Summary of the 8/25/10 Monthly Meeting

So I attended the monthly Board meeting last night with my blogger hat firmly in place - and I have 7 1/2 pages of notes to prove it! Don't worry, I won't subject you to that much detail. After all, one of the main objectives of this blog is to summarize only the most interesting things. The things I think you really will want to know. So here goes...

Advisor Services Contract with Ross School District - I highlighted this item in the recent preview post as an item of note. After hearing detailed discussion at the meeting, I find it even more interesting. In attendance at the meeting was a special guest, Mary Jane Burke, Marin County Superintendent of Schools. So, it turns out that the whole idea for the advisory contract - under which Valerie and our facilities director will provide up to 12 hours per week ($60,000 max.) in services to Ross during the coming school year - started with Mary Jane. Ross approached Mary Jane about being a mentor to its new Superintendent/Principal, and Mary Jane in turn contacted Valerie. Several months of discussions and meetings ensued that resulted in the contract that was approved last night. President Mangan said the Board gave special consideration to the potential effect of losing some of Valerie's time to the Ross contract. The agreed-upon solution was to carve out some administrative-oriented duties from Valerie's workload (e.g. coordinating and maintaining the website) and assigning those to others. Both Board members and Mary Jane discussed how routine monitoring and evaluation throughout the coming year will be important to assess the impacts of the contract on both the Larkspur and Ross districts.

Financial management issue - The district's Business Manager, Becky White, reported prelimnary year-end budget numbers for the fiscal year that ended 6/30/10. Although we all know budget issues were tough, it could have been a lot worse. Believe it or not, we actually ended last year with a surplus of $481,000, when our initial projection had been for a deficit of $502,000. That's a total of $983,000 better off than where we projected we would end up. (This would explain the district's ability late last year give the teachers a 2% increase that was retroactive to July 1, 2009.) I, for one, am incredibly happy we all didn't have to live through having almost $1 million less last year. It was a challenging enough year as it was.

President Mangan reported that the County sent the district a letter praising us for:

• An impressive amount of funds from outside sources (i.e. SPARK and PTA. That's US by the way. Nice donating, all you parents out there.)
• Our ability to maintain a notable reserve fund.
• The overall great work done by Becky White. (Becky is fabulous, by the way. I learned this when I got to sit and chat with her at a previous meeting, one she went to even though she wasn't giving a presentation. If you haven't met her, you should. And when you do, be sure to say thanks for all her excellent work.)

STAR/CST testing results for last year - Valerie and the principals discussed some preliminary results from last year's standardized testing. A more detailed review will come in either September or October once the new API (Academic Performance Index) numbers are available. Valerie said the numbers are delayed this year because the state has been implementing a new data-collection system.

Generally, our kids continue to score very well on these tests. One score that stood out to me when I previewed the packet materials before the meeting was a seemingly low score for our 7th graders in "general math." At the meeting, I learned (courtesy of Principal Norbutas), that this number is artificially low because it does not include the most advanced 7th graders who took the algebra test instead. These kids' scores were included in the 8th grade score for "algebra."

New portables at Neil Cummins? - Turns out that Neil Cummins is stretched so thin that up to three additional portables may be showing up as soon as this fall. The projected cost for adding three more is $180,000. More to come on this soon, I presume.

Well there you go, school fans, I could write more but I feel it's time to stop for today. If you've made it this far, please take another minute or two to share your feedback with me. Do you like what you've seen so far? Do you have suggestions, requests,...? I'd love to hear from you.

Also, this post just needed to end, so I saved one interesting thing for a separate post to come in a few days. That is, new proposed drug and alcohol policy language supported by the County that some fear will require curtailing the presence of alcohol at fund raising events (auction party?). I don't see it coming to that, but I'll say more soon.

Never stop learning...

-Rob