It has been in the making for about five months now
but it became official last night... a new board majority has been born!
The new board majority consists of Doug Gilman,
Mark Mirabile, Lisa Houk and Beth Tegtmeier.
Nearly every major vote at the May meeting went
down 4 to 3.
It was truly politics at its finest.
Superintendent Mark Fredisdorf requested
that board members who wanted officer positions submit a memo to him no later
than Thursday, May 15. Up until the morning of May 21st, only two memos had been submitted
for board officer positions - Kristin Violante and Gina
Scaletta-Nelson.
Clearly this put Fredisdork into panic
mode! So after phone calls, emails, or the ususal private meetings, a new
alliance was solidified and by late morning, at the 11th hour, Doug
Gilman and Mark Mirabile submitted memos for board officer roles.
Board officer selection is always the first thing on the
agenda. BUT WAIT!!!
Beth Tegtmeier (who has either arrived late,
left early or not even shown up at all for the last several montly meetings) would not be able to make it to the meeting in time for board officer elections. Apparently,
according to Gilman, "Tegtmeier wanted to be present for board
officer elections." Interesting. No one else got that memo. She didn't care about being there for the RtI or curriculum council updates, ELA or math audits, or any other vote or topic of substance. She wanted to be there to
cast her usual token vote to support Fredisdorf in the officer elections. Seriously Beth? You
are a disgrace to every single person that voted for you to represent their interests on the board of education. And you care about kids? Get real! The only person you care about is Fredisdorf.
So Gilman, in his ultimate power as
president, decided that the board would not select new officers until she
arrived. Interesting that those type of agreements used to be up to the full board. Not anymore... Tegtmeier waltzed in at 9:37 p.m., over three and a half hours late. At this point, why bother showing up?
Nominations for Board President went to Kim
Barker (who works harder than anyone on the board and has literally put her
heart and soul into the district supporting students, parents and staff alike
- always looking out for everyone's best interest including taxpayers) and
Doug Gilman.
Gilman was re-elected board president for a second term in a four to three vote by the new majority.
Gilman was re-elected board president for a second term in a four to three vote by the new majority.
Nominations for Board Vice President went to Gina
Scaletta-Nelson and Mark Mirabile. Scaletta-Nelson was ousted by Gilman's back door dealing and politically laced delay tactics.
The role of vice president is really insignificant. The VP does absolutely nothing unless the board president is absent from a meeting and then the VP will step in and run the meeting. In the last year three years it has happened once, however, Gilman did not want to chance Scaletta-Nelson taking the reigns should he have to miss meetings in the future. The role of VP is really not a big deal... it's just the way the entire election process was handled and the principle of the matter. It's something Crook County politicians do, not necessarily suburban school boards.
The role of vice president is really insignificant. The VP does absolutely nothing unless the board president is absent from a meeting and then the VP will step in and run the meeting. In the last year three years it has happened once, however, Gilman did not want to chance Scaletta-Nelson taking the reigns should he have to miss meetings in the future. The role of VP is really not a big deal... it's just the way the entire election process was handled and the principle of the matter. It's something Crook County politicians do, not necessarily suburban school boards.
While we have to say that Gilman does a fair job of running the
meetings and is usually calm and polite, (it was nice to hear him apologize to
his fellow board members for last month's meeting);
his team change was pretty much a slap in the face to his running mates
and those that supported him and his promises during his election campaign.
The new board majority selected the STARR
Assessment to replace the ITBS because as everyone knows, Fredisdorf
is afraid to compare apples to apples. In other words, he does not want to
compare D107 to the LT feeder schools. LT had hoped that D107 would join the
entire feeder system by taking NWEA's MAP test, but the new majority gave a
collective middle finger to the high school and those that want a side by side
comparison to their neighboring districts by choosing something completely
different.
If you recall, Gilman often spoke about
wanting an assessment that would allow D107 to compare to the feeders during his election campaigns. Promise
broken.
We could go on and on, but we will link the meeting
when it's posted so you could see for yourself the new majority in action. Oh
and when you do, pay close attention to Fredisdorf when he talks. It is
more than obvious he talks in circles often confusing himself. You would think that he'd learned by now to keep his mouth shut, but he just likes to impress himself with his nonsense.
Sorry to those that dreamed of and banked on a new dawn for D107 and
supported making the district better. It's just not going to happen anytime
soon...at least not for another year or so according to Lisa Houk on the
May 1st meeting tape ;)
2 comments:
Just because other school districts are using the NWEA MAP test, doesn't mean we have to do it as well. Have you ever researched about this assessment?
First of all, the MAPS assessment does not correlate to any school district's curriculum. It is definitely not aligned to our school district's curriculum which makes it a poor fit for our district.
Also, MAP assessment takes a huge chunk of time. There is a reading assessment and a math assessment that students take 3 times a year. Each assessment takes about 1-1.5. That is about 6-9 hours of student testing! And don't forget our children need to take the state standardized tests that is several hours of testing to add on to the MAP testing. Some school districts reported taking 9 weeks-3 months of the year to administer and analyze/interpret for the hundreds of students that take the test. That is a lot of instructional time to lose!
You blog about how the school district is wasting money, but do you know how much a subscription to NWEA costs? You betcha a lot of CA-CHING! You have to pay an initial subscription to the test, teacher and administrative training, and not to mention technology costs to upgrade computers, software, and network capacity just to administer the test. Many school districts spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement and use MAP.
You are correct that the MAP test does not align to the curriculum, because Pleasantdale currently does not have a language arts curriculum which is the basis for two of the three MAP tests - reading and language. But, since you seem to know all about our school district's curriculum, maybe you could tell us about it.
The MAP test is an adaptive test so it may take a few minutes longer than other tests to produce accurate results. What is more important - measuring a student's test taking speed or their growth? In addition, a student’s score is generated immediately, and full performance data – with detailed information about each child’s understanding about specific concepts – is available within 24 hours unlike the currently used ITBS and ISAT.
As with any testing series a district purchases, there will be costs involved. Not too long ago our district purchased the new ITBS Form E assessment. It was a purchase based on lies and we no longer use it because of misguided practices that were used to produce the wanted results. When you have a principal telling staff members to have students write directly in the test booklets and their answers will be transferred to an answer key by the office staff, surely some eyebrows will be raised...because that is unethical! Some even call it cheating.
Watch the board meeting video tapes or read the board packets to learn about the costs of the newly purchased STARR assessment. Since the majority of school districts currently use MAP, many of our staff members are already familiar with it and how to read the scores, etc. Can you say that about the newly purchased STARR assessment?
There is only one reason our district is not using the MAP assessment - because our superintendent is terrified of his students being compared to the students in districts 101, 102 and 106.
Finally, you can place blame on the upcoming state mandated PARCC assessment for the need to upgrade computers, software, network capacity, etc. Thankfully, we are in decent shape technologically so only minor enhancements need to be made.
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