by Matt Watling | July 19, 2021 7:17 am
OSWEGO – The Oswego City School District’s Board of Education was introduced to the Strategic Planning Committee’s key points that it came up with during six meetings since its inception at Tuesday’s meeting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcpWXS5fLtE[1]
There were several speakers present to touch on the plan, most of which were teachers or administrators across the district. While mostly those spoke, the committee also includes parents and members of the board of education. After those six lengthy meetings that lasted roughly three hours each, the committee came up with its mission, value and core. The mission statement is to educate, inspire and empower all students, the vision statement is an “innovative high-performing district that graduates all students,” while the core competencies include students come first, to ensure equity and success for all, as well as celebrating diversity.
Donna Simmons, the principal of Fitzhugh Park Elementary School, expanded on these core statements to “priorities and strategies.”
“We want to improve literacy rates of all students, especially with the pandemic there has been a drop in our literacy rates. Integrate and immerse technology into daily learning,” Simmons said. “We also want to lower drop out and raise graduation rates.”
To address the goal of equity and success, there is a priority on ensuring equal access to enrichment programs, college preparation programs and extracurricular activities, according to Simmons. There is also a strong focus on support, specifically supporting students.
“We want to address student’s diverse social, emotional and academic needs and expand and provide supportive structures to improve the achievement of all students,” Simmons said. “We want to utilize protocols and support to improve the attendance of chronically absent students, that’s going to be a big prioritized strategy too.”
Many of these priorities can be quantified by rates such as graduation rates and literacy rates. Some of the current rates and targets to be achieved in 2024 include:
Superintendent Dr. Mathis Calvin III ended the discussion by welcoming constituents and really anybody to join the Strategic Planning Committee in the fall to create “action steps” or ways that the district can work to accomplish the goals.
Earlier during the Superintendent’s Report, the board heard from a member of the soil project team. The construction crew is currently working on other areas of the high school field that are not impacted by the muck, which is really just silt that has been in contact with water, thus creating mud. The crew suggested that the best option to resolve this issue is to use geogrids that can be placed over the top of the silt to allow for machinery to drive over the top of it to finish the project. The expected cost has not been calculated but will be offered to the board before it votes on a way to resolve it.
During the consent agenda, curriculum and personnel sections, all 15 subjects were approved with ease and unanimously. Additionally, subjects “A” through “F” of the finance section were approved in the same manner. The only subject that was not passed was actually postponed by the board. Subject G, which reads “funding of the reserves” was postponed in a 4-3 vote. Board President Heather DelConte, Pamela Dowd, Jim McKenzie and Sean Ohnmacht voted yes to postpone the decision, while Vice President Tom Ciappa, Lynda Sereno and Lisa Glidden voted no to the motion brought forward by McKenzie.
McKenzie proposed the postponement because he did not want to allot any money to reserves until the external audit was complete. He figured it would make more sense to allocate the funds until after the board knew how much it had to work with.
“If the number [of reserve money] is halved, the leadership team could say, ‘I want it all to go to X,’ when we thought it would go a little bit to X, Y, Z. They are not beholden to anything other than not go over a maximum,” McKenzie said. “The other reason why I made the motion is like last year in June, that decision was made, but then the auditor actually found another $1.2 million on top of what was originally [estimated,] and then this board did make it a motion to fund the unemployment [reserve]… It is my feeling that actually deciding how to fund them is best done when we know how many funds we have.”
Calvin added that he has worked with some boards of education that have waited in this manner but most do not. Due to the vote, the board of education will wait to decide on where the reserve money will go once the audit comes back. Agenda items and documents from the meeting can be found here[2]. The full meeting can be viewed in the video link provided above.
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