Observation Reflection Of The Millard Public School Board Meeting

I am providing an analysis of “School Consolidation and the Politics of School Closure Across Communities” by Zorka Karanxha, Vonzell Agosto, William R. Black and Claudius B. Effiom (2013). The principal at Roosevelt Neighborhood School, Brian Jones, faced a state wide economic recession, which led to the merge of his school with Scott Magnet School of choice,

Since last spring, Philadelphia school district leaders have been sounding the alarm about this year’s fiscal budget. Even after months of discussions and headlines, schools have opened with fewer resources than last year. On March 28th the School Reform Commission approved a lump sum budget which showed a need for an additional $220 million in revenue in order to provide schools with same resources as the “wholly insufficient” 2013-14 school year (McCorry). There will be many inadequate funding impacts on the quality of the education. Classroom resources would be stripped to untenable levels. The district would reduce as much as $2.2 million funding to the districts’ multiple pathways to graduation program which affects estimated 300 students. Another $1.5 million could be reduced from the elimination of preparation and professional development time for teachers at the district’s high needs promise academies. The district’s building maintenance budget could have reduction in amount of $9.6 million. Schools will be cleaned less frequently as a result. Building maintenance will also be curtailed as a result. District’s school police budget could also have reduction in amount of $2.4 million. School police officer vacancies will be unfilled, leaving an additional 27 elementary schools to share an officer.

The Englewood Board of Education meeting took place at the Grieco Elementary School in Englewood, NJ. On March 17, 2016 and began promptly at 6:30 p.m. in the Cafeteria. The board is made up of nine board members all sitting at a long table with the President of the board, Mr. Devry Pazant who sat at the center of the table beside the newly appointed Superintendent, Mr. Robert Kravitz.

The educational funding problem in Michigan takes root back in 1809, when the first public school was founded. While funding was not an issue at the time, the way schools were funded through local property taxes eventually created a large problem. Fast forward to 1985, Michigan has long moved past the rural cities of the 1800’s and into affluent suburbs and cities. The size and taxation pools of cities have greatly changed from 1809 to 1985, but the way schools were funded remained exactly the same. This lack of change led to a large disparity in school funding from richer districts to poorer districts. Coupled together with local governments’ inability to convince citizens to vote in favor of millages and tax hikes, the disparity ballooned. In 1993, Bloomfield Hills ranked in the 99th percentile of Michigan schools, was spending on average $10,294 per-student, while Standish Sterling ranked in the bottom 1st percentile, spent $3,738 per-student, roughly a $6,500 difference per-student (Roy 2003). This inconsistency greatly disadvantaged students all the way to 95th percentile, where there

The school board meeting I attended was the Norris School District. The meeting was located at Norris Middle School in the Mary Louise Robinson Library. The address was 6940 Calloway Dr. at seven PM. The Norris school district contains four elementary schools and one middle school. Total number of elected board members are five. The board president is Cy Silver. They meet once a month on the second Wednesday. The board is required to address the reports from superintendent and staff. Such as enrollment, district proposition 39 California clean energy job acts funding, district cafeteria report, local control accountability plan progress report. They also discuss new business such as approving budgets and achievements. The general format of the meeting is the board members sit in the front of the general attendees and the president sits in the middle of all the board members. Staff members sit to the right and left of the board members. The atmosphere was very welcoming, and they spoke of the business like they actually cared.

The school board meeting for the schools of Palm Beach County was overall an organized event. The meeting opened with different individuals simply sharing about some different events in the schools. The first speaking was a member of the board who spoke about HBCU and all of the potential and positives the school had. She was very passionate about her subject. The next speaker was a woman from the school who attended a school even about 9/11 where the boy scouts read all of the names of the victims in the cemetery and placing medal all of the graves. Mrs. Brill was very excited about the event and expressed her proudness and hope that the event will become a tradition. All of these speakers will well prepared and you could see their passion on the subjects they spoke to the board about. The next section of the meeting was the proclamations and presentations. The first proclamation was again HBCU. The proclamation said that September of 2015 would be historical black history month. This movement was followed by one that asked the board to make September 15th to October 15th 2015 hispanic heritage month. This movement came with a video about all the statistics about hispanic children in U.S. schools and an award given to the hispanic teacher of the year. In the next movement the board was asked to name September 17th constitution day and September 21st through the 25th celebrate freedom week. Following this the board was asked to make September National PTA membership month,

Every school district has board meetings throughout the school year. Unfortunately, many parents, community members, & school personnel do not attend such important meetings because they don’t realize or understand the importance of such board meetings or how informative they can be. According to Kankakee School District (2017), the Kankakee School District Board of Education is composed of seven elected members, who were elected by the citizens of Kankakee to serve a four-year term that do not receive no salary for they services, are committed to ensuring a quality of educational excellence that will enhance the opportunities and challenges facing today’s student and additional responsibilities that board members include are selection of the District superintendent, developing general polices according to wishes of the community and requirements of law, hiring school personnel based upon recommendation of the Superintendent and the Assistant Superintendent of Personnel, adopts salary schedules, approves funds to finance school operations, must adopt and review the annual operating budget for the District, and setting the property tax levy to produce adequate funds to meet the District’s financial needs ranks among the responsibilities of the Board of Education (Retrieved from https://www.ksd111.org/domain/68). For this paper, the Kankakee School District board meeting will be used, information learned from board meeting, use of

On May 11, 2017, Dundee Central School had a Board of Education meeting. Nine members were in attendance. The main focal point of the meeting was student Athletics. Member Kelly Houck brought up that student Athletics are becoming an issue with attendance. Less and less kids are participating in sports. She stressed that this was not a budget issue, it was a capacity issue.

Today, however, it seems as if the public has lost track of the importance of a great educational system. The main issue today’s public schools faces are funding problems. There is not enough money allocated to support the growing needs of school across the nation.

Education is an issue that touches everyone’s lives in one way or another. Whether you are a parent, student, teacher, taxpayer, or employee, the effects of education on society can be seen everyday. For this reason, public schools are a top concern among political leaders. Over the past twenty-five years, confidence in the nation’s public school system has dramatically declined. While the public for the most part seems to support their school district, criticism is not lacking. Recent years especially have shown dissipating support. It appears that the prevailing view is that public education, as a whole, is in bad condition and is in need of a renewed effort to fix it. Private schools seem to fare

Budget cuts in schools cause turmoil and stress among the students and faculty. Drastic changes in the budgets have caused schools to negatively impact the people around them. With the lack of funding, schools are facing difficult decisions on what to do to stay within their budget. Supervision is facing much scrutiny on how to handle the lack of funding in their school districts. A solution needs to be made to improve the distribution of funding to our schools in order to keep them operating and thriving for our children to obtain their education. Budget cuts in schools have shown negative effects on employee positions, supplies, extracurricular activities.

As stated above, State Schools Chief Jack O’Connell believes that student’s education should be protected and invested in the future. Our government had a critical mission which is preparing students for productive futures. What he means by this is that we should have an educated, highly skilled workforce that can compete in the global economy for our state’s long term success, but since our resources are excessively depleted, we cannot succeed in achieving this necessary. He felt that the governor and legislature was not fair or responsible approach to closing this budget gap, especially the vital state services such as education. He argued that we can talk about courage, but it is just a word and it will not be useful until it is supporting by the right kind of action. By the way, the right kind of

Problems facing the public schools. The general satisfaction with the public schools should not cause one to lose sight of the fact that the public wants those schools improved. It would be logical for such improvement to focus on areas in which problems exist. Down through the years, the public has been consistent in the area which shows lack of discipline. Other points of either drug abuse, lack of financial support, or lack of discipline has topped the list. This year, lack of discipline is identified as the top problem. Fighting/violence/gangs follows at high on the list and lack of financial support/funding/money is also an issue. Teachers and classroom sizes are recognized as a ongoing problem in public education.

In today’s economic environment even the wealthiest states and districts are having to cut funding for education, while districts which were already teetering on the edge are now in an even worse position. In some schools children have to face not having enough books, paper for copies, severe overcrowding,

In addition, insufficient funding of schools along with quality teachers that are retiring are some of the problems we encounter in the education system. In some parts of the United States, there is a lack of adequate access to materials for reading and writing due to budget constraints. In Allen D. Kanner’s article, “Today’s Class Brought to You By…” he mentioned that with the baby boomers retiring, and a high turnover among new teachers, who are asked to teach subjects they are not properly trained for, are causing difficult classroom situations (280). Similarly, Governor Jerry Brown’s statement last January 11 pointed out that K-12 education has ‘borne the brunt’ of the state’s budget cuts with more than $18 billion in cuts over the last three years. This resulted in larger class sizes, programs are cut, and over 30,000 educators laid off. These teachers are very valuable in our society because they provide our youth with the knowledge and social experiences that they will use to better their future and the future of the entire world. As a student, I have suffered the consequences of triple digit fee increases and the lack of available classes offered. The high cost of education has put the burden not only on the students, and many of their parents, but educators, as