Board Meeting 6-20-07

Wednesday’s Board Meeting –

Hello My Fellow Espanola-NEA Members –

I sat through most of the board meeting last Wednesday evening at CVMS and I thought I would share with you what my perceptions are of the part of the meeting for which I was present.

One of the over riding perceptions I have received from this and a couple of other board meetings I have observed is how once again power and politics is playing a role where it has no place. What do I mean by this?

At a previous meeting there was on the agenda, under consent items, an item to approve the creation of a local labor board. One of the board members, Joann Salazar, objected to the item being included. It was her opinion, and she expressed herself eloquently, that not enough research and investigation had been done to make a decision at this time, and asked that this particular item be removed from the consent items list for further study and investigation. Her request, was backed by Joe Romero, who stated that in his opinion if any board member objected to any consent item that the item should be removed from the consent list. For those of you who don’t frequent school board meetings, items on the consent list are voted on, en masse, not individually, so it is not possible to vote for item one and against item two, for example. Board president Andrew Chavez did not accept either Mrs. Salazar’s motion to remove the item, or Mr. Romero’s supporting her in his pointing out that previously on the school board that item would be removed, that a motion was not needed, that all that was needed was for one member to object to any particular item. He forced a vote on the consent items, Joann Salazar voted no, and made it clear her vote was based on her objection to the creation of the local labor board at this time. It is important to note that she did not say she was opposed to a local labor board, only that she felt there were many unanswered questions regarding the value and the costs of creating one that needed answering prior to approval. Everyone else voted yes, the motion carried and our school board voted to create a local labor board, which will have to be funded by district funds, office space, staffing, phones, lawyers, legal fees, etc, all unknown at this time. Politics? Best use of district funds?

This past Wednesday’s meeting the issue of selecting a new school board member came up. Apparently from what I was able to understand of the conversation (sometimes the board members did not speak directly into their microphones) there are 4 applicants, two favored by Mr. Chavez and Mr. Valerio, and two others. Mr. Chavez and Mr. Valerio seemed to attempt to eliminate two of the 4 applicants immediately in the interests of saving time and so as to not have to interview all 4 of them. Mrs. Salazar and Mr. Romero wanted to create some sort of mutually agreed upon criteria for judging all 4 applicants, and possibly eliminating a couple of them based on these mutually agreed upon criteria.

There was some finagling going on there that I could not quite follow, followed by a vote, on what, I am not quite sure, but the result of the vote was 2 to 2. Dr. Cockerham declared the vote to be a yes, based on the fact that it was not defeated. I apologize for not having caught more of that exchange, but I found it very interesting that a tie vote between the board members was declared for one side or the other by Dr. Cockerham. Politics?

The net result of all the discussion about selecting the fifth board member (Recall that Joe Guillen resigned to become director of the state school board association.) was that Mr. Chavez would meet with Dr. Cockerham on Monday, June 25, and using lists provided by the other board members they would create the list of criteria by which all 4 applicants applications would be judged. Then on Tuesday the 26th, using that list, the 4 applicants would be winnowed to 2. Finally, I believe, there will be a special board meeting, open to the public is my understanding, where the school board will interview, in public, the two finalists. This meeting will be at CVMS Wednesday the 27th, at regular board meeting time. I have no idea if they will make their decision at that time or not. If it all sounds fuzzy, that’s because it was really hard to follow, and audience participation (as in, excuse me, can you repeat that?) is definitely frowned upon.

If you are in the least interested in who is going to fill that 5th seat, I strongly recommend you attend the board meeting, which I believe is at 5 pm CVMS Wednesday 6/27/07. You may not get to say a thing, or participate in any way, but at least you will see how our elected officials, our elected leaders, operate. This will help us tremendously during negotiations in our collective bargaining, and in deciding how involved we want to be in local elections in the future.

One of the most important, and interesting things I have learned in my 3 weekends of training is to discover how very fragile our right to collective bargaining is. Every time the legislature meets, (every year) it is possible for them to pass laws limiting our rights as people and as employees. Our participation and involvement at local, state, and national level is incredibly important. I urge you to be involved, be informed, be educated and to participate.

Again, more later.