The North East School District has made it a practice to have an impromptu award ceremony near the beginning of every other board meeting. These award ceremonies are due to the superintendent’s desire to recognize students for all sorts of different reasons. This month’s awards are for “conflict resolution and self-control.” All of the students receiving an award and their parents squeeze into the elementary school board room which is far too small for any large number of individuals and after the board meeting begins, they all move across the hall along with the school board members to the cafeteria where the ceremony proceeds. Each student is introduced by a teacher or the principal giving an explanation of why this particular student is receiving the award. When there are many awards and students, this ceremony can go on for 15 or 20 minutes, after which the board members return to the meeting room and the regular board meeting continues.
Here’s a suggestion to make board meetings more productive
If these awards are important enough to deserve student recognition, they would be much better presented during an assembly in the school auditorium where there is plenty of room available for the students along with their parents and family, relatives, friends and neighbors and especially their peers. This could be done during the day or evening or whenever it is most convenient for everyone involved.
School board members have nothing to do with these awards. They don’t choose the students or vote on their selection or come up with the awards to be given. During these ceremonies they are nothing more than passive participants. Members of the public coming to a board meeting are there to hear about and comment on school business, not to witness award ceremonies for the award topic of the month.
Time in board meetings is limited
When any member of the public gets up to speak at a board meeting, Board Secretary Jeff Fox, makes it very clear he is setting a timer for three minutes. If the speaker exceeds three minutes, the timer begins to beep loudly and Fox allows it to go on much longer than necessary to be sure everyone in the small room heard it and is aware the speaker has exceeded their allotted time, however, there would be far more time available if the award ceremonies were moved to a school assembly and the board reclaimed those 15 or 20 minutes for school board business. You might think a member of the public should have a bit more time to discuss a matter important to them after seeing how much time is given to these student awards.
When moving through items on the agenda, in order to save what is apparently very limited time available, items are presented with “It is recommended that the Board approve …” a sentence then finished with “items 1 thru 5” or whatever number of items there are in a particular group. Sometimes they are broken out, but often they are not. Items where hundreds of thousands of dollars are to be spent are grouped in with things like approving the Food Service Report. If the meeting had an extra 15 minutes, they might be able to take a few of those minutes to examine some items in more detail and board members might be able to ask a few questions.
Better awards appropriate for a board meeting
If we’re going to pass out awards, let’s come up with something better.
How about an award for the board member or school employee who comes up with a way to save the school district money? Instead of just approving items on the agenda, board members could go over items with a fine tooth comb looking for waste and unnecessary expenditures and suggest better solutions. Maybe they could have some questions for the superintendent and board secretary/business manager about money being spent. If there is an award, maybe the board and school employees will start thinking about how they can save money. School district taxpayers would welcome those ideas and maybe an award will motivate some out of the box thinking.
Taxpayers could qualify for awards, too
Maybe members of the public should qualify for those awards. I bet there are a lot of ideas floating around already, we just need to start getting them out there.
So, what do you think?
Should the school district put those student award ceremonies into school assemblies and get the school board back to school business? Should we have awards for saving the school district money? Do you have any ideas for saving the district money and having a no tax increase budget? Let’s hear it.
NE School Board meeting 12-19-24 Agenda
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Anonymous says
I think this article is right on.
Giving awards is always in the midst of the peers.
Imagine Olympic winners getting their awards outside of the arena, only in front of committee members and their parents. This would seem ill fitting and is what happens at the board meetings.
The time allotted for the meeting should be dedicated to the business at hand. I also feel the subjects should be discussed more in depth & detail.
These awards- however you feel about them, need to be given out when their peers are around. I believe it has been mentioned that this is supposed to help everyone want to achieve these “goals”.
If so, the peers need be present.
America First says
I wonder if any of those keyboard whiners ever attended a board meeting?? It’s all well and good to give out awards and citations but it should be in front of their peers. School boards are also or should be a set of checks and balances. School business should be the prioty at these .meetings.
Eric says
yet the only 2 comments on here hide behind aliases. No one is whining except you, the author and anyone else crying about the district celebrating the kids at board meetings.
Paul Crowe says
Eric, if you had bothered to read the post above, you would see neither I, nor anyone else has a problem with the kids getting awards. The problem is it’s the wrong place to do it. Using the board meetings for this type of award ceremony leaves the school district with little time for discussion on matters such as major financial expenditures.
If you had attended this most recent board meeting, you would have seen the awards consumed 45 minutes at the beginning of the meeting. There was an interesting data presentation afterwards dealing with student performance in the schools and then about 5 minutes total near the end of the meeting for discussion and voting on capital projects, personnel employment, student travel, a tax resolution connected to Act 1, school calendar adjustments and various other issues. I have a problem with what appears to be a lopsided apportionment of time and the lack of discussion on issues related to the actual operation of the school.
Also, I’m not on Facebook, but I hear you were part of a lively discussion filled with attacks aimed at me. Instead of highly emotional outbursts on social media, why not come over here and take part in an adult conversation, remaining civil and stating your case clearly? If you have something to say, say it, explain it and defend it. Happy to have it.
Eric says
It’s your opinion that it is the wrong place. As far as posting here, I did that once and you chose to delete the entire civil conversation.