Board of Education Meeting September 29, 2009 at Jefferson School

Written By: Robert Cox

John Quinn: Transportation Report

  • Quinn reported that there was an impact on busing due to advent of full day kindergarten this fall.
  • The impact was planned for and that except for 1-2 exceptions all calls from parents were resolved.
  • Transportation problems work themselves out on their own.
  • Majority of calls were the result of moving Kaleidoscope program from Davis school Webster school.

John Quinn: Library Bond

  • The library is seeking a $3 million bond for her in a structured manner.
  • The district has a legal opinion from their lawyers which state that it is the school is responsible for assisting the Library with issuing the bond.
  • Sara Richmond asked whether the Library Bond will be on the ballot in May.
  • David Lacher stated his view that all costs should come out of the proceeds of the bond, that working on issuing the bond should be revenue neutral to the District, that he expected the administration to be vigilant that there is no cost to the District.

Sara Richmond: Huguenot Herald Online

  • Sara Richmond informed the board that the editors of the high school newspaper had requested that they be allowed to create a online version of the Huguenot Herald.
  • She stated that students asked to use a service from Knight-Ridder called myhighschoolnewspaper.com through which the faculty advisor could upload a PDF file of the newspaper.
  • Concerns include making sure that the newspaper cannot be changed once uploaded, that students who had opted-out of being identified publicly by the school district not be mentioned by name or appear in a photograph, no wide-open blogging.

Richard Organisciak: District Policies and Procedures

  • Richard Organisciak informed the board that it was the administration’s intent to revise, review on refine, the school manual 25% per year so that every four years the entire manual would have been lately re-evaluated and modified.

Richard Organisciak: School Tax Increases

  • Richard Organisciak informed the board that assessables were going to the lower than projected because of a large increase in tax certioris.
  • He told the board there were “ box after box after box” of tax certioris the in the clerk’s office.
  • He said he had no doubt that they would have a significant impact down the road.
  • Sara Richmond asked about tax roll that had been voted on “last week”.
  • David Lacher said there were two figures that interested him: (1) what percent of tax certioris are ultimately granted?; (2) looking back, how accurate has the City Tax Department been in projecting the decline in assessables for a coming year.
  • David Lacher said the pending amount of tax certioris was $32 million.
  • David Lacher said, “it was easy to see it was going to be a bad year”.
  • Sara Richmond said, “the number of tax certioris this year far surpassed what we got in past years.
  • Mary Jane Reddington said, “the city should do a reassessment of all property”.

Richard Organisciak: 2009-10 Goals

  • World Language – determine how to expand our world languages program, conduct a complete review, bringing together practitioners present a “working plan” to the school board on June 2010.
  • Undertake professional development initiatives.
  • Create a district wide alumni program.
  • Have schools remain in “good standing”.
  • Have schools be “high performing schools”.
  • Reduced by 5-10 % the number of kids referred for superintendent suspension.
  • Increase by 3-5% number of students in Honors/AP.
  • Increase high school graduation rate by 2-5% compared to 2005 cohort.