‘Top 10’ list of facilities concerns to be drawn up by RC school board
Rogers City Area Schools Board of Education president Scott McLennan wants to take a list of 60 ideas, generated at a workshop meeting in November, and have each board member come up with their own ?Top 10? list. The 60 ideas were a list of facility needs for the district and included everything from a new weight room, what to do with the Grambau Center, to having the Huron football games played at the high school campus.
MCLENNAN WOULD like to have a committee prioritize the lists from board members and bring the ideas back to the entire board for further discussion and direction.
?I think it?s the next step to narrowing the field, culling out some things that we just can?t do or can?t tackle,? said McLennan. ?It also has to be in the best interest of the school district.?
He believes the board would be remiss if it didn?t explore ways to save money and improve educational opportunities.
?What I would like to do is come up with a refinement of those raw ideas and then bring that back to the board and then start in earnest and focus on what we need to do and start setting up some battle plans,? said McLennan.
BOARD MEMBER Norm Karbon would prefer the entire board work on the lists and not a committee, but was pleased about the way the workshop meeting went.
?We shook out many things but didn?t have time to flesh them out or to talk about them,? said Karbon.
Member Jo Bush-Glenn was concerned about the timeline in coming up with the lists. ?What we?re being asked to do is to come up with our own personal perception of the needs of the district rather than doing any research or data gathering,? said Glenn.
?I think we can all come up with our own personal opinion of what the school needs are. It might be interesting to see what has worked for other school districts,? she said.McLennan said he wants the board to receive input from the community and approach future steps cautiously.
?TO TAKE it to the next logical step would be at some point we are going to want to involve a planner to assist us. If we can?t agree as a board what our priorities are, a planner isn?t going to help us. We?re taking this…slowly, we want it to be very open.? The district is looking at the potential for shared grant money.
?We?re not going to pass up opportunities like that,? said McLennan.
Board members will work with the city and Mary Ann Heidema
IN OTHER NEWS:
? McLennan will set up an ad hoc committee to come up with evaluation forms and establish a format which will be used by board members for a self-appraisal.
? The board received a letter from the Rogers City Educators Association bargaining team, which superintendent Schultz said officially opens contract talks. ?This letter is not unexpected,? said Schultz. The teachers? contract expires August 2003.
by Peter Jakey, Managing Editor
