I made a motion to postpone approval of the Report until the Superintendent had a chance to make edits, and (after this failed 6:1), voted against accepting the Report. A couple of people have asked me why I did this so I thought I would write a bit about that.
First, the Report had lots of optimism, which is good, but also some items that deserved a second look. I took some time to review the report on achievement and put some comments, questions, typos, and friendly suggestions together on a version of the Superintendent's Report that you can read here. I think I ended up with 57 comments. Some of my comments are similar to last year's report like the need for more than 2-5 years of data in order to see a trend, and some of them are new. I picked a few of the comments to address at the board meeting, but was only able to bring up two in the time allowed. As I shared with the other trustees beforehand, my goal is that we see a high quality and highly accurate report.
I was a bit surprised that a majority of us would not see the value in postponing a decision on the report until the next meeting on January 29th. In my mind that was why we set up two board meetings in January to begin with. I am also a bit leary about accepting a report that may or may not be altered after the fact. I can guess that the typos at least will be fixed, but I won't find out until it after it goes to the Minister, so my approval would come before seeing the final document. On the one hand the Report goes in unchanged and is not the best report it should be. On the other hand a slightly different Report goes in than the one trustees voted on. That was why I voted no.
As with every decision I've made as a trustee, I need to know that my questions have been addressed before voting in favour of a proposal. I realize that Reports like this are mostly about Ministry requirements, but they also speak on behalf of the employees and partners of our school district and reflects the work they do.
This has happened to me a few times, where I seem to be voting no with some or all of the others voting yes because we each have different criteria for what gets our vote. One example was a bussing contract. For all I know it was the best contract ever but I did not get to see it or have it summarized, so I was not comfortable rubber stamping it without knowing what was in it. That's democracy I guess, and I don't mind being a trustee that holds out on principle. I can see why being positive all the time, accepting reports and proposals as they are leads to less grief as a trustee, but that is not why I became one. Each of us has an important role to play, some are good communicators, some are good at meetings and Robert's Rules, some are good at attending school functions and celebrating what's going on, and so on. I'd like to think my role is to ask lots of questions and keep coming back to transparency and openess, high quality work at the board office, and improved communications including the reports that speak for our district.
I was a bit surprised that a majority of us would not see the value in postponing a decision on the report until the next meeting on January 29th. In my mind that was why we set up two board meetings in January to begin with. I am also a bit leary about accepting a report that may or may not be altered after the fact. I can guess that the typos at least will be fixed, but I won't find out until it after it goes to the Minister, so my approval would come before seeing the final document. On the one hand the Report goes in unchanged and is not the best report it should be. On the other hand a slightly different Report goes in than the one trustees voted on. That was why I voted no.
As with every decision I've made as a trustee, I need to know that my questions have been addressed before voting in favour of a proposal. I realize that Reports like this are mostly about Ministry requirements, but they also speak on behalf of the employees and partners of our school district and reflects the work they do.
This has happened to me a few times, where I seem to be voting no with some or all of the others voting yes because we each have different criteria for what gets our vote. One example was a bussing contract. For all I know it was the best contract ever but I did not get to see it or have it summarized, so I was not comfortable rubber stamping it without knowing what was in it. That's democracy I guess, and I don't mind being a trustee that holds out on principle. I can see why being positive all the time, accepting reports and proposals as they are leads to less grief as a trustee, but that is not why I became one. Each of us has an important role to play, some are good communicators, some are good at meetings and Robert's Rules, some are good at attending school functions and celebrating what's going on, and so on. I'd like to think my role is to ask lots of questions and keep coming back to transparency and openess, high quality work at the board office, and improved communications including the reports that speak for our district.
