Shaker School Board Work Session Report

Board Work Session Report - September 27 at Administration Building

School Board Work Session Meetings are open to the public but are not designed for public participation.  The intent of work sessions is to allow discussion on issues as well as Board member reports and any related discussion.  We encourage the public to attend and to become informed about how our schools operate. 
The meeting commenced at 6:00pm with all of the school board members in attendance. Also in attendance were Superintendent Mark Freeman, Treasurer Bryan Christman, 7 administrators, 2 HS students and 2 members of the public.
 
Board Member Reports

• Special Education - Treasurer Christman will be preparing a report on the cost of providing services to Special Education students.
• Strategic Planning - President Sutherland reported on the September 4th meeting of the Strategic Planning Monitoring Committee. This is the beginning of year 2 and the next meeting will be in October.  She also commented that some "would like to see heaven and earth moved to address the achievement gap" but the outside reviewer's report cautioned that the Strategic Plan was very ambitious and may have to be modified.  The strategic plan as adopted in 2011 is here.  The report on Year 1 is here
• City Council - no report on the meeting as Mr. Bliss was not able to attend.
• Finance & Audit Committee - Ms. Fulford and Mr. Clawson reported that there was extensive discussion at the August 21st meeting of the Finance & Audit Committee on the role of the committee and how to support the school board.  Specifically, the F&A Committee is asking for guidance from the board on levy cycle and size goals.  The last levy and the planned next levy are on a 4-year cycle.  Is the expectation that the board will then return to a 3-year cycle with 9.9 mills?  If the board will provide guidance the F&A Committee will put this into the forecast to be discussed and approved at the meeting in October rather than using some hypothetical cycle.  President Sutherland asked that the board members "gestate" the request and discuss it at a future, not yet scheduled, work session.  She also suggested that she and the Superintendent would investigate how other districts use their F&A committees.  Superintendent Freeman said that the "working hypothesis is a 3-year cycle going forward" for the F&A Committee until told otherwise.
• Performance Compensation & Teacher Evaluation - President Sutherland reported on these overlapping committees. There will be a "Master Teacher" designation and peer mentoring training for Performance Compensation and an unspecified pilot for a Teacher Evaluation system this year.  The district committed $200,000 to the performance compensation pilot in 2012-2013 above negotiated compensation.  See "side letter" here.
• Succession Planning - President Sutherland commented that the board would be meeting frequently on this; is in the process of evaluating "preliminary" proposals from search firms; will take "some weeks" to select a search firm; and will then work with the search firm to establish a time line.

Executive Session - at 6:20 the board voted to go into executive session for "a personnel matter."  Despite the failure to identify the purpose, it seems likely that this was to discuss the search process for a superintendent.  Executive sessions are not open to the public.

Announcements
October 3rd, 7:00pm - Finance & Audit Committee Meeting
October 9th, 6:00pm - School Board Regular Meeting

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