Lebanon School Board Meeting Part Four - A Mandated Report on the CIP Program

This should have been relatively non-controversial; the state and federal governments require a report to be filed detailing expenditures and programs that deal with various government funding sources. SOP, right? The state did not release the necessary data (and apparently there is a lot of it) until mid-October, and the report is due on November 17th, so the district's employees have been scrambling just to get a draft done they could present to the school board for tentative approval (which really isn't that tentative, since the board does not meet again until after the due date). Word has it that the staff was working on the report almost right up to the meeting.

Predictably, Josh and (especially) Rick became clumsy, bullying assholes about the report. Rick disagreed with a paragraph that had been lifted DIRECTLY FROM SCHOOL BOARD POLICY, and then complained when the staff pointed out that he couldn't just change the wording the report without actually changing the source document as well. It was like watching adults try to deal with the cranky prince. It was pathetic and embarrassing.

Rick then proceeded to keep quibbling over minor points of disagreement in a report that was a draft anyway, at one point trying to claim that since Lebanon spends more money on labor costs than the state average, and yet Lebanon's report card isn't all that great, Lebanon is not getting it's money's worth.

Like there are no other factors involved that affect Lebanon's AYP or report card. Seriously.

At this point, Sprenger ranted about how much time the board was wasting when it could be dealing with "kid-related" stuff. She was tired.

Wineteer complained that he thought the board had wanted to move back to a more "goal-based" system, and the report did not indicate this. There is an element of honest disagreement in there, though it's really difficult for me to take that guy seriously.

Given all the complaining about not having time read the report, Robinson suggested - and he was obviously pissed about the possibility that this would be taken seriously - that the board schedule an emergency meeting between then and the deadline to approve the report. Sprenger spat out "how fun." She was furious. She then told the public that she at least had received the draft four days before the meeting, giving her time to read it, which belied a lot of the other members' complaints. It is rare for her to really go after the other board members in such an unprofessional and open manner, so I took this an indicator of her anger and tiredness.

This issue probably brought more people to tears than anything else, for some reason. I think it was the apex of exhaustion for most folks. The board was most vitriolic towards each other here.

One of the two staff members presenting the draft pointed out, at someone's request, what the consequences were for not submitting the report on time. Basically, funding would be denied in increasing amounts the longer the report was not submitted. Sprenger kept asking (in true Rick style, actually) whether or not that was kid money - a transparent ploy to make those holding up the process look bad.

Debi Shimmin saved the day by saying she trusts the employees to do due diligence and their jobs, and she motioned to approve the report. Chris and Sherrie supported her, as did Rick for some reason, and that was that.

I will say that this episode really demonstrated how poorly the board as a whole has learned to work together. They bickered amongst each other and with Robinson over almost every aspect of this issue, most of them trivial. And this time, I'm including Sherrie and Chris in that charge - their exhaustion had obviously overcome their desire to be professional.

And in all fairness, I'd probably have been a lot less civil towards Rick and Josh on this issue than Sprenger and Robinson were. The former two really acted like childish, petulant jerks, attempting to micromanage what is almost certainly a non-issue.