SocraticGadfly: Blogging the Jan. 8 LISD board meeting

January 08, 2007

Blogging the Jan. 8 LISD board meeting

Ed Kirkland had some good insights re the AEIS … asking about what programs the district has tried that don’t work, what the district is doing about phasing them out, etc. He also said he wants Lanc compared with similar size, similar demographic successful districts around the state and even the country.

Carolyn Morris was even more right on, about teacher morale. Good luck actually getting that one fixed.

Lewis later said that he didn’t have more time to address instructional problems until this past year. Well, Larry, shouldn’t you have been doing this before sinking all that work into International Baccalaureate? You gotta crawl before you can walk. Again, nothing wrong with IB, but you gotta crawl before you walk. And it’s hard to crawl with an overflowing plate of overstretched teachers and administrators.

Morris Mosley must be getting ready to run against Carol Strain-Burk. Why else would he be at the school board meeting?

Oh, Larry’s shooting a dart at your lowly (former) newspaper editor. “Many of times you, like the district administration, get undeserved criticism,” he told board members during their recognition. Well, be sure to let me know what the undeserved criticism is, and we will do a line-item discussion.

Oh, while you’re talking about different administration departments, what about all the extra high school cafeteria furniture that’s being hoarded?

“Eight Keys to an Effective Board-Superintendent Partnership.” Sounds like a great book. As published by Lancaster ISD Press, the keys would be:
1. Don’t worry, your superintendent has everything under control.
2. Repeat Key No. 1 seven times.

Just how much did it cost to have the high school band, etc., go to Royce West’s governor for a day event in Austin Nov. 18, and who paid for it?

The district had its best compliance rate ever on a holiday/vacation reading assignment.

Anna Tomlinson spoke in public forum about the board supporting 36 JROTC students going to nationals this year. If the firing range rumors are true, is that going to affect competition this year?

Sorry, but I left before the board got to deciding how to disburse remaining monies from the 2004 bond. The board was still in executive session at 9:30, after more than an hour. It was for personnel issues, even though I didn’t see anything personnel-related on the agenda.

Two guesses:
1. It was about the number of midterm “walks.” Maybe 20 percent was too high a guess, but nonetheless …
2. It was about a district management hire, and the fallout from that.

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