by AC
I’ve never went to a school board meeting before, but I really wanted to have a question answered so I decided to go. A few weeks ago I was told by a school employee that a project, a remodel of a intermediate school, was $20M over budget. $20M overbudget for a school remodel?? That’s why I went. I arrived at 5:30pm, the board meeting was called into session and I was promptly escorted out of the auditorium because there was an executive session and the public wasn’t invited. Oh well. I met a lady in the cafeteria and we began to chat. She has three kids in this school district. At 6:30pm we were invited back into the auditorium and the meeting continued. Lots of agenda items, some perked my ears up, some were hohum. A school employee named Steve, I later found out he was the grand poobah of the physical building guru(sorry I don’t know his title), stood up and proceeded to explain how the remodel of the intermediate school was progressing. $15M has been spent as to date with a total cost over run of about a million. He explained in detail on why the overruns happened and I fully understood what he was saying.
The meeting lasted about two hours but what really frightened me was the lack of people in the audience. Only myself and the lady with three kids were present. That’s it. A school district with about 2000 kids and probably 10K+ residents and only TWO people show up for a school board meeting.
Is this common for other parts of America? If so then I completely understand why our schools are turning out dolts. No parental oversight of the board members. No input. No nothing to keep the school board on a path which most parents want. I plan on seeing the Superintendent of the school system and the guy named Steve. Pick their minds and express my wishes on how to make the school a better place for the kids. Somehow the board wants to spend large quantites of money on buildings but the average percentile this school system has, compared with the entire state, is around 37% for reading comprehension and 43% for Math. Something is not quite right in this district. Maybe I’ll figure it out.
If you have suggestions on how to raise the percentile rates please let me know.