The Board is set to approve new goals for this coming year at the meeting on Monday, March 8th. This was something that I focused on last year as something that was important to me. Here is a note that I posted on my Facebook Page and the Two Minutes with Tracy video that I did as well. Previously, there were Board approved goals in 2012/2013, 2016/2017, 2019/2020, and now 2020/2021. I’m pleased that they are revisiting goals because frequent review and reporting on progress are important from my perspective.
However, aren’t goals supposed to challenging? Aren’t goals about improvement? Aren’t goals about accountability?
I’m going to get my biggest criticism out of the way. This Board doesn’t provide a report on whether the previously approved goals were exceeded, were met, or fell short… and what types of actions or steps will be implemented to meet those goals. How do we know if we are doing the things we need to do in setting up our students and district for success if we are not taking the Goals that are being implemented seriously? I wrote this last year and it still holds true today… “… if elected to the School Board, I will make sure that regular updates are clearly and widely communicated to the district residents. This too, holds school board members accountable. In some areas, we will succeed. Some areas may be a work in progress. And in some areas, we may fall short. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Those sorts of challenges can allow us to reset. To see what didn’t go well. To learn. And to move forward to ultimately meet the goal.” As you will see, many of the proposed goals that the board will consider have been adjusted down to fit where we are now. They speak to nothing about where we might need to be next year, three years from now, or five years from now.
Now onto some notable changes from last year’s goals.
From the Enhance School & Educator Effectiveness section, they are proposing lowering the goal from 81 to 80 for the Wisconsin School Report card. To be clear, 80 is still solidly in the “Exceeds Expectations” range that Wisconsin DPI defines. However, 83 is the start of the range for “Significantly Exceeds Expectations.” I’m hopeful that they are able to explain why we are lowering that number.
I have written quite a bit about my thoughts on the District’s budget and finances recently: What’s Your Definition of Fiscal Responsibility?
What's Your Definition of Fiscal Responsibility? Part 2 What's Your Definition of Fiscal Responsibility? Part 3
They will keep the ‘Ensure a balanced budget’ as a goal. I’m certainly hopeful that by ‘balanced budget’ that they mean they will ensure that whatever the expected expenditures for the year will NOT exceed expected revenues. As we have seen, our initial forecasts (which will continue to evolve as we approach the fall) are that we may have a budget deficit of $2 million+ for the 2021/2022 budget year.
Our fund balance continues to shrink, and we cannot continue to “balance” the budget by using the fund balance money to do so.
I believe the following three changes from last year to this year are all related. They have removed the goal which speaks to balancing educational services with community tax expectations. They have adjusted down the goal of where the fund balance should be from 13% to 6.5%. They also now want to maintain an investment-grade bond rating instead of maintaining the highest bond rating that Moody’s provides which is Aa1.
Researching the steps in creating a virtual academy and launching an Advisory Council on Equity are two items that are already in flight. I believe that we will hear something about the grant that we applied for with regards to the virtual academy toward the end of the school. The Advisory Council on Equity has just been established and will start meeting very soon.
I do believe that conducting an annual staff and parent engagement survey could be very valuable. I would hope it asked the truly important questions and is structured in such a way that valuable information can be collected from staff and parents. The key, ultimately, would be to take the information received and identify substantive improvements that can be made and follow through on them.
One last note, I believe that the Board should share some of their self-evaluations with the community. It would show areas in which they are doing well and the things that they may need to focus on to improve.
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