I am used to long hours, but this week has pushed even my limits! Three or four days in a row of 16-plus hours can make you loopy. We are really trying to get our budget built as quickly and as efficiently as possible and that has taken a tremendous amount of brain power from our top administration and union officials. This has been happening along with all of the other day-to-day events, happenings, issues, and challenges that come with running a school system that is the size of a small city. I am confident that the result of our work will place us in the top 1% of schools, governments, and organizations that "do the right thing" during challenging economic times.
As a side topic that is somewhat budget related, I would like to address our Board policy concerning solicitations. Basically we do not accept solicitations from businesses or outside organizations that are "for profit". This does not mean that we do not have relationships with many of our local businesses; in fact we have developed some great partnerships. These organizations create scholarships for students, donate money and food to our booster organizations, and help us celebrate our successes. Education Law is very strict about businesses advertising in schools and as such we need to continue to work our relationships through our boosters and through scholarships.
A great example is a recent fund-raiser being conducted by our sports boosters with the help of Applebee’s to provide the District with an updated sound system. Our Sports Boosters will be providing information regarding an evening where the restaurant will donate 10% of their profits to the Boosters to be donated to the school for use to purchase a new sound system for our gym. You won't see the company name in future publications, but they will still be able to help us and we as patrons will be able to help them all the same.
I think that everyone knows that we work very closely with the Camillus Police and that I like to communicate through this blog and Twitter. Well, the Camillus Police Department (CPD) is stepping into the digital age to inform the community as well through a web site called http://www.nixle.com. It is free to police departments and government agencies and is a great way to keep up to date with the happenings of the CPD. I am exploring it's use for the District along with Twitter as another layer of information for people who like to be in the "know".
Our students have celebrated many successes lately so please keep up with their experiences at http://www.westgenesee.org/. I am looking forward to Mame this weekend, the Special Olympics, and the Legislative Breakfast that will be held at our high school on Saturday.
Enjoy the weekend and I will post again next week.
Chris
