Whew! The November school board meeting had lots to report! Let’s dig right in! As always, you can view the agenda and items discussed here.
First, we heard from our auditors. Our audit report came back with no material weaknesses (the worst offenses!). We had two “significant deficiencies.” One was no surprise, and it was a concern over the segregation of duties over financial reporting mechanisms. This is largely because of our small district size – but we did work to address some of these concerns last year. The second was a deficiency in verification of free and reduced lunch applications. Increased training around those who are filling and checking these applications has begun to ensure the right verdict is reached. Overall, these findings don’t worry me too much – and as with everything – in a small district – we are continually learning and adapting as needed. Second, we heard from Lorenzo at Stifel, who presented on our bonding capacity information. In a nutshell, our bond rating as a district is “A+” – the third highest rating. In 2015, with our fiscal reserves falling below 20% (at 15.5%), our rating was downgraded to this rating from “AA-.” There is a potential for this bond rating to be raised from A+ to AA- again with our 2017 reserves back over 20% as a district. It is worth noting that even with our lower A+ rating, only 25% of the 181 districts that have an underlying rating by the S&P have a higher rating than us. Lorenzo then reported on our bonding capacity. For tax year 2017 (debt year 2018), we have a total debt capacity of $12.2 million. We have $4.9 million in outstanding bonds (principal only), leaving us with $7.2 million + the cash in our debt service account which leaves us with a total capacity of bonding to $8 million. This was expected by our previous estimates as we move forward with our architectural firm to design propose our initiative to come before the voters in April 2018. We spent some time in lengthy discussions on the District Reports. We discussed the APR (Annual Performance Report) results from our DESE scores, which dropped from a 95.4% to 88.6%. This drop can be traced to the performance of our ‘subgroup’ students, which are our kiddos with IEPs, ELL, and Free & Reduced Lunch. Basically, if you track attendance of the Free Lunch population, had attendance rates between 6%-20% lower than the non-Free Lunch population. You can see by the breakdown here, that our Free & Reduced Lunch population scores significantly lower in the proficient/advanced categories of the MAP tests. This is what needs to be addressed. As these populations in our district grow, we will need to consider pouring more resources into these areas. As we look ahead to next year, we are hopeful for a slight increase, but still realizing our science scores will remain low due to our curriculum not being aligned with the tests (but should be in a few years). So, all of this to say what? Standardized testing is both good and bad. It gives us a benchmark. But is this benchmark a fool-proof way to determine how well our district is doing? Nope. For example, our average ACT score increased to 19.9 from 19.0 a year ago, a 5% increase. Is this spinning numbers and perspective? Not really. There are severe limitations to all of this. Is it good enough? No. It’s our stated goal to be the top 5% of our APR range – and a score of 88.6 doesn’t get us there. However, moving the needle will take not just more student support – but administrative support to systematically ensure we are using best practices throughout our district. We also the spent some time discussing possible administrative additions. This will be met with some stiff resistance among the community. However, I would encourage those who would be opposed to spend some time asking Mr. Downs or any of the administrators to provide an example of something they needed to fill out to the state or federal government that took their time away from working to make teachers better and in turn, help our kids improve. I’ve already noted my concerns regarding the lack of curriculum and instruction systematic improvements with leaving the assistant superintendent position open. During our meeting, we discussed options Mr. Downs brought up before the board and are available online here. We also discussed these in relation to OPS and our maintenance/custodial work. We are still highly concerned with various aspects of OPS’ work. At the end of the day, my personal opinion is that it will likely be (although I don’t have hard data) more expensive to do this in-house, but I would hope we could create an environment where pride of work is higher than it is now. Although, we’ll likely never be 100% satisfied here. We then discussed the Greg Cotton scoreboard donation and approved accepting this and purchasing it. Donations like this and the purchase that we approved of a Gator this month or continued approval of funds being spent on the cheer-trip can be deceiving. These were parts of ongoing conversations that are tied to specific donations or expenses that are covered by participants. The district is not spending this money out of its own budget as it would look like here. Remember, the board only approves and sees expenses – and doesn’t see the specific income. In relation to the scoreboard, I hope and expect we will do justice in honoring Greg and the Cotton family commitment to Hallsville schools. I will end this blog. If you have any other question about the November meeting, let me know. We discussed a ton of things. I didn’t feel well throughout the meeting but powered-through. I hope you will all come to the listening session next Monday, Nov. 27th to provide input into the bond initiative. Until next time, Happy Thanksgiving! PS: If you hadn’t heard, an update on the Governor’s attempt to fire the Commissioner of Education – this attempt failed. An update can be found here and here.
2 Comments
Jon
11/22/2017 09:56:03 am
Thanks Craig. You covered a lot of ground and gave a fair and thorough overview of our meeting. I would only add that if anyone has questions about anything we covered please feel free to reach out to any Board member. Our contact information is available on the District website.
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Stacy Fick
11/22/2017 11:02:49 am
Nice work reporting,Craig!!
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AuthorHallsville resident. Foster Parent. School board member. Politico. Jesus Follower. Cardinals Fan #MizzouMade Archives
June 2020
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