School Board Meeting

     At the school board meeting last Monday, several topics were addressed.  The meeting opened with a teacher from Chandler.  He discussed the robotics program that he leads over his classes recess hour.  He shared with the board the excitement of the students as they cooperate on this hands on building activity.  He also brought in e few of the robots that the students had built.  He was followed by a research team asking permission to use Latino students for a study.  The study was on how the discrimination that minorities face can lead to depression or anxiety problems. They then did a brief overview on the TAP program, as well as an overview of elementary school ISTEP scores.  When compared with the scores of previous years, many schools are showing improvements. Then they discussed building plans and plans to keep the train quiet during the school day.  Mr. Kissinger tried to gain support for a new score board for the football field.  These topics were all discussed either properly or at length.  When they moved into budgeting, which took most of the rest of the meeting, it was only listing the proposal and then voting to decide whether it would be approved.
     I expected there to be more discussion during the meeting.  I greatly appreciated the teacher from Chandler coming and sharing his experience with robotics.  This gave a look right into the classroom to directly see how a group of students is doing.  However, the rest of the meeting felt out of touch with the everyday happenings of schools.  Sure, they could compare year to year test scores on a chart.  But no discussion was put into why they different schools were doing as they were.  For example, Chamberlain's math scores went down, while almost everyone else's went up.  It would have been nice to see the school board figure out why.  Chamberlain is in one of the poorer neighborhoods of Goshen.  They likely don't have robotics programs as Chandler does.  How does this affect student excitement about learning? How can budgeting be adjusted to help create appealing programs for students? Discussions such as those were what Iexpected from the school board meeting.  What I found was a group of people swiftly voting on proposals that had been sent out and read already.  The purpose of the school board seems to be managing the business side of schools.  However, it seems to me that to properly and successfully manage those things, one must understand the classroom side of schools as well. That's how one discovers where priorities are.