I've never went to a school board meeting before, but I really wanted to have a question answered so I decided to go. A few weeks ago I was told by a school employee that a project, a remodel of a intermediate school, was $20M over budget. $20M overbudget for a school remodel?? That's why I went. I arrived at 5:30pm, the board meeting was called into session and I was promptly escorted out of the auditorium because there was an executive session and the public wasn't invited. Oh well. I met a lady in the cafeteria and we began to chat. She has three kids in this school district. At 6:30pm we were invited back into the auditorium and the meeting continued. Lots of agenda items, some perked my ears up, some were hohum. A school employee named Steve, I later found out he was the grand poobah of the physical building guru(sorry I don't know his title), stood up and proceeded to explain how the remodel of the intermediate school was progressing. $15M has been spent as to date with a total cost over run of about a million. He explained in detail on why the overruns happened and I fully understood what he was saying.
The meeting lasted about two hours but what really frightened me was the lack of people in the audience. Only myself and the lady with three kids were present. That's it. A school district with about 2000 kids and probably 10K+ residents and only TWO people show up for a school board meeting.
Is this common for other parts of America? If so then I completely understand why our schools are turning out dolts. No parental oversight of the board members. No input. No nothing to keep the school board on a path which most parents want. I plan on seeing the Superintendent of the school system and the guy named Steve. Pick their minds and express my wishes on how to make the school a better place for the kids. Somehow the board wants to spend large quantites of money on buildings but the average percentile this school system has, compared with the entire state, is around 37% for reading comprehension and 43% for Math. Something is not quite right in this district. Maybe I'll figure it out.
If you have suggestions on how to raise the percentile rates please let me know.
I understand your sentiments. There are several towns/communities that utilize this school system. Lots of square miles with endless roads meandering up and around the hills. It's kind of hard to organize folks when they are so spread out. Sure, I could do the internet thing, but I like to keep my annonymity on the interwebs. Plus the community I live within has an average age of 70. Not too many old folks want to go treking down to the local school at 6:30 at night. The kids' parents generally live north of where I do so ........... Look, I understand change begins with one person. Maybe I'm that one person, or maybe not. I'm just disappointed with this community to not want to know what is being discussed within a school district meeting. The older folks do go out and vote on political issues and they narrowly passed the latest school bond issue. Surprising that old home owners want their assesments raised. But, I guess the vote is "for the children". Yea, we should keep water off the kids heads while they are trying to read, but do they really need state of the art gymnasiums with hard back seats? Or a football field that has endless metal bench seats with skyboxes? The athletic facilities are first rate but at the expense of taxes being raised and a lot of money being spent to get the best facilities for the kids. When do the kids utilize the facilities to begin reading better? While they are playing football will their math scores increase? These are the types of questions that pop into my mind, yet I don't know how to solve them.