Notes from Board of Education Work Session, 3/28/11

The Board Meeting on Monday, March 28th will be re-broadcast on Comcast Channel 96, Verizon FIOS Channel 12 and is available via webstream at http://www.ccboe.com/ . To view the full agenda and the various reports, please visit BoardDocs.

The below notes are my personal notes and are not intended to be all-inclusive or official minutes for the Board of Education meetings and are provided as a request from my supporters and the general public in a personal effort to be more transparent. Although I have diligently tried to make these notes as unbiased and accurate as possible, I am only human and do make mistakes.

Call to order - 6 p.m.


Pledge of Allegiance

Public Forum

• Liz Brown - EACC - Delay opening; teachers overwhelmed in crowded classrooms
• Robert Harlan - Against delay of opening the school. Population is increasing. Commissioners may want you to delay altogether and just not build the school. Baltimore County is opening one and they are in the same economic situation we are. Try redistricting and rezoning existing schools.

Discussion on status of St. Charles High School

• Wise - Read letter from Commissioners
• Wade - Discussed meeting with legislation; thinks school not to be built altogether should be removed from the table. Richmond meeting with Governor before Christmas. Believes new board of commissioners are very different from the last and he trusts them. His mind has changed since his "no" vote last meeting.
• Pedersen - County needs the high school. The past is the past. Time to move forward.
• Bowie - Commissioners committing to operating cost? If worst case scenario happens, would the 200 employees still need to be laid off?
• Richmond - Cannot solve overcrowding in high school by moving middle school students. Yes, if we have to foot the $10M ourselves, it would be difficult without layoffs.
• Lukas - Could the high school open with fewer students depending on funding?
• Richmond - Yes
• Lukas - In delaying for one year, we still get the state funds, but a longer delay could impact the state funds. Cost we are presenting to commissioners include cost of pool?
• Wineland - Bids have pool as an alternate. State does not pay for land, design, engineering, etc.
• Pedersen - Grant $ for digital classroom
• Richmond - Mikulski & Cardin secured the $.5M for the digital classroom

Motion to delay opening of new high school to 2014 by Pedersen; Second by Wade

Yes = Cook, Lukas, Pedersen, Wade, Wise
No = none
Abstain = Abell, Bowie

Adjournment