Tonight the ordinance committee will consider adopting some sort of path to getting the BOE to meet on a regular basis. This was the idea behind the movement last year, which resulted in … no meetings. Mostly due to Corda being unavailable. Alexandra Fenwick reports:

A Common Council committee tonight will consider whether to create a joint panel with the school board to improve communication.

Better cooperation is a perennial topic that tends to come up at the end of budget season.

The committee proposed this year is modeled after Stratford’s Board of Education Liaison Committee, composed of four Town Council members, three school board members and the school superintendent. The group meets once a month.

“They have a good balance of what the city wants and what the school system needs, and in turn what city can provide and what the school system can do without,” said Amanda Brown, chairwoman of the council’s Ordinance Committee, which will review the proposal.

The city government funds the school district but under state law has no line-item control over where funds are spent.

Last year’s budget negotiations were marked by particularly contentious relations between the two panels. Superintendent Salvatore Corda’s proposed 7.7 percent spending increase was cut to 3.8 percent by the Common Council.

The move was met with comments from one side that the school district was wasteful, and the other said the city was anti-education.

In the aftermath, the council and school board met in July about creating a joint committee and agreed to meet again in September, but that meeting never occurred.

This year’s budget season went much smoother, with Corda requesting a 4.9 percent increase and receiving a 4.7 percenthike.

The joint committee would ensure that the budget process would go even more smoothly in the future, Brown said.

“Each of these are different entitites and neither one has control over the other. That said, the only way to have balance between the Board of Education and Common Council is if we have communication all year long,” she said.

School board members have been receptive to the idea, Brown said.

Did Brown talk to all the BOE members? Because the BOE last year was receptive as well, and we can see how that all came out. See, Corda, resistant.

Board of Education Chairwoman Susan Hamilton and school board Finance Committee member Bruce Kimmel, a former Common Council member, plan to attend tonight’s meeting.

They support the concept but said they have questions.

“I believe any kind of communication we have is good,” Hamilton said, “I’m open to it.”

What communication does Hamilton have with the Council? I haven’t seen her at their meetings, which if you want to work through the process angle, her name would surface on committee and council  meeting minutes, right? FOI comes in handy, eh?

The original push to create a city committee to oversee education spending came at a time when the school board’s committees were not actively meeting, Kimmel said.

“There seemed to be a void and extreme difficulties communicating with the board,” he said of the climate during his time on the Common Council from 1997 to 2005. Kimmel served on the council’s Finance Committee during that time, including four years as chairman.

“All that is a thing of the past; it’s currently a very vibrant committee system. So to call for committee on education is now coming in a very different context. The question is, do they want to create a committee that is constructive or do they want to do what they wanted to do two years ago?”

One year, Mr. Kimmel, not two. But why not initiate a meeting of the minds from the BOE side? Mr. Burnett?

source: Advocate, Council, school board to talk better communication, By Alexandra Fenwick, 04/30/2008