{"id":182,"date":"2006-10-27T08:29:52","date_gmt":"2006-10-27T12:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/?p=182"},"modified":"2006-10-27T08:43:26","modified_gmt":"2006-10-27T12:43:26","slug":"bep-review-102306","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/?p=182","title":{"rendered":"BEP Review 10\/23\/06 (again)"},"content":{"rendered":"

My apologies for this recap: something happened to this week’s posts. The BEP Review was the important one, so the following is a recap of the meeting, replacing the original post from Oct. 23. Which just evaporated overnight.<\/em><\/p>\n

Monday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s BEP Review Committee meeting was very long, with protracted discussions about adequacy (lacking a clear definition to everyone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s satisfaction at this point), equity, and whether the committee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recommendations should be purely in the advocacy of education or should incorporate the Finance Commissioner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s request<\/a> to delay a recommendation until one can be found that falls within the State\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fiscal guidelines \u00e2\u20ac\u201c does this sound familiar<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Bill Nolan and Steve Jenkins were also in attendance from Oak Ridge, along with Dawn Robinson from Cleveland, and several other representatives of municipal school systems. I truly believe that having this constituency present makes a difference \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Richard Kitzmiller of Kingsport is the only member of the committee who is a vocal advocate for municipal school systems, and it would be too easy for them to simply outvote him if not for an audience of affected systems.<\/p>\n

Comptroller John Morgan was quite critical of the Peabody Alternative<\/a>, pointing out that it would increase friction over annexation (but could it really get any worse?) and complicates the role of county IDB\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in offering tax incentives. The committee’s listing of positives and negatives for each option is here<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Many voiced discomfort in voting on a recommendation that day, as they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d just received more than a hundred pages of new information at the start of the meeting\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 it would be like us getting the budget at the beginning of a meeting, then voting on it in the same meeting with no time to study it. However, there were also a few (from the big city systems, of course) that were adamant that some recommendation be sent to the Legislature this year \u00e2\u20ac\u201c before receiving Education Summit or the Gates Foundation input on defining adequacy, both of which are estimated to take 12-18 months.<\/p>\n

The ultimate outcome of the day was :<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. BEP Review committee will issue an “INTERIM ” report<\/a> in response to the Legislative mandate of Nov. 1 that includes recommendations on ELL, AT Risk, Growth, etc. ( things they can agree on as immediate priority), and will continue to work, study and bring a final recommendation on System Level Capacity by Feb. 15th.\n
  2. They will meet again on Nov. 21 and continue today’s discussions about the pluses and minuses of the various models being considered. In addition John Morgan will bring his model to the table for discussion.
    \nThere was evidence that some committee members are beginning to understand the need to identify “what is adequate” before we determine formulas for system level capacity. <\/p>\n
  3. It was obvious that there was no way to take a vote today on system level capacity models, and that there was no consensus about what would be better at this point. So, in essence the motion was a delay for now, but it appeared that the committee is dedicated to bringing a recommendation on this issue during this legislative session. We will need to continue to work diligently to seek solutions that produce a win-win for all districts in the state.\n<\/ol>\n

    Although this changes from one meeting to the next, it was my sense that they are now willing to give some serious thought to John Morgan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s proposal<\/a> (which would be good for us, but would result in a net property tax increase for most areas).<\/p>\n

    The next meeting is scheduled during the week of Thanksgiving, when it’s likely that many fewer interested parties will be able to attend. I simply don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t trust them acting without strong representation from City school systems in the audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    My apologies for this recap: something happened to this week’s posts. The BEP Review was the important one, so the following is a recap of the meeting, replacing the original post from Oct. 23. Which just evaporated overnight. Monday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s BEP … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.citizennetmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}