OFFICIAL MINUTES FROM THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES MEETING OF THE
ARKANSAS SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND
ARKANSAS SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF
The Board of Trustees for the Arkansas School for the Blind and the Arkansas School for the Deaf met for their monthly meeting on March 17, 2009.
Present: Pam Hyneman, Chairperson; Beth Gray, Vice-Chairperson; Andrew Tolbert, Secretary (via telephone conference call); Dr. Doug Watson, Board Member; Henrietta Williams, Board Member; Khayyam Eddings, A.S.B. Parent Representative; Janice Vaughn, A.S.D. Parent Representative; Jim Hill, A.S.B. Superintendent; Dr. Marcella Dalla Rosa, A.S.D. Superintendent; Katie Becker, Zania Musteen, Interpreters; Amanda Abernethy, Office of Attorney General; Members of the Deaf Community; Members of the Blind Community
Call to Order
Mrs. Hyneman called the meeting to order at 4:00 p.m. The
next board meeting was scheduled for April 21. Mr. Tolbert said he would not be
able to attend the next meeting but he could participate by conference call.
09-J-007 Motion to Approve Consent Items
Mrs. Hyneman asked for a motion to approve the Consent Items. Ms. Gray made the motion and Ms. Williams seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously.
Action Items
Board Manual
Mrs. Hyneman: On the action items, I was wondering how you feel if we postponed that until the very end and that way we would have x number of minutes and when we got to our time frame, we would just quit and go to the next one. This has to do with our board manual that we’re working on. I don’t want to get bogged down. We can do just a part of it and like we could leave at 5 o’clock. When we hit the 5 o’clock mark, we’ll just quit. How does that sound with y’all? Is that okay?
Ms. Williams: Well, actually Pam, I don’t know about the rest of the board members, but really in trying to look over the, what I am trying to say, the board governance and all of that, I’m not so sure that we should not put this off until a later time, because this document, I don’t think we should rush through it hastily, and it’s a lot that we have to sit down and really think about and go through it basically, which I think is what you are proposing, line by line, and I would rather we say next month or something like that, that
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Arkansas School for the Deaf
March 17, 2009
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we are going to talk about 1.1 to 1.5, and that way people can be better prepared for those sections. Because in going through it, it really is something that I am concerned about. The other thing that I noticed is that most of the information on this document has come from the School for the Deaf. From Haney? What is his name?
Mrs. Hyneman: Well she printed it out for us. It’s not that she did it. We did it together at a joint meeting, and one of the things about this, we’re in actually no hurry. We even talked about a separate meeting, but I thought we could get started because the very first part of it is not changeable. Like that one section and if you notice at the very end of it, each section is dated and affirmed with. So if we could get through one section today, we’ll just see how it goes and if we can’t, we’ll just re-evaluate. But if it’s in, we have extras with us and you know you have had this for two months. I’m in no hurry. I don’t want you to feel remotely stressed, but if we could postpone this until the end of this meeting and then we’ll just go to the very beginning of it because, once again, some of it’s law, especially that first page, that can’t be changed.
Ms. Williams: The other question that I had is, because I was concerned that the School for the Deaf was more involved, and I would like to ask Mr. Hill if he was involved in any of the changes and the organization of this.
Mrs. Hyneman: All of it.
Mr. Hill: Yes, I met with Marcella and Pam and we, I provided mostly the legal aspects of it and then we kind of coordinated on what’s in the other, the rest of the body of the document. And, you know, if there was changes other than what the board recommended the last time, I’m not aware of that.
Ms. Williams: Okay, so you don’t have the latest copy of the document?
Ms. Vaughn: I don’t. I have this one. I see y’all’s has what’s underlined.
Mrs. Hyneman: Everyone should have gotten one by mail.
Mrs. Vaughn: This is what I got.
Ms. Williams: I’m not trying to postpone it, but there are certain items in here that really kind of concern me that I think, you know, as a board we ought to really think about fully before we try to make this a part of our…
Mrs. Hyneman: Okay. I’ll reiterate what I just said, that we met, the three of us met. This is the exact same thing that we discussed before and we had them overnight y’all a copy and what’s in blue is a state law that cannot be changed. And basically the, most of this came from Mr. Hill’s old format. When you think it came from the Deaf School, we met at the Deaf School and had the meeting there. So let’s just table this, or postpone this until the end of the meeting and just see how much time we have and then we’ll just do a time factor and if it gets remotely, we can go three lines and quit. We’ll just see. We’ll just do that because I think it’s going to be short otherwise.
Ms. Williams: But it’s not something that we’re going to be acting on?
Mrs. Hyneman: No.
Ms. Williams: Okay. That’s fine.
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Arkansas School for the Deaf
March 17, 2009
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Mrs. Hyneman: I realize y’all aren’t as fast as I am and so we’re going to go at y’all’s pace because I don’t want a year from now, I go Pam Hyneman forced this down my throat. That’s not going to happen.
Ms. Williams: Oh, well, we won’t let that happen.
Laughter
(At this time, the meeting moved to the Arkansas School for the Deaf Agenda and the Arkansas School for the Blind Agenda. The board then returned to discussion of the Board Policy Manual).
Mrs. Hyneman: I’m just going to go over something that I think will alleviate your questions or stress. The three of us met. It happened to be at the Deaf School because that’s where a table was. C.J. happened to be there because that’s her area and actually Jim brought to us a board policy manual that they had started. I’m not sure, Jim how old was that, like in ’02-’03?
Mr. Hill: Most of it was in the Constitution.
Mrs. Hyneman: In the Constitution, and so after our last meeting, I realized a lot people had difficulty downloading it. I’m one of those that has trouble with my computer every time, out of the blue, so I asked C.J. to make a copy, and send to everyone, of what cannot be changed and the majority of it can’t be changed. I said the majority of it, a portion of it, cannot be changed and what I asked her to do to make it easier after our conversation, Henrietta, was to put it in a particular color and that wording cannot be changed. And what we also found out as we go through this is that we don’t do some of it anyway, but it is in our Constitution and it can’t be changed unless you go to a state level and it’s very minor wording that doesn’t really involve us. So we can do this in several different ways. The reason I asked to do it at the very end of the meeting is so the students could leave. We’ll see how much time we have left after both schools have gotten through their things, and then we can go through this, as opposed to having a completely separate meeting for the ones of us that live out of town. If we can just do a section, like maybe you suggested, per month to get this done. But basically it is already, we just took what they had already and took the part out that was public school that didn’t apply to the private schools and then incorporated what legally started our particular deaf and blind school on the get go. And for the ones that have nothing here, I asked C.J. to print out copies of what she did, typed out and mailed out to y’all. Now if y’all would rather, we can do it like Henrietta suggested. Because, once again, this is no particular time frame. It just needed to be done for a number of years. So, it’s really in black and white almost, but once again all of us need to look at it, and some of my questions that I tagged after reading again today that I would like to ask the attorney general’s office that had to step out. So, what we might do is this, is we’ve got to do our homework. We’ve got to read this before y’all get here, Okay? That’s why I had, the next
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Arkansas School for the Deaf
March 17, 2009
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day I called C.J. after I talked to everybody on my cell phone driving home, that we’ve got to get y’all to do this. Now we can do it one on one, line on line when we’re here if we can get it done that way. I don’t really care. I just think we need to go forth with this. I do have copies here, but once again, I’m a little uncomfortable to go forward with it because we don’t have our lawyer here if I’m not mistaken. Mandy left and so..
Ms. Williams: Excuse me. Has she seen this? Because before, Amy was ….
Mrs. Hyneman: Those are two separate things. Amy’s had to do with the schools’ policies. That was different.
Ms. Williams: Okay.
Mrs. Hyneman: And this has to do with our.. there was too many policies is what I’m saying. This strictly has to do with our policy that we, as a board, are creating for us. Actually we are sort of recreating it, what was already there that we can vote on.
Ms. Williams: But she still needs to look at it and I’m saying that Amanda just came back because she was off for a while and Amy was acting as our attorney.
Mrs. Hyneman: Oh, I see what you’re talking about. I was thinking about… right.
Ms. Williams: So I would think that Amy, Amanda would need to look at this as well.
Mrs. Hyneman: Which would be fine. I think they perused it once. Once again, most of it’s legal and what I asked C.J. to do was to highlight it in blue, which is our law, and you should have had two different sheets. One is the blue and the other one was the wording that we changed. I take that back, was the wording that we brought over, what you can download off the, what was that Jim, like the, all that 1 through 16?
Ms. Williams: The School Board Association.
Mrs. Hyneman: The School Board Association’s wording. And some of it is just not appropriate for us because it’s public and that’s where we changed it from public to where we are, because we are not a public school in the sense that they have certain rules and regulations that don’t apply to use, like with monies and other policies.
Mrs. Vaughn: Is the final form for us to look at that you just passed out? There’s so many different versions that have gone around and then I think there was one that Jim was upset that C.J. sent, or something. I mean I don’t know which one.
Mrs. Hyneman: Okay. This is what happened. Last month we were voting on their school policies and we never broached our board policies and so what I mailed out to y’all was just a general Arkansas handbook that you got that was real thick.
Mrs. Vaughn: And that’s what I thought we were voting on and I read it and went
Mrs. Hyneman: Well, you know, for some us that didn’t have, like for me, they mailed me an Arkansas School Board Handbook, just to have, and I didn’t know if y’all had one. It was easier for me to have one sent out and the reason it was printed was because they were out of print and I had someone print one and bind one to see what the Arkansas School Board manual suggested.
Mrs. Vaughn: Could I say something? I agree with Henrietta (inaudible) that if we can put ourselves on a schedule that we are going to go over this, this, and this so that, and
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Arkansas School for the Deaf
March 17, 2009
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make sure that we all have the exact same document that we’re looking at and, one of the reasons I suggest that, and I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to look at it, but always when you do these things, this is serious business because you are giving someone else to
rely on for a lawsuit if you don’t follow your own policy.
Mr. Eddings: Right
Mrs. Vaughn: And that concerns me and I want it very closely monitored that we’re not setting each of us up for a law suit against us.
Mrs. Hyneman: Okay once again I want to say we sent, it was my idea after talking with Henrietta, because I knew Henrietta would go over every sentence, as she should. And I said you’re going to stress yourself out because some of this can’t be changed because it’s the law. So I said put the law in blue so Henrietta can just look at that and know that’s not going to be anything that we’re going to have to mess with.
(Laughter)
Mrs. Hyneman: That was the point of the blue papers. Just strictly for Henrietta to know the law.
Mrs. Vaughn: I’m glad that Henrietta looks at this carefully.
(Laughter)
Mrs. Hyneman: As we all should, but especially Henrietta. She is a sentence by sentence, as she should be, word by word person and I was trying to help alleviate some of her stress which I probably created more. The other one is, that was in the red..
Mrs. Vaughn: That’s the one. I looked through everything I had and can’t find it and she said it was sent out. Maybe it was sent out.. I never saw that.
Mrs. Hyneman: We mailed that to your house.
Dr. Dalla Rosa: We’re going to start sending stuff certified because we mail stuff every month.
Several board members talking at once.
Ms. Williams: Well, Doug didn’t have the red either. He said he had the blue but he doesn’t have the red.
Mr. Eddings: I got the mail out but I didn’t receive that.
Dr. Dalla Rosa: It was all in the same packet.
Mr. Eddings: Not in mine.
Mrs. Vaughn: No it wasn’t in mine.
Ms. Williams: So you didn’t get it either?
Mrs. Vaughn: No.
Mrs. Hyneman: Okay, let’s start all over. We’re going to have a fresh list. Let’s all breathe. This is something we are doing for ourselves and for the novice board members, i.e. me, and I needed this. So we can take our time. What we’ll do for our next meeting, I’ll make sure that, is it Amanda or Mandy? She introduced herself as Mandy.
Ms. Williams: Amanda.
Dr. Dalla Rosa: Amanda is her real name. She goes by Mandy.
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Arkansas School for the Blind
Arkansas School for the Deaf
March 17, 2009
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Mrs. Hyneman: Okay. I’ll make sure that she gets a copy of this and then, let’s just say for our homework for next time, we’re going to do 1 through 3; actually, 1 through 5.
Ms. Williams: Okay 1.1 to 1.5.
Mrs. Hyneman: And the reason is, 3, 4 and 5 are just sentences.
Mr. Eddings: Just so we’re all on the same page, we’re looking at the draft that was handed out tonight?
Mrs. Hyneman: Okay. This is going to surprise y’all, but they both say exactly the same thing.
Mr. Eddings: Okay.
Mr. Tolbert: Okay, the blue one is the one that we’re looking at though. We’ve got a red and a blue, so we’re looking at the blue; discard the red?
Mrs. Hyneman: Okay, I’m going to say this again. They both have the exact same words on it. We just had different coloration.
Mr. Tolbert: Understood, but which one are we looking at? The blue for the law?
Dr. Dalla Rosa: The blue only. The reason why it’s highlighted blue, it just shows you what is the law. So if it’s highlighted blue, that is from code.
Mr. Tolbert: No problem. So my question, so I won’t be confused; I have two copies here. I have one that has red and then I have one that has blue. Are we looking at and reading through the blue copy as we are assigned 1.1 through 1.5?
Mrs. Hyneman: Yes.
Mr. Tolbert: Okay.
Mrs. Vaughn: 1.1 through 1.5, or 1.3? What did you say?
Mrs. Hyneman: 1.5. Because 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5 are just like straight sentences.
Mr. Hill: This copy here now, 1.1 is legal as well. Is it not?
Mrs. Hyneman: I want to say again, if I’m not mistaken, they are actually the exact same thing but they are just color-coded differently. So we’re just going to go with the one with the blue. Knowing that what is in blue is our law that cannot be changed. And I will say all of the other wording came from the download from the school board agenda. Words were not changed except where it said chairman or it said board of trustees instead of school board. So the wording is very minor and then we will get this copy to Amanda and have her look at 1 through 5. If there are any issues, we will bring it, and do you like the idea of doing it at the end of the meeting? I think so too. That way we can let the people go who want to go and then we can work; we can take it at our own pace.
Ms. Williams: Okay.
Mrs. Hyneman: So we’ll all do our homework and I was going to call and I said, Okay Pam, because I sent this out the next day. I apologize for my probably over information. I just want y’all to see what we saw.
Ms. Williams: Oh, that’s, excuse me. Pam, I really do appreciate all of your hard work.
(Many people conversing).
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Arkansas School for the Blind
Arkansas School for the Deaf
March 17, 2009
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Mrs. Hyneman: The three of us sat there, went through this
and had C.J. put out an e-mail to y’all. I have to have a hard copy. My
computer doesn’t always download. I like y’all getting a hard copy. Okay, are
we all through with that? Well, that’s great.
Discussion Items
Janice Vaughn – A.S.D. Parent Representative
Mrs. Vaughn asked if the school would be getting any of the stimulus money. Dr. Dalla Rosa said she is waiting for an answer about this issue. She said the school had applied for five million dollars for facility improvement. She said she is not sure which fund the
money will come from. Dr. Tolbert said as he understands it for public schools, the stimulus money will be earmarked for Title I and VI B federal funds. He said they will be restricted and that most of the public schools already know the amount they will receive and the restrictions for using that money. He said the stimulus money cannot be used for facilities. Mr. Hill said there is a plan for the school to receive federal funds for facilities money. Dr. Dalla Rosa said the school is not a Title I school, so it would not qualify for the stimulus money under those parameters and the school has some VI B money. Mr. Hill asked Stan Bryant if he had anything to add. Mr. Bryant said the schools get some VI B fund and if any stimulus money is received it will probably come through Special Education.
Optimist Oratory Contest Winner
Lorette Mandel, High School English and Literature teacher at A.S.D., introduced herself to the board. She said each year the Optimist Club sponsors an oratory contest for deaf and hard of hearing students. She introduced A.S.D. student Marcus Henderson who, as first place winner in the contest, won a $1500 scholarship. Marcus presented his speech on good attitude to the board.
Art Sign Winner
Judy Brint-Murphy introduced herself and her student Tiara Hopkins. Mrs. Brint-Murphy explained that NTID/RIT, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, and the Rochester Institute have a competition for students and there were over 40 entrants. Tiara won second place for photography and 2nd place for the Optimist Club speech. She said she wants to be a photographer when she grows up. She showed the board members the photos she had taken.
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Arkansas School for the Blind
Arkansas School for the Deaf
March 17, 2009
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Khayyam Eddings, A.S.B. Parent Representative
James Caton, chairperson of the School Health Council, told the board that the Council designated this week as Celebrate Life Week at A.S.B. Mr. Caton showed the board two posters which are on display in the school’s hallways this week which are to remind students and staff to celebrate life. He explained that each day of the week has a different theme and students and staff were encouraged to follow the themes during the week. Students also have the opportunity to enter art work, poems, or essays in a contest this week. There is a Dream Box in the main lobby and staff and students can write down their hopes and dreams and put them into the box. Mr. Hill said the health committee has been effective in emphasizing the basic traits of wellness and complimented Mr. Caton on his work as chairperson.
Mr. Eddings introduced Chris Wilks who teaches the Gifted and Talented Program at A.S.B. Mr. Wilks said when he last spoke to the board, the school was in the process of getting the GT program started. He said that A.S.B. is officially the only school for the blind in the country with a GT Program. He said the support for the program has been fantastic, especially from the Department of Education and the faculty at UALR Center for Gifted Education. Mr. Wilks had a power point presentation for the board, which explained the Gifted and Talent Program and the classes that will be taught throughout the year.
The meeting moved to the Agenda for the Arkansas School for the Deaf. The board will return to Joint Session for continued discussion of the Action Item, Board Manual, after the Agenda for the Arkansas School for the Blind.
09-J-008 Motion to Adjourn
There being no further business, Mrs. Hyneman asked for a motion to adjourn. Mr. Tolbert made the motion and Dr. Watson seconded. The motion passed unanimously.
_______________________________
Pam Hyneman, Chairperson
______________________________
Andrew Tolbert, Secretary
Board of Trustees Meeting
Arkansas School for the Blind
Arkansas School for the Deaf
March 17, 2009
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