If you have six hours and a thirst for excitement, you can watch last night’s school board meeting with a tall drink:
You will see the board
- learn the surplus for this year looks to be $3 million dollars.
- vote to put $250,000 into a fund balance reserve, which I believe is completely unnecessary and a moral hazard.
- struggle with stopping the expense of $250,000 on an inoperable sprinkler job in Danville in order to force the voters’ hand to fund the remaining $405,000 in a subsequent year
- vote to spend $94,000 on a new playground for Sandown North payable out of this year’s surplus.
The Star assessment results were also released, though not broken down by school and with an unhelpful “acceptable” band of percentile achievement of 40-84%. It is good to have this data but there could be so much more and should be. From what we are given, academics do seem to be improving, but the data is not detailed enough for me to be completely convinced of this yet.
Those at Deliberative will remember that Arthur Green and I proposed cutting a little less than $3 million from the budget. Concerned parents and teachers rallied because the district was going to lose music and bus service and athletics. Well, here we are with an extra $3 million and not a single cut. Dr. Metzler insists he hasn’t cut staffing either.
Perhaps those who believed the self-serving district hype in March will now be more open to looking at needed staffing reductions that even the teachers’ union acknowledged last night must be made.
timberlaneandsandown 
They are flushed with money. Time to get out of the district.