Live Blog: May, 2010 Board Meeting

You know, one of these days, I'm going to hack in something Javascriptish to do live updates and automatic refreshes. Someday.

This is going to be a long meeting. Warning you now.

It's 5:57 and a quick recap of what happened:

Eric Cowan was sworn in replacing Jerome Garza.

Here is the slate of new officers:

• President - Adam Medrano
• First V.P. - Lew Blackburn
• Second V.P. - Carla Ranger
• Secretary - Bruce Parrott

Each of the four was nominated and ran unopposed. Maybe we're actually achieving Board unity? They're all going to get along! One big happy family! Nah. The more things change the more they stay the same! Congratulations to all the newly elected Board officers.

We have the resolutions out of the way and we're on to speakers on agenda items. There are 25 speakers. 24 of them are going to speak with respect to a couple of agenda items.

The items:

"Repurposing over-age campuses including Barbara M. Manns High School and Otto M. Fridia Jr. Alternative High School"

"Full-Day PreK"

This may turn into a contentious issue.

Right now, there is a young pregnant student speaking against closing the programs down next year.

These are alternative campuses which provide special programs for different students with different needs. In this time of budget cutting, these programs are ripe for the chopping block along with several special education programs.

It's 7:00 and Dale Kaiser is speaking on behalf of his NEA Dallas teacher's organization. Interesting, but Alliance/AFT doesn't seem to have a speaker here.

Kaiser is proposing cutting $16 million in consulting contracts to pay for retaining the teachers who would be cut when programs are eliminated.

Joyce Foreman is wrapping up the speakers: "these are our children and we have to protect them at all costs."

Foreman is imploring the Board to make sure the public has input into the budget.

There are a series of budget meetings coming up; some of them, maybe, after the budget has been passed?

It's 7:06 and we're on to the agenda items. First, the minutes. Next the consent agenda. And right on into the items pulled for separate vote.

Not on the slate for discussion, after all, is closing Manns, Fridia and eliminating the Full-Day PreK program.

How would you balance the budget? Eliminating staff? Teachers? Raising taxes?

The hardest thing for a large bureaucracy to do is change. It will be interesting to watch the budget item evolve. Certainly there will be contentious discussions coming later.

It's 8:00 and we're hung up on something. MWBE (minority, women business enterprise) participation to underwrite a portion of the bond package. There is already 40% MWBE participation in this particular $166 million dollar issuance. The sticky point: Merrill Lynch.

ML is the lead underwriter with 30% going to the firm. Lew Blackburn, Carla Ranger and Bernadette Nutall don't like it and they want to vote to (as Edwin Flores put it) "yank the rug out from under Merrill Lynch" and replace them with a MWBE firm.

Throm and crew insist that any of the selected firms could serve as lead.

Flores is concerned that the Board is setting a bad precedent by changing the terms of the arrangement after the deal is cut.

Superintendent Hinojosa encouraged the trustees to accept the staff recommendation. It didn't work. The vote was 5-3 and Merrill Lynch still gets a chunk of business but it's much smaller.

It's going to be a long night.

9:28 and we just got done with a long debate over lawnmowing.

Yes, lawnmowing. But it's a little more extensive than that. The District wants to eliminate (move) 20 positions and outsource them at the cost of $1.1 million dollars a year.

Even though the total compensation from these positions combined total only around $500,000, staff claims that when you factor in equipment costs and trips to the gas station, the District ends up saving $180,000.

OK, I didn't get that.

But the guy who seemed to have a handle on it was Bruce Parrott who asked some good questions.

OK, we're outta here before the speakers to non-agenda items. Long day tomorrow.