May–July 2015 Board meetings

As always, these are my opinions only and not the opinions of the Pendleton County School Board or any other individual Board members.

The summer has flown by like it always does.  Here is an update on some of the major issues and events that occurred this summer:

May 21, 2015 General Meeting

Ms. Kristina Sheehy and Mr. Tony Dietrich did a great job with their presentation on MAP testing.  Mr. Dietrich mentioned that 54.3% of the senior class was career ready, and 53.7% of seniors are college ready.  Both of these scores are considerable improvements from last year.  The Reading Plus program identified 200 high school students that were behind in reading skills.  In fact, one of my sons was identified by the program.   He saw a significant gain in reading skills when he took his last ACT.  Ms. Sheehy integrated student voice in the form of video into the presentation.  I believe it is always more powerful when it comes from the student.  When Ms. Sheehy was presenting the results, I noticed that both 2^nd grade classes at both elementary schools did not show growth in reading.  Usually, this would indicate curricular issues.  Ms. Pugh from Southern Elementary suggested that this is the first time students must read the test on their own.  The next day a teacher contacted me and mentioned that another possible cause for this lack of growth is this is the first group of students that were impacted by the reduction in kindergarten to a half day with a certified teacher.  It is worth noting, and I plan to watch very closely next year.

We unanimously approved the budget.  I am concerned that the revenue side is very optimistic.  I will take a wait and watch approach until the end of the fiscal year, which is June 30^th.  At that time, I will have a better idea of how we are doing as far as our revenue.  I don’t want to jump to conclusions until after the end of year numbers are back.

I voted against the certified/classified pay scales as presented.  It is for the same reasons I voted against the pay scales last year.  There are still pockets of favoritism in certain sections of the certified pay scale.  I also had major issues with the classified pay scale this year.  In the last two years, a standard increase was fairly applied throughout the classified pay scale.  This is the first time I have seen inequity in the classified pay scale as well.

 
I have started compiling data comparing our current certified pay scale to the 2014-15 Bracken County Certified Pay Scale.  It was very eye opening.  Essentially, Bracken County pays junior teachers better than Pendleton, but Pendleton County pays senior teachers better.  I also compared our district proposed certified pay scale to the certified pay scale that Campbell County just approved.   It is hard to believe at one time Pendleton County paid their teachers more than Campbell County paid their teachers.  Before my mother-in-law’s death, she showed me some of the pay scales from the 1980s-1990’s that bear out this fact.

Finally, SES was awarded the Twenty First Century Learning grant.   I would like to congratulate Laura Pugh and all those who worked on the grant.  Hopefully, these additional resources will help increase student achievement and prevent the summer slide.

 

June 15, 2015 General Meeting

We welcomed Ms. Cheri Griffin to our Board at this meeting.  Ms. Griffin has been a teacher at NES for many years and has served on the Site Based Council at Sharp Middle School.  I am certain that these experiences will help Ms. Griffin in her new role as Board member.

Mr. Tony Dietrich presented the TELL survey results at this meeting.  When teachers were asked if class sizes were reasonable such that teachers have time available to meet the needs of all students, the results showed a 30.5% increase in satisfaction with regard to that question.   Districtwide the results had gone from 41.9% in 2013 to 72.4% in 2015.  Ms. Jodi Bertram mentioned that while this was to be commended, there are still 1/3 of teachers who are not satisfied.  I agree with Ms. Bertram that we still have much work to do.

It was “pitched” to the board that night in a memo from Ms. Jan Johnston and verbally in the meeting from Mr. Strong that we needed to revote on the Classified pay scale because several lines in the Category B listing were missing, and the correction would extend the Steps in Category B to 24.  However, what was not mentioned to the board was it was a major renovation of the whole Category B.  Was this lack of information intentional? There was a state statute this year that required each employee get a 2% pay increase.  Something of this magnitude would warrant a Superintendent’s knowledge of the pay scales.  Unlike last month, I did vote “Yes” for this amended Classified pay scale because this time it was fair and equitable for all the employees that fall into this section. 

 

July 13, 2015 General Meeting

I need to share some background knowledge before I talk about this meeting:

 

·        Pendleton County Schools currently have 3 “nickel” taxes to support our schools buildings.  Our yearly bond payments total about 2.5 million dollars.  However, the 3 nickels bring in about $2.1 million toward that debt each year.  The rest comes from our general fund.  Therefore, every penny that is brought in by the nickel tax has to be used for making bond payments for our schools.  Last month, $734,000 was moved out of the 320 escrow account (bond account) to our Fund 1 to make our end of year balance look healthy.  The board approved this move last year so I will take full responsibility for that.  However, this transfer needs to stop.

 

·        We just finished the fiscal year on June 30^th.  There are some revenue assumptions in the budget for this year that I think are not achievable.  The following is a table to make it easy to understand:

 

	Fiscal Year ending June 30, 2014	Fiscal Year ending June 30, 2015	Fiscal Year ending July 1, 2016 (budgeted)
Motor Vehicle Tax	522,000	505,000	700,000
Franchise Tax	118,000	99,500	300,000
Utility Tax	696,000	624,000	805,000
Source of information	Annual Budget 2014	Annual Budget 2015	Tentative Budget Report for 2016

 

I am concerned that the projected revenue is going to be about a $600,000 shortfall based on the historical data from the last two years.  I don’t think this is achievable unless a lot of people suddenly buy new cars, start new businesses, etc. 

 

·        We had a Special Meeting on June 25^th, in which we went into executive session per KRS 61.810 (1) (f) to have discussions which might lead to the appointment of an individual employee- board attorney.  After our meeting was over, Dr. Strong shared with us that Ms. Razor had decided to leave our district.   He shared his thoughts on bringing back the Executive Director of Teaching & Learning.  He led the board to believe that this topic would be discussed at our next Board meeting.

 

·        When the agenda to the meeting came out on Thursday July 9, there was nothing on the agenda regarding the Executive Director of Teaching & Learning.  On Friday July 10^th, I requested that the positions of Assistant Superintendent & Executive Director of Teaching & Learning be placed on the action agenda for Monday.  I firmly believe that we need to have a discussion about these positions publicly and not through email especially considering our current financial situation.  Ms. Jodi Bertram was planning on attending the meeting on Monday July 14^th via Skype.  Ms. Bertram had known this meeting was going to be a problem for her, and she had planned on attending via Skype for some time.  Interestingly, our Board attorney sent an email to the entire Board on the morning of Saturday July 11^th.  After receiving the email, Ms. Bertram decided she should not attend the meeting.  What could have possibly been said to keep her from Skyping into the meeting?  And why suddenly can’t Board members Skype when I remember Mr.  Spence and Dr. Verax Skyping into meetings numerous times in the last two years.  It makes you wonder.  Was something being done intentionally to keep Ms. Bertram from participating in our meeting on Monday?

 

At this meeting, I made the motion to suspend Dr. Strong’s ability to fill the positions until the next meeting when the full Board was present for discussion.  I felt that something this important should have the full Board present to discuss.  This motion failed because there was a 2-2 split.  Therefore, Dr. Strong will continue to fill this position.  We have a limited amount of money.  In recent months, I have gotten a clear message that this board is absolutely against raising taxes.  You can’t have it both ways.  It simply isn’t possible.  If you are not going to raise taxes, you have to cut somewhere.  It needs to be positions that have the least impact on our students.  We currently have two curriculum people in central office.  Why do we need a third one?

 

July 27, 2015 Special Meeting

 

Several years ago, the midday transportation for preschoolers was eliminated to save money for our district.   Because of these cuts, our district saw a drop in preschool enrollment.  At this meeting, your Board approved the wrap around preschool contracts for NES and SES.  Many of you are probably thinking why she would agree to pay for this and not pay for additional curriculum personnel.  The answer is this is money well spent.  In the end, you will spend less money for these students if you can start them off on the right foot at an early age.  It will be less expensive to offer the preschool wrap around program than to pay for midday transportation.

There was an executive session concerning the District’s legal counsel.   The Board came out of executive session, and voted to hire Matthew DeMarcus of Wolnitzek, Rowekamp & DeMarcus.  Mr. Elmer Utz, Ms. Jodi Bertram and I voted “Yes” and Ms. Cheri Griffin and Mr. Tony Spence voted “No.”