For the uninitiated, the title isn’t a typo.  It’s a reference to the Simpsons, the bread and butter of my younger days.

It’s been yet another busy week since getting on the Scranton School Board.  Most of my time, after the last meeting, has been spent learning and gathering information.

So what have I been up to?  Here goes:

• Familiarizing myself with Title 1/pre-k issues in the district.  The district’s position is that we are out of compliance.  Not so, says other people who are informed on the issue.  I’m awaiting official documentation from the state explaining what we need to do to maintain the program.  Just so everybody knows, I will NOT ever vote to end pre-school, be it the 3 or 4 year old variety.  Dr. Finan, our Recovery Officer, has a background in Title 1, so I expect her to give us a clear idea soon.
• Doing more interviews.  While this was not something I even knew would be part of my responsibilities, it is a nice learning experience.  I’m not sure why the Board is directly involved in athletic hirings, though.  I trust the Athletic Directors and Coaches to know what’s best far more than I trust myself, so I’ll look into why the process is the way it is.  The positive side, for me, is that it gets me into the buildings and gives me a chance to meet the people who work for the district, as well as those interested in being an involved part of it.
• Assessing the state of buildings.  I’m on the Buildings & Grounds Committee, so I need to take the time to figure out what’s going on with the buildings and what needs to be done.  It’s a tall order, so I’m still in the info-gathering phase.
• Learning how to actually do things.  Thankfully, Barb Dixon (Board President) and Katie Gilmartin (Policy Chair) have been helpful in this regard.  Once I feel comfortable in my Board skin, I’ll start making moves and attempting to implement some ideas I’ve been proposing for years.  One of the issues I’m dealing with involves simple communication.  Everything gets routed through Dr. Kirijan, which makes sense in that we don’t want nine Board members hovering over employees and all asking the same questions at different times.  On the other hand, I feel like I’m a complete pain in the ass because I like to understand things and constantly have questions.  So… I’ll have to learn to live with that, I suppose.
• Responding to constituent concerns.  Lots of people have reached out to me via Facebook Messenger, or e-mail (or call or text) in order to raise issues that are important to them, as well as offer solutions.  I’m writing everything down and doing my best to address everything that I can.  If I don’t know an answer, I’ll look into it and get back to people.  This has probably been the most rewarding part of my week, honestly.

As for my plans for the coming week?  Here goes:

• Meet with/talk to Dr. Finan to discuss financial reforms.  Our Recovery Officer has been wonderful to work with so far and appears very eager to listen to any and all ideas that may help the district.  I’ve got lots of those, which I’ve posted here over the years, so I hope to talk to her directly and discuss what might be viable and workable.  My focuses have been on intergovernmental work, bidding health care (and all contracts, frankly), and I have been working on ideas to solve some of the labor strife we’ve been dealing with (I’m the labor guy, as per my committee assignments).
• Solidify my lists of policy proposals and then pitch cooperation with other directors in order to get both their insights and help implementing positive reforms.
• Continue to read the mound of documents I’ve been given since getting on the Board.

As always, if anybody wants to reach out with questions, comments, suggestions, I’m always here.  tom.borthwick@ssdedu.org