Susan Manning will remain the Board treasurer (Peter Sobol removed his name from consideration) and Lionel Norton will remain the Board Clerk (Jill List declined her nomination) The Board also voted to reinstate standing Board Committees, specifically Business Services, Policy and Curriculum. Please consider applying to serve the district on a committee. Information and applications will soon be available on the district website: http://www.mononagrove.org/.Committee Chairs will be appointed by next week. With the re-establishment of our standing committees, the Board of Education will return to a one-meeting-a-month format beginning in June 2010. These meetings will continue to alternate between the District Office in Monona and the Glacial Drumlin IMC in Cottage Grove every second Wednesday of the month at 7pm. While our year-long experiment with the a two-meeting-a-month format did not entirely elicit the efficiency and comprehensive inclusiveness that I had hoped for, I am glad that the Board was willing to try a different approach. I never bought into the nonsense that the elimination of standing committees was an effort to stifle public input. Quite to the contrary, I am rather proud of the groundbreaking advances the Board made this year in opening up our budget reduction proposal debates to the staff and the public. I heard many comments from folks who are quite appreciative of the opportunity to speak at our public budget hearings, an option that had not been offered in our district since I've lived here. Sometimes trying new things works, sometimes it doesn't, but you'll never know until you try.
The Board approved revisions to Board Policy 185- Standing Board Committees. We also voted 7-0 to remove the expansion of our school walk zone to two miles from budget reduction consideration for 2010-2011.
