Board Meeting Reflection

Attending an AA meeting was intimidating at first, but it was one of the most moving and enlightening experiences of my life. I attended a meeting called the “Nooners Group” at the Serenity Club in Alexandria. The group had six men and one woman in attendance. The members were mostly white and were about 40 years or older. The group seemed to be in a middle or lower socio-economic level. The meeting started with several short readings. I was invited to read the AA preamble. Then, the group leader suggested reading a story from the ‘big blue book.” The story focused on a woman’s denial of her addiction and eventual acceptance of her alcoholism. After the reading, almost every person spoke about their own addiction and how it related to the story of the woman. After the time of sharing, the group held hands, said the AA chants, and recited the Lord’s Prayer. Afterwards, some group members lingered to interact and chat. I was so moved by the power of the meeting. At times, it felt very serious and emotional, but there were moments of levity, where the group would laugh or nod in agreement. Overall, the meeting was emotional, inspirational, and healing.

Local school board meetings are a venue that allows the public to attend and be a part of the educational process. These meetings provide community members with important information about upcoming events so that they are able to be well informed of the happenings that are taking place within the school system in which their child attends. Along with being able to learn about what is taking place within the school, it also allows parents and parent groups the opportunity to express their opinions and concerns about matters that could likely affect their children. Monthly school board meetings are a way to help establish and maintain open lines of communication between the school and community members. By allowing the community members the opportunity to be heard, it further enhances the relationship between the school and the community.

This paper is a reflective report of the authors’ personal observations, thoughts, and experiences from attending one of the ‘Alcohol Anonymous (AA) meetings’ at Burnaby Fellowship Centre Society. It is a drop-in social club for recovering alcoholics and addicts where its members describe their experiences with alcohol or drug addiction, how they came to the society, and how their lives have changed as a result of attending the program. Burnaby Fellowship Centre Society is part of the AA group which is a self-supporting and independent body. Membership is open to anyone who wants to recover from addictions and the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop the addictions. The main purpose of the AA meetings is to help its members

The meeting continued with board member Jason Hopp presenting Dr. Matthew Flannery, formerly the principal of Shiloh Hills Elementary School, for a roll call vote to approve him as the new Assistant Superintendent of the WIlson School District. Mr. Hopp spoke for approximately two minutes about the credentials, reputation, and record of quality performance that Dr. Flannery has documented during his time with the district. A five-year contract was approved on an 8-1 vote, with Mr. Martin voting “no”. It may be worth observing that Mr. Martin is known as the “no man” of the current board, and often tows one of the more conservative lines of all board members. One can speculate that he may have felt

For the example in this memo, I will be focusing on the funding of educational programs. As you are aware, 38% of the property taxes fund school programs such as athletics, arts, and all day kindergarten. Due to the great recession, property values here in the Knoxtown area were greatly affected and a majority of properties lost nearly 50% of their assessed value. A significant portion of our constituents also lost their homes. Due in some part to these two factors, our projected revenue was not met. The overall revenue for the city was down 42% resulting in a serious budget shortfall. The loss of these property taxes resulted in the cutting of many school programs. The children of our constituents not have fewer athletic and arts programs to choose from as well as eliminating full day kindergarten for the next term. If corrections to the budget are not made, some bus services and reduced lunch programs will also be eliminated.

Bureau Valley’s school board is comprised of seven members. Each member represents a section of the district. These board members are very prominent figures in our communities; they have much of the communities support. Although popularity, may not be what is best for the students. Looking at the Bureau Valley school board mandates, they are ultimately only required to do 4 hours of training and attend a few meetings when elected (Bureau Valley 2013, 120). Unfortunately, it is 2016 and the board member with the most recent training of any sort happened in March of 2014, almost two years ago. David E. Lee and Daniel W. Eadens, authors of “The Problem: Low-Achieving Districts and Low-Performance Boards,” find that school boards like Bureau Valley’s are not uncommon. Lee and Eadens find that most school board members only receive about “six hours of training per year,” compared to Bureau Valley’s four per election, our board is severely undereducated (Lee and Eadens 2014, 3).

During the semester I attended different 12 step program in the South Bronx in churches around my community. Firstly, most of the people that attends to the meeting are Latinos. I was surprised to observe many Latinos in the meeting. My experience is that Latinos does not believe in mental health treatment. However, the room was filled of male adult’s Hispanics. The first time, I greeted the speaker who explained me how the meeting will progress. The meeting starts with a pray, and a brief introduction of each of the participants, just the name and the reason they are in the meeting. The speaker informed me as a group they focused on the abstinence and positive thinking for the most part. AA is trying to promote the idea of a superior believe

The Hallsville Independent School District board meeting was very conductive. An agenda was handed out to everyone present, and it had every point to be made at the meeting neat and organized for everyone to follow. The meeting is mostly open to the public which provides a great way for everyone to feel up to date with what is going on in the school district, and be able to help in any way they can when problems arise. Once the superintendent had finished speaking about who was being recognized, the updated itinerary, and the HISD Education Foundation Report, he closed the meeting from the public. School board meetings benefit the community by letting the people not associated with a job through the school know what is going on in the district.

The Englewood Board of Education meeting took place at the Grieco Elementary School in Englewood, NJ. On March 17, 2016 and began promptly at 6:30 p.m. in the Cafeteria. The board is made up of nine board members all sitting at a long table with the President of the board, Mr. Devry Pazant who sat at the center of the table beside the newly appointed Superintendent, Mr. Robert Kravitz.

Some students wanted to protest and “others wanted to march on over to the next school board meeting to demand that students be included in the reform efforts and have votes on major policy issues that involved our conversion to smaller schools. Still others wanted vaguely to “fight the power.”(Koppelman, p. 308-309)

The failure of the school’s principal to call a board meeting to hear student’s list of concerns, was the result of the walkout of students at Edcouch-Elsa School. Furthermore, some concerns were drawn up by students in regards to the policy and conditions in the school. The Mexican-American students threw the doors open of classrooms and left the school to protest their anger. All of this was due to the increased school policy segregation of race. Examples of this, the High school classes were organized according to race and students were not

All board members/trustees, Interim superintendent, assistant superintendents, executive assistant, and the principals were in attendance. Although, the vice principal for Sunny Hills was proxy for the principal and the student board member was not present at the meeting.

Every school district has board meetings throughout the school year. Unfortunately, many parents, community members, & school personnel do not attend such important meetings because they don’t realize or understand the importance of such board meetings or how informative they can be. According to Kankakee School District (2017), the Kankakee School District Board of Education is composed of seven elected members, who were elected by the citizens of Kankakee to serve a four-year term that do not receive no salary for they services, are committed to ensuring a quality of educational excellence that will enhance the opportunities and challenges facing today’s student and additional responsibilities that board members include are selection of the District superintendent, developing general polices according to wishes of the community and requirements of law, hiring school personnel based upon recommendation of the Superintendent and the Assistant Superintendent of Personnel, adopts salary schedules, approves funds to finance school operations, must adopt and review the annual operating budget for the District, and setting the property tax levy to produce adequate funds to meet the District’s financial needs ranks among the responsibilities of the Board of Education (Retrieved from https://www.ksd111.org/domain/68). For this paper, the Kankakee School District board meeting will be used, information learned from board meeting, use of

The meeting began when the school board members entered the large group instruction room and took their seats at a panel table angled to the side of the audience. The school board consists of nine elected members from the community. The members are as follows: Paul Ridley (President), Pat Vigliotta (Vice President), Helen Cumminskey

Teamwork is the joint action by a group to complete a given task. This was displayed by group 20 as each member contributed their individual knowledge and skills towards the team as well as the course objective.