Observations about the Clinton County School Board Meeting of April 8, 1991 for consideration by any interested citizens. By Duane Bristow, Parent, taxpayer, citizen, and product of the school system. April 9, 1991 I attended the regular monthly meeting of the Clinton County School Board held on April 8, 1991 in the cafeteria of the Clinton County Elementary School. These are a few of my observations of some items of business that were discussed and my comments on those. These comments, it is hoped, will be of help to people involved in the school system and to parents, taxpayers and others to understand how school business is conducted. This meeting started with more discussion of the site for construction of the new elementary school. Officials from the company doing the blasting at the rock quarry said that they had performed a blasting at the rock quarry that day and had been unable to detect the blast with an instrument set up for that purpose at the site of the new school building. That plus the fact that they are following all state and federal laws and regulations at the blast site and the fact that there had been no complaints of damage by people and businesses living closer to the rock quarry than the school site in the last 30 years would seem to indicate that proximity to the rock quarry would not be a factor in school site selection. Sid Scott from the local radio station said that they had had no problems with interference from properly constructed and installed equipment during the 30 years the radio station had been in Albany and pointed out numerous examples of other schools and colleges that either were very near radio stations or had radio stations on campus with no problem. Eddie Paul Coop, who was present at the meeting, said he was sure there would be problems for a one mile circle around the radio station in spite of these examples. Again Chairman Guffey asked the architects about increasing the seating capacity of the gym in the new school to 600 people and was told that this would cost the school system about $50,000 from their general fund. The architects stated that the water supply problem could probably be solved for quite a bit less money than the estimate of $100,000 given last month. It was also pointed out that the school system has to give a bid and sell bonds before July of 1992 in order to get the money from the state to build a new school building and it might prove impossible to meet that deadline if the board decided to scrap the existing planning work and start over with a new school site. A question about access to the second story of the new building by handicapped students and an answer concerning use of an elevator in the building led Eddie Paul Coop to ask the architect how handicapped children would get out of the building if a fire occurred in such a way that it made the elevator inoperable. The architect smiled and said that he guessed that like any other multistory building in which the elevator didn't work someone would have to carry them out. At this Eddie Paul became very irate and accused the architect of being insensitive to the needs of handicapped children. He then said that he had a granddaughter who was handicapped and insisted that the architect tell him who would carry his granddaughter out of the building if this situation occurred. He implied that the plans for the building were incomplete if they did not specify who was to carry out handicapped children in the event of an emergency. Because of recommendations by people I had consulted about computer use by schools and due to the emphasis in the new school reform law on networking computer systems by means of fiber optic cable, I had asked the superintendent about two months ago if the new school building plans included wiring with fiber optic cable. I was told that he thought it did but he said he would double check this with the architects. I asked the architects about this at this meeting and was told that no it would not be wired with fiber optic cable because no one had mentioned this. Larry Craig commented that that would be very expensive. I don't know if it would be more expensive than increasing the seating capacity of the gym. Rudy Thomas reported that the math teachers in each school had been asked to recommend math textbooks for adoption by the board for use in the school system for the next six years. He said that of the three or four textbooks available the teachers at Irwin 7th grade had recommended adopting a text which was considered to be harder than those recommended at the lower grades and that even though he had pointed out to the Irwin teachers that this might cause the children a problem when they got to 7th grade they had refused to change their recommendation. With that the board, without discussion, unanimously adopted the text books as recommended by the teachers. The first interesting point is that there is no overall school plan for progress in math from grade to grade and no discussion or cooperation between teachers in different grades. The second interesting point is that Rudy felt it necessary to encourage the Irwin teachers to recommend the easier text but did not recommend that the teachers at the lower grades set higher standards. The third interesting point is that during a three hour school board meeting it took about three minutes to adopt math textbooks for a six year period and a few minutes later the school board spent 30 minutes discussing whether a 40 foot strip of the little league ball field should have the grass removed so that it would be suitable to play girl's softball on that field. During the discussion of the ball field, David Warinner, principal of the high school, pointed out that one of the light poles lighting the ball field had been rotten and ready to fall for quite a while and that another similiar pole had fallen in the last couple of years. He said that if someone happened to be under the pole when it fell, it could cause a problem for the school board. He said that he had checked last year and found that a new pole would cost $300.00. He also said that the baseball field was in poor shape and needed a lot of work. The school board took no action on this. There are several interesting points here. One is that the principal of the high school does not have authority, or at least feels that he does not, to correct this situation on his own. Another is that there is no asset maintenance program in the school system and no one in charge of maintenance so the general policy is wait until something breaks and then decide what to do. Another is the fact that the school board took no action on this after he brought it to their attention. I would assume that that means their policy is to wait until the pole falls and see if someone is, indeed, under it. It also occurred to me that if someone is under the pole it might not only be a problem for the school board but, possibly, also for the person under the pole. Other business included an annoucement that a school nurse has been hired and a motion to hire the accounting firm of Gregory Pendleton to audit the school finances for a fee of $4,900. This is a regular annual audit. The board also voted to form a committee of the Superintendent, the Chairman, and the Vice Chairman of the board to screen suggestions from the teachers suggestion boxes in each school and bring those they thought worthy before the full board. The Superintendent announced that this year the school system had two students accepted for the state Governor's Scholars' Program. This is an encouraging accomplishment.