Round Lake Area Schools Update
June 23, 2007 by Guy
Look, a blog post!! I realized I haven’t posted anything here in some time so I will do an update here. I haven’t seen a reporter at one of our meetings in some time so either we’re boring now or they have something else better to do! Here’s what’s going on.
Board Reorganization
Tammie Hanna and Denny Driscoll were sworn in on the board in May along with Nanci Radford, Tonesha Baker, Annette Negrete McGinley and myself who were all re-elected to the board. After swearing in officers were elected and it was decided that I will be president of the Board of Education for the next two years. I wished my very heart-felt thanks to Ann Welk my good friend and predecessor for her hard work during her tenure as president. Nanci was elected vice president and Annette was elected secretary.
It’s been exciting to serve as the board president, it is a lot of additional responsibility but I have confidence my past experience on the board and my past leadership experience in other organizations will serve me well in the job.
Building Principals
At the Middle School the district hired Brian Minarcik and Kurt Sinclair was hired for Round Lake High School. They both start in July although both have already been hard at work getting ready for their new positions. Mr. Minarcik comes to us from Schiller Park School District where he was a middle school principal. In his introduction to the board he stated his training and experience had been in urban school districts and he felt Round Lake was a close match for those experiences. Mr. Sinclair comes to us from Kenosha Unified School District where he was principal of an alternative high school and middle school and served in other administrative capacities as well. He came to Round Lake to fulfill the dream of becoming a high school principal and he’s looking forward to continuing the progress we’ve made at RLHS under Dr. Brierton, his predecessor.
Other Administrative Changes
Dr. Ben Martindale is all set to take over as CEO the 1st of July, he already has me on speed dial and has been very active with the district in the past few months while still holding down his job at Gurnee SD 56. Ben is a veteran superintendent and a superb administrator, I can’t wait for him to be in the position full-time.
We have also filled almost all of our other vacancies in upper administration. We recently lost our human resources director to another district and we are looking at options for filling that position presently.
Construction Updates
Elementary HVAC Project
Work is progressing quickly on all the HVAC installations, most buildings are just about ready for the units. Everything is on schedule for them to be online for the start of school though we could certainly hit some snags. Once the units are delivered we’ll have a much better idea if all will be on time. The expectation is that they will be at this time.
Magee Renovation
As you have probably noticed demolition of the sections of Magee being replaced is well underway. We have hit a few small snags but nothing major. We did have some asbestos in an unexpected place and we’re set to get that taken care of so the project isn’t bogged down. The next round of bids were opened but after they came back a bit high Seater Construction thought it would be best to “value engineer” the specifications and see if we can get bids within budget. Value engineering is basically looking at the specifications and seeing if alternative materials or methods can be used to save money. We have a $3 mil surplus in the building fund above the budget for all outstanding projects but obviously we want to preserve that if at all possible.
Work is on target still for the re-opening of Magee for the 2008-2009 school year. During the coming school year the administration and the board will be hard at work preparing for that. There are many things that will need to be done including determining the boundaries for the two middle schools, building names, mascots, athletics, etc. It’s certainly an exciting time but the task is a large one. I’m confident we will be well prepared for it, I expect us to be looking at a timetable for reopening tasks shortly.
Mobile Classrooms
One of the mobiles in in place at the high school and the other will be arriving from Michigan soon. Both should be in place for the start of the new school year. It’s a good thing, we desperately need the space while we hold on for one more school year until Magee is ready for occupancy.
I think that is all of the significant items for now, hope you appreciate the update.
I work at one of the schools and got on the computer for the first time for this school year on August 6, 2007. It is much slower than it was before. It took three minutes (no exaggeration) to get a one line email to open up. I shudder to think what will happen when everyone there trying to use their computers on the network at the same time. I was really looking forward to an improvement and am disappointed so far. We do more and more record keeping on the computer and a lot of class time will be wasted waiting for things to load. I hope we will have a means of reporting things like this and getting things fixed.
Sorry to hear about your experience, make sure your building principal knows about the issue and also there has been a help desk set up. Email me if you don’t get satisfactory answers.
I will do that, Guy.
With your knowledge on the technology package, is this an issue related to the new “provider” and if so, would the problems then be limited to access from the school computers themselves?
Net56 provided a deployment roadmap of when they would be where prior to the start of school. I’m not sure what building you’re in but that could have a lot to do with the issues. Their efforts have been focused on the high school at first because that is where we had the most problems (I’m really hoping you’re not in the high school). Their work in the Middle School and the elementaries was slated for closer to the start of school. That’s less than a week away though, so if you’re having an issue make sure you let your principal know so he/she can get the feedback up the chain or get a Help Desk ticket in that there’s an issue in your building.
I’m not at the high school.
The building principal has not responded to my email sent 8/7. The tech person contacted Net56. Net56 was supposed to come back to the building 8/8 to check with me on it and didn’t. The rest of the staff will be back on Monday and then we will see what additional impact this has on productivity.
Mr. Finley,
I’ve been a district resident for many years and I am very happy you have been elected school board president as I was happy when you came back to serve on the board.
I hope you can do something to help our poorly prepared, unorganized and rude transportation department. Today was the first day of school and although I understand first hand how busy things could get the lack of knowledge, customer service and ability to help is shameful. Kindergarteners were left without a pick up furthermore, transportation letters informing parents of stops were sent on Monday. Most of us didn’t get them in time! Bus stops and busses are crowded and stops are assigned steps away from sex offenders. Help us keep our children safe! Good luck . . . wish you the best school year.
We were disappointed with the timing of the transportation letters, that’s far too late to send them out and we’ll be sure to do that better next year. Along the same lines the phone support wasn’t there to deal with the volume the first day, we have hired some termporary secretarial staff to help assist with the call volume.
As far as your other questions I would encourage you to bring those to the transporation department and if you don’t get the answers you are expecting there you should contact the district office and speak to Dr. Martindale our new CEO about it.
Thanks for bringing these to my attention, I am pleased we did better this year but we know better still isn’t good enough.
Mr. Finley,
Thank you for your response. I’m sorry for using this forum, however at the time, I was very dissapointed. I have followed the proper chain a command with my individual transportation issue, unfortunetely it has been a week and I have yet to get a solid response. Please be informed that the Transportation Manager will not speak or grant meetings with parents. I sure hope my issue is prompthy addressed. It is currently with the CFO whom which I informed today of my intent to escalate to the CEO. Thank you for taking the time to read and act on our behalf. We are blessed to have people like you dedicate their time to the benefit of our children.