The new Morgan Hill School Board delayed choosing its goals for
the 2003-04 year, until March 10 and possibly later. No School
Board goals for the 2003-2004 school year were agreed upon during
the Feb. 3 continuation of the Feb. 1 special meeting devoted to
budget and goals.
The new Morgan Hill School Board delayed choosing its goals for the 2003-04 year, until March 10 and possibly later.
No School Board goals for the 2003-2004 school year were agreed upon during the Feb. 3 continuation of the Feb. 1 special meeting devoted to budget and goals.
New trustees Mike Hickey, Amina Khemici and Shellé Thomas had requested several special meetings in workshop-style, including a facilities meeting and the budget and goals meeting, to learn the state of the district before making decisions on impending budget cuts and a construction management firm for Sobrato High School.
“If we make as our goal to respect and support the teachers and employees of the district then all these other things will fall into place,” Hickey said during the goal portion of the meetings.
Many of the trustees agreed with Hickey in desiring a goal stating the board’s support of teachers.
“I don’t know how much we’ll be able to offer our staff this year, and what we do have to offer them is our support,” Thomas said.
Trustee Jan Masuda had a similar theme for a proposed goal.
“To support qualified programs and well-trained teachers which foster student achievement while maintaining fiscal solvency,” she said.
There was some disagreement about how exactly the goals should be developed.
Thomas said she thought the goals should be very specific; she wanted the superintendent’s evaluation tied to them, and she wanted to complete them during the meeting. She was told by Board President Tom Kinoshita that the district staff would create them.
Board members’ ideas were recorded by Assistant Superintendent Denise Tate. The district staff will take the ideas and bring some goals back for the board to approve.
“These (ideas) will be digested and summarized and put into some type of format,” Trustee Del Foster said.
Superintendent Carolyn McKennan said once the board goals were approved, the goals would be implemented at the school sites during the next school year.
“Once you establish your goals, we go to our staff, to our principals and our teachers and then we figure out how to meet those goals,” she said.
McKennan said the current goals had been developed for certain reasons.
“We will go back and distill what we thought we heard you say,” she said. “I feel the need to remind us a little about how the process has evolved over time. We had a curriculum audit and the result was that we needed to get our house in order … It wasn’t random that you chose these (2002-2003) goals.”
Foster pointed out that times have changed.
“When we drew those up, we were operating under a different financial climate,” he said. “We need to understand now what criteria we are looking for that’s measurable.”
Trustee George Panos agreed.
“If the ship is sinking, why complain about the room service,” he said.
Panos said later in the week that decisions regarding goals and budget have to be well-publicized.
“Every time we can give and share information with board members, employees and the public we become more stable,” he said. “We have to come together in some agreement or compromise, and we know not everyone’s going to be happy. But we have to make hard decisions to keep this public education boat afloat.”
Thomas said writing specific goals is particularly important because of the financial situation of the district.
“We need a goal that really talks to how we attain student achievement,” she said. “But if we’re looking at construction goals, we need to be specific enough. For example, we could say we would only enter into contracts not to exceed 10 percent over cost.
“We’ve had cost overruns in the past, and we need to learn from experience. We’re in a survival mode, and we need to build up morale and take care of our teachers and staff. That’s what’s going to drive us to student achievement,” Thomas said.
Panos said he thinks that the board goals are important for several reasons.
“There are three things we need to do to tie goals to: how to assign dollars to the goals to make them realistic, to make the goals measurable and on a timeline of sorts,” he said. “All those things have to come together because the superintendent’s evaluation is somewhat tied to these goals, and the health of the district is gauged by these goals. They are like the district’s temperature gauge. And now we’re facing a fiscal crisis … What’s been dominating our attention and focus is this budget crisis, and we don’t have the leisure to refine and tighten up the goals as one would hope.”
Panos said he thinks the state government needs to take some responsibility for the financial situation.
“I’m very upset with our governor, our legislators,” he said. “Education always gets a bad rap. If students are doing bad, education gets bad rap, yet everyone wants to ride the bandwagon for better public education. We have unfunded mandates and lip service. It’s left to the local population to solve the problems. We now have to come together to try and find some bandages to get through this. Every district now is faced with the need for a first aid kit.”
During Saturday’s session, as the board was looking at the various sources of revenue for the district, some board members were looking for innovative ways to bring money into the district. Noticing a line item on revenue from gas sales, Trustee Mike Hickey asked Deputy Superintendent Bonnie Branco to explain the sales.
“We are able to purchase our gas at a lower price because of volume,” said Branco. “The police department and the city purchase it. We figure out what our operating costs are, and we add that as a surcharge.”
The report from the district listed projected revenue from fuel sales for 2002-2003 as $60,000.
Hickey liked the idea of a new source of revenue.
“Couldn’t we open that up a little, maybe sell gas to teachers,” he asked. “They have to buy gas anyway, and if they could get it cheaper, it would help them and it would help the district.”
Branco said the district could look into the idea.
