June 6, 2007
Dear Students,
On Wednesday the 6th of June I attended my second School Board meeting. This was my first real meeting as the last one was more of a workshop discussing the Standardized grading system. During this meeting six teachers were wished a farewell on their trip into retirement; Faith Madore, Susan Rodgers, Mike Aitken, Richard Tosch, Alice Perry, and Karen Simpson. All of these teachers served Hall-Dale for many years, and will be greatly missed by the school and the community.
First on the agenda were two proposed field trips, the first was the Trip to Costa Rica proposed by the Spanish Class. The school Board gave their approval of the trip in a high majority vote, they mainly inquired about the safety precautions taken on the trip. The second trip was that of a girls soft ball team going to play in a tournament at the Disney amusement park Florida, and this was also approved. The Boosters club made their report of a wonderful year and the Ruth Lachance spoke to the School Board about an expansion of the boosters club as well. The School Board greatly appreciates what the boosters club does as the boosters club fills the gaps where the budget can not.
There was a small discussion on raising the school lunches price by 25 cents. This is due to a decrees in the population of the school, for this year we had forty less students than last year. It is also to begin building a healthier school. The school system wishes move into more whole wheat foods as well as more fresh produce. This was voted in and will take effect next year. New bleachers for the High School gym were also discussed. Right now we will be required to spent $14,000 to repair the old bleachers, however it was proposed that we buy new bleachers which would cost around three times the cost of repairing the old ones. It was a popular idea to buy new bleachers and was voted in by majority vote.
The largest discussion of the night was over the Standards based grading system. They needed to vote on whether to proceed with the idea or kill the idea. This topic of discussion lasted for the majority of the meeting. During the time of public comment David Sirois voiced that he is not objecting to the standards and rubrics, he is against the 1 through 4 grading style. The School Board Members now see that they need the community behind them as they are, representing the community. They voted to move forward with the stipulation that it is not a done deal and if the community really is against it it can be killed. The School Board wants to build a committee for the standards based grading system, and this committee will be made of School Board members as well as community members. He believes that if we do not go forward with the standards we will have utterly wasted a great amount of time and effort. There will be further discussion of Standards based grading system in future meetings.
If you have any concerns that I may relay to the School Board tell me as soon as you can, and I will bring it up at the next meeting, for I will officially be part of the School Board in July’s meeting.
Respectfully,
Student School Board Representative
Dylan Sirois
