Input to the Board
Assignment
Round 3: Input into Board Decisions
For this activity we’ll be in groups of 4 or 5 again.
Tomorrow, the Boards for each school will meet and discuss some of the projects that they need to make decisions on – for the future health of the schools in each community.
We’ll announce each project on the screen in front of the room. We’ll take about it for a minute to answer any questions about this project, and then ask you to write your thoughts and recommendations on a piece of paper.
Please label your paper with the name of the project – and then your recommendation.
After we go through all the projects we’ll collect your recommendations and give them to the Boards tomorrow.
Dan Hoesing
I’m standing between you and some cookies, so this will be short.
When I went to school, we sat in desks in rows in classrooms. Today education needs to be more hands-on. We need to come up with these solutions. It’s up to you guys to find them, not just up to us.
This next part shows you that the board’s goals remain the same. Whether or not you receive a diploma is up to you. We have to move forward, we need to develop a sustainable model. We continually look at how to keep our administrative costs down so we’ll be looking to you to learn how to create equal opportunities for students in all our communities. We have to create ways for us to communicate with each other.
We also have to learn how to work in complex systems. Sometimes you hold us back and sometimes we hold you back from changing. Systems are called emerging because they’re always becoming something else. We know that we can do more together as a group than we can do in isolation. It seems like an impossible task because the solution is unpredictable and the decision-making needs to be decentralized.
We need systems that support all of us being more innovative and more forgiving in trying new things. Sometimes the best learning occurs at the edge of chaos, which is where chaos and order meet. We learn how to manage chaos.
Darwin said: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
If you had the choice would you want us to be focused on how to cut the budget or how to generate revenue?
Michael Kaufman
I want you to take the piece of paper you have to write your recommendations to the board. The issue first is the administration has to cut half a million dollars out of the budget, so make your recommendations for either cutting budgets or creative ideas for making money. Dan will read through the questions here for you to answer. We'll collect the papers and put them together for the board.
Link to the Questions
Link to the Answers
Dan Hoesing
I’m sure you wonder why we brought you here today. This video will help you understand why. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USn5t5nQWU8
Remember you’re an extremely important part of our success. You have to make it work otherwise we’ll become worse and we’ll listen to you less. Help us make the changes that are necessary to you.
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