School Board Faces Angry Crowd, Tables Bylaw Change
On Monday night, the School Board faced an overflow crowd of angry parents, and refused a vote on proposed bylaw changes to the Measure J generated Citizens' Oversight Committee. The boisterous crowd, mostly there to voice opposition to earlier announced teacher lay-offs, a topic not on the agenda, instead heard the Board table a controversial vote to reel in prerogatives of the Oversight Committee.
The staff had proposed limiting the power of the Oversight Committee to form subcommittees and also to the content of the Committee's annual report to the public.
Too Late For Lay-Offs
The crowd waited for almost an hour while the Board was in executive session, to hear news on the February 27th Board decision to start teacher lay-offs at the schools but the only employee action the Board took was to rearrange two executive administrator positions; temporarily eliminating the Dean's position at the High School while the school constricts during the looming Center of Community Life building project. The Board took no action on the teacher lay-off process, started on February 27th. On that date, the School Board voted to reduce teacher staffing by 6.4 "Full Time Equivalent" positions which will result in four total lay-offs and three partial lay-offs. The lay-offs are still in action and will be effective in June barring some intervention.
The proposal to limit the power of the Oversight Committee is postponed until the Board has a chance to engage the Committee on the issue at a later date, it was decided.
So ... let me understand this ... communication between the Board of Trustees (the official name of the school board) and its constituency (the parents) is SO POOR that they have provided NO press releases or information to parents about how the lay off procedure works? Made NO ALLOWANCE for the type of public participation that would follow the bomb they dropped at the last public meeting?
ReplyDeleteThen MADE THE PARENTS WAIT an hour before getting started (executive sessions can easily be moved to the time slot FOLLOWING the public session if desired, or begun, then recessed, then started again after the public session).
THIS IS CLEARLY a school board that has lost touch with the parents.
I refuse to believe that they deliberately keep the PTO and parents in the dark. But I would like to see them reach out to parents by making more information available.
And Brian, it's not like none of us were asking them what was going on with the bonds, the 3 campuses, the plans to close Anna Yates over the past 6 months (or a year, in the case of Brian Carver).
Their transparency is abysmal. They need to communicate a whole heck of a lot better. Get parents involved in bake sales to raise money for school supplies, but try to slide big stuff like closing down Anna Yates and firing teachers under the table. Yuck. What kind of "partnership" is that?
The EUSD Board has been the superintendent's board for years. They have not felt obligated to take care of their charge (students, parents, teachers) since they were seated. They cower and listen to the district solely. Lindo doesn't fit in our community. Let's cut our loses and move on! It is time to recall board members. They are incapable of objectively doing their job.
ReplyDeletelet's start that audit on revenues and itemized expenditures from measure a NOW.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but closing down Anna Yates HAS BEEN ON THE TABLE SINCE THE START OF THE ECCL PROJECT.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, this is the SAME school board that hired Wesley, when he was #3 on the list of recommendations, and then let him sweet talk them into not checking his background when questions were raised. Instead of investigating they asked the accused if he was guilty, and when he said 'No', they said 'Good enough for us!'. That's your school board, and you keep re-electing the same jabronis year after year.
Dear god I hope if I'm the victim of heinous crime and the perp goes on trial that NONE of these people are on the jury.
A nice idea would be if Mr. Donahue, or Mr. Webber snagged a spot on that school board and used the tattler as a clearing house for board business.
Man, that would put the school administrations panties in a wad.