Our Board held its regular monthly meeting tonight. Here's a recap of the issues discussed and actions taken on tonight's Agenda.
We had three special presentations this evening. First, our April 2008 Employee of the Month is Diane Knapp, a teacher at Housman Elementary.
Our April 2008 Volunteer of the Month is Patty Busmire.
Our final special presentation recognized the students who received this year's Character without Question Awards.
No one spoke during tonight's Citizens Participation.
Next we held the first of our public hearings on the Draft Preliminary Budget FY2009. Click here for the PowerPoint presentation on the budget.
Next on our agenda were our Board Member Liaison reports and the District's Quarterly Investment Report as of March 31, 2008.
We then had first readings of the following Board policies: BQA (Local) Planning and Decision Making Process: District Level, BQB (Local) Planning and Decision Making Process: Campus Level, CDA (Local) Other Revenues: Investments, EHAC (Local) Basic Instructional Program: Required Instruction (Secondary), FD (Local) Admissions, TASB Policy Update 82 Legal and Local Policies.
Our first action items on the Agenda included the approval of the Budget Status Summary Report with Budget Amendments as of March 31, 2008 and the Facility Improvement Program Monthly Status Report with Project Detail Changes as of March 31, 2008. As we do in every monthly meeting, we also approved the awarding of a variety of contracts.
We then approved the items on our Consent Agenda (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).
We concluded our meeting with a two hour discussion on the recommendations of the Academies Task Force. For more information about the recommendations, please see this prior post that includes the Task Force's recommendations.
I value the extensive work that was done by this Task Force, and tonight I raised the only 2 significant concerns I have with implementation of the recommendations. First, I believe we need to continue the District's long-standing belief in and commitment to the importance of neighborhood schools. Students zoned to a particular school should always be permitted to attend that school. Second, we must ensure that any academies are sustainable, both financially and programatically. Other areas of discussion were transfer policies, transportation, assessment, types of programs, and costs. The District's staff will now begin work to address the implementation of the recommendations in light of the Board's input.
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