A special meeting of the District 150 Board of Education is planned for Tuesday night. There’s only one item of public business on the agenda:
APPROVAL OF CONTRACT WITH HAZARD, YOUNG, ATTEA & ASSOCIATES
Proposed Action: That the Contract with Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates covering the Superintendent search and the Controller/Treasurer search be approved. Further, that the Community Superintendent Search Committee’s proposed total budget of $45,000 be approved and that the timeline for commencing the candidate search be changed to August/September, 2009.
The district’s search committee recommended the firm to the board last month. A March 25 Journal Star article reported, “Cost to hire the firm is about $21,000, not including travel costs and office fees.” Apparently travel costs and office fees are no small expense, based on the $45,000 to be budgeted for the search committee.
Current superintendent Ken Hinton plans to retire June 30, 2010.
UPDATE: I received this additional information from School Board member Jim Stowell:
The first story didn’t anticipate them doing a search for Controller/Treasurer as well. Dr. Durflinger and Dr. Butts highly recommended a search firm who might “draw out” better applicants than what applied to our posting on several sources, including all of the “free” postings offered through the state. I had suggested the same firm recommended by the supt. search committee, if they were willing to do it for a reduced fee (and possibly seize on some economies of scale or interest from a duo who might like to work together). The Board saw a list of applicants and will discuss whether to go the search route.
Kcdad: I am sorry about your experience at Richwoods–I don’t know your age, but I assume you went to school after Richwoods came into District 150. I don’t believe Manual was that restrictive with regards to staying in a track. Richwoods–especially, in its early days as a 150 school–often marched to its own drummer. I do know that I heard of cases at Manual where college-prep students wanted to take keyboarding but didn’t have time–I don’t know that they were forbidden.
I will never agree with you with regard to the cause of the discipline problems–that is your own little theory. If your theory were correct, wouldn’t students have rebelled in the 1950s when I was in high school? Students then had few rights to question authority, etc. If your theory were correct, wouldn’t all students be rebelling? There are always a few rebellious students, but in most schools the rebels are in the minority.
They did rebel in the 50s… you don’t remember the blue jeaned, ducktailed t-shirted “rebels without causes”?
Did you not see The Blackboard Jungle? Was all that just made up? Or has our collective memory just elected to forget those by gone days in favor of “Happy Days”?
Why do you think the 60’s hippies, yippies, tune in, turn on and drop movement occurred?
All students don’t rebel because many realize that there is a paycheck… I mean payoff at the end of the rainbow. Many students are frankly sheep… blindly obeying and accepting whatever the “authorities” put before them.
Kcdad: This country was founded on a rebellion, so, of course, I do not stand against rebellion. There were many issues from 1950-1970s that required rebels “with” a cause. Clothing, hair styles, etc., were certainly at the center of some of those student rebellions. I was on the side of students who wanted to wear Afros or long hair. The district lost a lawsuit filed by the parents of Indra Singh (father a Bradley professor) over the long hair issue. A few of us female teachers did a bit of protesting because we weren’t allowed to wear slacks to school. I did wait until the rule was changed, but wore my new pant suit the next day. Certainly there were riots, etc., during the Civil Rights Movement–and for good reason. I was sorry that the kids had to get involved in that fight; I would have preferred it to have been settled by adults. More so, I wish that white society had recognized the inequities and made the changes willingly so that rebellion would not have been necessary.
Today’s discipline problems are not caused by rebels. These kids are fighting each other, not the system. Very few problems in the classroom are in any way student vs. teacher or administration or system. The teachers just get in the crossfire of students fighting verbally or physically with other students.
I survived all those rebellions in District 150. I especially remember the Vietnam Era when most students opposed war, etc. I remember my shock during Desert Storm when I suddenly realized that my students were pro war. I had not realized that the tide had turned.
“I remember my shock during Desert Storm when I suddenly realized that my students were pro war. I had not realized that the tide had turned.”
Follow this line of thinking… and you will find the source of your discipline problems in the schools
Kcdad: Your line of thinking isn’t clear to me. Remember, however, that there had not been any wars for some time. I think these kids just got excited about the nightly shows on TV of American war power–all the new weaponry, etc.
We live in an entirely different society today. Education used to be about enlightenment, now it is about getting a job. Our society used to be about people and now it is about money… our money used to have value and now it only represents debt. Our businesses used to exist for the betterment of employees as well as the community and now they exist only to profit the majority stockholders…who also happen to be the chief officers of the company…
HOW MANY CHECK CASHING AND TITLE LOAN STORES DOES ONE COMMUNITY NEED?
Government used to be bout solving problems, now it seems that it exists to create them, or if not, ignore them until they become unsolvable.
Police used to be about preventing crime… now they just punish it. They used to members of the community, now they are an invading force from outside of it.
Be honest… look at the curriculum of the schools… are we creating poets and free thinkers? Or are we creating “American Idols”?
Kcdad: Whenever I agree with you, I always think I have missed some hidden message. Ha! Your objection to a utilitarian education is exactly why I object to the Johns Hopkins plan at Manual. The freshmen year (and probably beyond) is not the time to be thinking about career pathways. Inner city kids need literature, etc.,–the courses that make them think. I agree that the police, teachers, leaders, etc., once were members of the community–now they are members of a community, but not the ones in which they serve. Even though I didn’t live on the southside when I was a teacher, after school hours I was often in places where I ran into students. Especially in the early years in the 1970s, I think that did make a difference to my students. They knew we had some connection beyond the classroom.
May I suggest you watch “The Trap”. In it you will recognize the influence of John Nash and RD Laing, and others in the transformation of our social society into a paranoid schizophrenic, selfish economic battlefield.
http://freedocumentaries.org/film.php?id=152
Homeschooling anyone?
Mazr – Don’t even go there!
“I want to live in Peoria and I want to educate my children in public schools. I read this blog and try to contribute because I want desperately for things to change. I hang on to every small measure of good news hoping that it will get better and all I see are things getting worse. I know Sharon is sincere about this subject matter, but for some of you, this seems to be just a theoretical exercise, just another topic to be argumentative about. But some of us have real skin in the game.”
Frustrated – I totally agree. See
http://emergepeoria.blogspot.com/2009/04/mommy-journal-wednesday-april-21-2009.html