February 23, 2011 Special Board Meeting Minutes

MINUTES
SPECIAL MEETING – TRUSTEE WORKSHOP OF
THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF
BLAINE COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 61
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2011 – 12:00 P.M.
DISTRICT OFFICE

For complete details, please watch the streamed broadcast of the Special February 23, 2011 Board meeting.

I.     Call to Order and Welcome

Board Chairman Julie Dahlgren called the Special meeting of the Board to order at 12:30 p.m. and welcomed everyone in attendance.

Present were Board Members Dan Parke, Steve Guthrie, Paul Bates and Kathryn Graves. Also in attendance were Dr. Lonnie Barber, Superintendent of Schools, John Blackman, Assistant Superintendent/Chief Academic Officer, Mike Chatterton, School District Treasurer, Adam King, School District Attorney, and Laurie Kaufman, Board Clerk.

Chairman Dahlgren stated that a quorum was present.

The motion was seconded by Paul Bates and passed unanimously.

Please click here to view Dr. Barber’s overview of the Idaho 2011 Legislative Session.

Please click here to view Dr. Barber’s information regarding the Stabilization Cap.

The Board amended the February 8, 2011 Regular Board Meeting Agenda by striking the following Consent Agenda item in order to further discuss it at a later date.

The Board further discussed the Communications Hiring Committee’s Recommendation.  No action was taken as a result of the discussion. Chairman Dahlgren stated that “Approval of Communications Hiring Committee’s Recommendation” will be moved to the Regular March Board Meeting Agenda.

Written comments were received regarding the Communications Director prior to today’s Special Meeting of the Board.

Please click here to view public comments taken from the Minutes of the Regular November 2010 School Board meeting, comments received since the November meeting, and comments published in the February 23, 2011 issue of the Mountain Express.

I think these communication issues are something that every company faces, every school district faces. It’s an on-going issue; it’s an on-going challenge. Everybody’s time is tight and I understand the comments to that. I guess I have some questions. This report came out back in September and one comment or question would be; what has been done so far? In the report on page 15 underneath Implementation Schedule and Recommendations, it says quote, “It would be unrealistic to attempt to undertake all the proposed strategies and activities in one year. We advise district leaders to carefully consider and prioritize those recommendations that could be implemented immediately with the staff and resources available and incorporate others into long range plans.” My question is, has that been done so far? I think that’s something that has to be done by the Trustees, by the Superintendents, to come up with a plan. I’m not sure that that part has been done so far. In looking at the answer that we hire a Communications Director and everything’s taken care of and all our problems are solved. This is communications right here, all the people here talking amongst each other having open meetings. I think that’s where it’s got to start and I would urge the Trustees to try to follow this implementation timetable and the recommendations for the next year and see what could be done by you, Minutes of February 23, 2011 Special Meeting of the Board Page 3 of 11 and then make a decision on it, rather than to go into this in what is now uncertain times financially, both locally and at the state level, and just push it off a little bit to see what can be implemented. This is a very, very comprehensive, very thorough report with great recommendations that apply not just to schools, but to anyone, and I would urge that the Trustees consider doing that. Thank you.

Blaine County School District Board of Trustees:

In July 2009 Dr. Barber addressed the Board of Trustees and asked you to consider a communications audit to better understand and improve internal and external communications. The school board elections had just resulted in 2 veteran board members being unseated. One of the planks of the winning candidates was the push for better District communications with the community. The newly seated members of the board along with the remaining 3 trustees agreed that a communications audit was a good first step to learning how the District could better the communications gap with stakeholders.

The audit was clear and concise in its analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the school districts' communications strategies and made a number of recommendations, the most important of which was that the District hire a Communications Director.

This is a quote from the audit: "The most significant overall finding from the communication audit of Blaine County Schools is that the district has accomplished as much as it can given its current level of investment in Communications... [I]n order to address many of the issues outlined in the "Key Findings and General Observations" section, it is critical to increase the investment of time and resources in Communication-related functions. Without it, the district is not likely to see much improvement in the quality or quantity of communication with its internal and external stakeholders."

The auditor went on the recommend that a CD be hired.

The argument has been made that current district personnel can undertake the recommendations of the auditor. This argument assumes that our current personnel are trained in communications. They are not and the suggestion by Sheri Thomas that the District can send personnel to "seminars and classes...for a onetime fee" assumes that learning to be an effective communicator and representing over 500 staff, 3000 students, and communicating with a community of over 10,000 people requires a few days of training here and there. That suggestion has no merit and will only lead to throwing money at a problem with no centralized plan and further undermine the ability of the District to effectively communicate with a large number of diverse stakeholders.

Communications is a specialized professional function and requires exceptional skill and leadership.

Another misguided argument made by those opposed, and one that has been the subject of escalating rumor and innuendo and points again to the need for a communications director, is the salary of $78 K a year for this position. If you compare this salary to the salaries of other directors, it is low. If you compare this salary to the salary of our certified teaching staff, 83% of our teachers earn more. 83%.

Your superintendent came to you and asked for a Communications Director, based on an extensive and well received audit of the district and based on his and your experiences trying to manage communications without the personnel to handle the job. He realized, as did you; that the District must do a better job communicating with all of its stakeholders and staff and you agreed. There are no good arguments for changing your collective minds and reneging on the decision you made in November. For the good of our District and the good of our community, please confirm the hire today.

The Blaine County Board of Trustees:

A high standard of ethical conduct is one of the most important attributes we seek in a school board trustee. This includes knowing and adhering to all relevant rules of conduct for the office, as well as dealing appropriately with any real or perceived conflicts of interest.

Most of us recognize that ethical standards are more stringent than legal ones. Sometimes, though, even the ethical standard isn't tight enough - we must also avoid the appearance of impropriety. Although some find it frustrating, it's essential in complex societies.

Public confidence in the school board is eroded by irresponsible or improper conduct by school board trustees. A trustee must avoid all impropriety and appearance of impropriety. A trustee must expect to be the subject of constant public scrutiny. A trustee must therefore accept restrictions on the trustee's conduct that might be viewed as burdensome by the ordinary citizen and should do so freely and willingly.

Trustee Bates should recuse himself from the meeting today to avoid the appearance of impropriety. His "life partner", Hemingway teacher Tracy Atwell, signed a letter addressed to the school board opposing the hiring of a communications director for the District. This presents a clear conflict of interest for Trustee Bates and casts a shadow on the entire Board and on these proceedings. Trustee Bates should not be at the table for this discussion and this vote.

Thank you, Board; I really appreciate this discussion period. As I can tell this is a discussion period over the Communications Director; I would like to also go over two points and I will try to be brief.

I know you amended the agenda and I’m hoping that the amendments that you made at the very beginning which was the additions, corrections, modifications, or substitutions to the current agenda, meant the agenda today. Since that amendment did not include voting for this position, I request that you follow your additions, corrections, modifications and do not vote today for this position.

That being said, I want to back to a few of the items. One was a world class communicator. As we know, Heather Crocker is a wonderful person; she works very diligently for the Education Foundation and I love what she does for us now in that position. A world class communicator and PR communications job descriptions that I have seen in the past as well as talking to numerous people in Boise at the State Legislature building; these people have extensive degrees in communications, if they’re hired for this position. That being said, also I want to reiterate that at the Legislature, numerous people and districts have gotten rid of this position as they no longer have the funding for it. So, as your fiscal responsibility as the Board of Trustees of this district, I really, really request that you focus on that. I was told a year ago that there was not funding for a Dual Immersion Coordinator at this time. A part-time coordinator was hired. If you see it in your decision to hire a full time Communications Director that does not directly affect students, I would hope that you also hire a full time Dual Immersion Coordinator, as we do seem to have funding. Also the fiscal responsibility goes to the Audit. A great strategic plan for the Audit was labeled and that was $14,000 spent, so I’m hoping the implementation is also created in a fiscal responsible way. It takes time to actually get a message across. I understand that time is of the essence. There are never enough hours in a day. However, if you have a Communications Director, now what you’re saying is this person over here needs to communicate with the Communications Director, which then the Communications Director decides how it goes out to the public. That is still taking up time. In fact, instead of going from point A to point C, you have to go through point B apparently. So, in that respect, I think what the District has done just within the last two months is incredible for what the communications has put out forward. As Lonnie has gone to all the teachers explaining to them that they are in a delicate state of losing their jobs, I don’t see how we can hire this position. Thank you.

I never said that any teacher is in the delicate state of losing their job; I’ve never said it once.

Mrs. Thomas, we’re going to go on to the next public comment. I usually don’t comment on public comment, but just for your information, we are able to move any information item on the agenda to action; that’s Robert’s Rules of Order.

The words that I heard in the Board’s discussion were misconception, managed backlash, shrink. How are we going to manage public sentiment against the levy that we’re going to be affected by every two years, peoples’ misperceptions, and people’s perceptions? The reason we need a Communications Director is to avoid all of this. We are inundated with misinformation; everybody has an opinion, a viewpoint, all valuable, all genuine, and all heartfelt, all about the children. These are valuable but they confuse the topic, they take up time. We find ourselves in these disagreements that don’t move our community in a positive way and we need to do that. We need to move this community in a positive way.

We have a woman that 22 people decided that they wanted to offer her a job. She was the best candidate. She’s a woman who comes from this community, she is an intelligent woman; she is able to communicate with grace and patience and understanding. She understands the economic reality in this community; she has been affected by it herself.

So what we would like to do from Works of Grace Foundation; -- forgive me, I am very emotional about this, because I love our teachers in this community, and I really feel our teachers have been taken down-road on this subject and they haven’t been dealt with honestly in a truthful way.  My family and I were out there on Monday on Main Street with them in support of them. We have a scholarship program for their children; we’ve paid almost $700,000 year to date. What I would like you to consider is that we help with the salary of Heather. It’s only Heather, because she understands this community. We will pay $25,000 for this year and the next year in support of that position, because we need this position. We need to work together as a community to move past this. We all know this; we know we need this position. If she is hired we will help the District with the salary requirements.  So please give it consideration, -- please.  Thank you

I spoke this morning to the woman who is in charge of all the community relations of the ten largest districts in the state. There are only ten districts in the state that have full time community relations staff, whether they call them community relations or public relations, it really varies. Those ten districts have roughly double the population that we have. We continue to grow at anywhere between 1 ½ and 3 percent a year, so we know that our needs continue to grow and our needs for public relations or communications continue to grow. But if we look at schools of our size, then none of them have a full time public relations position. They have part time staff. It’s hard for me to understand how schools which are double our size with six to seven thousand students, why our population of 3,400 students, would have to have the same requirements that the larger schools have. So I think that no matter what we do, that compromise is an essential part, because I’ve been also down in Boise all the last two weeks also testifying against many of the disgusting parts of the Luna Bill, but I do know from talking with our legislators, I’m getting emails every day, saying the stabilization cap is probably going to get thrown out and the reason it’s going to get thrown out is there are so many people against it here in Blaine County. So I would be really concerned that when the cap gets thrown out and we have to have a levy every couple years, that those same people who are now trying to get the stabilization cap thrown out, are going to come forward and say, why are we hiring more administration? Why, if we are in financial straits, do we need more administration? Which is the second part of my question to the staff and to the Board, I realize this is probably a question that might be answered by a communications person. I believe there is a lot of disinformation about the growth of the administration. I realize that Mr. Blackman can give us statistics about what our percentages are versus the percentage of students. But I think what I hear over and over from people is, we’ve hired a lot more administrators in the last ten years. When our population of students is only going up 1 ½ to 3 percent a year, you have to ask that question, have we been really hiring more administrators? I have no idea, and rather than drawing it out as a statistic, what percentage we have versus other percentages in other schools, I think just a plain number. In one of the other testimonies today, and I have no idea of whether it’s true or not, well, we needed a position for dual immersion and we couldn’t hire it. So, I do think that compromise is going to be necessary here, especially if we look at the rest of the state. Are our needs so much greater than other schools of our size that we need a full time position? When I talked to the woman this morning, she gave me a great amount of information which I can’t cover in three minutes, about what their communication directors do in addition to giving out public information. They maintain websites, they help out with technology, and they do a lot of things that are probably already being done. Only a comment about Mr. Chatterton’s comments. All of the teachers that I know in the District work way more than 40 hours. They work on the weekends too; they’re out there working really hard. We really need to look at this because the state is going to pass some onerous bills that are really going to affect us. So we need to look really good, because in two years we’re going to have to raise that $29-million bucks on our own, and the only way we can do that is to get all of the community on the right side, and right now, if we’re hearing correctly from our legislators, there’s a lot of people in this community that do not think that we need that money. Thank you.

I grew up here. I went to Hemingway and graduated from Wood River High and came back. Now I have two children, one at Hemingway and one at the Middle School. I don’t want my kids’ teachers in classes on the weekends learning about communication; I want someone hired to do that. I want my teachers teaching. I want my administrators to do their jobs. Since this communications program came up and they made their recommendation in September, a lot of things have changed; Luna, Roberts. There is more need now for a Communications Director than ever. All the problems I’m hearing about are communications problems and understanding problems. This person will help that. It seems like every objection to this would be dealt with this kind of person, or at least help the people do their jobs. Please, for the kids, let the teachers teach and let’s just move on. Thank you.

I definitely agree with what the gentleman just said. I’m married to a teacher and I know for a fact that they work a lot more that 40 hours a week. Not only that, they have a hundred people a day plus take care of, wait on, serve, however you want to say it. So their hours a day compared to their salary doesn’t really add up and their time off in the summer is needed so that they can come back in the fall.

I would like to say that, as I think the first speaker said, I feel like there’s been a rush to this position since the Audit came out. From what I’ve seen, there have been maybe slight implementations of the recommendations that came out of the Communications Audit. I feel that prioritizing some of those, putting this position off a little bit longer, is more prudent. You voted on this position in November; I came to that meeting. There was not much discussion except among the Board Members; there was some public comment. Once the position was hired, there’s been more of a public outcry. I was really excited that there was a public hearing today to be able to come and voice my opinion about this. But if you are going to go by your vote in November, then why did you have another public hearing, except to let people voice their opinions and you just go ahead and do what you were going to do anyway. What’s the point of that? In my mind, that continues on the perception that people have about our School Board, is that it doesn’t matter what the public says. One of the previous speakers made a comment about Board Member Bates, and I think you can’t have a conflict of interest if you are a parent, and people sometimes want to say that I have a conflict of interest because I’m married to a teacher and that I have certain opinions. But I’m a parent first and I am a member of this community, and that comes before any associations. Thank you very much for holding this hearing today but I sure hope that you garner something from it as opposed to just already having your mind made up.

I have two kids in Blaine County Schools. My letter was published in the Mountain Express today so I’m not going to repeat those comments on why I think this position should be hired. But I just want to make one additional point. We have been talking about this issue for six months. The Audit came out in September, we’ve had multiple public discussions both at Board meetings and a Town Hall, so I’d just like to urge the Board of Trustees to make a decision about this as soon as possible because it’s desperately needed. Thank you.

The public image of our teachers.

Many of the emails to the Board opposing the appointment of a communications director have come from teachers in the system. One of the themes in these emails is that teachers can be the District's best ambassadors. With a little communications training they can do the job, and we won't need a communications director.

I urge teachers to read the barrage of anti-teacher comments on the Express website following the article in today's paper about Monday's demonstration in Hailey. Is this what you have been able to accomplish as ambassadors for your profession?

Do you feel you deserve these attacks? Might your public image be vulnerable? In tight economic times, is there a potential for serious backlash over teachers' salaries?

Among the key responsibilities of the communications director will be building respect and appreciation for the vital work that our teachers perform. Our goal should be to live in a community where everyone admires the teachers and believes they deserve every penny they earn - and more.

From today's comments, it appears that we still have a way to go. Do the teachers really think they can do it alone?

Is it really about putting money in the classroom?

All this fuss is about less than one tenth of one percent of the School District's budget. Can it really be about the money? About whether every last dollar goes directly into the classroom today, regardless of whether it would be better to invest it in other ways? Ways that might bring a greater long term benefit to our school system?

I heard no such concerns -- either from the public or from Trustees here today -- when the Board unanimously voted to spend one hundred and fifty plus thousand dollars on a comfortable Greyhound style bus to transport our athletes around the state. One of the Trustees was positively gleeful about the bus. It cost the District almost twice the annual salary of a communications director. I am still waiting for an explanation of how that bus money will impact the quality of our children's classroom experience.

On the other hand, while the immediate impact may, not be obvious, if Ken Roberts' proposed repeal of the stabilization cap goes through the Idaho legislature, the work done by our communications director could have a powerful impact on life in our classrooms. Our life blood will depend on the community's understanding, trust, and ongoing support. Every two years we will be waiting anxiously for voters to confirm that they want to renew nearly $30 million of tax support for our schools.

Is it worth investing the equivalent of half a bus in building community support for that time down the road when we will need it most?

Isn't the answer obvious?

It's pretty clear that this dispute is not really about the last dollar going into the classroom today. Opponents of the appointment should ask themselves if this is the most constructive way to express their hostility to the District leadership. Is their opposition to the appointment really helping our children?

Chairman Dahlgren asked the Board to consider three scenarios.

1. Adjourn the meeting and resolve the issue at the next Regular Board meeting (March 8, 2011).

2. Ask for a motion for acceptance of the hiring committee’s choice for a Communications Director, followed by a second to the motion and a full vote.

3. Go into an Executive Session of the Board pursuant to Idaho Code 67-2345(1)(a) to consider hiring a public officer, employee, staff member or individual agent, wherein the respective qualities of individuals are to be evaluated in order to fill a particular vacancy or need. This paragraph does not apply to filling a vacancy in an elective office or deliberations about staffing needs in general.

School District Attorney Adam King advised the Board not to go into Closed Executive Session to discuss staffing needs in general, as stated in Idaho Code 67-2345(1)(a).

The Board discussed the options presented and agreed to bring “Approval of Communications Hiring Committee’s Recommendation” back to the Regular March 8th Board Meeting agenda.

There being no further business to discuss, Board Member Dan Parke made a motion to adjourn the meeting. The motion was seconded by Steve Guthrie and passed unanimously. The Special Meeting of the Blaine County School District Board of Trustees was adjourned at 2:35 p.m.