Board Of Education Meeting 06/14/2021; Will Vote On Adopting Coherent Governance Framework

The Appleton Area School District Board of Education is holding their regular Board meeting on 06/14/2021 at 6PM. This will be following a work session that begins at 4PM.

In person public appearances are still suspended even though only 33 people in the whole of Appleton are known to have an active case of coronavirus. Put another way, only 1/25th of 1 percent of Appleton’s 75,000 residents currently have coronavirus, but the Board of Education is still refusing to allow in-person public participation.

The work session is devoted to reviewing and finalizing the Coherent Governance framework. Then, during the Board meeting proper, they will be voting on officially adopting that framework.

For whatever reason, the person who put together the document showing the policy opted to create a separate document for each individual section of the policy. The result is that there are 31 separate 1-2 page documents that the public has to download individually in order to find out what this proposed governance policy is, instead of just one document with the entire policy in it.

For the public’s benefit, I put all of these documents together into one PDF and created a table of contents for it so that it’s hopefully more coherent and readable than the [garbage] format provided by the district. There are some minor formatting changes, but the text has not been altered. You may download that here:

There are a couple policy items I found particularly notable.

1. The Board Purpose

“The Appleton Area School District Board of Education represents, leads and serves the owners and holds itself accountable to them by committing to act in their best interests and by ensuring that all Board and district action is consistent with law and the Board’s policies.The Board’s purpose is to assure that the district achieves the results described in the Board’s Results policies and that it operates according to the values expressed in the Board’s Operational Expectations policies.”

[The “owners” are taxpayers, and I would be interested in knowing how many taxpayers actually feel the Board and the district’s administration team are competently carrying out their purpose.]

2. The Treatment of Community Stakeholders

“The Superintendent shall maintain an organizational culture that treats parents and citizens with respect, dignity and courtesy.

The Superintendent will:

1. Protect confidential information.
2. Effectively handle complaints.
3. Create and maintain organizational commitment to:
   1. Individual differences of opinion
   2. Including people in decisions that affect them
   3. Open and honest communication at all levels
   4. Predominant focus on achieving the Board’s Results policies
   5. Open, responsive and welcoming conditions throughout the district.”

[“Stakeholders” are parents, and I am curious how parents feel they have been and are being treated by the Board and the district administration team.]

Not only will the Board be voting on adopting the Coherent Governance framework, but they will also be voting on some other items such as grants, an extension of the Scullen Leadership Center’s lease, and a request to name the Kalaidascope Leadership Academy’s community garden after Dr. Allen J. Grant.

The Safe and Resilient Return report is not going to be given but the Board will get to listen to a special presentation entitled “Reflections from Principals” which I’m sure will be very scintillating.

View the work session details and agenda here: http://go.boarddocs.com/wi/aasd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=C3FLMY56E6E9

View the regular board meeting details and agenda here: http://go.boarddocs.com/wi/aasd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=C34NTL5BA39F