School Board Meets at its new time and day in TRIS LMC

Click on the link below to view the agenda for tomorrow's school board meeting. This is the first meeting at the new time and day of 6:00 the second and fourth WEDNESDAYS of the month. As it deals with approval of the preliminary 13-14 budget, it is being held in the TRIS LMC to accommodate the numerous folks who have comments on that, I presume. I am unsure as to why the change was made after numerous attempts by board members over the years, yours truly included, who had kids in high school music, which always has concerts on Mondays. This forced one of three scenarios. People missed their kids concerts, people left the board meeting early in an up-yours to the administration or people rushed the meeting along so it would be done before the concert began. None of these are optimum choices for board members. I heard that they lost one of the board applicants because of the unannounced change, with apparently little or no discussion in public.

I am surprised the district changed to Wednesdays because of the "unspoken" rule of avoiding Wednesdays because that is the designated religious education night as well as some religious services are held that night. That completely eliminates those people who volunteer at their churches as religious education instructors or who wish to attend Wednesday services as school board candidates. Hmm. This does not affect me, but there are a lot of people it does eliminate who are happy to volunteer their services on a regular basis. Smooth move, district...

Finally, the change to Wednesdays has not exactly helped the problem of the district's inability to post the detailed packets in a timely fashion so that people can study the materials and call the right people with their questions prior to the board meeting. People like, I dunno, reporters or board members or citizens who are curious as to what that budget they plan to approve tomorrow looks like? Get on the stick people. There is no reason to wait until the last minute to publish these documents. It makes you look inept and unprofessional that you cannot produce documents in a timely fashion so that there can be a meaningful dialog during the meeting with both citizens and board members. I'll let you know when I see the agenda!



http://www.ecsdnet.org/documents/Board%20Meetings/2013-2014/July%2024%202013%20agenda.pdf