Mark Mason's budget presentation to the School Committee is posted to the school website on the home page. The budget timeline is posted on the Superintendent's page.
The Public Budget Session is televised currently on Chan 22 - it is worth watching to gain an understanding of the budget. It is over 4 hours in length. The folks at Chan 22 are looking in to ways to break it down in to 4 parts so folks can watch part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I am one of the members of this community who truly wants an override to better our schools, however I cannot find any reason so far as to vote for one. Mr. Mason wrote an article at the end of last year that said our schools are doing great despite the conditions. So why should I give more money? I do not agree that every school needs an assistant principal. I also dont agree that the PTO's in this town should pay for the CSI newsletter that is going out. I have children only in the elementary level, I am not thrilled by any means of the curriculum or conditions of the school. I still have not seen an action plan for our schools. So where is this money going to go? I want to support you, but truly dont trust you know what to do with the money you want. I am one of the members of this community involved and still dont feel like i am getting answers. Its just the same rhetoric year after year, we need money. Every week there should be an article in the paper regarding what the schools need. Take one school a week and inform this town what has been cut and what needs to happen to stay on the same playing field as other towns. You are not getting the message out there. This blog is hardly getting hit. You are not getting it. PR for the schools better.
We would like to respond to the last anonymous post, we appreciate your comments and we will keep trying to get accurate information out. We like the idea of highlighting individual schools. FYI - The CSI: Scituate Blog has had 550 hits since we started!! Thanks!!
Thank you for your input. You are not alone about your feelings and the need for assistant principals at the elementary level. But as a school committee we asked the principals to let us know what they needed-and they said assistant principals. Please watch our meeting tonight, or better yet come! We will be discussing the revised budget.
We know the elementary schools are in need of "face lifts"-as you will see in the upcoming newsletter created by CSI Scituate-they are old. I believe that we have done an amazing job keeping them as well maintained as possible. There are plans for improvement.
As far as an action plan-please visit the school's website and look at both the school committee's as well as Mr. Mason's goals. We also have our 5 year accountability plan on our website which clearly outlines what needs to be done year to year. The Language Arts program is actually one year behind schedule as we were unable to fund it due to the need for budget cuts. This new ELA curriculum is K-12 so it will affect all grade levels-including your children in elementary school. It is in our budget for this year-again.
Our Communication Sub-committee will be meeting Monday, Feb 5th, 7:00 PM, in the superintendent's office-I welcome you to come and share your ideas about how to better our communication-there is always room for improvement.
Thank you for sharing your feelings, and I hope that with more facts you will come around to understanding we are a sorely underfunded school district with an outstanding staff that have managed with less for too long.
To anonymous, opinions are good, so are efforts to inform and educate both school-aged parents and the rest of the community. CSI Scituate is attempting to do that. As a parent, I don't have the time to attend School committee meetings. PTO meetings are about all I can manage once a month. If there are parents out there who are willing to spend their time attending these meetings and summarizing the information for our benefit, why wouldn't we support those people? I am not sure how much this organization asked for from your PTO but it can't be much. I believe the Hatherly PTO gave roughly $100 toward the cause of gathering important school information and sharing it. We have around 350 students in our school, that is about .28 per child. If it gives parents information about our schools, how money is spent on specific items and where the gaps are, isn't it worth a quarter? That can't even buy a carton of milk anymore. This blog forum can't be more than 3 months old, it's "success" can hardly be judged yet. Instead of complaining that this forum isn't working, and telling these hard working folks that "aren't getting it", try inviting a few friends and check back. Opinions are always good, especially if they are constructive...
Thank you for the responses back to my comments. I had listed this reponse specifically under the Budget section as I was addressing this to the school officials and commenting on the school budget. I was not addressing this to the members who organize the CSI blog. I am happy to see that you have received so many hits on this website. I am one of them who checkes a few times a week to see what is being shared. I wish more people would share their comments/opinions when they log on and hope they will when the newsletter goes out. To Libby, thank you for your comments. I am aware of the original budget requests and the changes and I do attend and watch meetings. My comments were sent prior to the meeting. My concern was that I did not feel that the school department was doing enough for itself aside from town meetings to help convince/inform the masses of the issues our schools face. There is only a little over a month to go for the override request and although some of these issues have been going around for years and many "band aids" have been put in place in an effort to help, there still has not been a great job by our school officials or town officials of getting the town behind the issues at hand. In many towns, teachers and school officials are very active in getting the message out, I would love to see that here. I understand its a difficult procedure but there are many of us who would support it. I agree this newsletter and blog are a great tool and one more way to inform. I just felt that the schools and school officials need to be more vocal and not just for a "wish list" but for what has been cut or where we fall behind. Again, I do want to support an override, just did not feel you were convincing the masses very well. To MBoynton, thank you for your opinion as well. I never disagreed with the object of the CSI newsletter or this blog nor was it a complaint for this service, more ways to communicate and get info out there the better. I also did not have an issue over the money spent by the PTO's ($100 from each school plus a couple town organizations) to support the newsletter. I just don't agree that the PTO's need to pay for this or many other items. I feel that this information is school related and should be supported and released by the schools and within their budget. (Perhaps if more updates had gone out we would not be where we are now.) There should be line items in the budget for this and as you pointed out, its not that much money. We should be hearing from our school officials via letters home with our children about the conditions of our schools. If they want our support they need to help get it too. The PTO's accross the country are paying or supporting the schools in areas that really should fall within a school or town budget. Not everything has to be cut either to provide some of these services. Unfortunately that brings us to this very point...overrides. But overrides cannot always solve the issue in our towns or schools. I do however look to our elected town officials for planning objectives and fiscal responsiblity and I am not sure over the years our town has planned well. I am disapointed with the issues are schools are facing now and that we are in this position. This is my comment/opinion and I look forward to seeing more views shared on this blog as I believe thats what this service is for and as a result more action or involvement will happen.
Post a Comment