Mountain View numbers are down

 

BY VIRGINIA CODY

Attendance is down in the Mountain View School District for the second year in a row, Superintendent Andrew Chichura told the school board in a lengthy meeting whose completion was to take place Tuesday.

“As of the third day of school,” he said, “there were 1,135 students.”

This number is 88 fewer than were counted on the third day of school in 2010, he said.  It is 111 fewer than the number counted in 2009.

Chichura said the 1,135 students were broken down into 77 kindergarteners, 483 first through six graders, and 575 secondary students.

In other district business, the board voted down the posting and advertising of a library clerical position by a narrow margin, but agreed to post and advertise for paraprofessional substitutes, a girls’ junior high basketball coach, and long-term substitute teachers in science and Spanish.

Board members passed with a narrow margin conference attendance for a number of teachers.

Board member Dava Rinehart-Cowan, in voting against allowing those teachers to attend those work-related conferences, said she preferred to keep the teachers in the classroom.  Last year, she said, the combined total of time utilized by teachers to attend events like those voted on Monday, amounted to 2,250 days.

“I think our teachers are highly qualified enough to get through this without a conference,” she said.

Karen Voigt, Director of Curriculum and Instruction/Federal Programs justified the need for the conferences and said that to preclude attendance could jeopardize the district’s science grant.

In bus contract matters, the board approved a one-time fuel escalation payment to its bus contractors for the regular bus runs in the amount of one percent of the annual contract amount.

Chichura said that payment will not be applied to the activity buses or car and van contractors.

Board president James W. Zick said the subject will be reviewed again in Feb. 2012.

Also on Monday night’s agenda was the public reading of policy revisions on special education, a matter that took up most of the board’s attention during a 3-hour meeting.  The primary concern related to this policy was that there appeared to be a disconnect between the policies being revised and the school district’s strategic master plan.

Voigt assured the board and members of the public that the strategic master plan, which is already six years old, will be revised bySept. 30, 2012, and will incorporate state law and school policy when it’s completed.

Related to policy revisions, board member Richard Griffiths had expressed at a previous meeting that those revisions were not easily accessible by members of the public who had interest in participating in the revision process.

Chichura, who had obtained a solicitor’s opinion on the matter said that members of the public could access existing policy on the district’s website. The specific changes being worked could be obtained after filing a written write to know request.

Chichura, who has frequently advised members of the public to file written Right to Know requests on other matters, said that, as the district Right to Know officer, he is trying to comply with the law.  Even though the state Right to Know law allows for him to respond to verbal requests for information, and even though he does on occasion respond to those verbal requests, he prefers written requests for recordkeeping purposes.

“The state is going to start requiring an annual report on Right to Know requests,” he said, explaining that if he doesn’t have records of requests and his responses, he won’t have anything to show the state.

An additional matter on Monday’s agenda that wasn’t acted on was the selection of a financial adviser to guide the district as it attempts to refinance its $7.1 million bond.

This matter was to have been revisited when the meeting resumed Tuesday evening. Results of that meeting were not available at press time.