Too Many Irons in the Fire?

A fundamental philosophy of life is that it's far better to do a few things really well than to perform many things at a mediocre level.

Yet, here we are again with two pretty massive undertakings on the school board agenda tomorrow night. And...as we well know...whatever the administration wants...the school board votes in favor of. There is no independent thought or assessment. Certainly no "checking in" with the community. Sure...a few of them will check with their cronies that are part of the grand flock. But this board does not really serve the people. It hasn't for years.

And so here we go:

1. Chasing after the almighty dollars that come with the Race to the Top, and
2. Let's start a Charter School.

Where is the "Gee...we started 4K this year, we traded in security guards for Youth Advocates at the high school, and we are both opening a new high school and opening a whole new concept: "upper middle school" this fall...maybe we have too much going on.

Nope. You see...the more the =administration pads its resumes, the better positioned they will be to parlay what "they did" here in Sun Prairie to even bigger salaries and titles elsewhere.

Oh...and we note with a Spockian eyebrow raise that the official agenda item seeks a school board member to join the administrations "Charter School Team".

Culver writes in his "Situation Report":

We have begun to assemble a representative team to study possible implementation of a charter school. We anticipate this team meeting quite frequently in late afternoon/early evening and possibly on occasion for up to half a day.

There will be a lot of reading, attendance at conferences if opportunities present, and likely site visits to other charter schools that will take a whole day.

We will first be preparing a charter school planning grant application within the next few months to seek funds for the school development during the 2010–2011 school year.

When fully assembled, this team will work over the next 12 to 18 months putting together periodic reports, recommendations, and grant applications in this area for consideration by the School Board.

Ultimately, the School Board may accept or deny the proposed charter for the school that will be developed.

Forgive us a moment, but we just a rhetorical question here:

Who the hell authorized anyone to even THINK about a charter school?

Hello! Certainly the school board never discussed it. Can you say, "Open Meetings" laws?
And don't we have this minor nuisance thing called a BUDGET on which we should be spending our efforts?

A lot of reading...
A lot of conferences...
...site visits
12 to 18 months...

Does anybody on the school board even read this stuff? No wonder it took so long to get the budget documents put together. The Admin is simply chasing its own dreams...to hell with running the business at hand.

Dear school board... you MIGHT want to think about (A) voting NOT to add a school board member to this boodoggle, and (B) directing administration to put that little pie back in the sky.

Would a charter school be nice...some day...sure...maybe. But these things aren't free...to either develop or implement. Why don't we get a handle on the budget and start doing what we do BETTER before chasing any more dreams.