Memo

NON-AGENDA ITEMS:

1.0	Christmas Break break: The big story during break was another flood in the elementary section - in Darlene Poormon's room again. We believe in skimming one of our boilers for impurities, we allowed the water volume to get too low, such that we created a pressure surge when it was re-fired the Sunday after Christmas. That pressure surge broke a gauge in the boiler room and caused no water to move through the system the night of December 26. With no water circulating, the standing water in Darlene's univent froze (again) and spewed all over her floor. Because Darlene has allergies anyway, at her request, Terry had not blocked her fresh air intake vent like we did with all others in the area. That seems to have made that particular room susceptible. Water damage was pretty severe, affecting the wall board separating her room from Amanda Pundt's, and carpet damage occurred in neighboring rooms again (the same carpet we just replaced last year). We have a $1000 deductible on our property damage coverage, so all but that will be covered, including the salaries of the people who spent four days trying to clean up the mess. Barb has moved Darlene and Joe Kelly around (Joe has no allergies apparently) and we are back in business for now. Terry will have carpet cleaners rather than baggers come in to try to salvage the new carpet, but we can replace it if required in the neighboring rooms. This put a big dent in getting any other planned work done on the building this vacation. It will also put a big dent in Mike Barry's time right now as we just did some testing in the room and have determined that we can't wait to replace the wall board; it must come down ASAP for air quality standards.
2.0	Another goof occupied much of Gary and Gloria's time recently, along with that of Mike and Jim Bastian at the Real Property Tax Offices. Seems we did not give the county all of the correct information about taxes that had not been paid, and they sent bills out to about 75 people indicating they had not paid their Romulus School tax when in fact they had done so late in the collection period. Consequently after a whole lot of cross checking in Waterloo, new bills are being sent this week to those people affected along with the attached letter of explanation/apology from me. The goof had to be in more than one place, though, because we should have known we had more money than we told the county we had collected as well. Nothing to be done at this point but correct the situation and absorb the blame. Thought you all should know, though. Interesting thing is that fewer than 1/3 of the affected people called to question or complain.
3.0	Capital Project has begun! Standing room only! There are no seats at all left in the auditorium and the electrician has begun dismantling the old rheostatic control panel. Terry will be removing stage curtains and storing them temporarily (just in case the new ones aren't here in time for the March production). Once that is done, our own crew will be painting the backstage walls black. This is the preferred theater design nowadays, with black back curtains on order as well, with a Royal Blue front curtain. Color samples are still here for those of you who did not get to see them. have to send them back soon, though.
4.0	Request for Sabbatical from Joy Ike means that we will need to have the committee sit down. Barb and I met with Joy this week to discuss how the district might use her time and we should have a proposal in hand by next meeting. My push is for Joy to pull together that elusive complete K-12 curriculum document in electronic format and have Romulus be the envy of the State for having done so.
5.0	Attached is copy of a holiday card we received from Laurie Asermily. Thought you'd like to see that she is doing well in her new home.
6.0	Also attached is thank you note from the kids from the Lock-in along with an emailed letter I received Thursday morning from the Larzeleres. All seemed to go well and everyone not only had a good time New year's Eve, they also made their parents happy New Year's Day buy being VERY quiet around the house.
7.0	The Governor's State of the State Address was delivered Wednesday and is heavy on school issues, including the proposal to send STAR checks directly to taxpayers instead of letting you high spending school boards steal some of the taxpayers hard-earned savings. Interesting take is that it would cost a whole lot more to send out 3 or 4 million checks to individuals who own primary residences in the state than to send out 705 checks to school districts. Also interesting is the idea that the State would not send those checks out until after January, allowing themselves the "float" on holding money the school business officials wouldn't let them get away with holding up. Lots of rhetoric, let's see if there's any beef at all to the budget which should be out by the 18^th. Web site for Governor's Office at www.state.ny.us has full text of address.
8.0	Also enclosed is my to-do list in draft form so far. These are my notes and questions as to what needs to be completed, started or shelved between now and March 1. Please take a look, add items of concern and be ready to discuss after our regular business in exec. Thanks.

AGENDA ITEMS:

SPECIAL EXECUTIVE SESSION AT 6:30 pm: Dr. Marinelli will be coming through from Albany and will stop here for a 6:30 session with you on how you might wish to handle an interim and a superintendent search. We don't often have the big guy out here in the hinterlands and this is the first step in the most important decision making this Board might do for years to come - the selection of your next superintendent. I have suggested to Joe that he bring some resumes with him of people available and willing to do an interim job for you here from March 1 on through the appointment of the next person. I think you can get by with 3 days a week to both reduce the cost to you and to entice some candidates who might not want to do a full five days and still have time for other commitments. That's certainly up to you, Joe and the interim you select. With Gary to handle budget and Terry to handle the project, I think the rest of the pieces exclusive of the amount of time I spend at meetings for BOCES and the like, could be handled just fine by existing staff and a part-time interim (unless that person is also handling the search process itself). I scheduled 6:30 so you can have up to an hour with Joe on this stuff, thinking that a half-hour will likely be pushing it too much. Joe will also want to know that you in fact want him to handle the search process for you. I have asked him to discuss that with you with the understanding that it is my recommendation that you use BOCES rather than prolonging the process by searching for a search consultant first. Joe is obligated to do this ( at a cost) whereas no one else is, and he can coordinate the interim and the search piece both for aid at 65%. You used BOCES to bring me here 7 years ago and I think it worked out well. If you choose to go with BOCES after speaking with Joe, we should look at modifying the agenda to include appointing BOCES to handle the search process for you - tuck it in somewhere after accepting my resignation ( if I have one for you by Tuesday - still dickering with contract language on insurance).

Please try to be prompt for Dr. Marinelli's appointment with you. Then on to the agenda items….

1.0	Senior class members wish to make a presentation to you about their planned trip to New York City later this spring. They may also wish to gain your permission to do something other than mixed blue and white in their graduation gowns….Chris Puylara will accompany the officers to the meeting as advisor.
2.0	Routine items should be just that.
3.0	Conference requests are all within budgeted amounts if not funded by grant dollars..
4.0	We should discuss any further action you might like to take on road signage and/or cross-walks for the school. You may recall a spate of interest last Spring and some letters which were exchanged including Madaline Preston sprearheading an attack through Senator Nozzolio's office. The upshot was that the DOT sent a letter to Mike which he forwarded to us, indicating they would do some signage improvements once weather allowed. They also indicate that IF we want a school speed limit, we must make certain that specific conditions exist. These include a supervised crosswalk, well marked. That will cost somebody (you) some money. To supervise the crosswalk (s) already marked would take two people for an hour a day in the morning and again at night. Hours of elementary arrival are approximately 8:30 to 9:15, not a time when we have a lot of spare hands available as bus and cafeteria monitors are already in use at that time. For a 180 day year that would run approximately $4300 for two people two hours a day if we can find interested parties. If you want to include that in the budget, I'd be glad to add it, but I think you're creating one more low-end personnel problem unless you add some hours to people who are already working for you - though most of them are busy at the needed times. Your call.
5.0	Two new positions to be added deserve some explanation. The first is easy as it doesn't affect tax dollars. For years we have allowed Sharon Jensen to augment her food service staff with a substitute which she claims doesn't work everyday. However, in reality we bring somebody in 95% of the time. We are starting to experience some difficulty filling that slot now, because the person who has been willing so long in the hopes of getting a permanent position has had to look elsewhere for a position which will provide benefits. The union wants us to move on creating the additional slot, the person who usually does the job would LOVE the chance to come to work everyday knowing she will be doing so and receiving benefits, and now that it has become a problem finding any other subs, the cafeteria staff can live with the idea, too. Since it is a cafeteria position and since our cafeteria is fully self-supporting, this position will have no impact on the general fund budget.
6.0	The second position creation, more accurately title change, involves providing some additional stimulus and reward for dealing with special education students being transported long distances. Currently a bus monitor is a bus monitor is a bus monitor. Two of the bus monitors happen to be assigned to the special ed out-of -district runs. These two people have a considerably different job than the ladies who hold the little kids hands as they cross the street. Recently the severity of the outbursts and disruptive behavior has seemed to increase and we are having trouble finding capable, desirable individuals willing to work this demanding job and able to do it well. One of our two currently doing it fits the bill. The other is not working out well, but is a warm body willing to put herself in harms way for minimum wage. By creating two positions with a special ed title attached we can up the salary to a whopping $7 per hour, keep the one we like and use the title change as a way of putting the less capable individual into a general monitor slot where she won't get into situations she can't handle.
7.0	Attached is a copy of the memo from the Waterloo administration to their Board about the topic of regional summer school that is so well crafted, I decided not to try to out-do it. I have attended a couple of meetings on this topic, and asked Gary to represent us at the last one. The idea is that we share a regional program through BOCES and draw BOCES aid on all the costs. Last year we implemented our own program thinking we would make out fine financially after aid. What I didn’t realize was that summer school operating aid is subject to the transition cap, and that we didn't end up getting the $12,000 back that we thought we would at all. BOCES aid is not subject to transition as you know ( that's why we keep trying to spend money through BOCES in order to generate revenue). Therefore it makes sense to all enter into an agreement to participate jointly, rotate sites, and let BOCES worry about adequately staffing the needs - something we might not be able to do in year when we don't have a Bob Ike willing to run it, for example. We guarantee we don't get closed out like we did last year from our neighbors programs (or as close to a guarantee as anyone gets in this business), we don't have the headaches of running it - only those of hosting it every fourth year- and we get BOCES aid versus no aid at all as long as we are on transition. Logical to me. I think you should commit to participating.
8.0	Change Order Number One of the Project will be to add the cost of the complete chair rehabs rather than the estimated cost of reuphosltery only as decided last time. Next Change will likely be an approval to replace the wooden doors leading into the gym, but we still have paperwork to process on that one.
9.0	The Friends of the MacDougall Schoolhouse, headed by Bruce Fullem, would like to get complete control of the leftover money from the fund-raising we did for that project. According to our auditors this motion will allow us to clear that account out of our Trust and Agency holdings and turn the close to $1900.00 over to that group. This will save Gloria some involvement she doesn't need in co-signing checks, etc.. The group has their own tax ID number and legal status, so it makes good sense.
10.0	Mike and Cornelia may wish to share some thoughts on shared services committee work.
11.0	Barb and Mike will update you on their areas.
12.0	Provided I have a contract ready to sign with Wheatland Chili by Tuesday, you can expect me to submit a letter of resignation effective February 29, 2000. The attorneys are certainly taking their sweet time with this, quibbling over details and missing one another's phone calls. Something I would hope you consider carefully when you get to this stage. We all know I've personally seen one of these fall through before and nobody needs the ups and downs and the anxiety of contract talks detracting from what should be a very welcoming experience for both parties.
13.0	With the passing of Mary Jennings, we need to act on replacing her in a more permanent manner. Tina is fine with Sandy taking over both duties - attendance and dispatching/reception, Sandy is interested, and I am supportive. We need to post the vacancy, which we have done. We did NOT put Sandy Steeles' name in the appointment in order to allow others to respond to the posting first. But, we would like to put Sandy in at the meeting at her salary being currently paid and to change the title to include bus driver in order to preserve her seniority in that department. Next meeting we will ask her to resign from her full-time bus driver/typist position so we can fill that with something other than a long-term sub.
14.0	We have a person ready to move from long-term sub to probationary appointment as a Teacher Aide. This moves everybody else up one slot on the long-term list waiting to become probationary.
15.0	Amanda Pundt will be going out on maternity leave soon and we would like to bring MJ in at the prorated starting pay while she is home. There is precedent for this.
16.0	We have some other substitute appointments and CSE minutes to approve as well.

I would like to engage in a brief executive session with you after the meeting to discuss appointing Terry Mays to the position of Clerk of the Works at an added stipend of $500 per month from now to the conclusion of the capital project. I did not put this down as an agenda item because we have not yet had the chance to discuss it, but would encourage you to entertain a motion after the executive if you're ready - next meeting if not. This will also give us a chance to discuss my to-do list with you (my version enclosed for your perusal/ponderance.)

Sorry to have such a heavy agenda, but the possibility of moving always brings to light the laundry list of things that need to get taken care of "before you go…"