Recap of Tonight's Board Meeting

Our Board held its regular monthly meeting tonight.  Here's a recap of the issues discussed and actions taken on tonight's Agenda.

• Trustee Dave Converse delivered the invocation.
• We had four special presentations:
• Our November Employee of the Month is Cheryl Laucher, the Librarian for Spring Woods Middle School.
• Our November Volunteers of the Month are Curt Martin and David Slattery who jointly lead the Bond Advisory Committee.
• We then acknowledged the District's Gold Performance Acknowledgements for our schools based on performance on TAKS, AP/IB results, advanced course completion, students completing the recommended high school curriculum, SAT/ACT results, and results of the Texas Success Initiative.
• Our final special presentation was the presentation of a Grant from Washington Mutual for the District's Leadership Academy.
• We then had Citizens Participation.  No one spoke during Citizens Participation.
• Next was a Public Hearing on a new section of the Tax Code dealing with taxable personal property in transit.  We had no speakers on this issue.
• Each Board member then gave liaison report.
• We then received our Quarterly Energy Report.
• The Board then continued with our ongoing revision of our Board Policies with first readings of TASB Policy Update 81, DEA (Local) Compensation and Benefits: Salaries, Wages, and Stipends, and CFE (Local) Accounting: Payroll Procedures.  We then adopted the revised BF (Local) Board Policies.
• We then approved the Budget Status Summary Report with Budget Amendments as of October 31, 2007 and the Facility Improvement Program Monthly Status Report as of October 31, 2007.
• The Board then approved a number of contracts, including the acquisition of the 85 new buses promised in the recently passed Bond election.
• We approved the District's Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for the Year ended June 30, 2007, and the sale of property.
• We also approved a resolution to tax taxable personal property in transit and a resolution to purchase the buses, and our consent agenda.
• We concluded our meeting with a discussion on the status and implementation of the 2007 Bond plan including a discussion concerning the formation of the Bond Oversight Committee.

Comments

[Debbie Slack]

After 9 years as a pretty involved parent in this district (with 8 more still to go) I cannot understand why we don't repeat the same basic school calendar from year to year...allowing of course for the shifts in holidays like Christmas and Easter. My issue with the proposed 2008-09 calendars are that we are now asking participants to choose between a holiday at Labor Day or Colombus Day and Thanksgiving has been reduced again. WHO TAKES COLOMBUS DAY OFF IN THE REAL WORLD???? (Other than banks??)
The calendar options for 2009-2010 are even worse! Our calendar committee is asking us to consider combining spring break and Easter break into one holiday in order to get Labor Day off and 3 days at Thanksgiving....and by the way...what is so difficult about scheduling the same Thanksgiving break from year to year?? Its always the 4th Thursday of November. Seems like it'd be pretty easy to schedule 3 days off each year...just as we did this past week.
Why do we continue to ask volunteers and SBISD employees to serve on a calendar committee when their task could probably be done on OUTLOOK each year????