Wednesday, September 29, 2010

COPA Meets with Board Of Eductaion!

COPA Meeting Held on 9-23-10.

This meeting was held with the President of the Board of Education, Sharon Beloin-Saavedra and Board member Paul Carver with president Michael W. Wanik presiding.

Both board members erased the many vague impressions that the COPA membership had about the Board’s costly needs within the city’s budget.

They pointed out having to provide for state mandates such as having to give special education to the disabled students that are patients of the hospital for special care within the city. With the city’s income lessoned by many of the state properties, in our city, being under the pilot program providing little growth for it‘s tax base..

The 127 teacher layoffs proposed by the school administrators; but Ms. Saavedra announced that they were able to hire back 67 of those teachers.

Mr. Carver pointed out that they have just adjusted their budget for this year and that they have to start to work on next year’s budget this September. They will also will provide a line by line budget for next year. The major problem that they are faced with is how many children will become students without their knowing of their existence because they just moved into the city during the summer. Other state mandates forcing the school district to provide for many of the foreign speaking students with special education with student aids in order to improve their English reading skills. Mr. Carver also claimed that 60% of the student inventory are bi-lingual. He also noted the major cost in their budget are teachers salaries and student transportation. He also addressed the fact that the higher family income relates directly to how well a student performs.

With the issue of establishing a search committee for a new Superintendent the Board has decided to hire an outside firm to perform this search. The board also decided to select an interim Superintendent from the administrative staff for a period of an approximate eight months. With the hiring search being completed by March of 2012.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm glad we got an anti-school board person like Mr. Wanick to chair the meeting.

This should be fun to watch.

CPOA member said...

This was a very enlightening meeting. Sharon Beloin-Savaadra and Paul Carver thoroughly explained how the Board of Ed works to help all students. There is much to do that doesn't reach the public. Perhaps one of them should replace Dr. Kurtz..They both have children in the school system, putting them in a position to seek the best ways to educate our children/grandchildren.

Anonymous said...

Only 67 were hired back is a lie Mrs.Saavedra. Tell the people the real truth. All but a handful of teachers were rehired and new teachers were hired to replace some retired ones. The only people not to come back were the ones the board did not want. There is still much discretionary spending at the BOE. It is not all mandates from the state and feds. New initiatives were included in this budget but they will not tell you that probably because some on the board don"t even know or pay attention at the meetings.

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