School Community

Now that hes retired, the board is poised to bring those committees back. 

The five-member school board will vote at a meeting Thursday whether to revive 10 committees, which is one committee fewer than it had in 2008. 

Each panel would be led by one board member and have a second member serving on it. With two members on each committee, the board will not have a quorum and therefore will not be able to take any official votes. 

The committees would meet once every three months, and would call additional meetings as needed, said school board President Levon Manzie, who has come up with the list of committee assignments. Each board member would chair two committees. 

Meetings would be open to the public, board members said. Interim Superintendent Martha Peek and a board attorney would attend all committee meetings, as would the relevant school system staff. 

During a work session Thursday, board members said that without the committees theyve felt out of the loop on a lot of the measures theyve been asked to vote on. They said they often have had to table items with which they werent familiar during the boards regular, once-monthly meetings, until they could get more information. 

“Our current format does not lend itself to us receiving information,” Manzie said. “We must have access to the staff.” 

Nichols, who retired in December, was vocal in his goal to put an end to years of board micromanagement, which landed the entire school system on probation about 10 years ago. Besides eliminating the committees, he cut the number of regularly scheduled board meetings down from two a month to one. And he prohibited board members from asking questions of his staff directly during public meetings. 

Board members said reviving the committees is not a form of micromanagement; rather, the committees are tools to help them do their jobs. 

School boards set the policies of a school system, but superintendents are responsible for daily operations. 

“Were not attempting to micromanage,” Manzie said. “Were trying to have a format where we can ask questions.” 

Board member Ken Megginson, who was one of only two current board members who served prior to 2008, warned that the committee meetings are time-consuming. 

“If you think you can come for 15 minutes and leave,” Megginson said, “thats not going to happen.” 

But, he added, the committees are very informative. 

The other committees would be: intragovernment; policy/legal; safety and security; school and community relations; school facilities and land; student services; and technology. 

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FLINT, Michigan The Flint School Board tonight will take a second crack at approving a state-mandated plan on how they will trim a $3.7 million deficit.

The board tabled the plan Wednesday with board members requesting more information on the district’s financial picture before they approve anything.

The plan is intended to outline how much in cuts the district will need to make in order to come out of the red by June 2013.

Eliminating Northern High School and closing buildings were among a set of preliminary suggestions laid out by the administration this week.

The board has until 5 p.m. Monday to get a deficit elimination plan approved and sent to the state.

School officials have said tonight’s plan will not name specific cuts, but instead strives to outline the scope of cuts the district will need to make.

The meeting starts at 6 p.m. at the Sarvis Conference Center, 1231 E. Kearsley St. in Flint.

Portland school board co-chairwoman Pam Knowles reacts with joy when she sees the initial tally of votes on a proposed local option property tax increase to save teaching jobs. She stood next to fellow board members Bobbie Regan (in white) and Ruth Adkins (in red) at the election night event.Members of the Portland school board avoided a rare public debate Monday over who should lead the seven-member panel by deferring discussion about changing leaders until September.

By then, the board that oversees Oregon’s largest school district plans to have sorted out whether and how to change the way the board operates.

Unlike in city and county government, where voters make the call about who serves as mayor and as chairman of the county commission, school boards decide for themselves which of their members will hold the gavel.

Every July, the Portland school board votes which member will serve as chair of the board and who will be vice chair. Typically those votes are unanimous.

But at Monday’s meeting, after current board chairwoman Pam Knowles was nominated for another six-month term as chair, board member Martin Gonzalez said he planned to nominate someone else for that role.

Gonzalez said he was doing so not because he opposed Knowles as leader but because he felt the upcoming debate over how the board will operate, including how the role of the board chair will be defined, should take place before a new leader is selected or Knowles is voted in for more time presiding over the board.

Other board members readily agreed, and the panel unanimously extended Knowles to continue as chairwoman until September and board member Trudy Sargent to continue as vice chairwoman during that time. Although they are formally designated as chair and vice chair, the two call themselves co-chairs, a practice Portland school board members adopted many years ago.

Knowles is a lawyer and businesswoman who, during her time on the board, has worked as chief operating officer of the Portland Business Alliance, as managing director of the Oregon Zoo Foundation and, beginning last week, as executive director for industry relations for  Oregon State University’s business school. That job requires her to work from both Portland and Corvallis.

The board currently does much of its work through committees that specialize in finance, student achievement and school boundaries, which gives significant power to the board members who head those committees. Each three-member committee digs into details in its realm and in essence make decisions for the full board.

Knowles, after learning more about how other boards operate, is urging her board to rethink the committee work, leave more details to school district staff and concentrate on doing more decision-making as a full board.

The board, including two newly elected members who cast their first votes Monday, plans to discuss and decide that issue in August, then make a longer-term decision about which members should preside over the board in September, members said Monday.