Category Archives: Budget

EMID Board operates in secrecy

At many an EMID Board meeting I’ve heard the words “Steering Committee recommends” or “Steering Committee discussed the options.” This month I decided I wanted to see this “Steering Committee” in action. On 12/2 wrote an email to board chair Christina Gillette and my board member, John Brodrick, who I thought was on the Steering Committee. I told them I’d heard the Steering Committee would be discussing Dr. Robicheau’s contract extension and I was wondering if Steering Committee was a public meeting. I got no response until 12/10 when Ms. Gillette called to tell me that yes, Steering Committee was a public meeting, but sadly it had met on 12/5, so I’d missed the meeting.

To make a long story just a bit shorter, EMID has never issued any kind of public notice of Steering Committee meetings, even though four board members sit on Steering Committee and by Minnesota Statute meetings of elected officials are (generally) public meetings. I learned that EMID considers the Saint Paul Legal Ledger its site of official notice, but had never placed notices of Steering Committee or any other committee of the board there. In fact, a search of Legal Ledger on 12/12 showed that EMID seems to have stopped even posting notices of board meetings there after June 2011.

What happens at Steering Committee? Why is it important that the EMID Board conduct a public meeting behind closed doors? Let’s use the December meeting I missed as an example. The board at it’s meeting this month considered three “recommendations” by the Steering Committee: (1) extending Dr. Robicheau’s contract as interim superintendent, (2) eliminating parent involvement from the strategic planning “Design Team” and replacing that Design Team with a “Community Council” and “Administrative Team” to divide duties of planning, and (3) reducing the integration funds contribution of EMID member districts from $52 to $30 and cutting the EMID schools budgets by 10% in the 2012/13 school year.

Because the community was excluded from Steering Committee and because no notes or minutes ever emanate from the committee, we have no idea how these recommendations were made. Was any other option than an extension for Dr. Robicheau ever seriously considered? We cannot know. What were the concerns about parents on the Design Team? It is a mystery. Why is only the school budget being cut? We have no idea. The fact that the EMID Board allows the Steering Committee to do its thinking in secret is a serious problem for what is supposed to be a publicly accountable board.

Does it matter? Last night the EMID Board agreed to every single recommendation of the Steering Committee. I think it matters a great deal that the community is not allowed to see the venue where real discussion happens and real decisions are made. Below are some deeper questions about two of these December decisions. Continue reading →

EMID Board keeps Robicheau and considers 10% cut for schools

The EMID board met last night to consider Dr. Robicheau’s contract extension and the EMID budget situation. Following recommendations of the Steering Committee, the board approved extending Dr. Robicheu’s contract through June 2012. They hope to have a permanent superintendent search or some form of “administrative restructuring” underway before that date. They also considered a budget proposal from the Steering Committee that would reduce our school budgets by 10% while essentially not reducing any member services. This would be done to cope with a 57% reduction in the integration funds received from member districts that would not be replaced with any levy funding from those districts sending students to EMID.

Other business before the board included consideration of the “phase 2” strategic planning process (a “Community Council” is now planned to “drive the process” and to double as the community council required by state statute to write a new integration plan for the collaborative by mid-March), revision of the Joint Powers Agreement to allow non-elected “former” board members to continue serving on the EMID board, and acceptance of a “clean” audit report.

The board changed the date of its next meeting from 1/18 to 1/25, so please update your own calendar if you want to attend the next meeting.

Three parents testified to the board during open forum. Mike Boguszewski expressed concern that the revision to the Joint Powers Agreement would make the EMID board even less accessible and accountable to the community, he also thanked chair Gillette for her responsiveness and expressed hope that the “Community Council” could be an opportunity for the community to work together with the board on solutions. Eric Celeste expressed serious concerns about the secrecy of the board’s Steering Committee and the quality of the decisions it was making. Bill Droessler noted that some parents had already been meeting with Dan Schulman and suggested that the board might want to read the stories about the integration task force in the Star Tribune and MN Post. Not a single board member had read those stories or knew who Dan Schulman was.

Update

The EMID board also approved a “guiding change” document (PDF) that will be the foundation on which the phase 2 strategic planning process rests.