Milford School Board 9/4/07

Superintendent's Report

The new school year started last week, and it went very well. The staff was in on Monday and Tuesday with start-up activities, grades K-9 started on Wednesday, and grades 10-12 started on Thursday.

They held the District-wide meeting on Tuesday. Bert Becker and I were able to attend the meeting, and it was quite good. I was impressed with the positive outlook that everyone exhibited during the meting. Everyone seemed to be really looking forward to a new school year and the influx of new students. It is difficult to positively motivate large organizations, and our District appears to have excellent morale. There are a lot of factors that go into this, but I think that some of the major ones are our Superintendent's performance, and the fair contracts that we have with our bargaining units.

The three largest classes in the district are the 6th, 9th, and 10th grades, with all of them over 240 students. The formal enrollment numbers will be presented at the first October board meeting, with the board setting the enrollment projections for the next year's budget at the second October meeting. The numbers can fluctuate during the first few weeks of the year, which is why the state waits until October first summarize the enrollment figures for the entire state.

The calendar that was created by Sue Asselin was distributed to the board. Sue has been creating these calendars for a couple of years, and does a great job of it. She raises the money to produce the calendars by selling ads in the calendars, and she prints enough of them to enable all students in the District to get one. The calendars list all the standard school events for the year, and they are a wonderful tool for keeping track of school activities. We use them at our house, and they work great. Thanks Sue!

Beth Powers (High School English Teacher) received the Champion of Human Rights award about a month ago from the NEA. This was partially due to her support of the Peach jam program in Milford.

The district had received written notice from the state that they felt that our ballot question was not detailed enough, and that we might not be authorized to sell bonds for the high school renovation project. Additional information was provided to the state, including the voter guide that was mailed to all residences in town, and the state decided to allow us to sell bonds. We will need to be more critical with the wording of future articles to insure that we do not get into similar situations.

Adequate Yearly Progress

Laurie Johnson gave a brief overview of the AYP results that had been announced by the state last week. She is going to do a much more in-depth overview within a month or so once she has all the detailed data to summarize.

In short, the District made AYP but the K-8 Reading program did not make AYP. The Heron Pond educational disability sub-group did not make AYP for Reading, and as a result, the entire K-8 program did not make AYP for Reading. If the K-8 Reading program does not make AYP next year, then it will be designated as being in need of improvement.

Buildings and Grounds Reports

Bill Cooper gave his annual report summarizing the B&G activities that occurred during the summer break. He passed out a four page report detailing all the actions, but these are some of the highlights:

* Replaced carpeting and painted in the Front Office areas of the High School, Middle School, and Jacques.

* Remediated Asbestos in 15 rooms in the High School in preparation of the renovations that will mainly occur next summer.

* Installed guard rails at the Middle School and Bales.

* Installed a second culvert at Heron Pond to help drain the pond during very high water events.

* The ball field at Heron Pond is in great shape with new fencing, loam, and seeding. It will be rested this fall and go into heavy use starting next spring. It is expected that the MCAA will be allowed to use it in addition to various school uses.

* There were a series of security camera improvements at most schools.

Budget Process Guidelines and Parameters

Peter Bragdon submitted the budget guidelines that we used last year, with a few slight modifications to make some needed corrections.

We changed it during the meeting to add a reference in the voters guide section that the guide should not include political advertising, except that a free candidate profile section would be allowed, similar to the voters guide that was produced last year.