After the two articles included on the JT website today, I expected to see Brent Killackey at the RUSD board meeting tonight if only to provide some additional information to his original story, Unified board targets member. Imagine my surprise to find a completely empty media table in the Central Office conference room. Come on JT, isn’t it your responsibility to report?
To summarize tonight’s meeting, Julie McKenna made a motion to completely REMOVE this item from the agenda. This motion passed 5-3. The board members that passed Julie’s motion were: A. Clobes, B. Dey, R. Bangs, J. McKenna and D. Nielsen. The board members who voted against the motion and (keeping the agenda as written) were: S. Kutz, R. Carlsen and T. Baumgardt.
Also worthy of mentioning are the plethora of referrals that came at the end of the meeting. In order for an issue to be addressed at future meetings, a referral must be made first; some of the referrals I found very interesting:
Don Nielsen made a referral to get the Attorney General’s legal opinion on the ethical and legal use of electronic communication (email, blogs, etc.)
Brian Dey made a referral for an update on the “Betsy Kippers” clause. You might remember this as a source of contention for many when the REA contracts were ratified earlier this spring. The clause allows the REA president to perform union activities (for up to 179 days) on taxpayer dollars (where the REA will subsidize a substitute teacher at a much lower rate of pay)
A. Clobes made a referral for administration to study the legal ramifications of Caledonia forming their own school district. This referral is similar to the one Brian Dey made at the last meeting when he asked the CEO to prepare a financial impact statement regarding the same issue.
And finally, the board voted to adopt the changes in the Governance Policy. Guess what item was pulled out? Drum roll, please……. GP-11! GP-11 is the Process for Addressing Board Member Violations. It would seem that many want this issue reevaluated; I think that is a very good idea. Don’t you??
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3 comments:
Excellent job covering the meeting. This came out of nowhere and the few of who reacted seemed to get a positive outcome for now.
Of course, this is yet another black eye on the RUSD school board, who while trying to spin a positive light can't seem to get out of there own way to generate negative PR.
Kudos.
I only wonder if she (Kutz) will try this again at a later date.
There were very strong statements made last night, one of which by Armin Clobes. He made sure that Sue understood that it (the item on the agenda) should be "removed indefinitely".
My guess if she tries any disciplinary action against any school board member for speaking
his/her mind, it will be political suicide.
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