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-----Original Message----- Deneen, Thank you for expressing your thoughts. I appreciate your willingness to honestly express your convictions. I find it discomforting that expression of MY concerns is of such great irritation to you and other members of the Board of Education! I will try to disregard any innuendoes you may have been making with your remark, “Perhaps you thrive on negativity”, because I believe that it is much more important to remember the bigger picture. In principle I don’t disagree with the matters that were being discussed last night. I may disagree with the proposed method of broaching these matters with the bargaining unit. I believe that CHOICE is our God-given right, and if we do NOT give the staff the option to choose we are making two mistakes: 1) Denying them of a choice. 2) Precluding the possibility of putting an option on the bargaining table! We recently had an outpouring of community concern over the ‘local busing’ which was raised by members of the community that believed they had not received sufficient notification of our intent to discontinue local busing. Even though we had employed the same methods discussed at the meeting last night. My point is that WE may believe we have made every effort to notify the public, but if there is such a significant number of district patrons that ‘missed’ it, then there must be room for us to explore other methods which may be more effective. Could it have been because we hadn’t sent any information to our network of ‘key communicators’ for several months…perhaps even during a major part of the budget development process? There were matters discussed at the meeting last night that we had not previously discussed collectively, as a Board, and still others that we have STILL not discussed. For example the large document provided by Senator Ron Wyden outlining numerous grants that are available. I didn’t ever get a chance to even mention these grants due to the fact that every time I made any remark contrary to the prevailing preoccupation with cutting days for our students I was met with irritation, annoyance, impatience, and condescension. There were other expense issues that Karyn had brought up in her e-mail Sunday, October 21, 2001 concerning District Office staff. The bottom line is that I cannot say truthfully that we have examined EVERY POSSIBLE OPTION TO REDUCE EXPENSES OR INCREASE REVENUE! We were supposed to have had a meeting scheduled for this purpose on June 18, and the meeting lasted for EIGHT minutes! If YOU honestly believe that we have examined EVERY POSSIBLE OPTION TO REDUCE EXPENSES OR INCREASE REVENUE then you will have no problem with me writing a letter to the editor of the Herald (oops! Meant the Pioneer.) stating that we have done this, and made EVERY POSSIBLE EFFORT TO NOTIFY THE COMMUNITY OF OUR DELIBERATIONS before deciding to continue business as usual: Increase spending and/or decrease the quality of education! My conscience will not permit me to disregard what I see transpiring. Jim -----Original
Message----- Please read below... ----- Original Message ----- From: Jim Needham Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 10:23 PM To: 'Deneen Munson (E-mail 2)'; 'Janette Palmer (E-mail)'; 'Karyn Gibbons (E-mail)'; 'Mary Beyer (E-mail)'; 'Ralph Gierke (E-mail)' Cc: Alice Ericksen (E-mail); Dr. Alice Ericksen (E-mail); Pam Briscoe (E-mail) Subject: Notification of Budget Meeting Board
and others, Jim, My personal response to your question is that not only did the Board of Education look at every possible method of cutting the budget and finding alternative methods of funding, but rather the community, staff, parents, students and Board of Education worked together at various budget reduction meetings at all of the schools, articles in the Pioneer, Molalla River Reporter questionaires, site councils meetings, staff meetings, administration meetings, parent club meetings, district office study committee, worksessions, board meetings and budget meetings to look at every possible method of cutting the budget and finding alternative methods of funding. We all know of the cuts and reductions that took place through the budget process, but I'd like to remind you of the 'out of box' suggestions that came about because of the above mentioned meetings...cut 3 days from calendar (2-Inservice, 1-Student), replace retiring administration from within the district, reduce days, local option levy, reduce days by 3 (District determined), salary freeze, run until $$ runs out, 4-day week plus until $$ runs out. The Board told the community that we would look at all of those suggestions and I've highlighted the ones we've done. The spring survey told us that the community wants us to 'cut days'. However, it's now time to come to the table with our associations and discuss. Which leads me into responding to your comments at last nights worksession regarding 'Are we now guessing what the association will agree to?'. In my hands I have a letter dated January 2002 from the associations president Barb Drennan that is addressed to their members and I would like to quote portions to enlighten you to what the association may or may not agree to during our upcoming discussions... Paragraph 2: 'Make sure in your building meetings that you don't put another teacher's job on the chopping block. If the District needs to lay off people, the administrators need to make those decisions...' 'We appreciate that we are being asked for our input, but be careful!' Paragraph 3: 'We do not endorse cutting any days out of the calendar. We do not endorse giving up any of our hard fought salary increase or benefits for next year. Both of those ideas would cost us money out of OUR pockets to balance the budget of the District. Those are contract items and they must be brought to the Association.' I would close by saying that you've been quick to criticize the Board rather than speak well of the processes we put in place and the outcomes that come from it. Perhaps you thrive on negativity, whereas I prefer to praise the positives in the work we have done. I'll add that in a childcare course I attended years ago I was taught that for each negative comment, it takes 8 positive comments to mend the damage. Take a moment to think about it. Deneen |
