When I decided to attend this ACS Board of Education meeting after a month's long hiatus, I was not expecting it to be the longest BOE meeting of all time; however, that is the meeting we got. The hour-and-forty-six-minute-long meeting was jam packed with all your favorite meeting stuff. There were presentations. There were motions and seconds and "all in favors". It was everything you could want in a meeting and 46 minutes more.
This is the first meeting that Andover Exclusive has attended with Interim Superintendent David Hanks at the helm. He was very superintendent-y and only vaguely interim-ish. He started off strong with a 5-point Superintendent's Report:
There is an ACS jobs fair Wednesday 2/15 from noon-4pm.
104 ACS students made the honor roll which is really rad.
Congratulations were offered to the Kansas City Chiefs on their big sportsball win.
He wanted to recognize teacher Erica Jacobs for her efforts and the 6 students in grades 5-8 whose artworks were selected for an exhibition at the Regina A. Quick Center at St. Bonaventure.
Further accolades were offered for Will Kent receiving a key award for his senior art portfolio.
BOE President Perkins responded by stating, "There's no shame in second place. Fly, Eagles, Fly." Andover Exclusive holds both Perkins and Hanks in contempt for not acknowledging that the Buffalo Bills are the only acceptable team to root for even though they were not playing in the Superbowl this year. Next year, for sure.
Following the flagrant display of unacceptable fandom, the Budget Workshop commenced at 6:05pm. The Transportation and Facilities Workshop was presented by the illustrious Jen Joyce and Building Supervisor Shane Sharrett. They covered a lot of ground, and the very cool slides can all be found here. Did you know New York State wants all the school buses to be electric soon? In this economy? All very fascinating stuff. If you feel like you missed out on the fun and excitement of budget workshopping never fear, there are 2 more budget workshops at both of the next two board meetings. What could be better?
Funny you should ask because after the 50-minute-long budget workshop was ANOTHER presentation. This time from the newly reformed Andover Music Boosters. The band teacher, Melissa Harrison, briefly touched on the reformation of the Boosters, the need to consolidate accounts and get insurance coverage then introduced the Boosters' Board. Following his introduction, Booster's President, Dr. Albert J. Todd launched into a data-extravaganza. No band or choir data point was left unanalyzed (from 2016 forward). Check out the cohort analysis heat map below. Fascinating. Want to see even more cool data visualizations? Check out the entire slideshow here.
There was only one more presentation for the evening, and Kathryn Slavinski kept in short. She updated the board on the Harvard Intervention Program. Harvard invited the ACS Intervention Team to speak at their meeting. They were the only NY State Intervention Program asked to do so for the second time in five years. In addition to that honor, the Harvard Intervention Program plans to send a team to Andover to observe the program later this year. Very cool and very exciting. Ms. Slavinski also touched on the ESSA status, which is good, and CBT testing which turns out is computer-based testing. Board Member Sabrina Gaylord did ask if there was an alternative in place for students who did not want to do state testing on computers and preferred the paper and pencil method. Ms. Slavinski stated that there was not and that this was going to be a statewide requirement starting next year.
After all of the presentations came the Board Dialogue and boy did they dialogue. Betsy stated she was very happy for all of the positive news and offered a shout out to Mrs. Kephart as she had seen a nice statement about her on the school Facebook page. Pat wanted to express that it was good to see some excitement for the music program again. Sabrina brough up the lack of concession stand at recent sporting events and suggested the cheerleaders do it as they do in Whitesville. Brian dialogued on pretty much every subject imaginable from the job fair, to the music boosters meeting (2/16 @ 6:30pm in the band room), to the Elementary Shamrock Dance (3/26) and beyond. He rounded out his statements with a commentary on the Superintendent search and plans to get that underway shortly. Brian ended with reading a statement from Mrs. Turner in honor of National School Resource Officer Day which is this coming Wednesday and a real thing. In the statement Mrs. Turner thanks school officer Mr. Dougherty for his hard work and support of students.
The rest of the meeting was much more straight forward. The consent agenda was still being used, which is still ikky, in my opinion. Lots of motions were made and seconded and passed. There were warrants approved. There were indoor soccer coaches and substitute teachers approved and oh so much more. There was even a fancy bond resolution passed that was like 2 pages long, and I totally didn't read. All good stuff.
The meeting adjourned at 7:46 and was unfortunately a 0/10; however, I would say that it was very informative and full of a lot of positives. It was great to hear how well so many students at ACS are doing and to hear about their accomplishments.
© AndoverExclusive 2023
Comments