I will do my best to share my observations and thoughts about the school board meetings I attend in the next year on this blog. Starting tonight here are a few highlights from tonight's school board meeting (agenda).

• Springboard Partnership Agreement -- This is an exciting program. It is a coordinated district wide consulting partnership. Together with FUSD they developed a "plan that includes coaching and professional development to assist site administrators and teachers in raising student achievement and closing achievement gaps." I think staff development is so important and think this is a worthwhile investment. It is important that the right metrics in place to measure it's success before we make this an ongoing expense, but this first year collaboration is a great proactive step.
• Discuss Master Facility Plan Goal on Contiguous Boundaries -- The board decided to change the policy to allow non-contiguous boundaries. This means that in impacted areas when a new development comes in the district will have the option to assign just the houses in that development to a school that is different from the schools the surrounding neighborhood is going to. This is a good move that gives the district more flexibility especially given how tight space is in many of our schools.
• Sale of Site Funds -- This refers to the fund containing all the one-time funds from the sale of sites over the last 5-10 years. Among other things this fund has been used for the MVROP building, leased classrooms, and permanent classrooms.

• MVROP -- Great news! We have completed the new MVROP facility on budget, and the land we were selling to pay for it has been sold. In this real estate market we are very fortunate no problems happened with this deal. I am president of the district's financing corporation and signed this $18 million bridge loan that allowed us to build the new MVROP building. On top of this the district has applied for about $5 million in matching state funding. A great move to stretch our dollars.
• Leased classrooms -- The district routinely leases modular classrooms to handle temporary fluctuations in student populations at various schools. Paying for these ongoing costs out of a one-time fund is not a great long term solution, but is the best option at the moment.
• Permanent classrooms -- On the flip side the district is also using this money to replace the temporary classrooms with permanent construction.

• Mission San Jose Elementary project -- With this nearly $2 million project the site will get 2 new classrooms, an updated library, an updated computer lab, and a staff room. It's hard to spend this much of the sale of site funds on one school, but this school is particularly small and overloaded, which contributes to the high cost of this project.

The board has also added some of the Mission area developments to the 9/26 board agenda to discuss which attendance area they will be in.

The school board and city council have a joint meeting on Oct 1. The city and school staff's are working on a draft white paper to share at the joint meeting.

Tags: School Board, Schools, Student Housing, Student Achievement