Notes From the August 27th Meeting

NOTE: If you want to watch the board meeting yourself, tune to Lower Providence's Community Channel (Comcast channel 28, FiOS channel 42) the Wednesday after the meeting at 6 PM, or that Friday and Sunday at 12 AM, 8 AM, or 6 PM. Or, here is their YouTube channel.

- It was good that the Board spent two hours last meeting going over the First Readings on policy, since they haven't bothered to take the Policy Committee's suggestion at actually following Board Policy. Case in point, look at last weeks agenda; there were no voting items. At all. But if you look at this Tuesday's agenda, there's a whole slew of thingies to vote for. Including, but not limited to, a resolution that looked like MSD wanted to spend $750,000(!) on Technology Infrastructure. Of course, the Board feels like they did nothing wrong, besides wasting the cover paper, since they don't follow it anyway. Mrs. Barbone, a former Board President, brought this to the attention of the Board last week, and I figure they don't feel like fixing it.

This is the second freakin' time that a member of the public brought up a question because the Board tries it's best to keep the public out of the loop. Even though the Board's Attorney said they didn't, they were wrong in this sense, and without talking about voting items during the Work Session, they shouldn't have voted on anything during the regular meeting.

- Speaking of Not Doing What You're Supposed To Do, the Board passed the variance request to Worcester for Mascaro's Baseball field project, which was weird, because according to Dr. Miller, it was submitted to Worcester prior to the meeting. That means that Dr. Miller, and/or whoever submitted the variance, acted without Board Approval. You know that last guy who did that? Oh yeah, the guy who got caught with his pants down with the Director of Curriculum. He sued the Lower Providence Zoning Board for not issuing a variance on the planed Arcola/Skyview Sign, and he acted without Board approval. Even though Dr. Miller is out the door, so to speak, he better be careful on what action he takes, because all it takes is one person to slam the Board, and himself, and then the party's over.

- And with that proposed baseball field, some numbnuts decided to coincide the completion of the baseball field with the completion of the turf project. Yeah, so if it isn't done, it will cut off part of the field hockey field, and with Worcester moving this project along at a break-neck speed, and the fact that I'm probably not the only one who doesn't want this, it's going to be fun playing on the field hockey field.

- MSD is hiring their own expert testimony for the Turf Field to Nowhere, mostly about the lighting variance. The fun thing is that MSD already had to pay for Worcester's lighting expert, and a resident brought in their own lighting expert to boot. This is becoming more and more of a headache as time goes on. Unfortunately, that plays to Worcester's benefit.

- Why is it called a Reading if you don't read both sets of policies?

- Not on the agenda, but the Teacher's Union has reached an tentative CBA agreement, and will be voting on it in the coming days. Which means, once the Union approves the CBA, it will be public. I'm hoping not to see what happened last contract, but if that does, I hope that the teacher's threatening to strike doesn't saddle the district with another bad contract. Since, y'know, the last contract, the teachers got a raise every year (4% each year, give or take) and the High School failed to meet the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for six years. When that contract drops, hopefully, I'll be able to post it here so stay tuned.

- Speaking of AYP and other school stuff, Pennsylvania has requested a waiver from No Child Left Behind, which means Methacton won't get penalized for not reaching NCLB's goal of 100% AYP for 2014. I have ridden on Methacton before for not meeting the federal standards, but that doesn't mean I ever agreed with them. It's Methacton's job, required by the Commonwealth and the Federal Government, to meet the AYP, even if those standards suck. Education isn't something the Federal government can umbrella to everyone, but skeleton standards are a good guideline for each state, since not all states are created equal. Hopefully, Pennsylvania can find a program that works best for our state, and Methacton can do it's best for preparing these students for their adult life.