A Couple Of Meetings This Week...

The Monona Park and Recreation Board is scheduled to meet this Tuesday evening at 6-ish at the Monona Community Center.

I'm not sure if our meeting has been postponed as we haven't received an agenda yet, but as our June meeting was cancelled, I'm sure we will convene this month at some point.

Speaking of our Monona parks, anyone noticed the huge pile of concrete, rocks and other construction debris that has overtaken Woodland Park? At our last meeting in May, our Park and Recreation Board approved using the park as a holding ground of sorts for road construction detritus, and while I'm certainly glad to take some of the onus off of Monona Drive business owners of having a huge pile of rocks in front of their businesses, I have to wonder what the effect of dumping all this junk off in the park will have on soil compaction, flora and fauna. The original thought was that the construction company would re-prairie this area for the city after cleaning up the construction rubble. They had offered to spread the seeds that the city has already purchased for that purpose in exchange for using the park. Oh well, I've heard that Park and Rec. Director Jake Anderson has been lobbying our City Alders to turn that stretch of the Woodland Park into a parking lot anyway. Maybe they'll plan to add some trees into the lot landscaping to get into the spirit of things. Guess we'll wait and see.

*note: while taking these photos at Woodland Park, I actually fell down a hill of rubble, which was simultaneously horrifying and extremely funny. I'll bet the construction guys weren't expecting a hugely pregnant female landslide on Monona Drive today. Maybe I'll go into labor now; guess we'll wait and see.

In Cottage Grove Kids Park news: I received this email from Jeff Simpson:

http://www.refresheverything.com/cgkidspark

Pepsi is running a promotion and they are giving money to the ten ideas that get the most votes. The Cottage Grove Kids park is one of the ideas and is currently in 131st place. It only takes a minute to vote, especially once you're signed up, and you can vote every day through the end of July. If we finish in the top 10 we would get $25,000 for the park!

The Monona Grove Board of Education will meet this Wednesday evening in the District Office at 7pm.

Unfinished business includes the possible approvals of the new MG21 charter school charter amendments, our district's participation in an impact concussion study, the Chartwells Food Management contract and non-represented staff compensation. New business will include the discussion and possible approval of the restructuring of both our district's Continuous Improvement and Assessment Coordinator and Diversity Coordinator positions.

I also wanted to acknowledge the gift donations to our schools and students, something I would like to start doing consistently. The Board approves our gift donations monthly as a formality in our consent agenda and sometimes the amazing generosity of our school community isn't emphasized enough.

$171.00 from Skala Photography to Maywood for Activity Scholarship Fund

$324.00 from Skala Photography to Taylor Prairie for building needs

$1,000.00 from Kohls for furniture for the pod areas of grades 7-8 at GDS (grants written by GDS PTO)

$802.97 from the Monona PTO to Maywood School for grades EC-2 and Related Arts

$938.42 from the Monona PTO to Winnequah School for Related Arts, 4th- 6th grades

$200.00 from Susan and Chris Lynch to Winnequah School (Chris Charlson) to purchase books.

Thank You!

In other news, the puppy is still at the breeders and the baby is still on the way. Ah, the waiting...