Schools

Students Help Influence Actions of School Board

Two initiatives come forward after proposals

If there was one lesson that could be taken from Wednesday's meeting of the Howell Board of Education, it may well have been that even the smallest voices can have the biggest impact.

Back in May, seventh graders from Memorial Middle School got the chance to see what life is like as members of the town council, including proposing ordinances they would like to see enacted in their hometown. As a result of student government day, two of those proposals included setting a policy for the district for remembering the 9/11 attacks and bringing back some of their favorite extra curricular activities. 

At Wednesday night's meeting, thanks in part to board member Al Miller and the rest of the education committee, both those ideas took big steps forward. For the Sept. 11 memorial, the board passed a resolution on how the schools should recognize the terrorist attacks as the 10th anniversary approaches. That resolution can be seen here.

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That action was taken immediately, but the restoration of certain clubs and programs at the middle school level will take a concerted effort from several corners of the board including the finance committee. 

Miller said this process started with a survey that was sent home to parents of children in the schools about what they would like to see returned after challenging economic times forced them to be previously cut. 

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Of the 737 people who responded to the survey, Miller said approximately 285 had asked that the cooking club be returned. "We needed to look further into it to see if we could finance those clubs to bring it back to the students to help well round their educations," he said. 

He added that the fact that the students helped make this happen made it that much more meaningful. "We felt the students put a lot of work into it and a lot of research into it so we followed that process through and wanted to bring it to the education committee and bring it to the board to implement it," he said 

The proposed plan would have cooking and photography offered as clubs for half a year each. In addition, self defense, running and yoga would be offered as programs for a third of the year each.

While the interest appears to be there, Miller said it still remains to be seen whether money from this year's budget can be found to fund the programs. 

Board President Timothy O'Brien said he was hopeful the money could be found to bring these programs back to the students. "It's a great discussion," he said. "I think it's a wonderful idea." With the hope being that the programs could be put in place at the next meeting, O'Brien seemed optimistic that the pieces could fall into place. "It's the consensus of the board that we'd like to see it happen, now the next step is to see whether we can do it."

One of the people who will be tasked with finding the needed money is finance committee chairman John VanNoy. Only being on the job a few months, the newly seated board member said he hoped his committee could get things in place to make the plan a reality in time for the upcoming school year. "Part of it is trying to get organized what those pieces are," he said of finding the money. "Our next meeting will be our third finance meeting so we'll be aiming to hit those targets."

The finance committee's next meeting is scheduled for Aug. 9 at 7 p.m. in the large conference room of the administration building. That comes one day before the next scheduled board meeting back at Middle School North.


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