Milford School Board 8/27/07

High School Renovation Project

The school board met in a special meeting on Monday to review the recommendations of the High School Renovation Committee regarding the bids for the track and field site work.

The board discussed the status of the project and the budget implications of the bids that were higher than expected. Tom Hurley (Committee Chair) updated the board on all the discussions that had gone on at the building committee meeting and the background on all the issues. After all the discussions, the board held two votes.

The board voted 5-0 to award the site work project to Leighton White as per his bid. It is expected that Leighton will start work soon after labor day. Mike Trojano and Bill Cooper will look into the feasibility of doing something with the visitor bleachers (such as moving them to the soccer field), and if it seems viable, to act on the option. If it doesn't appear viable, then they will just be torn down as per the specifications.

The board voted 4-1 (Peter Bragdon in opposition) to authorize the building committee to not hire a Clerk of the Works if the Committee decided not to. This vote allows the building committee to make the decision without having to come back to the School Board for further approval. The vote does not obligate the Committee to not hire a Clerk, but the votes gives it the option to do so.

The board did not act on the award of the track surface bid to Maine Tennis and Track as had been approved by the building committee. The documentation of the bid was not presented at the meeting, and it was felt that it would be better to have the paperwork in front of everyone prior to a vote. This was not a time-critical item like the site-work bid since the track work will not be done until next May or so in any case. The bid information will be summarized and brought to a future meeting for approval.

The cost increase was discussed at length, with the basic consensus being that while it was a problem, it seemed to be of a manageable level given the context of the overall project. We will need to be careful moving forward that we make the proper decisions to keep the project within the overall budget and still have a quality result.

Superintendent Suprenant Contract

The board went into non-public session once the track and field discussion was complete. At the end of the non-public session, it was announced that Superintendent Suprenant and the board had reached agreement on a new three-year contract that is a follow-on to his initial three-year contract that recently ended.

I'd like to publicly thank Superintendent Suprenant for his performance during his first three years with Milford. We have made great progress in that time period, and the Milford School District is in great shape and getting better all the time.

While we don't use these terms to describe it, we have instituted processes that are essentially continuous improvement programs. Continuous improvement as a management philosophy is a prime foundation of quality systems, and we do it well in Milford. An example is our curriculum improvement process that is well entrenched in the district now. Every year we look at portions of the curriculum to plan future changes, we test the options for the changes, and we implement the changes. Each subject area flows thought this process on a regular schedule. This allows us to keep our spending relatively uniform from year to year while at the same time insuring that all aspects of the curriculum are refreshed on a regular planned basis.

We set goals each year, and we measure our progress towards meeting the goals. This closed-loop process helps to insure that we are working on the proper items, that we are coordinating our efforts towards meeting common goals, and that we are communicating our efforts to all interested parties.