and other oxymorons
September 1, 2006
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Joseph Gillis Jr.
You can do something!
To the list of taped live, junk food, jumbo shrimp, working vacation, pretty ugly, almost pregnant, big baby, and my favorite Microsoft Works, we now add Paid Volunteer.
All joking aside, the work of the vounteers is important to the success of any entity. However, to pay someone to coordinate the work of others who are giving freely of their time and talents does create some problems and issues. All of the Bridgewater-Raynham schools have active volunteer groups that provide a variety of services and functions for the schools. Some concentrate on volunteer efforts, some concentrate on fund-raising, others are groups to facilitate specific goals. Is any one of these efforts more important than the others? Is the work of coordinating vounteer efforts more worthy of compensation than the coordination of fund-raising efforts?
As many now know, Pat Riley made a presentation on Wednesday August 23rd on Volunteerism. This presentation was based on work that began with the appointment of Chair Don Delutis and Pat Riley to the SubCommittee on Vounteerism in April. Her presentation had a sense of urgency to it, with school starting in only a few days. Pat was looking for approval to hire two new people to serve as Paid Volunteer Coordinators. This was also the first reading of her report.
While I can understand her perceived urgency, perhaps she should have worked harder in order to present a month earlier, and therefore allow time to discuss the information. The B-R School Committee has made significant progress in carefully reviewing all issues, understanding the costs and benefits, discussing the matters, and ultimately rendering decisions and data that is complete and well thought-out. It is not my intent, nor for the Board, to make any decisions in haste. Fred Kern motioned, and Ron Pacy seconded, a motion to have the documents corrected and then re-submitted to the Committee at our next meeting. This is the appropriate step to take when a report begins to have more 'red corrections' than pre-printed black text. There were a number of concerns brought forward by the Committee, and to best judge this presentation requires its re-submission.
Further, before the matter of funding these two positions can be determined, two other issues must be resolved by the Budget SubCommittee:
(a) A determination of if there are available funds, and how much.
(b) To review the list of previous priorities to determine if this request is more important that our previously discussed priorities (To remind everyone, the original budget plan for FY07 included 3 High School positions, 2 positions at Raynham Middle School, 8 positions at the Williams Middle School (including 2 custodians), and one District person to address technology.) A few of these have been resolved, but most of the positions are still open due to a lack of funding.
A resubmission of the report, and a discussion of the issue should occur at our next B-R School Committee Meeting on Wednesday September 13th, 7pm, at Raynham Middle School Library.
