This month, the Morgan Hill Unified School District is welcoming
two new trustees, Ron Woolf and Claudia Rossi, and welcoming back
two incumbents, Don Moody and Shelle Thomas. It’s an ideal time to
review the district’s top challenges:
This month, the Morgan Hill Unified School District is welcoming two new trustees, Ron Woolf and Claudia Rossi, and welcoming back two incumbents, Don Moody and Shelle Thomas. It’s an ideal time to review the district’s top challenges:
- Continue the positive momentum: With the arrival of Superintendent Wes Smith, the district’s students, employees and parents have a fresh, upbeat attitude. It’s a valuable resource and one that was in desperately short supply under the former superintendent. Use that goodwill and energy in practical ways to improve our schools by increasing volunteerism and fundraising, perhaps with the help of the existing Live Oak Foundation, to enhance the district’s image in the community, to rebuild tattered relationships internally and externally.
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Get a grip on personnel issues: Two recent high-profile cases threaten to diminish that positive momentum. The district must review all personnel policies and procedures to ensure that problems aren’t swept under the rug and to ensure that the highest priority is given to what’s best for students, not what’s best for under-fire employees. Dr. Smith must communicate those priorities in no uncertain terms to anyone involved in handling personnel problems.
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Broadcast school board meetings: Years ago, school board meetings were broadcast on the district’s cable television channel, a practice that was stopped after volunteers moved on. Broadcasting meetings is helpful especially for parents with small children who can’t regularly attend hours-long meetings but who want to know what’s happening in the school district. In addition, given that only about a third of households have cable television these days, the meetings should also be streamed live across the Internet, and an archive of broadcasts made available on the district’s website. Meetings earlier this year were filmed by a teacher and students at Sobrato High School, though they haven’t attended in a while. Why not work with Sobrato more closely to get every meeting on TV and post the broadcast schedule? The district has the technology and the students and volunteers to make this happen. No more excuses.
There’s lots more work to be done – closing the achievement gap, increasing the woefully low number of high school counselors, finding long-term solutions to the chronic budget problems – and we’re looking forward to watching the new school board tackle them.
