Staying Away

People are staying away from the ballpark in droves—and we can’t stop ‘em. Spoken by a sportscaster about Pittsburgh Pirates fans long ago, but true of school board meetings as well.
You can find the full meeting agenda on the school web site about Friday of the week before the meeting should you wish a preview. Last week’s meeting saw the usual details approving various people to perform a number of duties necessary to the operations and being paid varying rates for the service.
From $7 per hour for ticket takers at athletic events to $20 per hour for teachers who oversee Friday School operations to $857 for a class advisor. It takes a lot of folks to operate the system.
An interesting number is 382. That is the total of the nearly 12 single spaced pages of names that were approved as volunteers to work in the system. Each volunteer fills out an application that includes character references and those references are confirmed in writing before the board approves the volunteer. In total over 700 volunteers will likely be on the list by the end of the year.
We approved paying the Auditor of State $19,500 for the annual audit of our finances to assure accuracy and integrity. I’m told ours is an audit that the auditors enjoy doing because of our accuracy; willing and friendly cooperation and our accommodations are quite workable.
Also approved was a solicitation for bids for additional video cameras to be installed at the Middle School and the High School. This project has been in the works for some time and is needed for security and safety purposes. There are some cameras in place already and this constitutes an upgrade and expansion of the current systems
Here’s a place where your help would be appreciated. During the first full week of October we must take a head count every day. We then receive state funding per student based on the actual head count each day during that week and the count during one other week later in the year. If a student is in attendance only 4 of the 5 days and has an unexcused absence that fifth day, he is considered to be absent 20% of the time. The formula then considers that the student will also be absent all the other weeks of the year 20% of the time and adjusts our reimbursement downward accordingly. It’s not fair nor accurate, but then fairness was never an issue in this rigged game.
Our transportation reimbursement works similarly, so if you would kindly have your students attend school and ride the bus every day that week it could be very helpful. Not fair of us to encourage attendance and bus riding if that’s not their regular habit, but then turn about should be expected.
Next we come to Special Education transportation reimbursement. Long ago we were reimbursed 100% for actual transportation costs as many of our specials students had to be picked up individually at their door. That worked well until the state decided to reduce the total dollars available for the entire state and no longer fund total costs.
Now we receive 100% of our share of the total allocation across the state which is far less than 100% of costs. Notice the cleverness of the language. Sounds like a good deal until you listen closer.
The Pirates were having a losing season when fans were absent at the ballpark. We’re having a string of losing seasons in the game of state funding. Perhaps that accounts for low board meeting attendance.