Category — School Board

8:16pm Miro Weinberger has won the election for mayor of Burlington!  Congratulations to the mayor-elect…

10:55pm- Time for a little unpacking of the day’s events here in Burlington, Vermont.

*Thank you to Kurt and Wanda  for running honorable campaigns. 

* From a personal standpoint, thank you very much to the 1,392 people who voted to re-elect me to the school board from Ward Seven.  It’s an honor to serve you.  I believe I received the 4th 8th highest vote total in the city behind Miro, Kurt and Bernie O’Rourke. Oddly Bernie was the one school board member with an opponent on the ballot and he got more votes than all 6 of the rest of us who were unopposed.

*Thank you Lauren Glenn, Meghan O’Rourke, Nat Ayer, Jess Wilson and everybody at Channel 17 for hosting election HQ tonight, and to Kathryn Flagg, Paula Routly, Tyler Machado, Cathy Resmer, Andy Bromage and the rest of the crew at Seven Days for inviting me to blog with them there.

* Jay Vos, formally of the wonderful local blog “Blazing Indescretions” tells me that Blogger has deleted his entire blog because they mistook it for spam.  That is upsetting.

*The school budget passed  5359 to 4490 . 

*Council Winners by Ward:  1- Ed Adrian, 2- Max Tracy 3-Rachel Siegel 4-Byran Aubin 5-Chip Mason 6-Karen Paul 7-Paul Decelles  Congratulations all. 

*The council takes a step to the left.  Kurt departs in 4 and is replaced by a Dem.  Berezniak departs in 2 and is replaced by the Prog he Bram beat by 13 14 votes 2 years ago.  Paul Decelles, whom I voted for today, got 54 more votes than ge got last time, yet only won by 97 votes, beating Tom Ayres 52.6% to 47.3%.  Ayres is likely to run again next year when Vince Dober retires from the council.  Ed Adrian envisions a “New New North End” that is solidly Democratic.  Is his vision correct?

 *Chart and numbers stolen from Seven Days:

Burlington Mayoral Race

7 of 7 wards reporting results.
The winning candidate must receive more than 40% of votes to avoid a runoff.

Miro Weinberger (D) 5801 Kurt Wright (R) 3746 Wanda Hines (I) 498

Burlington City Council Races
Ward 1 Adrian (D) 709 Write-ins 0
Ward 2 Tracy (P) 503 Hammerslough (D) 297 Write-ins 0
Ward 3 Siegel (P) 755 Hurley (D) 440 Ruloff (I) 44 Salese (I) 40 Write-ins 0
Ward 4 Aubin (D) 1095 Kenworthy (R) 974 Write-ins 0
Ward 5 Mason (D) 1177 Daigle (I) 453 Write-ins 0
Ward 6 Paul (I) 1118 Write-ins 0
Ward 7 Decelles (R) 965 Ayres (D) 868 Write-ins 0

Tuesday 3:24pm

Election Day live-blogging in random chronological order.  Just got back from hanging out at Ward 7 polling place.  I go back and forth between standing with the dems and the republicans.  If I stand in the middle I block the way.  I got yelled at for that last time.  It isn’t easy being an independent so I was happy to see Wanda there for a while.  Some thoughts on the ballot:

I voted.  When I finally had the ballot in front of me and I had to make a choice, I wrote in Bob Kiss for mayor.  I cherish my freedom.

The wording of the school budget question is so poor, the budget might just pass.  It doesn’t ask for a tax increase.  It just says ‘spend 65 million? Y or N?’  You know it hadn’t occurred to me to think about how it looks on the ballot.  I’ll be wiser about that next year.  Don’t get me wrong, as I said earlier, I want the budget to pass today, but I think people should know what they’re voting on.

About 2000 ballots had been cast in Ward 7 as of 3pm including presidential primary ballots, so I think it’s safe to say at least 1000 people have voted in ward 7 as of now.

Helen Hossley told me the 200 annual reports they had to give out at Ward 7 were sold out by 10am.

I took the CNN exit poll.  Ron Paul Revolution!  Woot!

Poopsie and the kids are still at the Lorax.  I’m going to try to eat something and go to city hall to get an annual report.  I’m going to be on the seven days live blog later (if I can find it; link?)  physically seated at channel 17, home or both.  Does channel 17 have WiFi?  Anybody?  And I guess folks from the school board are meeting at RiRa’s later, but I’m not really sure why… The school board’s finance committee will be meeting with the mayor-elect tomorrow to either start picking up the pieces if the budget fails, or a nice meet-n-greet if it passes…

More later… (but not necessarily within this post.)

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Monday Night:

I’m from Burlington.  I’ve never been to a town meeting.  I just didn’t want to call the post “Election Day 2012″ because I might want to save that title for November.

The 2012 race for mayor is almost over.  My guess is Wanda will get between 10 and 20 percent of the vote and that Kurt and Miro will each receive between 40 and 50 percent of the vote.  We will know the winner very soon after the polls close.

The school board will get at least one, and at most two new members.

The city council will get at least four, and at most five new members.

More later…

Tuesday morning…  Election/Town Meeting Day…

10:19am  I’ve been invited by Seven Days to join their live-blog tonight where I and several real journalists will unpack the day’s events.  I have not wanted to say much about the mayoral race.  I still don’t know who I’m going to vote for.  Hell, I might just write-in Bob Kiss.  Or myself.  In the race between Kurt and Miro, I have not wanted to step on either of their toes or hurt either of their feelings.  They are both good guys.  I think.  Kurt and I joined the city council together in 1995 and Poopsie knew him before that even.  I only ever heard of Miro a few months ago, and only ever met him in person twice.  Normally that dynamic alone would make my decision a slam-dunk for Kurt- but although I really like Kurt personally and respect him, I never ever pictured myself actually voting for him.  More often I’ve envisioned myself running against him.  Not because of his party.  I am an independent, and I vote however I want.  My most enthusiastic vote today will be for Ron Paul, for example.  It’s more because I have never been able to grasp what Kurt’s core philosophy is.  I think he would probably be an ok caretaker for the office of mayor, but I don’t imagine him really doing anything special with it, and I’m not sure how much he understands.  Miro on the other hand, I see as a bit of a wild-card.  He’s never been elected to anything, and I’m not sure of how much he understands either.  With Miro it kind of feels like he himself is simply the tip of the spear trying to pierce city hall, and just behind his smiling face the entire apparatus of the Democratic National Committee is waiting to come set up shop and control my city for the next 50 years.

I don’t know.  Let’s talk about the school budget.  I am voting for it.  As a member of the school board I was one of 2 votes against sending this version of the budget to the voters.  That is not the same thing as voting for or against this budget now that it is before the voters.  Most of why I am voting for it now, is because once a budget is put before the voters the effects of if failing are costly and damaging.  Let’s say a majority of the school board had voted against sending this version of the budget.  We would have come up with something else.  Personally, I would almost never vote against a school budget when it’s on a ballot in front of me.  As a school board member I have a responsibility to represent other people, and use my votes to try to send the best budget I can to voters.  So I just want to put that out there right now.  To vote against the budget as a school commissioner and for it as a citizen is not a reversal and not inconsistant.  I know it’s a nuance not everyone will grasp, but the votes are really for different things.

As is my tradition on the first Tuesday in March, I am not at work today.  It’s 10:58am, I have to shave, shower, vote and hang around the Ward Seven polling place a little bit.  Gotta promote my “fill in the bubble” campaign.  Me, Poopsie, Koko and Yana will all go vote together.  Then I will hang back, and Poopsie will take the Kids to see The Lorax movie.  Yup, ok… sounds like a plan…

More Later…

My apologies to Wanda and Kurt, I was only able to schedule, conduct, and and transcribe an interview with one of the candidates this cycle, and it happened to be Miro. That does not necessarily mean I prefer Miro over the other candidates for mayor. It just ‘is what it is’ in terms of what I was able to get done. For some reason I just haven’t seemed to have had the time to put into covering the mayoral race that I did three years ago. Oh wait… three years ago I wasn’t on the school board.  That’s probably part of the reason.

Click here to read my January 22 interview with Miro Weinberger.

This aired on 02/06/2012. Watching it now it seems like I talked too much and that Jill was very patient with me.

Breaking news: I have decided to cast my personal vote for the school budget. I don’t want to tell other people to vote for it, because I think they should make their own minds up. There will be a few people already at their financial edge for whom a tax increase will make the tyranny of the majority real.  That’s part of the agony of democracy and it betrays the fallacy of the property tax system. I wish the board and the administration had prepared a leaner budget, but if the voters say no to we will have to immediately notify up to 25 teachers that they might lose their jobs- all the cards will be thrown up in the air, and who knows what important things might get slashed in a panic as we draw up a second attempt? There really isn’t much of a plan b, sadly. Plus both Miro and Kurt have come against the school budget, and for some reason that pushes more toward supporting  it.

Democratic mayoral nominee Miro Weinberger released a statement opposing the school budget.   He also announced he appointed Carina Driscoll and Doug Hoffer to his campaign budget team.  Miro writes…

 “…That is why I am announcing the creation of a Budget Team to begin the hard work of finding at least $700,000 in budgetary savings – approximately 1.5% of the total general fund budget – as the first step toward putting the city’s finances in order…”

and…

 ”…I am unable to support the proposed increase in the school budget. School taxes and municipal taxes may be different lines on the tax bill, but they are paid out of the same wallets…”

Interestingly, perhaps ironically, the current mayor found 1.6 million in savings in the city’s budget … by transferring certain retirement costs to the school budget Miro does not want to pass.  ‘Same wallets’ indeed.  If the school budget fails,  I’m going to once again be asking to work with the city and state to stagger the cost shift over two years to lower what the schools ask for this year.  This will mean Miro’s budget team might have to try to find 1.1 million just to achieve their current goal of -700K.

It’s really hard to imagine anything in politics or government working out exactly as planned. 

Now,  you might recall that the 10% tax increase was sent to the voters by a school board vote of 12-2 and that I was one of the two voting no.  I voted no because I thought the board could send a better budget to the voters.  But now that we have sent it to the voters, I think it’s up to them.  I’m not campaigning for either outcome, but it sounds like Miro is rooting for the school budget’s failure.  Since it’s the true blue Democrats that can usually be counted on to pass school budgets in this town, this is not an insignificant campaign development.  I wonder how it will play.

My ears perked up a bit when I heard Obama challenge the states not to let kids drop out of school until age 18.  I think that’s a wise idea.  Right now in Vermont it’s 16.  Now one could argue that raising the no-dropouts threshold to the age of majority limits freedom, but to that I’d say then that we already limit the freedoms of children in many other ways, in particular forcing them to go to school until they’re at least 16.  Dropping out of school before graduating your period of free-to-you, government-sponsored education (ie k-12) is bad for you and bad for society.  Bad for you because you will be less employable, and bad for society because you will be less employable.  It’s a waste of the investment.  If we love our kids we shouldn’t let them drop out of school!  It’s the installation of rigor at an early age that sets the path for a person’s success in life, and a nation is only as good as the people in it.  We need an America Built to Last!  I’m going to bring this up at the next school board policy committee meeting, but I’m not sure a school board policy would supersede state law…  Is there a bill about this in the VT senate now?  The superintendent mentioned there might be…

George Cross sent me a copy of his final report to the city council, and some attachments back on November 17.  I promised him then I’d post them “in the coming days,”  but I did not say “this year.”  Tempus fugit.  Anyway- I’m posting them now.

You may need to choose “save” after clicking the link:

The June 23, 2010 Cross Report

What some other cities are doing to audit themselves

Numbers 1

Numbers 2

I’m buying myself an easy post this evening by just stealing Jeanne’s weekly update to the board and posting it. This one’s a good one because it’s got budget hearing dates.

Meeting Agendas materials and other school board info online now at Board Docs http://www.boarddocs.com/vt/bsdvt/Board.nsf/Public

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superintendent weekly updateSunday, November 27, 2011 11:02 PMFrom: “Jeanne Collins” View contact detailsTo: “Jeanne Collins” Bcc: haikbedrosian@yahoo.comGreetings all

I hope you had a great Thanskgiving break. I know I did and I got my voice back also! Yeah!

We head into a very intense budget season at this point. Dates to remember:
Nov 2- Finance looks at budget
They may wish to hold another meeting prior to Dec. 13
Dec. 13- Board accepts or amends Finance proposal to get public input
Dec. 15- Board meeting to hear public input on Budget
Jan. 4 Board meeting to hear public input on Budget
Jan. 9 – present budget to city council per charter
Jan. 10 – Board approves budget for March ballot
Jan 11- Town Meeting Day- get the word out!

On Dec. 1, I will be attending the Ward 6 NPA with Alan Matson at their request to begin a discussion about the budget. Please let me know if others of you would like me to attend NPAs with you now through Town Meeting. This is a great opportunity to discuss the student successes we have and to explain the challenges we face in funding.

DIVERSITY
The first committee meeting is also Nov. 29. We will be bringing data to this meeting on last spring’s teacher hiring season. I hope you all also received word that Vince Brennan’s forum on the Task Force report Monday the 28th is postponed due to a death in his family. Our condolences go out to Vince and Siobhan, his wife.

Dec. 1 the Equity Council will be meeting for their monthly meeting.

K REGISTRATION
Kindergarten and New Student Registration Opens Monday, 11/28
Registration then closes on Friday, March 16th, with placement letters slated to be sent home to families
by April 30th. Please visit our website closer to 11/28 for more information and forms related to this
process. Or, call 865-5332.

BHS TRANSFORMATION
Adam Urbanski, Director of the Teacher Union Reform Network of AFT, http://www.aft.org/about/leadership/vp_bios/urbanski_bio.cfm, will be in Burlington and Winooski on Nov 28 and 29. Nov.28, he will talk with teachers from both districts; Nov. 29 with administrators and Board members. Adam was first heard by Keith and Kathy and others at a Nellie Mae conference earlier this year and Nellie Mae agreed to fund his visit to our districts. He is skilled in helping labor and management look at new ways to forge collaborations for the achievement of students. Keith will join us on Tuesday for some time with Adamn.

COMMISSIONER’S CORNER
This week, TH, Dec. 1 is a Commissioner’s Corner. We hope to be discussing Family School Partnerships, but are still confirming our guests. We are live at 5:25 on Dec. 1.

CITY FINANCE ISSUES
Joe McNeil will be meeting with Bill Talbott, VT DOE CFO, about the retirement issue on Wednesday. Alan, Keith, Haik, Karen and I will meet with city officials on Wed afternoon about the bond, along with our counsel, Paul Guiliani and others. Paul has stated that he feels the issuing of the $1.25 M bond is simply a ministerial act, and should be able to go forward upon city council action. We are hopeful we can move foward on this issue.

TARDINESS POLICY
Nov. 28, we are rolling out the pilot Tardiness Policy as discussed by Policy/Advocacy and the Board last month. Alert Now phone calls went out last week to let parents know and the policy is posted on our web site.

PRINCIPAL SEARCHES
Per our previous discussions, the survey that came back from SA was overwhelmingly in support of keeping a second year interim with the intention of opening a search next fall. (39-2). Thus, I announced the search for EES today and the 2nd year interim at SA as well. I think two talking points are important. A 2nd year interim is unusual in recent times. IAA had asked for this as well and was denied, as the state would not allow it in a Tier 1 school. However, SA is in a different place and needs to finish some healing and some mission work so they can find the right person. EES is not in that place and needs to move foward with a permanent position. SA recruitment is staring now for a search next fall; and will intensify this spring as the mission work is in place.

Events coming up

12/3 SA Pancake Breakfast/Silent Auction (flyer attached)

12/5 OPUS 23- we have several students who were chosen to perform their original compositions in this event

* Burlington High School- Anne Sutton & Giovani Tabor

* Edmunds Middle School- Bastien Gliech, George Shaw, Henry Severance, William Sutton & Ben Hun

Twice each year the Vermont MIDI Project selects student compositions from among those that have been posted to a password protected website for feedback by professional composers. Students from over 50 Vermont schools, homeschooled students, and a few selected out-of-state schools currently participate in this non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students in music composition. For more information and examples of student work, please visit our website (http://www.vtmidi.org/opus23.htm).

The event is
Date: December 5th, 2011
Time: 6:30 pm
Location: Elley-Long Music Center,
at St. Michael’s College in Colchester

That is it for tonight- have a great week, everyone!

–

Jeanne Collins
Superintendent of Schools
Burlington School District
150 Colchester Ave.
Burlington, VT 05401
PH: 802.864.8474
FAX: 802.864.8501

“When parents and teachers collaborate on behalf of children, they create windows of light for the generations that follow.”

The school board’s tech guy came to my committee tonight to continue to seek direction on how to draft the school department’s technology policy for the day when the kids all have computers in school. 

Some of the questions discussed:  Do we make the kids insure the devices?  Do we give devices to all kids or just those who don’t have their own?  Do we take the computers away from them for misuse?  How are they going to do their work if we take the devices away?  If they can do the work without the devices, what do we need the devices for?  Should Facebook really be part of the curriculum?  Do they take the devices home?  If the devices disappear, does the taxpayer eat it?  When should parents be asked to opt-in?  When should parents be asked to opt-out?