Working Smarter

I appreciated the hopeful, yet pragmatic tone of President Obama’s address yesterday.There is no doubt that things will probably get worse before they begin to get better.We will be watching the legislature with interest and anticipation as its members grapple with ways to assist our state out of its current financial morass. What does that mean for us in USD 373? It means that we need to think about our current and future expenditures and continue to think about ways to work smarter and more creatively as we face the prospect of reduced budgets. One thing I have been thinking about is an employee idea bank, where our staff can make suggestions for saving money for the district. It is going to take all of us thinking and working collaboratively to move past our current situation.

I’ll be putting something out to staff in the near future regarding this project. It is still my fervent hope that we will be able to achieve budgetary reductions without having to eliminate any staff. If you have additional ideas, I would be happy to hear them. Thanks for all you continue to do for our students in USD 373.

New Year, New Ideas

Here we are at the start of a new year which, hopefully, brings new promise and better times to our country. I have recently been in two retreats with our administrators to address issues that will be facing us both in the immediate and more distant future. I will send out that information to staff this week. I am hopeful that we can collectively think of ways to continue to expand learning options for our students and to provide the necessary resources to support our staff. It will, undoubtedly, be a challenging budget year for us. However, we need to examine things we can do which do not necessarily cost money, but which might improve the educational opportunities we provide. I will once again be visiting with staffs in each of our buildings and departments in an effort to hear what staff members have to say about our district and where we are headed. I hope you will choose to join in those discussions. We spent a lot of time yesterday discussing how we might identify and address root causes of issues facing our district and, we hope to use some of the techniques we discussed in conversations with staff. I am meeting with the Sunset staff today so those staff members will be my guinea pigs with this process. I hope all of you returned to the new semester rejuvenated after the long break and prepared with the planning day yesterday. Thanks to those teachers who shared their thoughts with me regarding the benefits of the planning day to begin second semester.

We are undoubtedly going to have to challenge some of our assumptions this semester, and we are going to have to find ways to work together in the best interests of our students. I am confident that we can do so in such a way that will continue to move our school district forward. Thanks for going on this exciting journey with USD 373 and I look forward to your comments.