, I suggest you request it. Here are some excerpts, as usual I have comments to the comments and they are in red:

“Does not seem to have a feel for the community in general, since he does not live here. Still has problems with relations with city officials”
Is this a performance evaluation or a residence evaluation? I understand the want for a super to live here but should he evaluated for it? Make it a goal and a policy change, then an issue on the evaluation.

“Move into community (CF school district) to show full belief in district”
What about his wife showing support for the district she works in? It doesn’t count?

“Don’t try to play god to the role of a supreme dictator”
Shame, shame, you can’t play God in a public school system. Do you want the ACLU to come knocking? And am I the only person that knows God should be capitalized?

“The superintendent should be aware of all deadlines”
OMG! I can’t even keep track of the deadlines at my kids’ school let alone every deadline set by the efficient government. Tasks with their deadlines are and should be delegated.

“Manages by fear, threat of the unknown, low staff moral”
Morale, moral what’s the difference? And how do manage by threat of the unknown if it’s unknown? I have to say, when I complained about our CEO two years ago, every staff member I talked to defended him, his character, his leadership skills, his decision making processes, in fact he was almost God-like. Hmmm…I’m starting to see a connection here. Anyway they convinced me that even though I didn't like some decisions he had made, his intentions were, and would always be what's best for CF school district.

“Show a more caring attitude”
I’m embarrassed to even have to comment on this. Our CEO is not a mother. I don’t want caring, loving, pushover CEO. I want no nonsense, tows the line, gets the job done CEO.

Just the Facts Ma'am

I’m floored that Phil Keren, editor of the Falls News Press would do the citizens of Cuyahoga Falls the favor of printing our board president admitting a vote took place in executive session. Although the article was wrong on one part. It was not a unanimous decision as I and one other member did not vote. I stared at them and was quickly ignored, and the other member (noob) stated that they had their three votes and didn’t need his either way. Remember- he just had those new board member sessions with the Ohio School Board Association.

Bad fact checking Falls News! I mean, with today’s technology it wouldn’t have taken much effort to call me. Especially before you print something that is clearly a violation of Ohio’s Sunshine Law.

You can check it out here, or you can continue reading and I’ll explain to you what it says and of course my opinion of why it says this.

You can enter executive session for very specific reasons. They are few because we are a public entity. One of the reasons is discipline. Not that our board has ever bothered to be as specific as they should despite my raising concerns several times over the last two years.

Anyway, once you have convened into executive session you may not vote. That means no voting, polling, hand raising, etc. No vote. Period. The reasons for this are very simple. The public has a right to know what their board of education is doing. They also have a right to know how a decision was reached.

In fact I left the executive session February 6th because of illegal voting. They were voting on whether to censure me for leaving the meeting with a board document. Yes you heard me right. I was threatened with censure if I left the board meeting with the superintendents evaluation. The board president stated at the onset of the meeting that she wanted the document returned. I made no comment. I wasn’t made privy as to why I couldn’t leave with it.

I think it has something to do with the fact that she stated she couldn’t find last years evaluation. Even stranger is that she actually thought this was confidential information! The document is there by the way, but if you really need a copy, just ask around. Many copies were made available courtesy of a concerned citizen at a board meeting. In fact some board members had copies in the executive session.

Then it got bizarre. Obviously my scores were shared with other members, even tough we turned them over to the board president anonymously. The minute we took a peek at the scores another member stated, “boy Kellie you sure had a change of heart from last year” What?! How in the hell would anyone know that? In fact, if information wasn’t shared and you compared from last year you’d think the scores were anyone’s but mine. I’ll admit my scores have gone up this year. But only because I have seen improvement. I was not going to base the entire evaluation on one incident involving the missed deadline.

One Half of One Percent

A few people have asked about the potential loss of $288,000 in “excess costs”. First let me give a quick brief of excess costs. Excess costs is the monies that the district receives from other school districts for money we spend on special education services for their kids. For instance if a special education student is in our schools but lives in Akron, Akron must reimburse us for the money we spend to educate this child, that is above and beyond what we already get from the state for a “typical” child. But of course the state being the state, it must gets its hands on this money first and cause red tape and bureaucracy. So to get our money from Akron we have to report to the state. They collect everyone’s “excess costs” and redistribute them. The above was made possible by your friendly local state representatives. Not only that, districts now had to keep track of each and every kind of student we have. Even though we are not supposed to label kids anymore, there a whole section of reporting that labels every possible handicap, race, creed, sex, one parent, two parent, income, a child could have or not have.

So most districts, typical of government offices had to hire someone to do this new job. The “EMIS” coordinator was born. Because you know job responsibilities can’t shift or become obsolete, they can only grow and refine with your tax money. Once this excess costs business took effect somebody had to it. So some districts had this person do it, some districts had that person do it. Our district had the EMIS coordinator do it.

Everything went smoothly for all districts the first few years. Then this year something changed. It seems a newly imposed deadline was put on this excess costs report. Apparently our EMIS coordinator was unaware of the deadline and we filed late. Of course your first reaction is “How could you not know”? Until you get some facts behind it.

There are 10 districts in Summit County eligible to file for excess costs. Five claim they did not know of the deadline and three of those five filed late, including us. One of the other unaware districts just lucked out and filed on time and the last one filed over the weekend at the witching hour, after hearing of the deadline two days before the deadline. Notification about this new deadline was sketchy at best.

But let’s go back in time a minute. On or about December 4th our Superintendent was notified that our district had missed the deadline. He took immediate action in attempting to recover district monies and disciplined those responsible for the deadline. He also informed the board president Curt Grimes and vice president Therese Dunphy. Apparently they felt no need to inform the rest of the board of the missed deadline or take any disciplinary action regarding the loss of funds. In fact I assumed the entire board found out about the missed deadline the same day I did. January 8th. Silly me. But I guess at the time they didn’t think it was a big deal. Funny how things change. Because now that everyone knows, it has become a big deal.

Except everyone keeps forgetting that an appeal was filed prudently by our superintendent and we may be reimbursed. Only time will tell. In the mean time, I think we should sit tight and hope the state does the right thing. If 50% of Summit County was unaware, I wonder what the state average is this year. If we don’t get reimbursed, it is not the end of the world. While I admit it is a significant amount, it’s not much more than the office renovations. I guess we’ll have to put that on hold. And to put it into perspective, it’s one half of one percent of our budget. It’s a hit but we’ll survive without asking for a levy! And lastly, if the state doesn’t reimburse, we can try to bill the individual school districts ourselves. It will take some time but I think it’s a very real possibility.

Sherlock Anyone?

It’s been a very disturbing week. I don’t like much of what’s going on. I’m not even sure if the last meeting we had was legal. We entered executive session for the discipline of a public employee. No it wasn’t me! I know amazing, but true. That’s as much as I want to say about that right now. I can’t get censured two years in a row you know. But as usual I will give you an idea of how things work here in the good ole Cuyahoga Falls City School District.

First of all, I am tired of breaking the law. That’s right the board has been doing it for quite some time. You see, I finally heard back from Marc Danns office. Only to have some things verified that I already knew. When entering an executive session, you must state the specific purpose for which you are entering. In our case it’s “Personnel”. Our district has commonly listed every item available, from employment, appointment, promotion, demotion, discipline, etc... I have asked numerous times to stop this practice. But of course it has fallen on deaf ears. We need to state that we are going for “promotion of a public employee” or “compensation of a public employee”.

So at Tuesdays’ special meeting, I insisted we correct the agenda to state the actual purpose. You would have thought I asked them to jump in a Lake. No undertones intended. And imagine everyone’s surprise when the noob supported my stance on the issue. He’s fresh out of new board member training and obviously paid attention! OK I have to say this; I never thought I’d see the day when I’d like the guy who gave me in-school suspension. In case you are unaware, the noob board member was also my high school principal. (PS, they lie about that “pal” thing).

After spending $75.00 in attorney fees it was decided that I would be ignored for the time being and the agenda was approved listing all items. I asked that record reflect my request was ignored. You see, this was the proper place to correct the agenda. But our board president has let her newfound powers go to her head. So they proceeded with moving to enter executive session and then amended the motion to read “employment, discipline, and appointment of personnel”. Hmmm. We’ll see.

Now for the disturbing part that happened in executive session that I will talk about. Our board president asked that the board agree to present a letter to particular administrators. And then the strangest thing happened. When I asked to see the document, I was told no. Ummm, no? Surely I heard wrong because no one in their right mind would actually expect four other people to agree to an unseen document. Now it got really weird because two people were willing to go with the unseen document. Me and the noob said no way.

Long story short, despite my disagreeing with it, it was presented to the particular administrators, as a board document from the board president. I had to write a statement of dissent just to be able to detach my name from it. No vote. Oh except the vote in executive session whether to go public or do it privately. It was a 3-0 vote. Noob wasn’t going to vote in executive session. He knows better. That’s as far as dare go on that for now. You know, censure and all has me paranoid. I’m sure you’ll be getting details soon from the reliable Falls News Press.

We exited executive session and I asked that the record reflect that the board did not discuss “employment and appointment”. I was half appeased. They argued that appointment was discussed. I still disagree. We adjourned shortly after 9PM. I’m stunned that this was railroaded in with out a vote. I’m not even sure it’s allowed.