Artifacts from the field:  This is the entirety of the back of the page notes that I took while attending the first of the annual budget meetings for my district’s BOE.  Here is the Rosetta Stone by which you can interpret these notes:

• Quotations- refer to things that were actually said that piqued my interest, either linguistically or functionally.  
• The checks next to 5-year plan refer to the number of times that said plan was mentioned during the meeting by BOE members or administration (the “vaguely Maoist” bit is simply due to an understanding of language in history NOT the substance of the plan).
• Various numbers from the proposal, including the bit that I have previously written about re:  interest on bonds, the current proposed tax increase, drop in state aid, notes on “average” (aka mean) class size at secondary and elementary levels, and the number of FTE’s that will be reduced from staff.  All of these numbers are subject to change as the budget process moves on.

Who ever said union leadership was not glorious…was absolutely correct.