The District Mission Statement

Last night at the District 22 board meeting - the board and the superintendent were asked if anyone could recite the the district mission statement.  No one could - the school board and the school superintendent could not (or chose not to) recite the district mission statement.  How sad that the leadership of the district does not appear to know what the mission of the school district is. 

If we don’t know what the mission is;   if we don’t know what our goal is, how can anyone expect success?

The board is responsible for leading the district.  The board is responsible for setting the District goals.  Sadly they have not done that - they didn't even know the mission statement; and it was hung on the wall behind them!.

There was no discussion on the MOLD issues - How a major potential problem like that could be ignored is beyond me.  One board member did leak out to me that a company had been contacted to do an assessment of the problem - but the company and district had not yet decided when they would allowed to do the MOLD assessment.

There was a discussion on retirement of a bond the district has outstanding - In that discussion, the representative from the bonding company stated that the new financing of the old bond, would result in a saving of $144,000 over the next 6 years.  The board seemed happy with this idea.  A question from the citizens in attendance was asked about the outstanding balance of the bond, and could it be paid off at one time.  The bond representative stated that the amount was about $1,135,000, and could be paid off at any time.  If the bond were to be paid off, then the savings would be about $244,000 per year for the next 6 years.  If you assume the bond was paid off from the general fund reserve, that reserve will still have over $1 million dollars.  The board did not seem interested in saving what would amount to $1,464,000 over the next six years, but were far more interested in saving the $144,000.  My resources management instructor would be turning over in his grave if I ever made a statement like the board did.  By paying off the bond, I would still have over 1 million in reserve, and actually save more than the payoff amount of the bond over six years.

There was a discussion about the possible BEST grant funds for a new middle school.  Mr. Ebert admitted that he had turned down the first offer of getting a new middle school because he did not want to meet the BEST grant committee request that the district pay for 13% of the cost.  Mr. Ebert has changed his estimate of the cost of a new middle school from $6 million to $12 million or maybe $18 million - I guess it's inflation.  The board plan now is ask the district voters to agree to "bond" something between $750,000 for a 6 million dollar middle school to about $1.56 million on a 12 million dollar school, or maybe it's $2,340,000 for a 18 million dollar school.  They want to ask the voters for another bond - while having over $4.800,000 in reserve - can you believe that.  Further, they did not jump at the first offer.  If someone offered me a $6 million dollar house - or even a $12 million dollar house and all I had to do was pay $780,000 for it, I would have been running to the bank. But no one on the board has any common sense, and certainly no financial sense.