FriscoParents Blog

I have often had people ask what School Trustees do. Some people probably think that we do not do anything; others think that we know everything happening in the district and are involved in all operations and can solve any problem. Definitely not true!

In this post I will simply outline some of activities that I have been involved in during the past week. Keep in mind that most of the Trustees have full time jobs outside of the district, so all of these activities are in addition.

When reading any of these blog entries, please keep in mind that it is not a Trustees role to be involved in or to oversee the day-to-day operations of the school district. We hold the Superintendent responsible for all operations and by law and good practice we must allow him the authority to perform this job.  I happen to think that we have one of the best school districts in the state, and with 4,293 employees it is a really large operation.

Here are some of the activities that I have been involved with over the last week:

Clean it & Green it!

My wife is leading the 2009 Liberty Senior Parents committee and one of our activities was participation in the city’s Clean it & Green it! We didn’t have the participation like the elementary schools but we still managed to collect quite a few bags of trash. I can tell you that the fast food of choice at Liberty is Chick-fil-A. Other activities during the week included organizing the After Prom Party, Senior Field Trip, and Baccalaureate.  Trying to coordinate these activities is a huge amount of work and if you really want to communicate with the 17/18 year old students get a fellow student to setup something on Facebook. This is more effective than emails, school announcements, or signs.

Technology in the Classroom

The School Board has many working subcommittees and one of the most active is the Technology Subcommittee of which I am a member.  This subcommittee has been working very closely with the Curriculum subcommittee regarding technology in the classroom. The technology department has setup a wiki to allow the teachers to share some of their experiences. See https://wiki.friscoisd.org/groups/justbraggin/.

Stadium Light Poles

I’m sure that you have heard about the light pole issues. Frisco ISD does have a few manufactured by the now bankrupt company. We hired an independent engineering firm to perform a thorough structural inspection of these often overlooked, but critical infrastructure facilities. None of our poles exhibited any evidence of base plate to pole shaft weld cracking. The engineering firm did suggest a few maintenance procedures which we will address as well as establishing an annual plan to evaluate all poles.

Swine Flu

Our administrative staff is monitoring this situation very closely. Keep watching the Frisco ISD Website for updates.

As of 6:00pm Friday, May 1st, there are 293,081 students across Texas affected by school closings. Within Frisco ISD, our attendance on Thursday was 97.3% which is actually quite high for this time of the year.

Frisco Early Chilhdood School

FISD EARLY CHILHDOOD SCHOOL

You can’t help but laugh at this one. One of our ever alert Frisco Police Officers snapped the following picture and sent it to Chief Renshaw. Obviously our Chief could not pass up this opportunity and so he forwarded it to Dr. Reedy (with comment ). Dr. Reedy sent it to the Board with the comment, “A perfect end to a perfect week” – sarcasm obviously intended since it has been a very trying week.

I attended the early morning Frisco Forum breakfast on Tuesday.  The Frisco Forum program was established by the Frisco Economic Development Corporation to engage Frisco’s corporate business community in an informational and progressive networking environment.  Attendees include CEO, CFO, VP, and other top-level executives from a select group of major Frisco companies.

The topic was “Workforce Readiness” and we had representatives from Texas Woman’s University to lead our discussion. We also had Dr. Wes Cunningham from our Frisco ISD Career & Technical Education (CTE) Center present. It was clear to me that Frisco ISD, especially with the opening of our CTE Center, is at the forefront of the “Workforce Readiness” effort.

Hello everyone,

I thought that I would try this little experiment just to give people an idea of what it’s like to serve as a school board trustee.  Let me know if you think that there is any value.

It has been an honor for me to serve the community and students of Frisco ISD since I was first elected to the School Board in May 2002.   At that time we had about 7200 students.  In April 2009, we welcomed our 31,000 student to the district. That’s a lot of growth.

I also serve on the TIF (Tax Increment Finance) Board. The TIF zone has been a tremendous blessing to both the school district and the City of Frisco.

Beginning in 2008, I bacame the Frisco ISD representative on the Frisco Economic Development Corporation Board.

I have twin daughters who graduate in June 2009 and a son entering high school.  We have attended 10 different schools as a result of the growth of our district.