Big Week

Last week was pretty tough, to be quite honest. As a leader I am looked upon to be the rock of the organization, the person with all of the answers, and the person that other people look to when they do not know what to do.  The true test of a leader is if you can survive a bombardment of negativity from every angle that you can think of and still come out on the other side making positive and correct decisions without taking on anything more than a scratch. I have many years of experience doing this, but when you can physically hear your own head working and everything else is quiet, you know that you have reached the limit.

I am glad that we had strategic planning last week. It was a way to watch stakeholders from various areas of our school community come together and figure out how we will stay on top after resources and opportunities dwindle. I am pleased with the results, and I think you as community members will be also. At our Board of Education meeting on February 2 our group leader Deb Geiss will talk about the Strategic Plan and it will then be placed on our web site.

This is a BIG week coming up. I cannot imagine being the Governor right now preparing to publish his budget for next year. It is highly anticipated to be the most devastating budget in New York State history. I cannot wait. We have done our homework at West Genesee. We know what we need to do, and we have put the pieces in place to do them. We just need our number from the Governor, and we will have a preliminary budget built in about three to four days. Our first swipe at necessary reductions will be revealed, and we will begin to march toward the end of the year. January is my least favorite month, and this January has taken the cake!

Around this time of the year I get asked how cold it needs to be to close or delay school. First, it would be rare to delay school due to cold temperatures. Even two hours in this part of the country is not enough time to raise the temperature, and in some cases the temperature even goes down as the day progresses. We do not have a specific Board policy related to cold weather, but as a long-standing practice I have always considered closing if the regular temperature hits five below with no windchill and twenty-five below with the windchill. From what I have read, next week might produce a couple of days that will get us near those benchmarks, but then again I cancelled evening activities last Friday after being told that there was big lake effect snow coming only to see a few flakes. Weatherman is definitely my next career.

As part of our budget plan, we are going to reduce the number of paper Communicators to about four (plus the budget issue).  This move will save us about $18K. We are going to replace the other Communicators with an E-blast to still get information out to you, just cheaper and faster. I am very, very excited at the initial layouts and structure of the E-blast. We will continue to develop it and let you know how you can begin to receive your electronic newsletter as soon as we are ready to release it.

Have a great week. Keep your chins up whereever you are and remember that difficult times bring about innovation, change, and advancement!

Chris

The Worst Part of My Job is...

Losing a student is, by far, worse than budgets, angry people, layoffs, and job stress. I have lost eight students since becoming a superintendent. Even today I could tell you who they were, their personality, and traits they left behind that we all miss to this day. 

Last week we lost Craig Rienhardt, a junior, to cancer. Cancer does not discriminate and is a very cruel disease. Craig was upbeat, kind, energetic, and full of life. His parents and family are very strong people. 

Many of his family came to our basketball game where three students, Austin Gambino, Peter Johnson, and Lindsey Sweet, held a 50/50 raffle and a blue ribbon campaign for Craig. They wanted to give the proceeds ($1,000 in about a half of a basketball game) to Craig and his family the next day as a show of solidarity and strength. Unfortunately, he passed away during the night and the students did not get a chance to get closer with one of their closest friends. On Friday the staff held a one day fundraiser to help the family as well.  What we take away from a situation like this is that as big as we are we are, we are still small enough to come together for good causes and to help bring peace. May we never forget Craig Rienhardt.

Tomorrow night is the "Dialogue with the Superintendent". It will be held in the high school large group instruction room from 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. If you have questions for me and you don't want to e-mail them to me, call me and ask them, or see me at an event to talk, then this is the place to be. You can place a question on an index card and I will answer anything that is asked to the best of my ability. Should be fun!

Wednesday night is our Board of Education Meeting. I will be giving an overview of the current budget situation and what things (generally because I have not spoken with affected staff yet) are likely to be reduced as we try to zero in on the actual deficit that the Governor will announce during his State of the State address. I will tell you that at least something from every aspect of our organization will be affected, and I will also share with you that I am in a position where many of the decisions that we have made will affect students. Last year we were largly able to avoid this from happening, but with the size of the impending gap there is just no way to avoid it for a second year.

Thursday and Friday we have our Strategic Planning Sessions. This is where a large group of people gathers to help create the guiding document for the District. This will be an interesting session as District initiatives meet dwindling resources.

Budget aside, I hope to get back into my routine of visiting all of our classrooms so I can see all of the cool things that our students are doing. This is all for now, but stay tuned. If anything changes I will be sure to keep you posted. Have a great week.

Chris

Ahhh Facebook...

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!

Chris

Welcome to the New Year!

I cannot believe that we are half-way through the school year. I also cannot believe how much snow has melted in just a couple of days. There are three sump pumps in my basement and all of them have been running non-stop since New Year's Eve. It took some time to walk around the yard to look at the house after all of the snow that we had, and I noticed that both the house and yard have taken quite a beating this Winter so far. It will need some touch-up paint, roof sealer, gutter work, and some grass seed for starters.

While I was out assessing my home, I thought about how I would assess the school year so far. Financially, we are in great shape while we wait for the Governor to tell us (hopefully Wednesday) what next year is going to have in store. Academically we have made strides in every area, and there is every indication that our graduation rates will be higher than last year. The athletics and fine arts programs are moving right along and our building and grounds are in pretty good shape, considering that they are facing the same Winter that our homes have been weathering. 

The biggest work that we will have ahead will be building the budget in an environment where there really will be limited resources. In the weeks ahead I will be communicating frequently as we make decisions that will be challenging, but necessary. For now, we are going to get back to what will be a great second-half of the school year!

Chris

Poet I Am Not

Greetings and welcome to the most unpredictable four days of the school year. In the eleven years that I have been a superintendent, this time of the year normally presents the most unusual behavior out of students, staff, parents, and probably myself. The joys and pressures of the holiday season converge in what can only be described as a science fair volcano; you know it is going to erupt, but you don't know if it is going to spill onto the carpet!

I am looking very forward to visiting classrooms this week and experiencing these last four days before break with your kids. I hope to be able to share many of my visits on Twitter, and I leave you with a poem that I wrote which should reassure you that I am not quitting my day job! 

My next blog post will most likely come after the holidays. Have a safe and enjoyable holiday season with family and friends.

Chris

‘Twas the week before winter break

And all through the school

People were stressing

About the temperature of the high school pool.

Students and teachers are all wondering where

A two-hour delay comes from, even when the weather seems fair.

What to do over break is the topic of talk

X-box, sledding, shoveling and clearing the sidewalk?

One thing is for sure, and that we will all see

Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Christmas; the “holidays” they will be!

Odds and Ends

Greetings from the frozen tundra of Syracuse, New York. We are going to try our best to get through this week with as few interruptions as possible, and as I write this message East Hill is beginning their great holiday concert that I had a chance to see this morning (pictures available on www.twitter.com/cbrownwgcsd). It will be very important for you to check westgenesee.org/ or our Facebook fan page (which you can access from the home page of the web site by clicking on the Facebook icon in the upper right corner) if you have children, grandchildren, nieces, or nephews involved in athletic or fine arts programs to make sure that events are being held as scheduled.

You might have seen some information about a Special Education services audit that was completed by the New York State Comptrollers Office. While the audit summarized that the District did nothing wrong, they did criticize the District for not seeking the lowest per hour price for the people who work with our Students with Disabilities (low bidding is not required for confidential services such as services for children with disabilities). The decision was made to not take the lowest bidder for Special Education services (we pay about $5 more per hour than the lowest priced provider) because we feel that our children, and especially those with disabilities, need consistent services provided by adults that we have individually interviewed to provide the best fit for each individual student with a disability. We would not be able to do this for our students if we just went with the lowest bidder for the services.  If we need to take the hit for that, then so be it. A copy of our audit will be made available on our web site, and if you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Speaking of audits and budgets, the governor-elect announced today that he is going to be pushing for a tax cap of 2% or the cost of inflation whichever is less (right now inflation is about .9%). He also intends to make the biggest reductions to health care and education. As it stands right now voters (with a 60% majority) will be able to vote to go above the cap.  For West Genesee, the tax cap will cause us to have a gap of about $5M to close. The first thing you might think of is a pay freeze, which I know my staff and I would consider, but the total amount saved from a pay freeze is about $730,000, quite a distance away from the $5M gap that we might need to close. Our principals, directors, and I are prioritizing athletic, fine arts, and academic programs that we may have to do without to close this gap, and I have been working with neighboring districts to discuss consolidation and sharing of service opportunities. We should have some better information right after the holidays, and I appreciate your support through what will be the most challenging times for the New York State public education system.

Our anti-bullying climate survey is also going well. We have administered the survey to approximately 3,000 students so far and hope to have it completed by the beginning of next week. I will post the overall results once we have them, and our team will meet right after the holidays to take our next steps.

Stay warm these next few days. I am hoping that my snow blower will be repaired in time to clean up the snow that is coming this week!

Take care-

Chris

Whoever is Dreaming of a White Christmas Can Start Dreaming about Something Else!

Well, these last few days have been pretty interesting. With the thought of another Winter storm hitting on Sunday, my wife reminded me that since Monday I have worked (happily, of course) 16 hours before 8:00 a.m. The people who have worked much more than me, however, are the plow crews. Yes they get overtime, but would you want to work for four days straight on about five hours of sleep? Thanks to our own crews, as well as the Town and County crews, for working to keep us safe and our schools and businesses open. 

I also want to thank our bus drivers. I used to be a volunteer firefighter and spent time driving all kinds of fire trucks to fire calls. That is nothing compared to driving the same sized vehicle with 60 passengers on board (many with ants in their pants) on snowy roads. Many of you have thanked them for their great driving and service especially in these tough conditions, and we will celebrate the week tomorrow with coffee and donuts and I will pass along your thanks.

Then there are the food service workers. Imagine cooking a big dinner at your home and then receiving a call from your spouse or kids telling you that they "can't make it".  That is the feeling that our staff get every time we delay or close...when cooking for 5,000 students. They have to meal plan, schedule, and work twice as hard on delay days to keep the cafeteria in good working order.

Channel 9 covered this very well at : http://www.9wsyr.com/news/local/story/Schools-juggle-decisions-to-delay-or-cancel/xxP7oEy9-U6bNMklb5Te1A.cspx

It seems like we will get through the rest of the week without interruption and we will see what next week brings. Now, put yourself in the shoes of Mr. Davern, our Director of Fine Arts, and Mr. Pascale, our Director of Athletics. We missed three days of concerts, practices, games, rehearsals, and training. They are working together right now to try to reschedule everything and have the least number of conflicts. They both will have to stack games and concerts on top of each other in order to fit everything in before the holidays and they and I appreciate your understanding. In my own house I have an 8th grader who has missed a game and concert and a 10th grader who has missed three practices and a scrimmage. 

Stay tuned to our website and Facebook for scheduling updates. Please remember that next Monday and Tuesday look questionable also, so the beginning of next week could very well be "next verse same as the first" no pun intended.

The real bummer for me this week is that I will probably not be able to get to every classroom as I usually do, but I am sure that the students and staff will be understanding.

Have a great rest of the week and weekend.

Chris