Well, as of yesterday your old superintendent is officially one year older. Lots of jokes and smart aleck comments received already- so no need on Tuesday. Let’s see, 45 and a 10-month old at home. Looks like 62 not 55 for retirement for this guy. If I did all those years at Romo I’d be eligible for a 20 year pin! On to business....

NON-AGENDA ITEMS:

1.0  EPC guys are back. Looks like we might actually get around to installing those motion sensors afterall. The engineers and the BOCES wiring crew were here Wednesday to check final details before ordering material. Expect motion detector install in all classrooms by January. Then if people don’t keep moving, the lights go out on ‘em. Talk about an incentive for active participation in learning!

2.0  Current Project Proposal: Confirmed attendance of Allen Kosoff and Roy McMaster for 7:30 Tuesday night. I am working on a powerpoint presentation which you may use as talking points. Threw in some pictures of the handicapped kids in the closet - pulling out all the plugs. I’ll send a copy with your packet so you see the headlines ahead of time and I’ll try to post it on Docushare - I’ve never tried to post a powerpoint presentation - wonder if it can be done? New issue of Romulus Bulletin has centerfold on the topic ( extra copy enclosed in case you have trouble with bulk mail). Fliers we showcased last time will go out next week as final reminder. Paycheck memo next week will remind staff to remind parents to vote when they’re here for parent conferences. If we can’t succeed in manipulating a positive vote with all these dirty tricks, we might not be able to succeed at all....

3.0  OSHA Inspection Continues: Mr. Sharp ( and I use the term loosely) will NOT be here next Thursday, but will return. Forewarned is forearmed. Terry and Bruce Glaser ( BOCES employee for agency with whom we contract for health and safety services) are keeping him entertained while he’s here and apparently doing a good job. Good thing nobody measures the effluvium levels of our sewer system during this process, however: we’d likely be over the limit of anyone’s tolerance.

Enclosed is a 2-page report from Terry on everything the guy has found so far. FYI.

4.0  Xerox Crew did its thing here last Wednesday all day, and our small school with BIG ideas will be the featured background school in their promotional video for Docushare debuting at the NYS Conference on Computers and Technology in Education in Albany Thanksgiving week. I have asked that we receive a copy for your perusal when its done. Your Board President gave up three hours of his morning last week and even made a cake and wore makeup for these folks! Talk about going the extra mile for your school!

5.0  Tax Collection wraps up this week. Alice is away and her sister Janet Alger is filling in for her. Very few in-person payments at this point. I may have final numbers for you by the meeting, but things seem to be going well and complaints to me have been nil this year. If we ever do get to a CBO, we may have people trained not to expect to come here to pay their bills already!

6.0  CBO efforts continue: I met with Larry Driscoll at BOCES earlier this week, and he is working diligently on preparing a plan he feels would be salable to all three Boards. He has visited Verona and the Northcountry himself as part of the process. He is looking at moving Gloria and the accounting function as well, and has talked with the county about space in the DiPronio Drive building. Committee ( Mike, Anne and me) is expected to meet next week to hear report. No final date from Larry yet. If it flies, lots to do in the next few months. If it doesn’t, expect a counterproposal from Waterloo for a two-way merged office at their current Sessler building site in downtown Waterloo.

7.0  Rural Schools Board met at Thornfield Conference Center on Cazenovia Lake last weekend and I attended ( I brought Charlie’s 2-inch TV so I could catch the end of the game: had seven others join me on the lawn during a break while we watched the Bills come back. It was quite a scene.) Enclosed are some materials from the 2-day affair including: membership of the Board; whitepaper on Education in New York in the 21st Century; prioritized list of potential legislation paper items; 2-year school aid increase showing Seneca County getting screwed in the long-haul; and a policy paper from the Educational Conference Board on STAR. ( Remember this year it was a 7% impact on our tax levy - $140,000 we didn’t collect. NEXT year it will be significantly higher and that’s true for each of the next three years). All in all I feel good about representing you through this potentially very powerful lobbying group. Best $400 we spend in dues I can think of.

8.0  Class Size Reduction Dollars: Both the State and the Feds are onto this political white elephant. State program will not send any dollars our way. Seneca Falls qualifies - we don’t. South Seneca qualifies - we don’t. Apparently we haven’t crammed 30 kids into elementary classes the way some of our neighbors did in 1994 ( the base year for the distribution dollars) and so we are penalized for doing our job by not being eligible for this new funding source. ( Get used to it - my prognostication is that all the money on reform and Standards related issues will be going to remediation of those schools most in need according to everyone else’s definition).

Feds also have their mitts on this hot potato and have announced an allocation of $124K to all of Seneca County. No word yet on how this is to be split up, but odds are our piece of the pie won’t buy half a teacher. So much for the headlines and their impact locally.

9.0  Standards: Enclosed is a flier about the Commissioner’s latest efforts at communicating with the general public about the changes taking place. Teleconference on November 19 on WXXI. In case some of your neighbors watch, thought you should know. Also you should know about the web-based instruction on the Standards available at www.edutech.org . This is OUR BOCES effort and it is superlative! ( Ann Kaminski is one of the writers on this project). The State is looking at using this for all schools. Readily available to everyone with internet access. Check it out!

10.0  Part 100 Regulations: These Commissioner Regulations are the Bible of what schools must do in New York. They are being re-written for Board of Regents action this year so that they match the new graduation policies the Regents passed last year. Last Monday night a forum was held in Newark for public input on the proposed changes. Dave Hubman, Theresa MacCheyne and Mike Midey attended as our reps. Expect to hear more about the regulations changes once they are finalized.

11.0  FYI: Editorial from Ithaca Journal on Depot closure and environmental impacts.

12.0  FYI: Demographic information from two different meetings I recently attended which should be of interest to all of us. Local population stuff is from a prof at Cornell, national data is from Rural Schools.

13.0  School Based Wellness Visitation to Cooperstown: I’ll be leaving Geneva General Hospital’s parking lot at 7 a.m. Monday morning for a bus trip to Cooperstown with members of their community outreach Board and some other folks from the Seneca County Partners for Children effort to visit three school-based wellness centers. This is a potential cooperative project between the regional health system and local schools (particularly YOUR local school). The concept is that we would share our space with the health system who would assign a PA here to provide health services to kids and families. Though nothing has been worked out yet as a plan, we are willing to explore the possibilities and make this visit. This is similar to what we currently do with the county in providing counseling services and with the Rushville Dental Health services with their traveling dentist. I like the concept and think it fits our stated desire to be a community center for kids and families. Costs would be borne by the family involved, insurance, etc., and billed through the hospital’s billing offices. FYI and in case you’re looking for me on Monday.... Peter Gregoire, our school physician supports this, too.

14.0  Middle Level Visitors: we had another contingent from Parishville-Hopkinton here this week. This time teachers and administrators. Nice to think that we’re good enough at what we do ( or unusual enough anyway) to be visited twice by the same District looking into building a middle school.

15.0  United Way campaign, coordinated locally by Janice Hyde with the help of Sandy Kaufman and Sue Mitchell, has exceeded its goal, raising $2,480 this year at Romo. The goal was $2200. FYI - you’ve got lots of good folks here who give back to their community in many ways. County co-chair Dana Allen should be pleased....

16.0  Computer Replacement: Ooops! I almost forgot about the $145000 budget transfer I’m contemplating for you in the near future. Thought I’d better mention it.

Our old ( Tracy) and new ( Donovan) computer coordinator from BOCES , a BOCES tech guy and Ray and I met earlier this week to talk about what it would take to get our labs up to snuff for streaming audio and video for cybercoursework ( distance learning over the internet). Basically the labs were the first areas we computerized in 1993, and even though we’ve upgraded them, they still aren’t what we’d want them to be if we had all of our druthers. Also, when we installed our fiber optic backbone and network, token-ring was the technology of choice at BOCES. Token-ring is not dead yet, but it is not sufficient to handle the next steps for live video and audio on our scale. SO, I asked the question, what will it cost to get us up to cutting edge infrastructure once again. The answer? Somewhere near the $145,000 we currently have in our budget for BOCES special ed that we are currently ( knock on wood) NOT spending in that area. For that we think we could move the computers from the existing labs into 1) the Mac lab upstairs ( and make it Nancy Bauder’s classroom) and 2) the library itself, where we have six machines today. We would replace the machine in the existing lab spaces with the newest technology standard available to us, AND replace all of the token-ring connections which make up our network with the new standard - ethernet. This would allow us to go to four labs instead of two ( two of them will be older and used primarily for wordprocessing in English and for internet research), all windows 95 in all classrooms, both new labs and all offices, and upgrade to office ‘97 as our standard tool package.

If we look to sign an SAA by January, we can expect a summer install and not miss a beat during the school year. We gain two labs for student access and a classroom for our new math person in Nancy Bauder’s old room. If we use the anticipated Tom Cummings money and the underexpnditure we are currently seeing at BOCES in special ed costs, we do the work, get the aid next year ( Larry’s still checking on this fir me to see if it’s too late) and still come out looking good. We also solve the only remaining year 2000 glitch we are uncomfortable with on our network, the I-Class menu.

No action yet - just a heads up that Ray and I think it’s something we should be doing.

AGENDA ITEMS:

1.0  Capital Project Presentation: This is the focus of our evening. We will begin in the auditorium at 7:30 and plan to have the presentation to Harold last about a half-hour to 45 minutes. We will plan to offer a walking tour from 8:15 til 8:30 of the gym area and the media center lecture room. We will then do our group picture for the yearbook at 8:35 in the Board room and get down to business. ( More realistically, 7:30-8:30 in aud, tour, business by 9).

I have prepared a powerpoint presentation which will allow me to click the buttons and you to do the talking. Copies of the slides are enclosed for you to use as notes. Certainly you can embellish all you want on these points. The outline is really just there to guide the discussion and make sure we don’t leave anything important out. I will try to post this on Docushare, too, so you may want to check that out to see if the slide show works. I intend to hide out on this presentation so that it doesn’t become Harold versus the salesman, and is more a matter of you - the community’s Board of Education- proposing what you think is best for the school in our area. Allen Kosoff will be on hand for any questions about the design and details of an architectural nature and Roy McMaster will use an overhead to show how the financing works. You don’t need to know about either of those things - you just need to convince Harold that you’ve thought about this project and believe it is in our best interest to go forward as planned.

Don’t forget press is likely to be there, too, so be quotable in your comments....

Good luck!

2.0  Routine is.

3.0  Gloria would like to go to this conference and I support the notion.

4.0  Time to think about snow plowing. I saw flurries this morning!

5.0  Tax refund authorization for an error on STAR. Watch out for more of these as this program expands. Note the savings this woman almost didn’t get!

6.0  Barb and Mike will report to you on their programs.

7.0  Resignation of Albert Clark deserves some executive session time if someone is willing to call it. Nobody necessary to stay but me.

DON’T FORGET TO LOOK ESPECIALLY NICE FOR YOUR YEARBOOK PICTURE!

See you all by 7:30 in the Auditorium.

CM/CM

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