Emily Rose Skirtich

HTSD School Board Meeting

This particular school board meeting struck me as a typical meeting upon my first impression of

the meeting.  However, after listening to a few minutes of the deliberation, I felt that this meeting

was a much more involved group of citizens and school board members.  The first order of

business was the personnel report, with the approving vote of the retiring teachers across the

district and other miscellaneous positions for interim teachers and summer custodial workers.

            I was fortunate enough to attend this particular meeting because one of the line items to

be discussed was the technology budget for the upcoming 2013-2014 academic year for the

entire district.   My initial reaction was jaw dropping, as the first draft of the amount requested

from the school board was approximately $1,000,000.  However, since the last meeting of 6 May

2013, the board, headed by Mr. Ed McKaveney, District Technology Director, worked to cut the

budget in half to about $500,000.   There were some items eliminated to try to whittle the costs,

such as new laptops that the Middle School had requested to replace the five year-old ones.

When the board deferred to the Assistant Superintendent, Dr. Jo Welter, asking how the items

that were eliminated were selected to be removed from the proposal while others, such as salaries

for the Instructional Technology Specialists in the schools and technical upgrades in the 5

schools within the district.  After that meeting, the board voted to increase that budget from

$512,000 to $612,000, which had been whittled down from over $1,000,000 prior to this

working meeting.  Many of the constituents of Hampton Township attended the meeting,

questioning all of the funds that were suggested, asking if they were completely necessary to

implement into the school.  In no uncertain terms did Dr. Welter defend the amount necessary to

“better improve the learning environment for all our schools across the district,” and held her
 Emily Rose Skirtich

ground as other board members speckled her with interrogations about the various elements of

the budget.  Some of the items eliminated from the budget were the Chromebooks that the high

school instructional technology specialist requested for the high school to utilize them for

research projects and streamline group work more efficiently, rather than e-mailing any research

or group work back-and-forth, the Google Suite allows students to more effectively

communicate and maintain their group work.  Although this Suite can function on any laptop,

desktop computer, or mobile device, the Chromebooks present the interface for students to work

in that Google Suite with the machine that operates in tandem with the Suite, enabling features

that otherwise would not be available, like streamlined saving, extra data storage, and

compatibility.  

            The atmosphere of the room seemed calm before the discussion about the technology

budget, but when the topic was breached, it was quite a tense setting as we sat in the Middle

School library.  The board members were quite stuffy regarding the “exorbitant technology

plan,” as they dubbed it within a few moments of discussing the proposal.  Dr. Welter, who

helped to create the proposal, stood firmly rooted in her belief that each item was considered for

a long period of time while composing the proposal, especially when it came to integrating new

technology pieces into more of the classrooms.  She did explain to the board members and few

citizens present that there were some iPads and MacBooks for student use, but there not

anywhere enough of them to ensure that all students had an equal access to them while inside the

classroom.  This was a problem that Dr. Welter deemed as “inexcusable” and “reparable by the

board’s commitment to equality amongst all students.”  I was surprised that Dr. Welter took on

the offensive so brazenly, not shying away from the fact that she has requested almost the same
 Emily Rose Skirtich

amount of funds from the school board the past three years in order to create real, effective

change for the school district.  One of the most heated part of the discussion was the salaries and

benefits that all of the IT personnel from the district would receive, including the part-time IT

staff members who reaped benefits in addition to salaries.  Since the discussion could not be

finished within one working session, and the representative from the teachers’ union had a few

stark comments that sparked a bit more of a debate amongst the board members deciding what an

“appropriate amount” would be to increase the IT staff with all of the new implementations put

into place, the discussion is set to continue at the next meeting in July.