FEAC Meeting 11/03/09 FEAC Finalizes Recommendations to present to the Board of Education

The FEAC had their last meeting for the year on Tuesday 11/03/09 to finalize their recommendations for School Redistricting to present to the Washington County Board of Education.  

There was a lot of information gone over in this meeting in an attempt to wrap things up before the redistricting proposal is due to the BOE.  The full minutes will eventually be posted on the Washington County Board of Education FEAC website (as are all previous minutes).  The website has also been updated with all of the current proposals for redistricting with boundaries for each district.  I would highly recommend all interested parties visit the WCBOE website as well as the Herald Mail website to get additional information regarding the overall redistricting plan.  This blog focuses on the Boonsboro/Keedysville community and so the information shared about the meeting will omit other areas.  I also highly recommend interested parties to attend Board of Education meetings and future FEAC meetings if at all possible.

• A petition of 97 names of Keedysville residents who opposed the proposal to send our children to Rockland Woods was presented by Keedysville/Boonsboro representative Lorraine O'Connor to Staff for them to include in the presentation to the Board of Education.  Thank you to those concerned residents who went door to door to collect the signatures and those who signed this petition.
  
• The previous revelation that a new school being built in South County was not on the docket until 2018 came up and the recommendation was eventually passed to have the Board of Education review their capital expenditures in the CIP to raise the priority of this expansion happening due to the obvious need.  I am certain that I did not word this exactly right as there was a lot of debate about how exactly to word the recommendation but that is the essence of it.
• Deputy Superintendent Boyd Michaels shared the information that they reviewed the proposal to send approximately 20 Keedysville students to Pleasant Valley instead of Rockland Woods and the school would be able to accommodate the additional students without having to add staff.  
• The question about the usage of the area behind to soccer fields as a prime location for a new Boonsboro school was met with some hesitation from Executive Director of School Operations Rob Rollins who explained there were some stormwater issues as well as traffic issues that would have to be addressed and it may not serve the best needs of the school although he said when they do make the decision to look at that area for a school, all viable locations will be considered.  Which led into a conversation about...
• Site selection. Recommendation to the board to get FEAC involved on the front end of site selection spurred a great deal of debate.  Boyd Michaels and Rob Rollins both discussed the need for confidentiality for the selection process due to the unintended consequence of having the information shared with public, one of which would be to take away negotiating power for the real estate purchase and inflate the price.  Washington County  purchases the land for schools and in some cases use a third party to complete the transaction. The State of Maryland allows for meetings involving real estate selection to be closed to the general public due to the sensitivity of the information.  
• The magnet program at Boonsboro sparked a great deal of heated debate.  FEAC CoChair Adam Lewis held fast to the belief that if you take the program out of Boonsboro, several of the parents would follow the program giving voluntary relief to the school.  Lorraine O'Connor disputed that and referred back to the recommendation made a couple of years ago which led to outrage from the community.  FEAC committee member Bert Iseminger agreed with Lorraine and said he was against taking away such an important program from any school and felt test scores would suffer as a result.  A vote was held and the motion to recommend to the BOE to consider removing the magnet program for further relief of Boonsboro passed with only Lorraine O'Connor and Bert Iseminger voting against the proposal.

So what happens next?  The FEAC Committee will present their completed recommendations to the Board of Education on November 17th at 6pm.  The Board of Education can send it back to them with additional direction to revisit portions of it (as they did last time).  There will be a series of public hearings on the matter during the month of January and further meetings during the month of February.  The final decision will probably happen at the end of February or the beginning of March. 

Although the FEAC Committee makes it's recommendations to the Board of Education, the Board can elect to accept all of it, parts of it, or none of it.  So in other words, it is still possible they can decide to send the Keedysville students to Rockland Woods. 

It is important to recognize the FEAC Committee for doing the right thing by voting against breaking up Keedysville.  It is a very difficult job they have and one they receive no compensation for.  Although I do not agree with all of their decisions or their methodology in coming up with those decisions, I do respect the time and energy spent in doing what they believe is right.