Benson, elected to her second term in 2018, is a “product of Fargo Public Schools,” who promised to “work to understand all sides of any issue,” according to her most recent campaign.
“I can tell you there are members sitting around the table that decided to run because their neighborhood school was at risk for closing due to declining enrollment,” Benson said. “Others were inspired by a desire to protect certain programming or specific groups of students. I ran because there was a significant equity imbalance across the district.”
She’s voting no to boundary changes because she said the option is a used band-aid, at best.
“To be clear, what I don’t support are boundary carve-outs. Boundary carve-outs do not provide equity for all students. They will not provide the same long term stability as a natural, true feeder system would. Carve-outs will also increase transportation costs. For these reasons, this approach is not the most fiscally responsible option either,” Benson said.
Since the state saw its first positive case of COVID-19 on March 11, most board members who leaned toward building a new school changed their minds, citing the unknown future effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Benson, however, voted against all motions favoring boundary changes and accused administration of covering up enrollment statistics.
Superintendent Rupak Gandhi said the accusation was baseless as enrollment numbers are shared at every board meeting, including when the board was debating building a new school or changing school boundaries.
“It appeared then that the district was growing even faster than projections were showing," Benson said. "Student enrollment declined by 75 students in the 2018-19 school year, the overall five-year trend is still positive, … just at a much slower rate."
She said she was also blindsided during the school board meeting on June 23, when she was publicly censured by a vote from the board after she accused Gandhi and Associate Superintendent Robert Grosz of hiding the enrollment information.
Board member Kristi Ulrich made the motion to censure Benson.
“Ms. Benson has consistently reported inflammatory and unsubstantiated comments … and this has been detrimental to the psyche of staff, and as well as administration, and it greatly affects the overall reputation of the district as a whole,” Ulrich said during the meeting.
Benson called Ulrich’s comments "a pretty heavy accusation" and defended her actions by saying she had proof enrollment information was being withheld. According to an outside report by educational planning firm RSP & Associates out of Kansas, enrollment projections are not increasing as fast as what the district reports, Benson said.
Public censure within the school board is a public statement meant to say board members disagree with repetitive behavior that willfully violates policy by another board member, Fargo School Board President Robin Nelson said.
“Last night felt like a setup,” Benson said the day after the board meeting. “I had no idea I was going to be accused of a violation, which, ironically, is actually a violation of policy.”
Proper procedure stipulates that a private conversation between the offending board member and the board president or other individual member must first take place, and then a public meeting can occur to determine if censure is necessary.
“A few members stated when they read my comments they had concerns, yet none of their concerns were discussed with me prior to Tuesday’s meeting,” Benson said. “I would say it is because I continue to advocate for increased accountability measures, clarity and growth targets to be included into board policies. This has been met with great resistance.”
Benson said she’s been told to simply “trust" and “sadly, the past practice of using a blind trust approach is so heavily entrenched, even recommendations from those with expertise in governance models have been pushed aside.”
“Over the last several months the board has decided to reconsider the option for boundary adjustments, only this time, the data being used in the analysis is only current enrollment numbers and an assumption table with fixed growth rates applied to all … leading to some inaccurate or incomplete data being used," Benson said.
"These are decisions that will impact our students, their families, FPS staff and the community. We owe it to them to use the most up to date and accurate kind of analysis available to us.”
During the July 14 Fargo School Board meeting, Benson revisited the accusations against her, saying the "attack" was against policy.
“I’m still perplexed about how all of this came about," she said. "That policy states a private conversation must happen before, and that never happened. As you can imagine, it was a surprise. I was shocked. I didn’t know what it all meant. I had so many questions. I still do."
"board" - Google News
July 19, 2020 at 07:00PM
https://ift.tt/2ChGNHr
Fargo School Board member opens up about infighting | INFORUM - INFORUM
"board" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2KWL1EQ
https://ift.tt/2YrjQdq
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Fargo School Board member opens up about infighting | INFORUM - INFORUM"
Post a Comment