Friday Focus
January 29, 2016
We survived Courtwarming week (in kind of 1 piece)! Thank you for your patience this week with the students and their craziness. We still have some exciting events this weekend. Please come up and watch the boys play California tonight and they see the kids in the coronation ceremony. The dance will be on Saturday night and I know Christine, Claire, and Ty could use an extra hand.
I have been listening to the teachers, the community, and even the students this past week and it is clear we have some misunderstanding going on. I need to get a few things out there to you, because I know you are getting questions about decisions I have made. Hopefully, this will ease your mind some and help you walk others through it.
I think my biggest nag right now is the new touch screen TV for the senior composites. I could not have worse luck and timing on that thing. I started that process over a year ago and it was finally completed and hung the week before the school board pulled the tax levy. Here is how it came about. The past 2 years of senior composites have been delivered to me and are still sitting in my office, because all of the metal frames that were in the former central office lobby were full. I tried to find where we bought them without success so I finally asked the photo people where other schools get them (mind you those 2 steps took forever, because it wasn’t the top priority). They sent me a website for buying more metal frames and brackets, but the MINIMUM purchase was 10 of them for $3,000 (yes $300 per frame). I thought that was outrageous and at first I thought about it being for 20 classes, but several of the old ones were breaking and needing to be replaced. I asked around and found a few area schools that have went to the touch screen composites and they are really happy. Last year, I contacted the company that builds them and started the process of getting a quote which came to about $6,000. When we came back to school this year, the yearbook students took the pictures of the older composites (it only cost me some ice cream) and then we sent them to the company who made the graphics and backgrounds. The software took a long time to construct and it was finally ready to be hung over Christmas break. The guy called and cancelled due to flooded roads and then cancelled again because of a funeral. They finally made it to Hallsville and installed the TV a few short days before the board meeting. I have been taking a lot of heat over this purchase and I want everyone to know that I am attempting to save money over the long term, because buying more of the expensive metal frames every few years adds up. I also believe it saves wall space over the old composites and better preserves our aging pictures. In hindsight, I would have just moved the old composites and frames to a new location (by the way they are going to the historical society museum) if I knew it would be so controversial. In order to remedy the situation, I am working on a plan to help offset the costs. I will get the details out soon.
There are plenty of other things we need to talk about. Let me know what is bugging you. The more I can explain to you the more it will make us informed.