The trouble with blogs of this type is that they tend towards criticism. The trouble with the current school board and its Superintendent is that it is hard to find much to criticize. The board is one of the most experienced and competent that we have had in many years. The Superintendent is the best in a long time. But every now and then, there is going to be a slip up, and I will be duty bound to point in out.
Case in point is the curious timing of the Superintendent's announcement that the US Department of Education had rejected the District's grant application for $478,345 to be used to open the charter school in 2010. As first reported by Holly Worthy of www.thinkdsm.com the announcement was not made during the two-hour charter school presentation at the October 6, 2009 board meeting. It was announced much later, at the tail end of the long meeting after much of the audience (including the Register reporter), and one would have to imagine most of the television audience as well, had left.
Alerted of this odd event by a Facebook post by Graham Gillette, I watched the pertinent part of the replay of the board meeting tonight. Dr. Sebring's rather sheepish announcement was not met by groans of anguish or stunned questions from the board, as one might suspect, but by stone silence. Having set at that table for something like 200 meetings over 9 years, I have the strong sense that the board members knew about the letter before the meeting ever started. Yet no one mentioned it during the presentation.
The loss of the grant will make it very difficult to open the charter school in 2010. Facing severe budget cuts it will be difficult if not impossible to undertake any new initiatives next year, even one as worthy as the charter school. At the very least the lost funding source should have been made part of the presentation so there could have been a timely discussion of its impact before the board votes on the charter school at its October 20 meeting.
If they vote for it, I hope they explain how they intend to pay for it and what current programs will be cut. That doesn't mean there aren't some programs that deserve the axe, there are. It does mean there needs to be a little more transparency in the process.
