Imagine if the school board meeting was a mouse click away on
YouTube or Google Video. Now, come back to reality. The public
wants Morgan Hill Unified School District trustees to do a better
job broadcasting their meetings and do a better job helping
struggling students.
MORGAN HILL
Imagine if the school board meeting was a mouse click away on YouTube or Google Video. Now, come back to reality.
The public wants Morgan Hill Unified School District trustees to do a better job broadcasting their meetings and do a better job helping struggling students.
Other than that, it’s not so bad.
In fact, despite writing down their concerns on hard copy report cards distributed among the community, readers still gave the seven members of the Morgan Hill Unified School District Board of Education passing grades in the three areas evaluated which dealt with academic benchmarks, English learners and broadcasting of their twice-monthly meetings.
Among the more than 130 report cards collected as part of the Morgan Hill Times Accountabilty in Community Leadership Project evaluation, readers demanded that the meetings, sometimes lengthy, are broadcast.
“It’s been two years, they could have been taping now,” one reader wrote.
Another one offered: “The policy of having all classes (fourth-grade, for example) do the same work each day has hurt teacher morale and not allowed for teachable moments.”
Other readers said about benchmarks such as the California Standards Test, California High School Exit Exam, California English Language Development test, etc., that “teaching to a test doesn’t really give students an academic foundation that they can rely on in life. It’s regurgitating facts.”
With the largest response from the public yet, the Times collected the last batch of report cards grading board members’ progress in completing goals adopted in July 2006.
The Times asked Board President Peter Mandel to identify a projected completion date for the goals. He complied by giving the newspaper measurements with target completion dates that could be used by readers and the editorial board to track their progress and hold them accountable. But in the end, Mandel declined to participate in the grading process.
Newly-elected Board President Julia Hover-Smoot, commenting on this third evaluation, said she sees good things happening in the district, but there is always room for improvement.
“I think a lot about how to sustain our school district in its best aspects and how to improve it where it is weak,” she said. “I think we are doing a very good job right now in working or developing creative new programs, adopting and using quality curriculum across the district and working on supporting our sites to make them wonderful places to learn.”
The Times Editorial Board gave trustees a C on student test scores, a C+ for monitoring English learners and a D for progress in broadcasting board meetings.
Trustee Kathy Sullivan once again declined to participate in the grading process as she has done throughout the project. Sullivan said she was not going to evaluate her performance in the goals for the same reasons she has declined to do so in the past.
“What the paper is looking for is that we use them (the newspaper) as a ‘vehicle to help the district address these issues,’ ” she said. “They are certainly one vehicle, but not the only one. And their priorities may not always be the same as those of the children we have been elected to represent. My job is to serve children and promote public education. I do not see how this will do either.”
Bart Fisher did not return a report card this time, though he has participated during each prior phase of the project. He didn’t return phone calls for comment by press time.
Trustees Hover-Smoot, Mike Hickey, Don Moody and Shelle Thomas gave themselves a B- on student scores, a B- on English learner progress and a C- on the attempt to broadcast the meetings.
“We’re looking at other things we can do, such as video streaming, in order to broadcast the meetings until we can work things out,” said Moody. “In general, I feel good about the goals and the goals workshop we just had. A lot of it is stuff that we already know is important.”
The board met on Nov. 20 and on Thursday in special workshop sessions to create new goals for the next 18 months.
Thomas gave the board a failing grade on the third measurement, broadcasting school board meetings.
“ASAP is appropriate,” she said. “A date certainly needs to be established. Two and a half years is too long for our community to wait. Charter Communications could help expedite coverage.”
