The Ellicott School Board held a special meeting held on Jan. 12 we managed to get quite a bit done. Policies were approved that will allow for a student representative to be on the school board. The seat would be a non-voting seat, since it’s appointed and not elected, but the school board wishes to get the opinions, ideas, suggestions, criticisms and more from the students as well as from the community. The requirements to be a student rep: GPA of 3.25 or higher and during the term of office maintain C’s or higher in all subjects and be an incoming Junior or Senior. One of the reasons the board choose to make the seat open to any student was there might be a student out there that is not on the student council or other such club that might be interested. We will take applications and draw a name for a primary seat and an alternate seat. The two students will work together to be available for meetings and then take the information they receive back to their fellow students.
We approved changes to a policy that will allow for input from our PTA and Booster Association at every meeting, input from Schriever AFB at every meeting, an input time for any district employee who has something to say and of course the public input opportunity. We removed the initiation of having a prayer at school board meetings based off legal advice.
Public input was changed and any taxpayer of the Ellicott District is again welcome to attend a school board meeting, sign up to speak, and then speak that night. If the citizen has questions that cannot be answered that night, for whatever reason, the school board president, Ernest Hudson, will take their contact information and respond to them in writing within seven days.
We added in an official working board session to each month, making two working board sessions and one regular board session per month. As we did in January, if there is a need for an additional board meeting, we will create a special meeting with plenty of notice to take care of business.
Because our elementary school is in priority improvement status, we were required as a district to create a Unified Improvement Plan for that school. Employees worked long and hard on the plan and created one for each school and the district as a whole, in an effort to go above and beyond. Due to time constraints the plan wasn’t put through the District Accountability Committee as it should have been, so when it was approved by the board it was with the caveat that it would be sent to the DAC and that they would render an opinion/recommendation at their February meeting.
A grant for the Improvement Support Partnership Grant was created by Mrs. Garduno in an effort to secure the district more than $150,000 to assist in implementing the Unified Improvement Plan. Because it was not ready to be sent before the last board meeting, the school board president had to sign it to get it up there and the board approved it after the fact. This is not ideal, but sometimes it does happen with boards. In addition, the district added Caplan and Earnest law firm to their choices for district attorneys.
After consulting with the new lawyer, the board determined in a unanimous vote of 5-0 to non-renew the superintendent’s existing contract. One reason for this is that the contract, as currently written, was a very poor contract for the district and for the school board. The board holds the responsibility of ensuring that the district is covered by adequate contracts and that we limit the liabilities of such contracts. One reason that the vote was unanimous is that all the board members took the time in executive session to get their questions answered about the contract. Before the vote was taken the motion was read aloud at least four times and one board member even verified that we were voting on the existing contract, which we did.
Overall, the board is very pleased with the progress they have been able to make thus far. We have a regularly scheduled board meeting Thurs., Jan. 19 at 7 p.m. and we have a retreat planned for the school board (Jan. 29 from 1-5 p.m.) to be hosted by District 38, where we will discuss such things as goals, plans, finances and more. We want to extend our gratitude to District 38’s school board for being kind enough to take us in and share their time, experience and knowledge with us.
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