I even heard that board member Mr. Gibson felt the $40,000 was too low. Last spring the board was so concerned about finances they wanted to close another elementary school. Were they looking to use that money for bonuses for another 'pilot program'?
"For now, the administrators have not made any plans to mentor more students."
--They created this pilot program with no plans on how to continue it-great. Why are they consistently lacking in planning?
-poor planning for disposition of the country schools
-poor planning for bus route changes for this year, they may now need to pay more money to bring in a consultant to help fix things.

Let's also ask the question as to when the board approved this mentoring program with bonuses. I don't see it anywhere in the board minutes.

When is this board room circus going to end? Hopefully in November.

When I hear that awarding bonuses to administration is not new for our school district, red flags go up. How much money has been dished out in the past. I thought my tax dollars were paying for eduction, not bonuses. Then I read that this is UNCOMMON practice from other school districts. For some reason this year, our school district decides to start our K-4 grades before our high school students. Another UNCOMMON practice from other school districts. How many more things are uncommon practices in our district and why does our Superintendent choose these?

Speaking of Mr. Gibson, for those of you that might have forgotten, he was the one individual on the school board that voted to close Stiegel. This move alone makes me realize that this guy has no clue as to what he is doing on that board. At the back to school night at Stiegel, J C Hess was telling us how "challenging" it has been to deal with 60 kindergarten children at lunchtime. Had they closed Stiegel and continued with their plans, Manheim Central would have only two elementary schools to deal with over 200 kindergartners. Can you imagine J C dealing with those numbers?? Oh, that's right....I almost forgot. Had they closed the school, she would not have had to deal with them..........

We can only look forward to new board members who will begin to shed light on some of the backroom, behind closed doors stuff that is going on. If it is such a good idea, run it through a public meeting so everyone can hear about it.
What would cause undocumented meetings to occur? Either there was an intent to hide something or they are not very bright. I'm not sure which one is true, but I find it hard to believe that they did not think to document everything they discussed in their so-called executive sessions.

It is my understanding that most of the district's teachers didn't even know that this mentoring project occurred. Now why if a district was so proud of this great idea would they not even communicate this to their teachers?? The teachers and staff that are with these students 7 hours out of the day providing constant mentoring to their students. sounds pretty suspicious to me. Communication just doesn't seem to be one of this districts strong points. Not by a long shot....