Per usual, the agendized items of the Board of Education were dispatched in the blink of an eye, but its meeting was an hour long and spirited. Reporter Dan Stork explains why…
The Board of Education of the Morongo Unified School District conducted its meeting in front of a full house. The size of the audience had nothing to do with the meeting’s action agenda. Rather, the attendees—District employees, both teachers and classified employees—had come out to support their unions’ negotiating teams, as the Morongo Teachers Association and the Classified School Employees Association get ready to enter bargaining sessions with the District. During public comment, speakers from both groups reiterated this theme: We’ve sacrificed and done without for many years. Now there’s some money coming in, and there’s an education-friendly governor in Sacramento, and it’s time we got some tangible appreciation. As one speaker, Shelly Howe, put it: “If you want to take care of your students, you must take care of your teachers.”
Apropos of this theme, Assistant Superintendent Doug Weller listed sunshine items that the District wants to bring to negotiations with the MTA, including a desire to change the evaluation interval for tenured teachers from every five years to every other year.
On the action agenda, the Board deferred ratification of multiple policy revisions, due to the absences (for illnesses) of members Ed Will and Ron Palmer.
