Hazen Union School Board Annual Retreat

August 13, 2007

Hardwick Diner/OSSU Office

Attendance at 4 pm: Monty Shatney, Ed Karp, Tami Furry, David Ford, Elaine Laine, Patrick Flood

There was a review of the annual agenda and a discussion of the ends column and how various departments are working toward ends. There will be a format set up for the departments to report this to the Board.

The NECAP tests are scheduled for October for grades 7 and 8 on literacy and math and in May for juniors on science. The social studies test is still in the formative stage.

A discussion regarding test data results and when these results come in and can be reported to the Board ensued. It was decided to allow some flexibility on receipt of the data and the compilation to be reported to the Board. It’s not always known when the school will receive the results.

Add health to June’s “other programs”.

Linkages meetings will be scheduled for September (faculty and staff), October (students), November or December (community leaders) and January, 2008 (alumni).

The Board had a quorum upon the arrival of Johanna Laggis.

David presented the Board with a suggestion on “carousel meetings”. This is where all the Boards in the district meet 3 times a year on a Tuesday for a joint meeting, then break out into their individual board meetings. This would involve the Hazen board changing their meetings from Mondays to Tuesdays. There was a conflict with a Board member’s previously scheduled activity on every Tuesday.

Another addition to the annual agenda is Board education: Ideas - VSBA on how they can help boards, Mark Andrews and David Ford doing a presentation on the OSSU vision, some sort of presentation of “school board cutting edge ideas”.

There was a discussion on adding additional department’s presentations to the agenda and possibly moving around some of the ones that are already scheduled.

Further discussion of the annual agenda was tabled to move onto other business.

The agenda was approved unanimously with the executive session moved to the end of the meeting.

The consent agenda of accounts payable of $2,531,676,17 and payroll of $318,052.41, the minutes of June 25, 2007, and the hiring of Mary Morrison was moved for approval by Monty, seconded by Tami. David explained that the AP line item was larger than it has ever been because the $1.8 million line of credit was paid back to the Union Bank. Motion for approval passed unanimously.

Patrick Flood arrived.

David passed out policy updates to be integrated into the Board’s policy books. Johanna noted that the second page of the weapons policy was missing. David will get that the Board members at the next meeting.

A discussion of goals and how to chart the progression toward them was the next order of business. It was decided to wait until the administration presented the Action Plan to see if that helped in determining how to set the goals.

The annual board agenda will be changed according to ideas presented earlier in the meeting and along with the Action Plan, be presented at the next Board meeting.

David asked the Board what they felt they had accomplished in the past year. Things mentioned were the changing of how business is done at the Board level, progress on instituting policy governance, the Board’s mindset has changed, people are more curious as to what we do, and the school building keeps improving.

At 7:25, the Board moved the meeting from the Hardwick Diner to the OSSU office for an executive session.

David handed out working agreements from 02/14/05 for Board review.

Monty made a motion for the Board to move into executive session at 7:35 for an update on negotiations, seconded by Patrick and unanimously approved.

Monty made a motion for the Board to move out of executive session at 8:10, seconded by Tami. No action taken.

Submitted by Tami Furry, Board Clerk