Observations about
                     the Clinton County School Board Meeting 
                               of February 11, 1991
                              for consideration by
                          members of the school board,
                       and any other interested citizens.

                                By Duane Bristow,
                           Parent, taxpayer, citizen,
                        and product of the school system.

                                February 21, 1991

        I attended the regular monthly meeting of the Clinton County 
        School Board held on February 11, 1991 in the cafeteria of the 
        Clinton County Elementary School.  These are a few of my 
        observations of some items of business that were discussed and 
        my comments on those.  These comments, it is hoped, will be of 
        help to people involved in the school system and to parents, 
        taxpayers and others to understand how school business is 
        conducted.

        This meeting of the School board was characterized by a sense of 
        cooperation between school board members to carry out the 
        business brought before the board.  The following points seem to 
        me to be significant.

        First, there seems to be an effort among all school board 
        members to cooperate with each other to run the school system 
        and, at least outwardly, no sign of opposing factions.  I hope 
        this is an accurate appraisal of the situation.

        Second, there seems to be more business which should be 
        discussed and more discussion that should take place than there 
        is time for in one nightly meeting per month.  To do the job 
        that they should do, it seems to me, would require more time 
        from each of the board members than they probably have 
        available.

        Third, this school board began the process of discussing 
        creation of new positions.  A few positions discussed and 
        approved, I understand, are driver's education instructor for 
        the High School, school nurse, bus mechanic, and transportation 
        supervisor.  These positions are probably needed, or at least 
        can be justified.  I would hope that positions are created in 
        accordance with an overall plan for educational goals and 
        organizational structure but I have found no evidence that this 
        is the case.

        Fourth, Clayton Brown, transportation director, reported on the 
        progress of a plan of rotating bus drivers for assignment to 
        duty for school field trips.  This policy was implemented, I 
        understand, on the request of a few school board members, but 
        was never brought up, discussed, or passed in a public school 
        board meeting.  I am told that the previous policy was to assign 
        bus drivers to these trips based on sending the best busses with 
        the most experienced drivers on all trips outside the county.  
        This seems to me to be a policy that would be approved by the 
        parents as in the best interests of the children going on these 
        school trips.  I understand that some bus drivers complained 
        that they did not get a chance to be assigned to these trips and 
        thus to earn the extra money involved.  The policy now is to 
        simply rotate all drivers who request to be on a list of drivers 
        for field trips regardless of experience or competence in 
        driving on interstates, in large cities, etc.   Fortunately, for 
        the children, the policy is still to send the best busses.  This 
        means that when a driver is assigned, he usually has to exchange 
        busses with another driver who is driving one of the better 
        busses.  This leads to some confusion among the children as to 
        which bus they are riding today.  Obviously, it is now the 
        policy of the school system to operate the transportation system 
        in the best interests of the bus drivers, not in the best 
        interests of the students.  I would recommend that all 
        permission slips for school trips sent home to parents from now 
        on contain an identification of the bus and the driver that will 
        be used on the trip.  This could be important to the parent in 
        determining whether or not he wants his child to go on that 
        particular trip.