Scot Graden's Blog

I’m looking for some feedback on what the community finds useful about our website and also what are some features we should look to add in order to improve its usefulness. If you have looked around recently, you probably have noticed that over the last 4 months we have updated our individual school pages, community education and athletics.

The athletics page has taken some giant steps forward in the last couple months. Athletic Director Rob White has connected with a couple students who seem to “get” technology better than most and are eager to help.

As you can imagine, it takes numerous staff members to create and maintain accurate content for the site. We currently do not have a dedicated webmaster. We have our system administrator – Ken Lupo – handling the duties along with keeping our network and email servers up to date and secure, managing our network software and troubleshooting IT issues at Union School. He does an excellent job of keeping our technology backbone in good shape. With this format we lean on office staff and administrators to manage and post the information.

Please post your comments here so we can learn more about what our website users would like to see.

Tonight’s Board of Education meeting was well attended – by Saline High students. I can tell it is getting close the end of the semester. While I am sure many of the students attend for the pure entertainment value, my guess is the requirement for attendance that some of our government and social studies classes have helps motivate them to attend.

At any rate, tonight’s meeting went well. We were fortunate to be able to congratulate Ms. Erica Peplinski, a 5th grade teacher at Heritage School, on her recent Sierra Club Huron Valley Group Award of Merit for her Wetlands research project. Previous winners of this award include State House Rep. Lynn Rivers, and State Sen. Liz Brater.

Director of Facilities Doug Bacon delivered an informative report on our snow removal and winter maintenance practices. He was able to show how his department manages to move snow and provide salt for almost 50 acres of parking lots and sidewalks. He also highlighted the benefits of our cooperative salt purchase and storage program with the City of Saline. The slideshow file will be available to be viewed on the front page of our website by the end of the day on January 10th.

We also set the agenda for our joint Board of Education/Administrative Retreat. The meeting will be held at Union School on January 15th.

The next regular board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, January 22 at 6:30pm at Union School.

I hope everyone had a wonderful break. We are set to get back to business on Monday. January will be a busy month – we will begin the board policy review, 2008-2009 budget process and have a joint Administrative staff and Board of Education meeting on January 15th. Not to mention, exams the week of January 21st and a new semester starting January 28th. We should also get some news around January 11th from Lansing regarding the State of Michigan budget, which could have an impact on both the current budget (hopefully not!) and next year’s budget.

Reminder – Monday, January 21st there is no school in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Click here to view the school calendar for 2007-2008.

Over the past year there has been discussion regarding the selection of dates for future school elections. With the new Election Consolidation law, school districts either need to stay with May or move to November. Moving to November means getting lost in an already busy campaign season. In addition, it would require extending current terms having new members join the board in January – in the middle of a school year. The issue with staying in the May election window is the cost. The school districts must cover the full cost of the election, as there are no other municipalities to share the cost – like in November. For example, in November townships, cities and the county all have elections that would divide the overall cost to each entity that put candidates or proposals on the ballot.

One compromise that we have our eye on is the August election date option. House Bill 4507 was proposed to give districts the ability to schedule August regular elections. This would mean that every other year we would share the date with a primary and as a result share the cost. This bill had momentum in the Fall legislative session, but at the end it did not see action. It should be back early in the next session.

The board would have needed to act by December 31st to move to November. At our last meeting, following a discussion on the merits of each election date, the board chose not to act. One of the issues with moving to November, once a district moves, they are not allowed to move back to May. This non-action sets us up with May 6th, 2008 as our next regular election and leaves us open to respond to the August option if it becomes available – however, it would be for the 2009 election.

More information about the timeline for the May 6th election will be available in January.

I had the opportunity this morning to hand over the 1st place award for our recent corporate gingerbread house contest to Steve Babiak, owner of Benny’s Bakery. Of course, I was able to multi-task and picked up a couple donuts for breakfast. Steve and his wife SHS graduate Erin (formerly Bowbeer) purchased the bakery a couple of years ago and has been busy ever since. He credited his staff member Robin Schantz as the talent behind the award winning house. If you want to view the house in person – you had better hurry. The bakery will be closed from December 23 to January 3.

Some of you may have noticed the article regarding a greenhouse project in the Tuesday edition of the Ann Arbor News. If not, here is the link to the article. The article generated several calls to Doug Bacon yesterday to offer funds, as well as some in-kind services on the project. We greatly appreciate the support. Seeing Joey and Mr. Ealy talking about the greenhouse brought home one of the reasons why Saline is great community. For those of you who have been around a while, Mr. Ealy was the face of the Saline High School Science Department for many years. His ability to pass on the history of the greenhouse to a student who wants to help also passes along a tradition of having pride in our school district. Good luck Joey – it’s going to take hard work to pull the project off – we know you can do it.

Thanks also to Doug Bacon for coordinating that effort from the school side. If you have questions about project, give Doug a call at 429-8007.

The purpose of this blog is to provide quick updates on various issues impacting Saline Area Schools. I plan to post information on weekly basis. Feel free to send me your thoughts on issues you would like to me to address here. My email address is gradens@saline.k12.mi.us