Alston-Kline
Veritas Update

June 13, 2008

Dear District,

At the end of this school year, we want to thank you for your commitment to educating Lynden's children. Under typical circumstances, yours is a hard job. Under the circumstances we found ourselves in over the past year, we realize that your job was made more difficult.

We would like to use this opportunity to inform you of recent developments, look ahead at our plans for the summer and fall, and discuss opportunities for involvement and feedback from the district.

First, we feel it is important to mention the board has been involved with a series of behind-the-scenes discussions with individuals and with an entire building. We have found these to be encouraging opportunities to re-build relationships and to re-establish positive communication.

As one teacher recently commented to us, “In my opinion, we appreciated being able to be heard and to get our feelings out in a safe forum. This will help us to move on to another level in terms of trust and a continuous bridge of communication in all directions.”

Below are a few initiatives we are either currently working on, or hope to work on over the summer.

Investigation

The Board is continuing to carefully examine the personnel recommendations made through the Alston Kline process. While we realize that some may be disappointed by the time this process has taken, we are committed to making informed decisions that benefit the long-term interests of the district. Inherently these decisions take significant time and effort. As a part of our decision-making process, we have engaged the services of an investigator to look into specific issues in the AK report. The investigator began his work on June 9th and his report is due to the Board near the end of next week. We intend to use the report in our decision-making process in time for our final June Board meeting which is scheduled for June 20th at 7pm.

Balanced budget

The Board is legally required to provide a balanced budget for next school year. By now you have seen the budget recommendations provided by the AC team and distributed by Superintendent Carlson. The Board has been pleased with the amount of effort, collaboration, and professional knowledge the administrative team has brought to bear on this issue. While we realize cutting is never easy, it is the Board's obligation to make cuts in such a way as to minimize the impact on our core mission: educating children. We anticipate working on this issue at our summer public meetings and encourage your suggestions and feedback during those meetings.

Addressing AK recommendations

Over the summer we hope to work on two initiatives:

A. Evaluations

The Board realizes the need to work on the structure of personnel evaluations throughout the district. The AK process focused on the superintendent evaluation, yet it is also clear that the District's evaluation policies should be examined at all levels of employment. We have drafted an amendment to the current evaluation policy which the Board will discuss over the summer. It is our intention to include others in the feedback loop on this and to take public testimony during Board meetings.

B. Communications Protocol

The second initiative is a communications protocol. Over the past two years, the Board has heard from individuals who have felt uncomfortable sharing their thoughts with the Board. While it is clear that some thoughts should go straight to the Board and others should go through supervisors, there is confusion and difference of opinion as to which communications go where. Further, there is not a clear set of values guiding the tenor of that communication. Our goal is to create guidelines that will express appropriate and inappropriate avenues of communication between the Board and yourselves. As a Board, we never again intend to find ourselves in a position where employees feel uncomfortable sharing information with us. We would like to begin next school year without this source of confusion.

Staying in touch over the summer

We will use District e-mail to communicate periodically over the summer. As you have seen, Jeff Leischner sent an all district email explaining how to access email away from school.

Again, we realize this past year has been a difficult one for many, however it is also been a successful one based on many successes in academic and extra-curricular activities. We are all a part of doing great things in young people's lives. We thank you for your commitment to our kids and the Lynden School District.

The Lynden School Board of Directors