PUSD board meeting disintegrates over goal setting

An otherwise productive Poway Unified School District special school board meeting Thursday night rapidly disintegrated when the five members began discussing strategic goals.

Board members spent over an hour arguing about the process of deciding on goals for the upcoming year before concluding the meeting without making any progress.

The special meeting was originally scheduled to discuss the district staff’s report on the Local Control and Accountability Plan for 2014-15 and proposed plans for 2015-16. An agenda item to discuss setting the board’s strategic goals and establish budget priorities for 2015-16 was added late in the day Wednesday.

Board President Kimberley Beatty had asked her fellow board members to come up with their top five priorities for the district and wanted to share them out loud and see if any of their goals matched up.

Beatty’s top priority was reducing class sizes, she said.

Several of the board shared similar goals, including hiring more library technicians and increasing library funding, hire full-time special education teachers, restoring staff pay to pre-recession levels and increasing funding to the visual arts, music and physical education.

However, board member Andy Patapow called the process “an exercise in futility,” saying that he didn’t have enough information to make informed decisions about what the district really needed.

Patapow said he didn’t come up with his five priorities because he wanted to hear comments from staff, the three district employee groups and the community.

“Right now, I have no information from staff, and in my opinion, that’s what we hired this excellent staff for,” Patapow said. “My number one priority is what is best for the students.”

Patapow said that in the past, he has always had input from the people these decisions affects, and would like to hear from staff and others affected before making a decision. “Right now, we’re in a vacuum. As far as I’m concerned, we’re here to serve staff and meet their needs, so they can meet the needs of the students.”

Board member Michelle O’Connor-Ratcliff shared similar sentiments, saying she wanted the board’s priorities to be informed by input from the community and staff.

Board member T.J. Zane said he shared Patapow and O’Connor-Ratcliff’s reluctance to discuss priorities without extra input.

The board’s arguing over the process of choosing goals focused around the idea of hiring more library technicians for school libraries, which was a goal several of the board members shared.

Beatty suggested at one point that library funding could be put back to its pre-recession funding and staffing levels, as it was in 2008.

Board member Charles Sellers said that he had no idea if the district needed to hire new library technicians and maybe all that was needed was more hours. “We need to go into the libraries and let the librarians explain themselves what their role is now, not have (Learning Support Services) decide what it is librarians do,” said Sellers. After Assistant Superintendent Mel Robertson said she hadn’t been trying to declare what the role of librarians was in the district, Sellers clarified that he hadn’t been speaking directly to her but about LSS “as an omnipotent being,” a comment that drew some ire from staff in the audience.

After Patapow said that he still did not have any input from the people the issues affected and wanted to hear from the source, Sellers said, “I sleep with (a school librarian) every night, so I know what they want.”

Patapow replied that he wanted input from all librarians, not just one, and repeated that this was an exercise in futility.

Zane called for giving the board’s top priorities to the staff to consolidate, saying that they had been discussing the process for 45 minutes and had yet to come to a consensus on a single point.

Beatty disagreed, and overruled Zane, saying she was the chair and called for the board to move on to discussing the next priority item.

O’Connor-Ratcliff said that Beatty was “missing the point” by trying to continue the discussion about the process of choosing the board’s goals, saying that the board had opinions but were uninformed by facts.

“I have six months on the board and two children in kindergarten and second grade,” O’Connor-Ratcliff said. “No wonder my list is focused on elementary school.” She said that it was difficult to put together a list of priorities without recommendations, and felt that all of her priorities were off the top of her head.

The meeting ended a little after 10 p.m., with the board agreeing to have the staff consolidate the board members’s top priorities.

The regular monthly school board meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Monday, where the board’s strategic goals and budget priorities will come back as a first reading.