As I begin to ponder what to put in this back-up, it dawns on me that it was only one week and two days ago we met and during that time school has only been in session four days. This may be abnormally brief....

NON-AGENDA ITEMS:

1.0  EPC work is still on hold for the elementary classrooms, waiting for relays which should be here this week according to Paul Yeager, the BOCES wiring crew foreman. In those rooms where the system has been installed it looks/works great! ( Watch out- the Board room is one of them - any serious nodding off and the lights may go out).

2.0  New Project is underway with test holes being bored this morning. We hit something that was not on our maps. As I write this, Terry reports that we hit a sewer line which is ten feet off from where the map shows it to be, and which drains from the nurse’s office and the lavatories across the hall from there. We will effect repairs tomorrow morning.

I have to prepare some material for Roy McMaster, and part of that calls for an optimistic timetable from the architect. In speaking with Ed McGraw last week, he feels we will have final plans ready for submission to Albany on March 1, with the hope of an 8-week turnaround time there. That would put us bidding work in early May, awarding bids in mid-May and starting construction in the summer. At the most optimistic we could look to have gym floor in in time for next basketball season, auditorium done in time for next year’s musical, Distance Learning lab for start of school and addition to gym by January of 2000. An awful lot depends on Albany’s turnaround time, though, and if we can’t bid work until the height of the season, we may want to/ have to wait on items until the following summer rather than be without a gym during basketball time. We’ll see.

3.0  School cancellation on Thursday for the elementary was explained to you over docushare. If you didn’t read it there, we had a pipefitting in our hot water heat line which covers the elementary wing burst. The heating unit in Darlene Poormon’s room was the location of the freeze and we essentially drained some 400 gallons of 110+ degree water all over her floor and the hallway and classrooms nearby. Terry discovered the situation at about 6:45, and we thought we would be able to isolate it and clean up all other areas except Darlene’s and still hold school. In trying to shut the pressure off to that unit on the computer controls, we discovered that the wiring was crossed and we inadvertently thereby discovered the cause of the problem. The thermostat in Darlene’s room was controlling the heating unit in her neighbor’s room and vice-versa. SO - the computer reads that Darlene’s room is cold and it turns up the heat- next door. THEN the computer reads that that room is getting too warm so it turns down the heat - mistakenly the heat in Darlene’s room. Eventually Amanda Pundt’s room is 100 and Darlene’s is so cold that the pipes freeze in her heater! THEN - while we’re cold and fixing the problem, the end of the line in Cindy Drexler’s room also freezes up and bursts. Needless to say, we’ve had words with the folks from Honeywell, and we expect our insurance company to go after them for our deductible and more. We will try to recarpet four elementary classrooms out of the deal with the insurance recovery.

I had tried to hold on for maintaining classes and holding school, but once we realized we were losing the use of three ( and eventual four) classrooms, not one - we folded.

In discussing with Terry how the pipes in a heater could freeze, I’ve learned that when the computer thinks the room is too warm, it shuts off the heating unit completely. Heating unit and fan both shut down. NO hot water got into Darlene’s univent at all for several hours on the coldest night of the year. The standing water trapped in the heating unit, exposed to the outside air supply save for a thin metal damper, became so cold in the fin tubing itself that it literally froze and burst the pipe. We are working with Honeywell to change the computer settings so that the room air fan stays on on our units whenever the outside air temperature gets below 10. If the fan had stayed on even with 40 degree room temperature being blown around, we probably would have been all right. It didn’t and we weren’t. So it goes....

4.0  School cancellation on Friday was a no-brainer. I did get one hostile call on my voicemail from Mrs. Piccolo who had apparently not heard the announcement on her favorite radio station ( from Mars?) and was irate in informing me that she would NOT be sending her children to school.

FYI- I have subscribed to an internet cancellation notification system through Accuweather in State College, PA, at www.cancelations.com . They allow you to search for listings by zip code and a 50-mile radius. Check it out!

5.0  Nothing new yet on Kidspeace. I called our friend Mr. Smiley at SED and he tells me he’ll be in our neighborhood on February 2 and 3 to meet with Kidspeace and he’s going to try to pull BOCES, DSS and us in on that meeting. He says his concern is that there be no surprises in this for us at the end, and that he thinks now there will not be. That sounded good to me. I expect him to FAX me something today and if it arrives, will include it for your reference.

6.0  Letter of Apology from South Seneca Boys’ Basketball Team is not for whomping all over us, but instead for poorly selecting the music they played for a version of the Star Spangled Banner. Hard rock solo electric guitar did not impress many of the people surrounding me in the stands.... copy FYI.

7.0  4TCC Mobile Recreation program starts here this afternoon. It’s been awfully quiet, I’m not sure we’ll see much participation.

8.0  Drug Survey results have come back and they are not good. Expect a report from Mike at a future meeting. We met as a County-Wide Task Force on Tuesday to discuss a press conference to release county results, probably in early March. We need to let Seneca Falls and Waterloo retest, as their first batch got mixed together at the factory. Marijuana and hallucinogen use were reported up for us. Overall the results are far worse than they were in 1991! We seem to be losing the battle county-wide.

9.0  CBO talks continue. Larry Driscoll confirmed that my calculations were close to right and that we could save money even on a two way split. He agreed to run these numbers through his spreadsheets from his “study 2” and come up with real numbers to share with both Waterloo and Seneca Falls with the idea of sharing someone other than Mike Renne in charge. I spoke with Mike about this on Wednesday. Worth a look anyway...

10.0  Superintendent Evaluations have not been pouring in. We have only two so far. Please bring yours to Tuesday’s meeting and we’ll tabulate and discuss another time.

AGENDA ITEMS:

1.0  Senior Class Trip Presentation. It’s hard to believe, but the seniors this year were the freshman class when Jeff Felice started here. They are special to him and he to them, and they plan to go out in style! They propose a trip to Florida! No school bus contribution this time around... Please plan to hear about their progress to date and to grant them approval. ( South Seneca has done this the past several years with good success).

2.0  Routine is.

3.0  Conference Approvals are routine as well. You may note that there is not one down for me going to the AASA national convention- that’s because you’re not paying for it.

4.0  Preliminary Budget information. I will share with you an overview of where we’ve been, where we’re going and how we’ve gotten where we are budgetarily. Barb and Mike are getting me their stuff , and I’ll be hunkering down with Gloria and the computer soon to prepare draft one of the last budget of the 20th century for our small school. The budget calendar calls for an orientation to our budget this time, and a draft one next time out.

I will also solicit your interest in attending a presentation on the BOCES administration budget scheduled for Newark on February 2nd. The rule is, if you don’t go to the meeting, you have to vote yes on their budget when it comes around in April....

5.0  Barb and Mike will have updates for you, including the letter we said we’d sign about homeschoolers and athletics last time in draft form for you with this mailing.

6.0  Approval of Sabbatical request of Jim Delia for summer sabbatical for 1999 and 2000. The January 15th deadline has passed, and Jim’s is our only timely request. The committee called for in the contract - one elementary teacher, one secondary, one administrator and one Board member- meets this afternoon. I am anticipating that they will recommend approval. If they do, I believe you should, too. Jim has been an outstanding teacher for three decades here, and wants to finish his career on a high note. He plans to teach at least three more years, and to improve his final average salary in this process. He is entitled to do so, he deserves to do so, and I fully believe he will make the most of this opportunity, not only for himself but for our kids.

7.0  Personnel swap on line for last time can now proceed. The internal candidate has withdrawn her interest.

That should about do it for this coming Tuesday night. Seneca Falls will have met the Monday night before our meeting, so we may have an answer on their particpation in CBO by then, too.

CM/CM

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