BOE Meeting Tomorrow 9/12

[Admin]

Considering the district doesn't utilize their bulk email capabilities to get more people to attend the BOE meetings, I will remind you of the first BOE meeting of the school year is scheduled for tomorrow - 9/12/2006.

Hope you all can attend.

[techie]

Admin, a question,...

(not to you, but to all)

why is the BOE meeting on a voting nite and the voting for this date is at the elementary schools?
With the Budget votes, the voting was kept at the High School.( not easy for many to attend.) But now, with a "First of the School Year" BOE meeting,... the voting is spread out to various elementary schools AWAY from where the BOE meeting will take place.

Wouldn't it have been better to have the meeting on another night?
After scrambling to vote after work and maybe dinner, it would have been nicer to walk into the next room to get the "Right Information". ;D

Seems as though some things are done to keep people away at certain times for certain things.

[justfacts]

techie

Right On The Point!

The District's former planning for making voting easy on the residents was always to have all school facilities open for voting so as to make it easy for voters to get to a nearby voting place. It's only been recently, under the guise of "9/11" security, that they moved just the Budget voting to one central place - the High School.

Jeff Burns sat across a BOE room table from me a while ago - and tried to pass off that 9/11 story to me and a group of seniors as the reason for the district's thinly veiled attempt to reduce the amount of Senior Citizens voting on the budget - and only on the budget.

Regular voting in elections is still held locally, putting a severe question as to the validity of the "protection plan" being the only reason behind the restriction on the Budgetary voting location.[/i]

So much for the phony excuse of making the voting place more "secure" since 9/11!

He, like many others, had the mistaken belief Seniors were mostly NO voters on the Budget. In fact, if you survey many, you'll find that many are Grandparents having children in the school system and do vote YES on the Budget as often as those that have children in the school. I found that if any group has a dominance of NO voters, it is those whose children have just moved on to an expensive college.

Then to, many a budget vote was accompanied by an "event" in the high school so that parents of children in the event had a good reason to be at the school and would tend to "pack" the YES votes on the budget.

With tonight's voting, there seems to be a try to "reverse pack" the BOE meeting. Making it slightly more difficult for many by making two trips necessary as you noted.

Planning a BOE meeting during another more regularly scheduled and important event, such a Primary Day, seems to show poor planning - or is there another reason behind it?

Please make it to the BOE meeting tonight, despite the added difficulty, and find out what's going on! We, who can't make it, would like to hear from you.

Ed

A side thought:
Say!, maybe that Is the way to go! Have needless Bond Issue votes on Christmas Day or New Year's! That should make rallying the few YES voters needed to pass those items a lot easier. Maybe the District has found a more effective way to load the voting in their favor than Tammany Hall ever did!

[Go Plainedge!]

I think they moved the vote for the Eastplain expansion to Thursday November 23rd!



Just kidding.... ;D ;D ;D

[justfacts]

Go Plainedge!

Some things you should not joke about!

That vote, and a couple of others, should never take place during a "Lame Duck" (and I do mean L-A-M-E ) administration. The deal stinks when you take an overall look at the utilization of existing facilities!

Building expansions needed for half the number of students that used to populate this District? And an underutilized new school sits around. And for 6 years the Packard facility has been planned to be empty? And for two years it lies fallow? What a business! In the outside world it'd be broke in no time at all!

I'd rather see the money applied to providing supplies to the kids at the beginning of the year. That becomes an unfair separate tax on just those parents who have kids in the school. It should be stopped - or minimized.

Several of the supposed programs for soffits, doors etc., fall into the category of "normal annual maintenance" which definitely doesn't belong under separate Capital Funding Projects. That's a definition that the State gives . . . not one I made up.

Those costs belong under the regular annual maintenance portion of the budget. Prior estimates given (I have no idea how reliable they are since they came from the District Minutes of meetings) say the total cost is about $100,000.

It's been more than two years that "Soffits and Doors" have been mentioned - less than $50,000 a year on the budget. That's even less than the amount left over from the excess funds they collected last year for TAN interest! ($62,700 was left over - not counting the added $27,000 taken without approval from the Library funds)

Hey! What the Hell! most are saying - he'll be gone in no time at all. The trouble is he's leaving behind one hell of a WAKE! And you can use both definitions behind that word!

Ed.

[Go Plainedge!]

Ed:

School supplies are a bone of contention with me. I blame the PTA for this pathetic idea. They claim that this is done as a convenience to the parents. What they fail to tell you is that this convenience will cost you! The PTA gave a list of my child's supplies needed. If I purchased it through them it would cost about $50. I took that list and with-in 30 minutes purchased ALL my child needed including a $19.00 book bag for $39.00. That is a net cost of $20.00 for supplies!

If you go on to the website that our PTA uses for supplies it mentions all over the site that this is a great fundraiser for PTA's. However, our PTA says it's just a convenience.

As far as Packard is concerned, we are losing so much money with that property. It's only barely being used as of lately (by Center Island Childcare).

• We are constantly told about a deal with the TOB but no updates on the progress.
  
• We were told the building was unsafe, but now it's OK to rent
  
• We were told it needed a lot of money for repairs. So now that we get this state money why can't we repair it?
  
• We're told it would be too much money to use it as a school for 5th and 6th grades
  
• We're told of repairs to soffits and doors to some schools with (now miscalculated) bond money. This NEVER happened
  
• It makes absolutely NO financial sense to waste this newly found State construction money on a new addition when we have a FULL building to utilize.
  

Money burns a hole in this guys pocket too quickly. He had it spent before it was 100% approved.

I agree that his legacy will cost us for YEARS.

[Go Plainedge!]

Does anyone have any updates from last nigt's meeting?

Thanks for sharing.

[techie]

Good morning "GO",

The best thing about last night's meeting was that the BOE was asking questions,... and, they were for the most part being answered!
( Ya think it may have something to do with RICHMAN not being there?) ;D

The whiteboard in the meeting room still has figures on it and it says $1,400,000. for the Eastplain expansion.
The BOE was told, as the rest of us, that the estimate for the job is $1,500.000.

I guess the "Real Information" that you get from BOE meetings can be varied. If this information on the whiteboard is still from last month when it was put up, why is it left there as information, and how does an estimate increase $100,000. in one month?
$100,000. is a lot of money to throw around.

The price to resurface the HS track is given as an estimate of $100,000. We were told that the track is good enough to practice on, but they cannot have Meets there. The reason given was that the outside lanes of the track are in bad shape. ( but so are spots on the inside)

A proposal was talked about for the library tans and it will be delivered today to the library. One BOE member still doesn't get the idea that it is NOT "OUR money and THEIR money" but,...now try to understand this,... the TAXPAYERS MONEY. Not a clue, not a clue,...

Was nice to see the Administration taking questions from the group and allowing the public to speak. (now who wasn't there?)

More info later.