I was planning on writing a blog post for this meeting, had a few things to comment on, but I have a family emergency right now so I have not and will not have time to write anything. Just wanted to get it shared here in case anyone was interested in it.....
There was a Township Board of Trustees meeting December 1st which I will be posting the video of. There will be another Township Board meeting held on December 15th. The meetings are held at 6 pm at the Governmental Center offices.
The Downtown Development Authority meeting should be on December 9th at Noon at the Governmental Center offices.
The BOE schedule shows that there will be two Bridgeport School Board Meetings this month, December 14th and December 28th. The meetings are held at 6pm at the Bridgeport High School ** There will also be a special School Board Meeting held on December 7th at 6pm at the high school. The meeting is being held to hold a "closed session". **
Looking forward to Sunday morning, opening day of Firearms Deer Season!! Hopefully the inbred morons that damaged my blind, and probably left the dead raccoon in my blind, won't be bothering me on opening day.
I missed the last school board meeting on October 26th and it sounds like it was a "unpleasant" meeting. When I read about the meeting in the October 28th issue of the Birch Run/Bridgeport Herald I was so upset that I was going to write a blog post about it. I was so angry though that I decided it would be best to wait before writing anything. I had attended the Finance Committee on October 21st where they discussed the problems facing the school district. They have the current deficit problems, the added financial loss of over $600,000.00 due to student enrollment losses, the changes that will be coming when the Michigan State Treasury Dept takes over the monitoring of the schools in deficit. It was a depressing meeting because of the problems they discussed, but at the same time I heard a lot of good discussion and saw that they wanted to work to find a way to deal with these issues and to do so in a timely manner. They knew they had to at least show the state that they were working on a plan to handle the deficit.
If they can't show the state that they are, then what will the consequences be? More state control? An Emergency Manager placed in control of the district? If this district can't show that they are capable of handling this situation and the state starts making the decisions, those decisions will most likely not be pleasant.
So after almost two hours, the Finance Committee came up with some recommendations to look at. One was to start taking bids on the possible outsourcing of jobs in several areas. They needed to put this out for bid now so they had the time to review all the facts and figures. If it wasn't going to provide a significant savings, then they would not go with outsourcing. Two other options they wanted to start looking at was possibly closing Thomas White and negotiating with the union over the five percent wage concession. The recommendation from the committee was not to just do this, but to look at these options now, get all the facts and figures, and have the time to make a decision.
I was shocked when I read that the full board voted this down at the October 26th meeting. I thought "these people can't even make a simple decision", there's no hope!
If anyone would like to hear the discussion at the Finance Committee Meeting, you can view it on youtube or here on the blog. There was no microphones set up for the meeting so the audio is very hard to hear. You can use headphones and turn the volume all the way up. If there are any doubts about what was discussed at the meeting, take the time and make a little effort to listen to it.
There is also another issue in Lansing that may impact the problems Bridgeport is facing. That is how the state will deal with the $700 Million Deficit that the failed Detroit Public School System is facing. The plan proposed by Gov. Snyder involves taking $50 per student away from every other school district in the state for the next 10 years. So to try and save a school district that is probably beyond saving, he wants to make every other district in the state suffer. That would probably mean a loss of around $70,000 to $80,000 per year for Bridgeport. Here is the original news article about his plan - http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2015/10/how_snyders_plan_to_fix_detroi.html
Thankfully it looks like there is not a lot of support in Lansing for this plan, and there is going to be fighting over this plan. But I don't have much faith in Lansing. Didn't the voters say No to Emergency Managers? They're still doing it. Didn't the voters say No to the Bridge to Canada? He is building it anyways. Didn't the voters say No to more taxes for the roads? They did it anyways. If Snyder wants this plan, he will probably get it, one way or another.
Now onto last nights school board meeting.
There were three speakers during the citizen participation segment. Please take the time and watch them! I was not surprised, but was disappointed, by some of the comments made by Sue Rutherford. She talked about some of the options that the MEA has presented to the board and district in the past to help save money, a lot of money, but it sounds like those suggestions were just blown off by the board. And so here we sit. Hopefully this board and district will listen to them this time. UPDATE: I found some information since I originally wrote this blog post about part of the proposal presented by the union to the school district and I talk a little about it in the comment section below.
I will say that I am encouraged that it looks like most of these board members are serious about taking action and want to work with all the members of the district and will listen to their ideas.
The Finance Committee Recommendations were back on last nights agenda and this time the board voted to approve it.
There was a lot of good discussion by everyone at last nights meeting. There was a presentation by Ms. Silvey that I hope everyone will listen to. The closing board member and superintendent comments were Very Good and I hope you take the time to listen to them.
They have set a Special Board Meeting for Monday December 7th. It will be a full board meeting/workshop where the board members, administration, and the various employees groups etc. will present ideas and work together to do what is necessary for the benefit of the district and the future of the children.
One of the reasons I love fall in Michigan. On the path to my hunting spot this afternoon. New from last night. He also broke all the little overhead branches and started a scrape here.
Surprisingly I don't have much to say about the meeting. Bridgeport is facing some serious problems, and I was glad to see everyone at the meeting working together and having some serious discussions about ways to keep this school district going. I knew when the enrollment figures were released from this years count and Bridgeport had lost students, that it meant there would be some financial loss also. I never even imagined that the loss would be that great, a loss of close to $600,000 is a very big hurt for the school district. The school board members, administrators, staff, all have a lot of work to do and some very tough decisions to make and I hope that Bridgeport residents will get behind them and support whatever decisions they make. I hope people will take the time to listen to the entire meeting, I think everyone really needs to hear what they discussed. I used a pair of headphones at home when I reviewed the video, it helps to pick up this poor audio.
The Bridgeport School Board had a Finance Committee Meeting tonight. It was a very good meeting, some serious discussions. It was almost 2 hours long so this will take me quite a while to get uploaded to youtube. It probably won't be up until sometime Thursday, Sorry..
Mr. Larry Ford from the Birch Run/Bridgeport Chamber of Commerce gave a update on how Bridgeport's money is being spent for advertising.
The Great Lakes Discovery Center is almost a reality, finally after 19 years. Someday, hopefully soon, that will be another great asset to our Bridgeport community!
Pre-payment on the bond has been made. Work has been done on the car pool parking area. Plans are moving along on the "North Gateway" area. They will be working on a beautification plan with a Welcome sign. They hope to start work on that in spring 2016. Another project I am looking forward to seeing done!
There were some updates/information during the DDA Coordinator's Report. There will be a Grand Re-Opening for the Bavarian Comfort Care Center on December 2nd, 2015. Sounds like it will be a nice event.
** The next meeting for the DDA Board will be on Wednesday, November 18,2015
I will start my post with a couple of good things from last nights meeting, then I will get to the rest of the meeting.
First good thing was the Mackinac Island Presentation. The presentation was by Middle School Principal Mr. Baker and an assistant, Mr. Lounsbury. What a fantastic opportunity this trip is for the children and I was glad to see it supported by the school board.
Elementary School Principal Mrs. Durand gave the Martin G. Atkins Quarterly Report. From what I have heard from her updates, from what I have seen, from meeting and talking with other people, I think there are many great things going on at the school. Martin G. Atkins also now has a Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/martingatkins
Mr. Lange presented the recommendations from the Policy Committee and they were approved by the board. I really like these new policies.
* First is for how the board will deal with public comments --
"It is the President's responsibility to respond to public comments in one of the following ways:
1. Directly
2. Allow other Board members to respond.
3. Direct the matter to a Staff member and /or Committee with a commitment as to when a response would be forthcoming.
4. Defer the item to the Board Comments section of the meeting.
5. Defer the item to the next Board meeting where the item becomes a part of the Board Agenda."
* Next is the Visitors and Staff Identification Policy -- A short excerpt of the policy is:
"It shall be the policy of the Bridgeport/Spaulding Schools that all visitors and staff be identified with picture ID before gaining access to school buildings and must wear identification badges while on school property. The purpose of the access control system is to enhance building security.
The goal of the identification procedure is twofold:
1. So that school staff may be identified by responding agencies during times of crisis as a potential resource.
2. So that staff and visitors can be identified as belonging on campus by all those who occupy the facility.
Persons who are not student or staff shall report immediately to the sign in area upon entering a school building. Persons other than parents, guardians, students or staff, who desire to visit a school building, shall do so only with the permission of an appropriate administrative staff member."
* Lastly is that the board will set a standing agenda item starting in November where they will review one section each month of the Board Policies.
There was a discussion, and action, that took place during the board meeting last night that bothered me. I have reviewed the video of the meeting several times since last night and each time I watch it, it bothers me a little more.
During the Personnel Report they were presented with some Administrative Contracts that needed to be approved. This part of the report begins at 38:17 in the video. The board voted to not approve the contracts at last nights meeting, they will send them to the Finance Committee for review and then they will be brought back up at the October 26th meeting for approval. The whole union business is over my head a little but I do understand that these contracts fall under the "collective bargaining agreement", that were negotiated by a previous Administration with BAPA, The Bridgeport Administrators Professional Association. You can view the agreement on the Bridgeport Schools website, under the transparency reporting section - http://www.bscs.k12.mi.us/UserFiles/Servers/Server_4467434/File/Migration/page_430_BAPA%207-23.pdf
Robert Lange did bring up that since they are union contracts they do need to be sure that they are in compliance and doing this properly. I don't have a problem with that, sounds like a logical course of action.
Mr. Long was the first and the most vocal to object to approving the contracts at last nights meeting. He brought up the fact that the school district has lost students since last year. According to the article on MLive, they have lost 158 students since the 2014 count. http://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/index.ssf/2015/10/bridgeport-spaulding_school_di_1.html#incart_m-rpt-2
