Pretty Good News from April 8 "Community Leaders/Fiscal" Meeting

(Updated below with comments from others who attended)
Every now and then, things have to go somewhat less wrong: otherwise everybody would understand that the Universe really is plotting against us all, and we'd be permanently braced for it. So this evening our oft/rescheduled meeting revealed that

• The GEA improvement in the just-released final budget run is $68K; (still not good, but less bad)
• Our State Assembly representative, Bill Magee, produced $50K in "bullet aid"; it may indeed be true that Our view:'Bullet' aid clear indication that system is wrong - News - Uticaod - Utica, NY, but in this case at least it is certainly plugging a hole left by, as the article puts it, "the state’s long-broken school funding formula". Again, less bad.
• I've written before on the possibility (and desirability, not just on financial grounds) of appealing to international students. Now it looks like the Southern Westchester BOCES is setting up an exchange student program to which we need only say "yes", for an initial version with probably five students, paying HCS $14-20K each in addition to the money that pays for their stay and supervision here; that's obviously complex, and takes most of the money that their parents pay. Astonishingly, this could happen next year and could add another $70K--$100K to the budget. (The tuition may be less than the average cost of educating an HCS student, but is far more than the marginal cost; it's mostly "profit".) In this case HCS benefits from the Colgate connection and the fact that Homeland Security has already investigated us, costs being paid by a previous student's family.
• Classrooms for special education, a huge expense for HCS, are being reshuffled in complex ways; Molly (BoE President) wanted to comment on the cleverness of the juggling act, without which "we'd be in a very different place."
• And for the moment, the resource officer is off the budget.

What with all the savings, it appears that we keep our full-time art teacher (1.5 art teachers total). Only the "supplemental innovation/enrichment" person is cut. Diana argues against looking for a part-time superintendent...hmm...dunno. Molly says, in response to the observation that we have a few more administrators than comparably sized schools, that she checked on specifics and was told that "for historical reasons" we list a couple of positions, such as the technology directory, as an administrative post where the "low-administration" schools would list the people doing this as teachers. This is plausible, and overall the news is much less bad than it seemed this morning.

Update on Opt-Out Our opt-out percentage may have been high, with almost a quarter of the affected students sitting out the test, but the protest has been heard and it wasn't just us: about 30K students in the state opted out, a vote of no confidence on the current nysed administration has gone through, the new administration is sounding different, the test is invalid and there's no way it will be used. I will probably update with other notes (we talked about telepresence and such) and maybe with more links Real Soon Now, but that's all for the moment.

Update: notes from other attendees:
Susan Marafino adds

I mentioned that [Carolyn Hsu] would be a good person to be involved with the potential exchange student program with Southern Westchester BOCES. The coordinator happens to be a Colgate alumni - Diana couldn't recall his name.  HCS would apparently be the first school to be part of this BOCES exchange student program, and  one appeal for choosing our district, besides the Colgate connection, is that we already have the SEVIS rating.

I missed the first minute of the meeting, but after the meeting Bud Ballinger confirmed that the strings position was being restored to current levels including 2nd and 3rd grade.

Lastly, Diana mentioned, following a question from Astrid about JV sports, that the girls soccer program was being cut because "there aren't sufficient numbers".  This is on the heels of girls volleyball being moved to the fall.  To my understanding, there has been no discussion of this in any BOE meeting to date, so it was surprising to hear it presented as fait accompli.  Considering that the last item on tonight's agenda was "asking for collaboration and transparency as a two-way street", this certainly merits further discussion at the next board meeting, as well as with student athletes and their parents, and Sports Boosters.

Heather Cigeroglu then added

Just a few other notes to point out...

• Susan had mentioned the shift of girls volleyball to the fall. In response, Diana mentioned that Jen Dean should be asked about this because it was Jen and Denny Roy that made the switch based upon a student survey that was given.

• There will be potentially 4 positions opening up at HCS if the budget is passed: 

       2 Guidance Positions (long-term maternity leave) 

       1 Art Position (not sure if full or part is being advertised)

       1 Special Education Position

* I was hoping that the .5 art teacher would somehow be able to extend their position by teaching courses that the technology and innovation coordinator may have taught so not to completely loss that portion of the curriculum and also to be a support to PBL since this is how art teachers have always approached their material. I don’t think I was clear on my intention, I think many people thought I was just advocating to bump the part-time to a full-time position which was not the main intent. Following my comment, Audrey Miller made a great point that although it would be great to have two full-time art teachers there is still only one librarian for the school. An excellent point really.

• Currently the Board is looking into Interim candidates and once he/she is decided on they will then focus their energies on a full superintendent search. 

• The PBL (Project Based Learning) model http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning is just beginning to become incorporated as part of the curriculum at HCS. Diana explained that she prefers to refer to it as process-based learning, placing more emphasis on the process than the product. I have to agree with her on that. 

  Audrey Miller seemed very positive about the experiences her 1st graders are    

  having with the PBL approach. 

• Also, for at-risk students or students who prefer a “hands-on” approach to learning BOCES will be offering a model similar to Tech Valley to 9th and 10th graders. http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/morning_call/2014/03/tech-valley-high-school-model-to-be-replicated.html  If i’m not mistaken, High school programs at BOCES are currently only offered to students in 11th and 12th grade. They hope this program will help catch students before they lose complete interest in school and fall behind.

Astrid Helfant said

Let me add to this Diana's rebuttal in response to my letter to the Board regarding a 0.75 FTE (interim) superintendent position. Her comments included that it would not be of benefit to HCS to reduce the superintendent position. She of course emphasized that she had nothing to gain from advocating this on behalf of HCS considering she's leaving her job this summer. Diana stated that those schools that have reduced superintendent and / or shared principal jobs are of lesser educational standing compared to schools that have no part-time upper level administrator positions. Also, according to Diana, HCS would not be able to hire as good a candidate if it were seeking to fill a less than full-time slot.

Furthermore, and Molly chimed in here, they both critiqued the earlier comparison Ferdinand and I vocalized during a board meeting regarding HCS having 6.0 FTE administrator positions compared to other similar sized schools with only 4.0 administrator positions. Such a comparison, they stated, is invalid as Hamilton includes its Technology Director as part of administrator staff, whereas other schools may include this position under teaching staff. So in essence, according to this argument, we'd be comparing apples to oranges.

Thanks also to Stephanie for backing me up on this reduced superintendent position by underscoring at the end of this discussion that my original letter to the Board suggested this may make sense for the interim job, which does not necessarily mean this is the way to go for the long term.

 and finally, Stephanie McClintick did some research on the athletic issue:

I wrote to Brian Rose who had no idea that there was a possibility of canceling soccer at HCS in the fall. He met with the Jen Dean, the AD this morning, and said that there would be girls soccer.

And a note from me (Tom Myers) -- I had been supporting the part-time interim superintendent idea, and wasn't immediately convinced by Diana's rebuttal: in particular, Diana commented that we could pay less and get a "manager" but not an "educational leader" and I wasn't sure that was bad. Thinking about what Astrid said and back to Diana's remarks leads me to think I was wrong. If we're hoping to get new things to happen, such as the international student project or electrical cogeneration or telepresence in any of its forms or whatever, then we do need more. The Bottom Line for me is that we're probably doing okay for next year... Yaaaaaay!! But there are several troubles on the horizon. So it goes.