Monday night there was a big meeting at Godfather’s Pizza to discuss strategies for getting the District 150 School Board to reverse their decision to cut 45 minutes out of the school day for 12 primary schools. The charge was led by Diane Vespa, who reports the outcome of the meeting on her blog:
Ultimately, we were persuaded to “call off the dogs” and place them on a back burner, for now. In the interim, we will meet a few more times to explore options for saving $600K. We don’t anticipate this to be too difficult of an undertaking given the fact that it is less than 1/2 of 1% of their budget. There is a meeting scheduled with the District for May 22. The goal: a full rescission of last Mondays vote.
If negotiations fail, things could get ugly. In the past week, there have been calls for everything from picketing to a city takeover of the school district. Those more extreme measures are on hold for now, in hopes that the board will reverse their decision and find a way to balance the budget that doesn’t rob kindergarten through fourth grade students of teacher contact time.
I think it’s a good idea to try negotiations first, but we must, at the same time, keep the heat up. We won’t let the administration razzle-dazzle us like they did the school board last Monday night.
CJ
I enjoyed the entertaining clip, but it almost made light of the contempt King Hinton expressed the night he rammed that hasty decision through. His arrogance continues to amaze me, let alone why that BOE stays awestruck with him and his merry band of over paid cohorts! Perhaps the reason lies with the saying that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is King. Throughout the blog reports and emails I have read about the meeting with Collier I sense that Hinton “will consider” alternate savings, but expects them to be handed to him for “his consideration”. That’s fine, but isn’t that what is he, his court jester Cahill and the excess superintendents are being paid their fat-cat salaries to do? Now will they even be allowed to skate on this as well? Geeeeez! I understand the idea of the villagers laying down their arms, but seeing Hinton poo-poo public input time after time I have wonder if he really will accept any recommendations. Maybe it is wise that some villagers stay riled and armed so the King will stay on task.
^oo^~
Left by one_feral_kat on May 13th, 2008