We’re LIVE! at tonight’s Danville School Board meeting. Refresh the page often for the latest photos, happenings and commentary. We’ll clean this article up tonight when we get home. This article is now complete, so enjoy the recap. We’re underway!
Tonight’s major item is the revision of the Entering Retirement In Phases early retirement program. Beverly Abbott is the only speaker and her speech is a generic one with no opinions on what should be changed. So much for the teachers caring much about it, eh?
Cheryl Bryant is the head of the policy committee, and she now has three (maybe more?) options to choose from and talk about. The longest tenured employees were able to get 7 years of benefits. The discussion is whether to cut that to 5 or 3 years. We’re a month away from a final decision. We move along.
Next, Coretta Lipscomb talks about voluntary worksite benefits. That’s fancy talk for disability, cancer and other insurance products that the employee pays 100%. They’ll change from Aflac to Allstate.
Coretta Lipscomb reads her presentation. Dolores Reynolds in the front row, HELLO!
Here’s tonight’s audience. Nobody looks happy.
Lori Cassada knows where the money is.
Lori Cassada goes over the financial and textbook fund reports. Daddy P reminds everyone that we can’t touch the textbook fund for anything besides textbooks or else bad things will happen. Thanks, Daddy P.
Robin Jones knows her discipline numbers.
Robin Owens goes over the discipline report and statistics. We’ll have that as a NumbersCentral in a few days.
Next, Ed Polhamus suggests reopening the Woodrow Wilson school building in January 2016 and moving the Langston Focus School there. This would free up the Langston campus to be a temporary home for Johnson, Forest Hills and Gibson schools when those buildings come up for renovations. I like this very interesting idea.
We heart Juliet Jennings. And her ginger ale.
And now it’s time for what we’ve all been waiting for… The Juliet Jennings Show! On tonight’s show, Juliet talk about the routing personnel actions that the board has to approve. They go back and forth and make inside jokes on Case #5. Case #5 is board clerk Liz Jordan, who’s leaving the school system for another job. Boo. We’ll miss her. Next, it’s time to announce the principal for George Washington High School. Juliet Jennings tosses it over to her co-host, Kathy Osborne. Osborne reads a list of accomplishments and tells us that…
The new GWHS principal will be Randall Stokes, currently an assistant principal at Atlee HS in Hanover County. Job candidates went through three interview boards, and incoming superintendent Stan Jones made the final decision.
Sharon Dones & Philip Campbell looks slightly less happy than the other board members. Campbell asks “And he’s planning to stay in Danville for a long time?”, as Jennings says “Yes. He’s relocating to the area.” Dones asks “And where’s he coming from again?”. Kathy Osborne says “Atlee High School”. Dones asks “Where is that?” Sharon Dones is much more restrained than me. By this time, I’d be yelling “AND WHERE IN THE HELL IS THAT BECAUSE I’VE NEVER SPOKEN TO THIS GUY?!” Heh.
Anyway, he’s voted in by a 7-0 vote. Angela Ramsey gets the assistant principal job at GW, too.
Next, Yvette Smith goes over the Title 1, 2 and 3 funding grant applications.
Yvette Smith knows her Title programs.
There’s now discussion of a bonus for employees. They have scheduled a finance committee meeting for Wednesday. If a bonus is approved, it must be passed by the end of the month. The full board will meet on next Friday at 3:30 PM for a special called meeting.
And now it’s time for the issue that I’ve been pushing for the last four months. I have gone on record saying that the school board should hold their meetings in the city council chambers. Currently, none of the school board meeting are broadcast live and only the first meeting every month is recorded for broadcast. At tonight’s meeting, a lot of numbers and information about the early retirement program, and no one is going to see or hear them unless they were at the meeting. I also raised concerns about the lack of public restrooms and lack of handicapped access to the basement meeting room where the school board meets now.
I had faced a lot of pushback from some board members and the senior staff, and I believe that was a combination of resistance to change as well as the convenience of being able to simply walk down the stairs to hold their meetings. That fails to weigh in against the benefits of more school board transparency from meeting at City Hall. School administration tried to answer my raised issues by making a kludgy workaround, having to make wheelchair entrances on the side of the building. The restroom workaround was to open up the normally locked doors that led to the inside of the building (by the way, those doors were locked last night until I reported that to the board).
So here we go. Kathy Osborne’s report on what it would take to move the meetings to council chambers is amusingly filled with lots of “buts” which only show the potential problems. Director of Technology & Media Services John Parris makes his presentation which is quite biased against the move as well. My favorite was “We would have to learn the city’s production system”. Big farkin’ deal. I learned how to use a video switcher in less than a day. Parris also suggests upgrading the camera and video system to allow for live webcasting. Again, all of that is already available in city council chambers.
We finally get to the board’s discussion on the idea and it’s desperation mode for the ones who don’t want to move the meetings. Chairman Ed Polhamus asks about the seating capacity. Needless to say, it’s way more in council chambers. Then comes the best “Worst Debate Point Of The Year” as Polhamus points out that previously, city council wouldn’t let the school board adjust the seats. Seriously. There’s enough books in City Hall if somebody needs to sit on them to be seen. Some board members eyes roll back in their head on that statement. Polhamus opens the floor for any board action, and Vice-Chair Terri Hall makes a motion to keep having the meetings in the basement room. Nobody else seconds that motion and it dies. Steven Gould makes a motion to start the process to move the meetings to council chambers and it passes 4-2. YES!
Finally, the school board votes to spend $2400 on a retreat meeting with the other $2400 half being paid for by a Mystery Benefactor (Daddy P won’t say who). It will be led by BWP & Associates. That’s the company that did the search the Stan Jones, the incoming supervisor.
OK, we’re done here! We may get to some bonus coverage and photos later. This is the most comprehensive coverage that you’ll ever find, and it’s only here on SouthsideCentral!
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