Category Archives: Teacher Input

December 2018

Posted in Budget, Communication, Meetings, School Board, Teacher Input by

Thanks for reading Fluco Blog! I’m Perrie Johnson, Fork Union’s representative to the Fluvanna County School Board. My goal with Fluco Blog is to let people know what’s going on at School Board meetings beyond the reports available online. Be forewarned, when it comes to discussion, most of the comments I remember turn out to be mine! Here’s the latest…

The big news for December was a continuation of the Alliance Club request to turn the Fluco F rainbow colors.  Before we got very far into the issue, the Board read a statement addressing the question of what we knew about how a local radio show host acquired a copy of the original request. The statement was approved by all members and pretty much said none of us released it, and none of us know who did.

Since the request never turned into an actual vote last month (I moved for approval but no one seconded and the motion died) it was possible to add it to the agenda again.  Questions about whether FCPS actually owns the trademark were answered (yes) and approval was rescheduled for later in the evening.  If I had remembered a Board member was absent (Mr. Pullen) I wouldn’t have voted to reschedule approval for that night.  I apologize that I forgot.  There was a lot going on.  About 10 speakers came forward in favor of approving the request and I only remember one against. (Another speaker asked for alternate bus routes to keep schools open during inclement weather and also questioned the effectiveness of the early release days for professional development.)

When the vote came around, Ms. Stewart made a motion to approve the request of the Alliance Club to change the colors of the Fluvanna F.  It was seconded by Ms. Pace – spoiler alert – you don’t have to vote to approve an item to second the motion.  The vote was a tie, Ms. Stewart and I were in favor, Ms. Pace and Mr. Rittenhouse against.  By policy, tie votes are automatically rescheduled for the next meeting so Mr. Pullen will get to participate after all.  I’m relieved.  This meeting was postponed because of snow last week.  All members would have been present if the weather hadn’t intervened.

I explained my vote in my last post, but I’ll quickly repeat that Fluvanna has approved a color change to the Fluco F by another school sanctioned club in the past.  I think pointing out how this group is different from that group, and making the decision based on evaluating our differences is unnecessary.   Rather than compare clubs and assign value by letting some change the logo and some not, as long as any group is already sanctioned by FCPS I’m in favor of treating everyone the same.  As one public speaker pointed out, maybe we should consider the logo as belonging to the kids, not the school system.  With the oversight that school administrators consider a sanctioned club a legitimate use of students’ time and school resources, I’d like to also consider them equally valuable and hold them to the same standards and the same benefits.  That wasn’t so quick after all, was it?

Minutes from the Staff Advisory meetings are always included in the online information.  This month’s indicated changes to the staff survey.  I asked for a survey committee so staff has control over the information they want to communicate.  I also asked for questions on testing and what we can do better to retain staff (that doesn’t cost much money).

Speaking of money, the amount of money to be returned to the county because it was not spent last school year is either a little or a lot less than expected, depending on who you ask.  Reasons were given, and I think accepted, but I hope communication on this issue between the School Board and Board of Supervisors improves in the future. I’ll definitely make that my responsibility.

The meeting pretty much ended with about another 10 public speakers and, as I remember, all but one in favor of the Alliance Club request.  We vote again in January.

I’ll be away for the next week or two and probably not able to check for comments.  Thanks for being patient with me.

If you’d like to keep up with Fluco Blog, click the FOLLOW button near the very bottom right corner and enter your email address. It’s private and completely free. If you want to comment on a post, click Comment or Reply. You’ll be asked to provide a name and an email address. If something hits too close to home and you want to be anonymous, DON’T GIVE YOUR REAL NAME ANYWHERE. Make something up. Do give your real email address, which will NOT show up with your comment. You might also be asked for a website, which is weird and not required. Your information is not sold or leased to anyone.

This blog is a personal blog, written and edited by me.  The views expressed in this blog are purely my own and do not represent the Fluvanna County School Board, the school superintendent, or anyone else. Comments added by others are not necessarily my opinions and I am not responsible for their content.

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Moving On In September

Posted in Budget, Compensation, Meetings, Pay Scale, Policy, School Board, Teacher Input, Testing by

Thanks for reading Fluco Blog! I’m Perrie Johnson, Fork Union’s representative to the Fluvanna County School Board. My goal with Fluco Blog is to let people know what’s going on at School Board meetings beyond the reports available online. Be forewarned, when it comes to discussion, most of the comments I remember turn out to be mine! Here’s the latest…

Within minutes of beginning September’s open session, there was a controversial vote on the position of Director of Elementary Instruction and Federal Programs.  The vote was to put a certain person in the position. I have no objection to this person or the last, but I do object to the position itself.  I voted no because this was not a director’s position a few years ago and, in my experience, the highly structured methods and programs put in place by those in the position severely restrict teachers’ abilities to use their own professional judgment to tailor instruction to meet the needs of their unique group of learners. It’s a mouthful, I know. And I have other concerns.  The motion to fill the position failed (2 in favor, 3 against) but I think the discussion will live on.

The first round of public comments drew 7 speakers, commenting on kindergarten staggered opening (teachers were appreciative), my opening day remarks (staff was supportive), testing (too much), and the first day bus fire.

Budget reports covered three years. Closing out 2018 gets us closer to a “carryover” amount for 2019, which is about $1.5 million BUT the timing of sales tax revenue reduces that by about $180k and another $500k is spoken for by state and federal programs we’re obligated to fulfill.  Then another $470k is “promised” to the county for funds used for Carysbrook roof replacement.

The 2020 budget discussion began with the governor’s plan for a 3% raise BUT state funds would only cover positions required by the Standards of Quality.  That includes only 219 out of our 500+ employees.  To raise all salaries by 3% would cost us an additional $625k.  I thought it sounded like a lot, too, so I asked twice.  The administration is also looking at some large class sizes at the high school.

Two items of Unfinished Business came up.  Ms. Stewart asked the Board to consider busing student voters to the polls during the school day in November.  The admin will prepare a report for our next meeting.  I asked if the Board was willing to discuss reducing the amount of testing we require in Fluvanna.  At our last seminar we heard from the administration about testing.  I’d also like input from those who give the tests and use the results for instruction.  The Board agreed to have this future discussion.

A couple of action items were especially interesting.  In addition to some simple changes to the teachers’ probationary policy, the Board voted 4-1 to change the terms of probation from 5 years back to 3.

We changed the date of the November meeting from the 14th to the 7th.  I hated to make the switch, and we thought about not changing it since three of us would be available, but two requested the change and both the clerk and deputy clerk will be away on our regular day.

We were scheduled to vote again on the motion from last month that certainly felt like a reprimand to me concerning my opening day remarks to staff.  However, Ms. Stewart and Ms. Pace rescinded their motions and the item was removed from the agenda.  I was actually disappointed (and said so) because I was hoping for a vote of support from a majority of the Board, and would have preferred that as the last word.  I respected the Board’s wish to move on, though, and somehow resisted the temptation to revive the motion myself!

For the last round of public comments, two teachers made it through the entire meeting to speak again in support of my opening day comments to staff.  I am very grateful to everyone who came, spoke, emailed, shared a kind word, patted me on the shoulder.  I needed it!

 

If you’d like to keep up with Fluco Blog, click the FOLLOW button near the very bottom right corner and enter your email address. It’s private and completely free. If you want to comment on a post, click Comment or Reply. You’ll be asked to provide a name and an email address. If something hits too close to home and you want to be anonymous, DON’T GIVE YOUR REAL NAME ANYWHERE. Make something up. Do give your real email address, which will NOT show up with your comment. You might also be asked for a website, which is weird and not required. Your information is not sold or leased to anyone.

This blog is a personal blog, written and edited by me.  The views expressed in this blog are purely my own and do not represent the Fluvanna County School Board, the school superintendent, or anyone else. Comments added by others are not necessarily my opinions and I am not responsible for their content.

May Meeting

Posted in Agenda, Budget, Communication, Extended Service Plan, Meetings, School Board, Teacher Input, Testing by

Thanks for reading Fluco Blog! I’m Perrie Johnson, Fork Union’s representative to the Fluvanna County School Board. My goal with Fluco Blog is to let people know what’s going on at School Board meetings beyond the reports available online. Be forewarned, when it comes to discussion, most of the comments I remember turn out to be mine! Here’s the latest…

Full disclosure, last month’s post was short.  This one isn’t.

Like most meetings, this one began with a vote to approve the consent agenda, intended to include non-controversial items grouped together for efficiency’s sake.  One of these items each May is the staff contract list, naming hundreds of people receiving contracts from FCPS for the next school year.  Retirees receiving contracts has drawn a lot of attention in the past, but this list included only two, both long-time workers with adult education and Families Learning Together.  Other retirees are hired from time to time but paid a daily rate.

Mr. Winkler presented a plan to extend contracts for elementary librarians (pay them to work two extra weeks, I think, during the summer).  His reasoning was spot on, and they certainly deserve the opportunity, but we have so many staff members who come in to work during the summer without pay, or work for a daily stipend that’s less than half of a contract amount, and we have other librarians not included in this plan.  We already offer extended contracts to some teachers and not others. I’d give an extended contract to anyone who wanted it if we had the money, but the inconsistency of giving the chance to only certain people in certain positions bothers me.  However, all Board members agreed to support this for the upcoming year and the administration agreed to look at the issue.

The cafeteria budget came under discussion because although it’s a “self-supporting program”, that definition includes money taken from the overall school budget to cover unpaid student lunch charges. Last year this was $33,000.  These charges have nothing to do with students receiving free and reduced lunches, those children are fed. These are either families who can’t pay but didn’t apply for assistance, or families who (according to federal guidelines) have enough income to cover lunch costs.  No Board member suggested withholding food from any student.  Mr. Pullen wondered if we can work with the treasurer’s office or DMV to impose consequences on parents. Ms. Stewart brought up that we could be using the $33,000 to better compensate those who prepare and serve the food.  At this point I’m not opposed to the cheese sandwich and apple alternative for those with severely overdue accounts, but I’m aware of the lunch shaming connotations and would like to learn more.  Ms. Stewart agreed to take the issue to the wellness committee for further discussion.

Trying for closure on the topic of recording/streaming/archiving our meetings, the Board decided streaming and posting (even just audio recordings) to the website was too costly when ADA restrictions were considered, so we compromised on a one-time expense of about $1700 for equipment to audio record and archive meetings ourselves.  This isn’t much help for those who just want to catch up on their own time since FOIA charges could be as high as $100, but it will provide a comprehensive record of all proceedings.

New Business is sort of my favorite.  Mr. Pullen suggested creating a taskforce to address bullying prevention (it’s tempting, but I just can’t call it a bullying taskforce).  We’ll start with looking at what we have in place now.  Also New Business, we need to decide on the agenda for a July 31 seminar.  Mr. Winkler wants to look at broad strategic goals. Several Board members want to go through the line item budget.  I want to address testing from my personal viewpoint of skipping the justifications which I’m very familiar with, and moving toward a meaningful reduction in testing, with plenty of teacher input.  My perspective is that all assessments may give us useful information, but we reach a point of diminishing returns when we test too much.

Also at our next meeting, we’ll finalize a decision about insurance, since we removed this vote from May’s agenda.  We’re waiting for more information but it shouldn’t affect employee costs or plan provisions.  We did vote on some FY19 budget amendments that simply made changes to account for our final appropriation from the Board of Supervisors.  My only comment was I’m very glad to see that instead of going down for several years, the instructional portion of the total budget is now going up significantly.

When people told me my April post was short I don’t think they were disappointed. Sorry.

Our next regular meeting is a week early (sorry again) on June 6.  Same time (6:30 open session) though!

 

If you’d like to keep up with Fluco Blog, click the FOLLOW button near the very bottom right corner and enter your email address. It’s private and completely free. If you want to comment on a post, click Comment or Reply. You’ll be asked to provide a name and an email address. If something hits too close to home and you want to be anonymous, DON’T GIVE YOUR REAL NAME ANYWHERE. Make something up. Do give your real email address, which will NOT show up with your comment. You might also be asked for a website, which is weird and not required. Your information is not sold or leased to anyone.

This blog is a personal blog, written and edited by me.  The views expressed in this blog are purely my own and do not represent the Fluvanna County School Board, the school superintendent, or anyone else. Comments added by others are not necessarily my opinions and I am not responsible for their content.