School Board Update 4/17
Hello again,
It’s your friendly, neighborhood school board!
We had one heck of a 4-hour meeting last Thursday with a lot of community support and feedback. There was a clerical error on our last agenda that assumed a 3-hour public comment period. While the meeting did last that long, in the future we do not intend to keep ourselves away from our families for quite that long!! The next posted agenda will correct the meeting length and we will soon detail changes to promote concise, civil discourse in an effort to condense the agenda and open the floor to underrepresented voices that feel their words cannot find space to vocalize their opinions.
We encourage those that could not make it to show up for our next regular meeting on Thursday, May 9th. We welcome all who can spare the time to attend, even our sisters and brothers in our neighboring towns. The more inclusion and diversity of ideas we have at these meetings, the more ability our community has to reach mutual understanding and shared goals. As we face uncertain times within our world, nation, state, and town it is imperative that our community(s) can grow and be able to work with one another.
Board’s Current Plans
Here is a posted agenda for a special meeting to address some of the later agenda items we had. These include (Re-)Vote Day, articles to vote on, and the wording of these articles. We want to minimize the district’s (and thus our town’s) risk while reaching out to our families who choose independent schools and do not benefit from tuition payments. These articles are extremely important to carefully wordsmith, because, if voted in, they will have long-term effects. Because of this importance, we are taking the time to meet with our attorney. The Town of Stratton has struggled with this very issue regarding their residency policy.
We anticipate that this meeting will mostly be in Executive Session to fully understand the warnings, and the implications to our district. Once again, it is vital that we consult with these professionals because of their past experience with and knowledge of these issues. They know the ins and outs of liability and can steer us to be absolutely correct on our wording. Please know that the intention is not to narrowly focus warnings such as tuition to approved independent schools with Educational Quality Standards (EQS), but to apply the broadest terminology we can, while minimizing potential risk.
Here is a link to a clip courtesy of BCTV from that meeting with local resident, Nancy Tipps, arguing the legality of the article warning as presented:
In the face of uncertainty, as you see in the clip, we advocate for our legal minds to weigh in and guide us to the best legal conclusions. Their availability necessitated a special meeting as soon as they were available. If we thought that the discussion at 7:30 pm would get this cleared, then we would have pushed for another hour. In no way did discussing the building use, the budget, and other issues at length take away from that discussion.
What’s Next?
We will be providing another board update detailing key points of the 4-11-24 meeting as well as the special meeting guidance. We will be working with the town to set a date for ReVote Day and will offer more details on our stances as we alluded to in the previous updates – surplus use, this/next year’s taxes, and the arguments we’ve heard on (and off) the meeting floor.
If you would like to receive these updates via email, please send an email to droth@windhamcentralboard.org with the subject “Add School Board Updates“.
Thanks,
Daniel Roth
Board Vice-Chair
Windham Central Elementary School