Alamogordo Daily News Article Covering School Board Meeting of Aug. 10th

The Alamogordo Daily News covered the August 8th meeting. The article can be found here.

Regular School Board Meeting of August 9, 2010

The podcast is loaded for tonight's meeting. Visit http://cmsbears.podbean.com to hear the entire meeting, or download it from ITunes. Board Member Doug Porch was not present due to illness.

The financial portion of the agenda was not addressed, as Sharlotte was out. Under Action Items, there was a handout outlining how the school would cut $122,400 from the budget. (These changes were approved).  There was considerable discussion about student travel, and some discussion as to the potential revenue gained by closing the High School campus.

Under the Assistant Superintendent's Report there was discussion as to Cloudcroft Schools meeting AYP and how to interpret the results. Visit the New Mexico Public Education Department's website to see the detailed AYP reports.

The Superintendent's Report covered disabling computer downloads for students. (I had some questions about that.)

Agenda for August 9, 2010 School Board Meeting

Here is the agenda for tonight's meeting. I'm interested in hearing about those budget changes.

Mr. Hancock Responds

In my prior posting I included a copy of a letter that I sent to Mr. Hancock and the School Board Members. In it I offered some suggestions as to ways that the school could better inform the public of upcoming special meetings. Here is Mr. Hancock's response to that letter:

Great minds travel the same path.  Number 1 would only notify parents and to add others would be at an expense that we just cannot take on, Number 3 we have those blocked on our network, number 2 is the one that I have already started Joel working on.  It is my thinking that this will work if Joel can overcome some issues caused by our network software.  He has been working on that and thinks that it can be done but still not sure (it is a network software issue).  If this will eventually work then we will have a list that one could sign up for to receive an e-mail about special meeting that are convened on short notice such as the one last Monday night.  This will require that one contact Joel to be added to the list.  This is not in place yet but I hope that it will be soon.  You can see that we were thinking alike on number two.  If this gets up and running I will let you know.

Special School Board Meeting Held Last Night

I discovered today that there was a special school board meeting held last night. It sounds like the topic of discussion was further budget cuts. Unfortunately, I didn't know about the meeting, so there is no podcast available.  I have long had a problem with the way that the school notifies the public of special meetings. Below is the letter I sent to Mr. Hancock and every member of the school board outlining my concerns and possible solutions:

Dear Tommy,

I discovered today that there was a special board meeting last night. I wish I had known about it ahead of time so I could have included its podcast on my blog, but I don’t routinely stop by the school to read the window. I realize that the school does the minimum which is required by law as to posting notification of public meetings when someone tapes the notice to the window by the gym and gives the notices to the post offices in hopes that they will post them. I am fully aware that you are loath to start an email list to notify people such as myself (People Concerned About Cloudcroft Schools blog) or Jennifer Smith (the Alamogordo Daily News) of special meetings out of fear that “everyone else” will want to be included in that notification, thus taking too much of your or your staff’s time. However, I think that you need to be open to alternative methods of communication if you are sincerely interested in having the public participate in public meetings.

The school has made significant investments in technology, so I assume that means that you and the school board recognize that it is an important tool in the educational process. Unfortunately, when it comes to public meeting notification no one wants to use the technology that you have readily available. I would suggest that the following notification methods could easily be employed by the school with minimal time and effort. I only suggest that these methods be used when it comes to special public meetings that are convened at the last minute...such as the one that you had last night.

1. Use the phone notification system that the school has in place.
2. Establish an email list and allow members of the public who want to be on that list to add their email addresses.
3. Set up a Twitter or Facebook account that can be updated, then anyone who wants notification can sign up for text or email notification.

If you are truly interested in encouraging public participation, then any of these methods could be implemented quickly and at no cost to the school. Expecting people to stop by the school on a daily basis to see if anything has been taped to the window is not reasonable. It is a waste of time, fuel and energy. It is, however, ideal if you want to do the absolute minimum.