There is a school committee meeting this evening. I came home a little early to read the packet and Kat “reminded” me that it is our anniversary. So I looked over the packet and only see a couple of items that I would try to fight - and surely get outvoted on anyway - so I’m taking the night off.
But here are the items of concern, we will see what happens. Not sure if George Abbott will be there. He is pretty good at standing up for most issues - although, one of my concerns is about the upcoming bond flyer and he does support the bond. And Bob does say he wants contract reforms, so lets see what happens.
1. There is a sub committee on contract negotiations. I think everyone knows where I stand here.
A. Make the negotiations public. (the items below are redundant if the public has input)
B. Merit pay for all employees.
C. Benefits should mirror the private sector. (i.e. No more steps and double digit raises - remember, even after all the talk of contract reform last year, the support personnel contract was signed giving those on steps an average of a 9.5% salary increases).
D. More management authority - principals are on the front lines, they should be able to hire and fire at will.
Just think about this - and I think RS has said it before too. The unions get to review and get input from their membership before the contract is ratified. Indeed, the membership MUST approve (by vote) the new contract. However, the public (The ones who pay the bills), are kept in the dark during the process, and not given any input until after the deal is signed. WHY CANT THE PUBLIC VOTE ON THE CONTRACT JUST LIKE THE UNIONS?
2. The committee will vote to approve the Annual Report.
I cant read all the data on the copy but am told the data is on RIDE (if someone can find it please let me know and I will post - if not, Donna at Chariho said she could get me the address).
One point of concern with the report is the layout - just a bit misleading in my opinion. Each school has a page with its picture and under the picture is a box that says: “This School is Classified As: “High Performing”. This box is also at the bottom of the page. However, for the High School, there is no box on the top. Could it be because this is the school classified as “Caution”
Secondly, and more of a curiosity than anything, is the listing for RYSE. It is listed as “High Performing and Commended” - and says that 81.3% of grade 9-12 students are proficient in math. Didn’t we just see a report that said it was 8%??? (I would look it up but I’m under some serious time constraints this evening - getting the evil eye soon). RYSE is actually the highest ranking school in the district - go figure!
3. Also up for approval is the Campus 2010 “FACT SHEET”
I’m guessing this will be this year’s sales flyer (remember the “Its time to..” brochure). It does look less like a sales pitch but there is one bit that is lacking. It says, “Chariho (sic) was completed in 1960 with a capacity of 700 students. Even with previous expansions, today’s 1250 students are crowded in a facility with a failing infrastructure.”
First question is what were the expansions. What is capacity and how much space is used for offices, etc…
Most importantly, at $14,000 per student why cant we manage to keep our buildings from falling apart. Look at St. Pius or the group in Stonington - all under $5000 per student and they aren’t falling apart.
4. Abbott and Polouski requested to have “Correspondence/Communications” placed on each agenda. It used to be that way - so when the district got a letter, or if a board member wanted to tell us about something from a constituent, it could be discussed at that time. The new solicitor has sent a letter saying it is a bad idea to do this. His thought process is that we might violate some notification rule by speaking about someone not present. Of course, we did this for years and it wasnt changed until the recent rewrite (where they tried to completely restrict our access to information - look over the changes that were posted here previously).
Item 4 is the only one where I might have an impact. Clearly, the board is going to do what it wants with the other issues. But with Polouski being for the change, its possible to get enough votes to do it. That one I am sorry I am missing.
Then again, the last time we had Polouski on the right side and had the votes to do something (the time we voted to stop the administrators contracts), they just ignored us anyway. So, I’ll take the night off and enjoy myself. I’ll post the scans soon.