The January 5th FCBOE meeting
First of all, I would like to thank the FCBOE for joining the 21st century and putting a podcast of their meeting on their website.
Some quick observations:
- Be aware that these podcasts are 93 MEGABYTES long (1 hour 40 minutes)! As an aside, in my line of work I routinely distribute audio recordings of meetings I conduct, and they never exceed 20 megabytes for a 90 minute meeting!
- These meetings are recorded in proprietary Apple podcast format (.m4a). You have to have an Apple Ipod to play them...regular mp3 players won't play them.
- Alternatively, you can download the VLC player and play it on your PC (this is what I do)
- It is VERY hard to hear Commissionr Marion Key on these broadcasts, she sounds like she is very far away from her microphone
- This is AUDIO only, no video
- A number of times the board refers to slides on a screen that you can't see
Now to the meat of the meeting:
- Terri Smith re-elected herself chairman, Lee Wright vice-chair. The vote was 3-2
- The board re-appointed Phil Hartley (the creator of the legal doctrine "Freedom of Information requests cost $2000") by a 3-2 vote. No competitive bidding for this outsourced job. WHY NOT?
- The board spent 20 minutes wrangling over when to meet for the remainder of the year. I realize that BOE commisioner is a part-time job but folks it shouldn't be so hard to get 5 people in a room for 2 hours twice a month.
- Competitive bidding to install cabinets in the new schools got a whopping 2 bids. They legally advertise in the Fayette Daily News. I wonder if they'd get more bids advertising in the AJC?
- Cost reduction: Folks, the operative words that describe this school board is Analysis Paralysis. Your school board talks and talks but nothing ever gets accomplished. Sometimes they talk in circular flows, keep coming back to the same issues (particularly Wright). Terri Smith is a "blue sky" moderator and seems to talk off the top of her head nearly non-stop.
- potential cost savings indentified last June and August were debated once again with no firm decisions being made
- the board patted itself on the back for doing nothing and letting normal staff attrition do their "saving" for them (70 percent of all "savings" to date)
- Sometimes good intentions backfire: going to a four 10-hour day week in the summer (instead of five 8-hour days) was supposed to have saved major dollars on electricity and air conditioning, but summer camps had been scheduled which required AC to be turned on and wiped out most savings
- the board stressed using email instead of paper...but that is for the masses, as DeCotis and his direct reports still seem to use paper (especially letterhead paper) exclusively to make their executive pronouncements
- They've started playing games with shifting costs into next years budgets, just like cash-strapped Northeastern schools do...i.e. "worry about it next year" (shades of the 2008 PC replacement debacle!!)
After listening to this debacle, I'm convinced of a few things: 1) the board really wants to cut costs, but they are terrified (terri-fied maybe?  ) of making hard decisions, particularly where personnel are concerned. and 2) I now am sure that Dr. DeCotis is no longer the man to lead Fayette county....or ANY school system...in economically troubled times. The man appears to be living in a bubble.
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