Well I spent most of today passing along messages about inappropriate Facebook pages to our School Resource Officer. As you might know, the school has very little ground to stand on when it comes to people outside of school making inappropriate Facebook pages unless the pages disrupt the operations of our buildings or put our students in unsafe situations.
About three months ago there was a page created titled "WG Hoes" and it had pictures of students and very derogatory information on it. Some of the students featured on the page were very upset at school. Our School Resource Officer contacted the District Attorney's office who ordered a subpoena from Facebook of the "IP address" or computer address where the page was created. Meanwhile, the School Resource Officer did some good old fashioned police work and caught the creator of the page, a graduate. Charges were filed and the person was arrested.
I am hoping for the same outcome in this case as well, but I keep having to remind people to watch who they "friend", what they say, and who they say it to. This cyber bullying nonsense is not going away anytime soon around the world, but I am really proud of our students for bringing it to our attention because they have simply had enough of this as well! All of us, including our students, have many more productive things to be doing with our time.
We are just beginning to ramp up our budget building process for next year and if you watch the news you know that the Governor is trying to enact a tax cap of around 1% while his opposition is trying to fight the tax cap concept. Cap or not, with the decline in state aid that is surely coming, we have a large gap to fill. We are working tirelessly to reprogram how we do business to compete with this financial challenge. I have said many times that everything is on the table. Everything. These types of discussions are healthy but are causing some stress and tension as you might imagine. We will get there but please be ready for any combination of ideas to help our children have as many opportunities as possible.
I turned 40 over the weekend. I have been a superintendent since my very late 20's, and I have been amazed at how much has changed in this position over the past decade. I entered the job building bus garages, science suites, libraries, and computer labs. Today I find myself looking at ways to keep buildings open, provide full programming, athletics, and fine arts. Crazy. Who knows what the next ten years will bring. I would like to say that I cannot wait, but maybe I can...
Have a great week. I am hopeful to still get out into all of the buildings this week even though I have what seem like hundreds of budget meetings. The kids keep me young, and I could use a dose of that!
