Muscatine

Ok, we have some new faces on the school board.  The big question will be see change? I was disappointed in the outcome.  I thought incumbent Joyce Haller had done some good things by voting no to new additions that were not needed.  She also voted no to an increase in administrator salaries beyond what they had negotiated.  Too late for changing our minds now.  I just hope the new board will realize that the time to worry about graduation is in pre school.  Some one needs to start looking at the kids who miss 18 days in a 6 week grading period and say " With attendance like that will this kid graduate?" 

The board  needs to stop building on additions if they have no intention of providing the man power or the funds to maintain them.

I also think the new board needs to look at a couple issues that came up in the forum and that is if we expect our kids to abide by a good conduct policy and a cell phone policy then the staff should do the same.

That is just my two cents worth.   

I was not disappointed in the results.  I stated on this forum a few weeks ago that I thought it was time to decrease the number of former administrators on the board, and it would appear the voters agreed.  While I agreed with many of Joyce Haller's positions, her inability to put her thoughts into words may have hurt her. 

I'm also not in agreement about the board being involved in pre-school.  You are advocating expanding the districts responsibilities even more, thus requiring more space and more of those "new additions that are not needed".  Most of the new additions, especially at the elementary level, continue to be required because of state and federal special education mandates, most of them unfunded.  For example, at Mulberry, the entire south side of the building will soon be devoted to a few special education students.  You can argue that this is a waste of space, but at this point the district has no choice.  I believe that pre-school is not a function of the district.  The schools start at kindergarten and run through 12 grades.  Pre-school would seem to me to be one of those sorely lacking "parental" responsibilities that we continue to force on our teachers. 

The cell phone arguement is another I don't understand.  We are forgetting that there are students and there are adults in the buildings, and that the children don't have the same rights and responsibilities as the adults.  The kids don't run the  school, they don't eat in the teacher's room, they can't drink alcohol legally, and they're not responsible for the safety and well-being of 150-250 other kids. This is yet another case of parental control run amok.   I can't see any reason why a student needs a cell phone in the school setting, but can think of many reasons why an adult would need to carry one.  If you want to have equal rights for students and teachers, I'd suggest starting up a private school and seeing what happens in that scenario.  Ridiculous.