Reorganization Planning Committee Meeting
May 21, 2008
Present: Chair Gail Marshall, Vice-Chair Brian Hubbell, Facilitator Bill Ferm
Bar Harbor: Bob Garland Mount Desert: Patrick Smallidge, Laurel Robbins Southwest Harbor: Skip Strong,
Kristin Hutchins Tremont: Scott Grierson Swan’s Island: Tammy Tripler
Others in attendance: Rob Liebow, Nancy Thurlow, Kelley Sanborn, Judy Sproule, and Patrick Barter
Gail Marshall called the meeting to order at 7:02 pm
Review of Draft Minutes from 14 May 2008
Patrick Smallidge requested that the minutes of 14 May 2008 be amended on page 4 from:
“Patrick Smallidge – Very comfortable with the funding formula. Can live with it. Like the way it pans out for additions of other towns.”
to
“Patrick Smallidge – Very comfortable with the funding formula (Union 98 funding formula). Can live with it. Like the way it pans out for additions of other towns.”
MOVED by Patrick Smallidge, seconded by Laurel Robbins and unanimously voted to approve the minutes of 14 May 2008, as amended.
Public Comment
There was no public comment.
Report from Trenton and Lamoine
Judy Sproule said the Trenton budget passed at just under $3.2 million without any problems.
Brian Hubbell – The commissioner is doing a four-town tour of the state. She will be in Ellsworth tomorrow night. Not clear what will be discussed. There has been some discussion about Union 96 going with Ellsworth.
Judy Sproule – Just saw letter from Ellsworth Superintendent to Union 92 people and it said that Ellsworth and Union 96 are going to be talking.
Patrick Smallidge – She’s (the commissioner) coming to the trouble spots to see who’s rolling over and playing dead. They’ve put this compromise up and she’s seeing if it’s going to fly with the more rebellious towns.
Gail Marshall - The invitation from the commissioner was addressed to superintendents and RPC chairmen. Bring other members. Open meeting. Not a public hearing. Regional discussions. Changes to law and questions people may have. Hancock County Tech Center (Boggy Brook)
6:00 – 8:00 p.m. May 22. Gail and Brian are planning to attend.
Report from Superintendent and Business Manager
Tuesday Rob Liebow met with Ray Poulin at the Department of Education. Mr. Poulin wanted to clear up some things regarding alternative organizational structures (AOS) and what we are trying to do. He was on the right page as to how budgets would be formed and how referendums would work. He wanted to get a template for those. He proposed cost center accounts for how an AOS might work and included in that discussion was Joanne Allen and another finance person.
Nancy Thurlow – One of the issues we talked about was how it would work with us being separate but together. They said we would have to have one set of books. It would work like the high school does where we would assess the towns and it would be held by the AOS which is basically the central office. We would assess the towns monthly. The towns themselves could be the employers of the teachers but there are still a lot of questions and they need to consult with Drummond Woodsum. The tax ID numbers are separate for everybody and if we have to report together, legally, how would that work.
Patrick Smallidge – Currently the employees of the individual schools are managed at the local level assuming we are going to remove that and put that to what was the superintendent’s office for payment disbursements.
Rob Liebow – Still managed at the local level in terms of their hiring, firing, and evaluations.
Payroll is going to be processed at the upper level as opposed to the lower level. Is this going to lead to a reduction in hours to be used at the local level and increase hours at Nancy’s level? Are we going to be shuffling personnel i.e. laying off local school personnel and hiring at the superintendent level?
Nancy Thurlow – We do the payroll now. We process the checks. We send the payrolls or the vouchers to the school board meeting or town office and they stamp the checks and send them out. They do the taxes as far as sending in checks. We make the checks up for the taxes. We do the W2’s to put with their town employees and send in. The town has a tax ID, the school employees go under that tax ID, and with multiple ones trying to put them together in one sense but not another is creating some problems.
Rob Liebow – All the work is being done at this office (Union 98 central office).
Brian Hubbell – Paying for Dick Spencer. The department (of education) is still committed to paying legal expenses for reorganization. Important to have him working for us in that capacity and consulting with them. If this group would authorize it, I would call and ask him to work on some of those detailed problems with them. I would like a list of these concerns as they come up so I can mention them to him so he can be thinking of these things on our behalf when they come up.
Nancy Thurlow – As far as state subsidy, as far as breaking it down, it’s not easy. Where we have minimum subsidy for special education costs, depending on the severity of their disability, the children are weighted as far as dollars so it’s not as simple as we would like to think it is. Could probably figure out most of the money that is in there. We could get within a certain percentage. There has to be something in the plan in black and white to show how you’re going to divvy up the subsidy.
Patrick Smallidge – So the state isn’t going to buy into your simple percentage basis on historical data. If you lumped all special education monies together as a sum total for all the schools and say Bar Harbor’s percentage is typically 18%…
Kelley Sanborn – It’s a lot more complicated than that because high needs kids could move from school to school throughout the year. Those percentages can adjust in a very dramatic way. Even in the middle of the school year.
Brian Hubbell – Important to establish the principle that the need should determine the division in the allocation.
Gail Marshall – I agree that this should be the deciding factor. It’s what the communities are proportionately spending for special education in any one year and there should be a mechanism to get to that.
Brian Hubbell – I don’t think that was what I was saying. The actual needs from year to year for special education should determine how that was divided up rather than some historical spending pattern. I’m just trying to decide what the fair division of special education funds would be.
Nancy Thurlow – As far as the data the state has, they use the December 1 count. So it’s as of a certain date. A kid may move from one school to another during the year, but they won’t get counted until the next year if they are still in that school.
Rob Liebow – It’s also from the previous year so I think you could get close to the number. We’re putting the data in but they’re going to treat it as one entity. If we know how the weights and percentages are done, we won’t get to 100%, but I feel confident that we could get into the 90% range.
Skip Strong – This is where the special education reserve would come into play. Would that be one giant fund at that time?
Nancy Thurlow – This is the state subsidy. Special education subsidy.
Skip Strong – The question that has been going back and forth is what happens with stuff moving back and forth is not going to take into account for the budget of that year, but that’s where we’ve traditionally taken it. Unanticipated cost that you use your reserve.
Nancy Thurlow – That’s a separate issue. Your state subsidy is just minimum special education subsidy. Reserve is for unanticipated ones that come in.
Skip Strong – In theory, you’re going to get that back a year down the road.
Nancy Thurlow – When we report it to the state it gets reported that year and then it goes into the subsidy.
Rob Liebow – You could be sure you got 85% and then the that remaining amount is put in a common reserve and then whose it really is gets split up by some formula. Remember you’re at 50% special education anyway. You’re not talking huge dollars. I think for Tremont it’s $83,000 so you’re talking less than $10,000 leeway on a $3 million dollar budget. As long as it goes to the common good in some way or pooled for some common purpose that seems like a way to address it if you couldn’t get to 100% of what was your money.
Nancy Thurlow – As far as grants are concerned, they still don’t know. There are a certain group of grants that have to be dealt with all together as one, but there are some grants that they need to contact other entities in the state to see if there is some way that some of these grants, like the REAP grant, could be like slivers, or their own entity in a way.
One of the items that came up was bookkeeping and how this is going to work with our software. Food services, for example. Right now each school that has a lunch program has their own checking account for food services and the revenue goes in there and they pay their bills for their food. We pay their payroll out of our office but then they reimburse the budget for the payroll. Eventually they want that rolled into our books, all the revenue and bills even though it would be collected at the schools. It would be called an enterprise fund, a sub account.
This led to another question. What about the subsidy? The special education is coming in one lump. Is food services going to come in one lump? They need to talk to their counterpart in Augusta to check on this.
Gail Marshall – In talking with Rob, my brief understanding of the conversation is that the overall general tenure of the conversation was cooperative to very cooperative. No sense that there were roadblocks.
Rob – No, but clear that everybody hadn’t talked to each other in that building about certain things in the law.
Bill – Is there another meeting?
Nancy – open for any questions or help they can give us.
Rob – They need to have some internal discussions.
Tammy – Is that going to adversely affect our school as far as ordering and that kind of thing?
Nancy – Your ordering you could still do by school. We have a contract with a vendor that everybody cooperatively orders from anyway. It’s the bookkeeping part they want to see pulled into our office. There would still be things handled at the local level, but the finances would eventually be held at our office.
Rob – The Dick Fox formula. I talked to him on the phone. He devised a formula for funding the central office. He said the driving force behind what he was trying to do was to make sure that of the eight players that everybody paid at least 1% of the budget. He had nothing to do with the column that has 96% and then adds ½ a percent. That came later. It’s meant to soften one year to the next. You can’t use the last piece of that if there are ten towns, including Trenton and Lamoine. Then it adds up to 101%. You could take a rolling three-year average of what your percentage was. It looks at percent of your budget, percent of enrollment and percent of staff.
Scott Grierson – From my perspective, enrollment looks like the best option. I suggest that those of us here looking out for the best interests of our towns as well as the entire structure look carefully at the numbers.
Gail Marshall – I don’t think that’s the right approach. We need to try to create a system that will work best from an educational administration point of view. We are not administering teachers and administering schools. It’s different than the straight enrollment question. There are other factors. He’s administering teaching staffs and the support staffs and there’s not a one-to-one ratio between that and the number of kids that are in the building. What’s the job they have to do and the factors behind it?
Rob – An example would be Frenchboro. They’re not going to count much on enrollment or staff side. If you just go by enrollment, they would pay about $9,800 for the year for all the business office services, special education director services, and for superintendent services. For them to get all those services, including the director of curriculum who acts as their principal, they’re getting a bargain. They have other factors besides the number of kids. They now have 15 kids but they’ve had as little as 4 or 5 kids. But if 2 of them are special needs, they still have the teacher, the PET’s, and if you did it just by enrollment and they had 5 kids they might be getting those services for $2,500.
Scott – I hear you, but I see it from a different perspective.
Brian – Speaking for Bar Harbor, we have roughly 45% of the enrollment, but don’t think we are responsible for 45% of the time from the central office.
Patrick Smallidge – I’d like to see that broken down by cost per student as in terms of the administration from the superintendent’s office and see how that varies from the smaller towns to the larger towns. One of the issues I’ve seen with another funding formula, is that every time we say we don’t need these kids, the people who are on the school boards and admittedly closer to the problem, throw their arms up and say we need every kid. If the difference is $5,000 of lower costs to Frenchboro or Cranberry is that simply an investment to bring in a more stable population of children into our schools. Maybe we should look into what Mr. Grierson is saying.
Gail Marshall – Each school has a principal and that principal is supervised by the central office. It doesn’t matter if there are more kids the principal is responsible for, like in Bar Harbor as opposed to Tremont, and yet they get the same kind of attention and supervision. I know there is beauty in the simplicity and straightforwardness of enrollment but it doesn’t accurately reflect the use of the office.
Rob – Here’s Patrick’s answer. They’re not dramatically different. Per student cost at the high school for the central office is $683, Bar Harbor $548, $706, etc. Not a huge swing.
Scott – It seems like what we have isn’t an exact science either. I don’t think this accurately reflects things either. From my town’s perspective, simple enrollment based may be the way to go. I hope we look at this carefully.
Gail - What’s in the best interest of the town is not necessarily what’s the cheapest or same dollar amount per pupil. A lot of things can cascade when you start playing with these funding formulas. We want to be fair to each town. We’re trying to design a system that will provide the best educational system that is reasonable under the circumstances. To say that you’re not going to take into account the staff size, doesn’t make sense to me. It’s not just about the budget. That’s a very important issue, but what the impact of making those changes might be to the ability to raise and fund and adequately staff and manage this system has to be in there as well.
Brain Hubbell – We are trying to get at the points we want to convey to Dick Spencer.
Bill Ferm – Name. My suggestion is that we keep that in the back of our heads.
The inter-local agreement between the municipal school boards would jointly administer operations and may include collaborative agreement under Chapter 114.
Brian – That comes from the law. Those are two mechanisms we can use for an inter-local agreement. One is required and one is optional.
Bill Ferm – The question to Dick Spencer is, are there advantages to including both.
Brian – Could be talking about a broader range of relationship than what is required.
Bill Ferm – Parties to the agreement. One of the issues that came up last week was to have the agreement permit other partners to join in and also to provide a mechanism for withdrawal.
Partick Smallidge – Is it possible to address any of the funding formats in the inter-local agreement for funding the regional schools. Where there is going to be an approval of legislative bodies of the individual towns, you already have the opportunity to solicit votes if the vote was in favor or against changing the formula, could that be forwarded to the legislature as a request for change. It depends on how much of that special act survives. I’ve heard varying answers, but basically I’ve heard that it’s the funding formula and that’s all.
Rob – Before the fixes, it was what you just said. It’s clear now, in my mind, that the high school continues to exist as it is under it’s private and special act that would be coalescing into this alternative organizational structure for shared central type services. But it’s language, it’s act, even it’s Trustees would still exist. It’s withdrawal mechanism and addition of new members mechanism would remain in tact unless changed by the parties of it’s agreement. It’s entirely there.
Gail – We can inquire of Mr. Spencer about that. I’m not sure there is a role for dealing with the high school issues including the funding formula issues in this process. I’m not sure it’s anything the RPC is going to have authority over generating.
Bill – I was thinking of the point of design of the system to withdraw and add new members.
Patrick Smallidge – If the mechanism is already in the private and special act for withdrawal, why would you be asking questions about it? Selectmen Grierson has also asked in the past about Tremont possibly going on it’s own. Looking into the mechanics of withdrawal, as long as the high school still sustains it’s debt, withholding one town under a formula that it deems unfair, this may be a chance to deal with an inequity and save us problems down the road. Already have a poll in Mt. Desert that desires a change.
Brian – What we’re talking about isn’t an alteration of any of these individual entities. We’re talking about whether these particular entities could enter into an inter-local agreement or withdraw from one. If we’re talking about a potential consolidation of Southwest and Tremont, we’re talking about the withdrawal of their two existing school districts and their re-entry of a consolidated one.
Bill – This could be a mechanism for Trenton to participate and Frenchboro to withdraw.
Brian – The inter-local agreement isn’t where we set the terms for the internal organizations of these parties.
Gail – That’s correct. In terms of withdrawing, we’d end up with a mechanism for withdrawal, but only a withdrawal to enter another system. I’d be surprised if the department would approve a plan where a little school can go off on their own. With respect to the debt issue that Patrick raised, when we commit to a bond for construction, that’s something the voters approve and now the Trustees just did the renovations to the gym in another manner. The voters approve it. I’m not saying this issue doesn’t need to be dealt with, I think it’s got to run under the system that we have.
Bill Ferm – Collaborative shared functions. This represents a view of what the cooperative entity that is administering all the parties of this agreement would be doing.
Gail – A blend of that and a line by line description of what’s in the law.
Rob – One aside from meeting with the state, in them not communicating with each other dramatically on the administration. When they were showing us some sheets of the core functions of the central board, they had down special education and transportation and we pointed out that it was the administration of these things. They were not on the same page. At their level, transportation meant all of the transportation for that new group was done by the central office, bus purchases, hiring of drivers. That word was a carefully negotiated statement about the administration of that. Interesting to find them totally not understanding some of the things that had been carefully brokered.
Gail – It’s a failure to understand the law, not a position they are taking in opposition.
Rob – I think when they talk to the folks at the higher levels, they will understand it’s just the administration of it. This never got communicated down to the people that are doing the work for them. They are assuming that in AOS, all of transportation is done under one roof. That was a deal breaker for us and was carefully put in by Dick Spencer that it would be just the administration of it.
The only requirement of the law is the administration of that function occurs at that level.
Tammy Tripler – It’s written in the law like that?
Rob – Yes.
Patrick Smallidge – Is it possible to have an official opinion, a written statement, out of the department of education saying this is so, so we don’t go through all the hoops, not knowing whether we’re going to trip up on one item that is a make or break item.
Brian – I believe the term “administration” is in the RSU law now as well. It’s not an issue. That’s what the law says.
Bob Garland – Don’t we want to hold as many of the reins in the formulation of this plan in our hands as we can as opposed to getting input from the department of education? In the sense of letting them do it for us?
Gail – That is our goal. I understood Patrick’s question to be, are there any booby traps in there after we’ve worked long and hard. We’re not aware of any of them. Dick Spencer will have communications with the commissioner.
Patrick – What is our timeline?
Brian – Only two points. The next progress report is due June 13. Then we have to have a final referendum date of January 31, 2009.
Patrick – We won’t make any final vote before the elections in November. Is that the plan of this committee? It might be wise to wait until after the legislature is reconvened.
Bill Ferm – The question of timing is important. We need to get something to Dick Spencer by the third week of June.
Brian – All the way through we’ve had the responsibility to create the plan we want. If there’s some objection to what we’re doing right now, we should deal with that. It’s my belief that we want to move forward as quickly as possible.
Patrick – The structure we have now, imperfect thought it is, it’s ours. We have to move forward. I want to make sure we have time to make allowances to keep exactly what we have.
Laurel – I think what we’re coming up with for a plan is quite close to what we had. Yes, we’ll have to make some changes on paper, but our goal has been to comply and not throw away what we have that is good and works in our system.
Gail – The factors are that this process is a very disruptive process from the point of view of educational leadership. As efficiently we can get through this, the better it is for our school system. The repeal issue is a fine idea, but politically and electorally, the horse is out of the barn on that one. Waiting for repeal to happen is a somewhat vain effort. I don’t want us to hinge our decision on that.
Bill – I think what Patrick’s saying is, looking down that long road where it would be enacted, can the voting or enactment take place after the November vote.
Patrick – Absolutely correct. Let’s leave the doors open, not by a lack of work or commitment, but so that any issue that could possibly happen, even if the final vote was to take place in December, should it fail, that would give us time to readjust those agreements, and allow the possibility of the legislature to overthrow this law.
Scott – sounds like the November election is the earliest we would get this out. We need to look at the politics of what’s going on. If repeal has a chance, Patrick’s right. If it doesn’t we might as well have the vote at the November election when we have the most number of voters turning out.
Bill Ferm – looking at the list, these are the things that need to be included. Seems that it’s critical that when Dick Spencer is given the charge to draft this, he needs to be clear how the group feels about each of these areas.
Do you want to appoint a group to go through what we did last week and fill in the column of how we would do things?
Gail – I would be glad to work on that. I can sit down with Rob and have him alter his form.
Bill – Would be helpful to do that so everyone on the committee would have that in front of them. Important for this committee to get behind the collaborative functions. Governance and representation and composition of the board. Where does the statute leave us with regard to voting rights?
Gail – We’ll need a legal opinion of how we allocate the voting strength. Practical decisions we need to make. I would presume that the elementary school board members by virtue would be the people who become the inter board, Justas we become high school and union members now. Do we want to do something that’s more like the high school where they have a certain number of there members be voting members? If we’re talking about some day adding additional communities to this, we could end up with a ridiculously large board. We should look at the functionality of the board.
Brian – the purpose of this discussion is to figure out what we want and then ask Spencer if there is any legal difficulty with that or not.
Bill – Do we want the composition of the board as something that could be modified, in the inter-local agreement?
Patrick – this is assuming that any significant modifications to the inter-local agreement would have to go back to the voters.
Gail – Yes.
Bill – Suppose this group talks about the same parties to the agreement that are listed here, what would you propose to be the composition of the inter-local board.
Gail - The school board members that serve in the constituent elementary schools currently within that system. So it would be Bar Harbor, Mount Desert, Southwest Harbor, Tremont, Swan’s, Frenchboro, and Cranberry.
Bill – What do we need in terms of voting rights?
Gail – It might be nice to clarify what latitude we have? Dick said, since we were going to be appointing board members, they’re going to be elected by a one person one vote from their communities, then appointed to the inter-local board, we may be able to deal with the weighted voting issue, rather than having a weighted we may be able to allocate votes differently. They’re elected by one-person one-vote and then appointed to another board.
Scott – do all school boards have five members?
Rob – Cranberry and Frenchboro have three.
Gail – if we had to have voting allocated by one-person one vote and combining all towns on a central board, this is how the board members would look so each person had that number of votes in the first column.
Rob – each BH director has 74 votes for a total votes for Bar Harbor of 442 out of 1,000 possible votes.
Brian - There is a general allowance that could ease the disparity between the number of directors. You wouldn’t necessarily have to have six members from Bar Harbor.
Gail – consistent with my earlier argument that the functions, duties and responsibilities of the central office and the services they deliver to each of the communities is not easily broken down by enrollment or census. Similarly the governance should not be weighted in that way if we don’t have to. My suggestion would be that we see what we can do about the weighted voting but simply have members of the elementary boards become members of that central board with the understanding that if it becomes too big, we can change that.
Brian – speaking from Bar Harbor, I would agree.
Patrick – From my point in Mount Desert, this was almost a deal killer. To hand the keys over to another town. Paul recognized this and knew it would cause trouble down the road. We are all together in this.
Scott – I think having them all serve is cumbersome. Maybe 3 could come from the towns of five and 2 from the towns of 3. Seems more efficient by not having all required to come to both.
Tammy – Would hate to see the number of members limited. If you have a larger pool you have a number of people who could come.
Scott – If any town has an important issue on their agenda, then all the members of their town would be there. I think you would get better representation
Gail – Some of your concerns are reasonable. Some of us have experience already working with this kind of system. We don’t try to out-strategize each other with parliamentary voting games. Beyond that, we recognize it’s a challenge for people to come to these meetings. It’s worked fine. The way the high school works, we only have ten members on that board. But we ask and encourage all members to come and participate in the discussion. You just have to decide who is going to vote. It broadens the discussion and makes everyone feel like an equal partner. Problems at Union 98 sometimes since Bar Harbor is worth more so if enough of them don’t show up we don’t have a quorum. That would be an area in terms of functionality to move away from weighted voting but allow them to come and participate.
Scott – The weighted voting seems like a crazy way to do it. If you have 5 from each you’re going to have to have 14 people for a quorum. Let’s just have each town have it’s representation, but get a more committed group of people and scale it back. So you have energized people attending meetings.
Gail – if we want to think of a system that has 3, 3,m33 as long as it encourages everyone to come that could work. We could talk that out.
Bill – leave this issue and come back to it?
Patrick – I think we need to hear if we can do it.
Bill – I would appreciate, if I were in Dick Spencer’s shoes, to hear what you would like to do.
Bob Garland– Could we do that through making a motion to forward this to Dick Spencer? If so, I move to find this reasonable approach and forward this working document to Dick Spencer to digest and come up with his best solution to come up with an inter-local agreement for us.
Brian – Would second If we could talk about what this is.
Bill – Can you clarify “this”.
Bob – Clarifying motion – we as an RPC find these two sheets of paper as a good working document to forward to DS for him to digest and come up with recommendations for an inter-local agreement. I could cut it to simply, we find this a good working document to forward for his consideration.
Partrick – A little broader than what I thought. Would give him more to work on if we were to say it is the committee’s wishes to explore the possibilities of a non-weighted inter-local board and high school board appointed to both committees by the individual local school boards or something like that.
Bob – I understood Gail to say earlier that Dick Spencer might have some words of wisdom regarding votes. If he does have those words of wisdom I’d like to hear them.
Laurel – I like the way our voting system works at all levels. If we can keep it the same that’s a good thing.
Tammy – I would like to be sure we’re all on the same page about the composition of the boards. I would like to see that it is automatic that if you are elected by your town, you are part of this other board.
Brian – I think there would be an advantage to making the regional board as similar to the high school board as we can. Is that the particular model we are after? Then relay that desire to Dick Spencer.
Gail – Not ready to vote on this document as what we would provide to Dick Spencer. The problem with doing this just saying we want it like the high school board. The high school is composed the way it is with unequal numbers of representation that reflect political and economical compromises that were made 40 years ago. I don’t think we want to duplicate that. If we want to say each town will have 3 voting members that every school board member can attend and participate in deliberations I can’t see a problem with that. We need to clarify is not how to compose the board, but whether we’re limited in terms of the weight and influence each individuals vote has. Do I have a vote on the Union 98 board and Brain does, too, or do I have 427 votes and Brian has 682 which is the way we do it now.
Bob – My motion in no way would indicate to Dick Spencer that this is how it would have to be. My impression is that this is a working document we present to Dick Spencer and he will take it and flesh it out. Wasn’t assuming we would.
Skip – May be wise to keep working on this instead of making a motion.
Patrick – I agree. High school representation is determined by the private and special act. Can we create a less weighted board?
Scott - once we know we can have a non-weighted board we ought to have a vote on what we want to do. We have eight entities involved. Tremont has 3 representatives that could be here. It would be good that we have a bigger body of voters here when we make that decision.
Bob – I’ll withdraw my motion.
Bill – the motion Bob made is the motion you want to make as you flesh out this plan so it goes to DS with the full support of the RPC. Gail and Rob will work on this sheet tomorrow. We’re also talking about the whole issue of the make up of the board. Do you want another group to work on this?
Gail – People should just think about the pros and cons of altering the voting and then come back. Or think of other alternatives. And then come back next week to discuss it.
Tammy – Elected or appointed – if you’re elected by your own people in your own town, then it goes on that you’re being appointed.
Gail – It’s loose at the high school. There are 5 people on my local board, 3 people can vote at the high school. We may have extra people and we look at one another to determine who votes that night. Your board makes the decision about who goes to the meeting and votes.
They don’t have to be the same three, but there is a continuity problem there. That’s why we encourage everyone to come.
Brian – It’s a matter of policy for the local board to decide how to assign. A subtlety to that is that we won’t know who’s going to vote until the vote comes up. It encourages everybody to come to the meeting.
Skip – Most of our votes are unanimous. Very few votes where you stack one side against another. We decide what is best for the kids.
Bill – Need to articulate to people who are not here tonight the issues with voting and enrollment versus Fox formula funding.
Gail – we could articulate as best we could when rob and I meet, the various scenarios we’ve discussed.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008 at 7:00 p.m.
MOVED by Patrick Smallidge, seconded by Laurel Robbins and unanimously voted to adjourn the meeting at 9:00 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Selena Dunbar, Recording Secretary