Back in Action

I hope that everyone had a restful week. Contrary to popular belief, Superintendents do not get school vacations off, but I did get a chance to travel to NYC the first weekend of break to visit some family. I spent most of the week working on the budget with Mr. Pelton as we prepare for our first public presentation on March 3. I also had some time to organize files and get everything prepared for what is usually for busiest week in February; the week after break.

I am also very proud of the boys Hockey team as they begin to advance through the Sectional process. They are not only showing that they are talented players, but that they are quality young men. Their character shows on the ice and off the ice when they are conducting community service or meeting as a team at a local eatery once a week. Through hard work, dedication, and a fire inside, I feel strongly that these athletes will make a name for themselves in the upcoming weeks.

Several of our Swim team members are also finding success through hard work, character, and determination. A great story about their success can be found here: http://highschoolsports.syracuse.com/news/article/-6951826110020704560/west-genesee-at-state-swimming-qualifier

Over the weekend I got a chance to attend the outdoor Crunch game and I thought it was fantastic. Jets flying over, a parachute guy landing at center ice, a classic hockey fight, and a goal all happened in the first five minutes of the game. Any hint of feeling bad for myself because of what has been written about me over the past week eroded as well when Governor Patterson was welcomed by the "boo birds". I was definitely glad that my family and I were fortunate enough to be a part of history.

There will be a lot going on for us in the next couple of weeks, and I will keep you posted. CYBA should resume play, arrests will be made, contracts are being negotiated, schedules will begin to be developed, the Commissioner of Education will ask all of us to consolidate or disband services, the Governor's budget will be updated, academic awards and college acceptance letters will begin to flow more freely, and Spring sports will begin. Wow. Stay tuned!

Chris

CYBA Update

I met with the Chief of Police, Town Supervisor, and the leaders of the Camillus Youth Basketball Association (CYBA) Basketball Program this morning to discuss how the CYBA program can resume the season. After much discussion, I am comfortable allowing the program to use our facilities beginning February 22.

CYBA officials will be providing a zero tolerance statement before the remaining games, will have CYBA "Board" members in attendance at the remaining games, and will provide security/police presence the entire day of the CYBA Championships. CYBA officials will reach out to their parents and coaches before February 22 to let them know about their adjusted schedules, etc...

Anyone not arrested or involved in the incident on Monday, February 8, will be allowed into our facilities as the season comes to a conclusion, and it is my hope that the program is able to return to our facilities next Winter stronger and safer.

Chris

Rising Above It All...

Good Morning-

Yesterday began with an investigation into a fight that erupted at WGMS during a high school level Camillus Youth Basketball Association (CYBA) game. I was disgusted and disappointed to learn that many people were fighting at one time (coaches, players, and parents) and several law enforcement officials had to be used to get the regain order. We had to provide counseling to a few youngsters who sat helpless in the stands and who were afraid to come to school the next day. Again, a complete disappointment.

While not a school function or activity, CYBA involves people from our community, and I am sickened by the behavior that occurred. The Camillus Police are working hard to determine how many people will be arrested and the types of charges that will be filed. Because I am not convinced that this was an isolated incident I have asked the Town of Camillus to suspend all CYBA activity at all levels immediately until I am confident that the season can be completed safely. I intend to meet with representatives from CYBA over break to try and determine if this season can be completed safely and what mandatory changes will need to be made for next year if the program is to continue in our facilities.

On another more positive note it has been nice to get into classrooms, and I want to publicly thank maintenance for completing all of the Promethean Board installs. They can now go to their "punch list" and repair damaged units and fix some of the odd problems that we are having with a few of the boards. We are fortunate to have them on our side!

The rest of the week will be budget building, negotiations, building visits, and hopefully final layoff notifications (instructional staff, non-instructional layoff notifications have been completed). I hope to end the week with hair left to recede.

Finally and so I don't accidentally miss a good news event (when I mentioned swimming and hockey having success in a previous post I was informed that our cheerleaders won Sectionals...my apologies) I am going to create a new e-mail address where people can e-mail their good news, and I can then collect it and get it out to you without omissions. We never want to miss good news!

See you soon and thanks for rising above it all..

Chris

It's Been a Hard Days Night

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

The Week In Review

Well, where do I begin? Let's start with Monday. I went out to get the paper (in my shorts) and ended up stuck on Kasson Road on a sheet of ice an hour later. Buses were on their way, most middle school students were delivered, some elementary students were en route, and some were at home. A mess and too late to call anything or do anything about it.

A situation like Monday has only happened one other time in my 10 years as Superintendent. It took me 50 minutes to get to work (usually takes about 10) and I was sick to my stomach the entire day as I wondered how many accidents there had been and kept my fingers crossed for student drivers. Nine o'clock came and it was over. Don't ever think for a minute that we take school closing decisions or delays lightly or that we try to stay open just to receive state aid. We are in contact with about a dozen people before a decision is made, and most of us have our own children on the same buses and roads that you have your children on. Monday just happened without warning and quite frankly, it stunk.

Also on the "stink-o-meter" is the budget for next year. You might recall from my previous posts that as we create the budget for next year we were looking at a budget gap of approximately $2.5M. This is after we rolled this year's budget over and applied some reserve funds, making sure that we have enough reserves left for the next few challenging years.

We decided to freeze spending for the remainder of the school year, and we feel that this maneuver will bring the budget gap to $1.8M. We then looked at student enrollment and the number of staff that we have to serve the student population. We have had a slight enrollment decline from about 5,200 students early last year to an estimated 4,950 students when we begin classes in September. This reduction in enrollment caused us to perform an exercise called "Adjusting to Scale" where we take a look at every department and make sure that we have the correct number of staff for each duty that needs to be performed.

As a result of this exercise we are going to make reductions in administration, district office staff, operational support staff, teaching staff, teaching assistant and aide staff, athletics, fine arts, building support staff, and buildings and grounds staff. While difficult, these decisions would be made even in ideal economic conditions based on enrollment. These reductions will cause approximately 14.5 position cuts.

The result of this adjustment, as well as the elimination of non-essential overtime and conferences, leaves us with a gap of $1M. This gap will hopefully be closed through negotiations with staff and the impact of retirements. If not we will need to conduct a second round of cuts that will dig deeper into administration, athletics, fine arts, and instruction.

The nice thing about this District and community is the sense of family and the trust that we have for each other. I appreciate the opportunity to try and think outside of the box in meeting our budget challenges. Many of my colleagues will have to close their budget gaps with straight staff reductions (would have been about 80 people in our case). That would be tough.

For those of you who are somewhat in tune with taxes and school budgets, our resulting budget will have less of a tax impact than that of a "contingency" budget, or a failed budget. It is what it is, and we will adapt and overcome.

Now for some good news… We have somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 volunteers (BOE members, students, and staff) for the upcoming Special Olympics. I think this is a great turn out and exemplifies all that we believe in for children.

Our hockey and swim teams are cranking right along and seem poised to compete deeply into State level competition.

College acceptance letters keep pouring in for our seniors and on a percentage basis, more of our seniors have earned the opportunity to receive a college acceptance letter. This in conjunction with those entering the Armed Services or those attending a trade school, put us in line to have one of the highest completion rates on record.

The high school musical is next week and it has the makings to be amazing. I will be attending Wicked this evening and I am proud to be in a District where I can make comparisons between school performances and off-Broadway productions. Nice work.

Time to head out into buildings and have some fun! Have a great weekend.

Chris

Discussion with the Superintendent

Thanks to all who attended our meeting last night. In case you have not attended, and were wondering what the "Discussion with the Superintendent" is all about, people come to the meeting and write questions down on 3 x 5 index cards. The questions are then categorized by type, and I then read and answer all of the questions that I am given.

There were many different topics last night. Probably the most prevalent was the budget. What to cut, how to cut, how deep will cuts be, etc... Last night was a little too early to give in-depth answers, but as a starting point I mentioned that the gap we need to fill, one way or the other, is $2.5M. Cuts will start in our District Office and will end where they need to end in order to balance the budget. Any programming that will be affected will be programs that serve the fewest number of students, or are not mandated. There isn't one program or department that is "liked" over another; it is business. We will conduct our business. Variables that will impact the severity of cuts include the outcome of negotiations with various groups and the number of retirement notifications that the District receives, as well as any softening of the blow the legislators will be able to provide. Weekly updates regarding the budget will be available right here. Stay tuned.

Other topics included on-line programming, our at-risk initiative, and technology. These are all great topics because we are in the middle of growing programs in each of those categories. Each of these categories have shown immediate results in student achievement and each of these categories are helping us to achieve our goal of a 100% completion rate. January two years ago there were 9 students who were unable to graduate, this January the number is 3. Quite a jump for programs that started in November.

I was also asked if our pool was going to close because the pool at Onondaga Community College is going to close. Quite the contrary. We are estimating that we will receive more requests to use our pool which will help us to generate some additional revenue.

Other questions included service sharing, summer school, our early graduation date this year, IEP diplomas, assistive technology for students with disabilities, transportation, sports teams that practice over the breaks, residency issues, and drug and alcohol use among students at the high school. All great questions.

In a nutshell and to address the questions posed above I offer the following:

• We currently share services with Solvay School District and the Town of Camillus. We service major issues for Solvay buses which generates transportation aid and allows us to staff a mechanic through a contract with Solvay. Solvay does not need to fund a facility and a full range of staffing. We both save. The Town of Camillus shares facilities so that residents can participate in Town run programs at school facilities at a reduced rate we our hockey team is able to use the ice at Shove Park at a reduced rate. We are looking at more ways to share.
• Summer School is a large program that doesn't cost as much as people think. By offering Summer School students can complete their courses of study and not cost the District extra resources if they were to return behind in subjects. We will explore a BOCES partnership to possibly save money in this area.
• The West Genesee Central School District philosophy regarding graduation is that if a child is eligible to complete their course of study by the end of June they are invited to Commencement. This being said, it doesn't matter if graduation was held on June 3,7,13,20, or 30 for that matter. The same students would be eligible to cross the stage.
  IEP Diplomas, or diplomas that are sometimes rewarded to students with disabilities may be changed to a Certificate of Completion with targeted goals listed right on the certificate. More to follow as we know more from the New York State Education Department.
• We are bringing more and more assistive technology devices into our District. This can come in the form of hearing devices, computer systems, wheel chairs, or other equipment that helps a child with a disability to participate in a more inclusive manner. There will always be work to be done in this area.
• Ninety-nine buses run each day to pick up students, and our buses travel approximately 1,000,000 miles each year. This being said, we continue to maximize our bus runs and may be looking at a system where buses do not stop at houses where students either receive a ride each day or drive themselves to school. We will have to work within the confines of transportation law to make this happen but difficult economic times require out of the box ideas.
• Sports teams do practice over break and as soon as the entire Section III stops this practice we will follow suit. We are one of 32 District's that practice and play contests over breaks. I have just started as a Section III Athletics Council Member, and I will continue to bring this topic up. It has certainly factored personally into the decisions that are made regarding what sports my own children play.
• Residency is important. People who try to send their children to our school and live outside the District are tracked by private investigators and are dealt with as soon as we are aware. If you think you have information we need to know what you think you know so we can investigate.
• When asked if we have a "drug problem" in our high school the simple answer is that we have the same problems that every high school USA has when it comes to drug and alcohol use among students. There is more than anyone wants to admit but at the same time the use is fairly isolated to pockets of students. The job is to find those pockets, get them help, and get drugs and alcohol out of the school. Period.

Probably a longer post than normal but I wanted to summarize what was asked last night. Stay tuned for budget and other updates as we begin to navigate unchartered waters.

Chris

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Many things have happened in ten short days. For starters, we are back in the saddle and running all of our classes and events. Data we have received thus far concerning Elementary assessments is better than expected, and our at-risk initiative in the middle and high schools has already helped position six students who might not have graduated, to graduate on time in June.

Financially speaking, your guess is as good as mine. Suffice it to say that we are going to need to do more, or at least the same, with fewer resources. Although in the State of the State address given by the Governor he did not specifically mention cuts to schools, but it is safe to say that there will be major reductions in what we are given as far as State Aid for next year. If we were to roll our budget over based on what we think the State will be providing us, our tax levy would not be acceptable to you or me.

Mr. Pelton, the Assistant Superintendent for Management Services, and I are calculating how much money will need to be reduced from our budget in order to present something to you that we and the Board of Education think is acceptable. If I had to make an educated guess with the information that I have today, I would put our reduction amount just north of $1,000,000. We pooled supplies, combined positions, and changed how we delivered some services last year to close a gap of nearly $2,000,000. With those options mainly gone, we are going to have to take a hard look at all staffing and make some decisions that will be difficult but will be necessary for our long term success.

I have been asked when is this economic condition going to end? When can we just run a “regular” school year? I believe that the answer is 2012 but that is dependent on the State and local Government. Decisions at those levels need to be focused, with long-term vision and an understanding that moving forward, we will not be able to operate as we have been. As I always tell people, we will get it done.

On the positive side, the U.S. Education Department is trying to start an initiative called “Race to the Top”. Essentially the program is to reform schools across the U.S. so that teacher preparation, evaluation, and assessment is better so that instruction and results can improve. Each state, including New York, has applied for these funds. West Genesee could see up to $700,000 in funding to revamp some of our programs to meet the specifications of “Race to the Top”. We should know by April. Any type of award would most likely not affect the 2010-2011 budget, but would affect the 2011-2012 budget. This is okay because we could use that funding down the road as the economy recovers and we are always looking for any tools that will make us better as a District.

Have a great week!

Chris