I have received a few questions from stakeholders regarding the attendance at our Town Hall. While members of our Board and Superintendent’s Committee were aware of and extremely supportive of capturing community budget input via a Town Hall, our town hall was not intended or advertised as an “official” school board meeting. The protocol we used in our town hall was adapted from one of our partnering divisions that called for presenters to share a hard copy of their remarks so that the information is thus shared verbatim with other members of the governing and administrative body. As our first budget “town hall” of this variety, but for the aforementioned confusion regarding the nature of the meeting, the process went well. Please accept my apology for not communicating the nature of the meeting as clearly as it should have been.
Please know that I speak with our Board members and superintendents regularly. Each is very committed to the students that they send to us and extremely proud of the school that the support of their communities has helped to create. From my vantage point, I see a governance and administrative structure that knows and appreciates MLWGS as one of their schools (as they do technically own it) and that is as committed to the students here as they are to the students in all of their schools. This being said and as presenters indicated, we do have some challenges and I am confident we will meet them.
This period of fiscal constraint has provided the opportunity for all of us to closely evaluate the “what” and the “how” of the significant value our school adds to our students’ education and to benchmark this wonderful school against others in the region, commonwealth, nation, and beyond. I invite you to share my confidence that, while the fiscal way ahead remains a bit choppy, MLWGS will emerge from this period of fiscal constraint being as strong in solidarity and constancy of purpose as at any point in its short history.
If you have any questions, please direct them to me: [email protected]; 804-354-680o; or stop in for a visit. Go Dragons!
