When asked to reflect on my eleven years as a Director on the Hudson School Board, five of which I served as President, I have a deep sense of accomplishment as well as gratitude to those who supported the Board, Administration, Staff, and students to make Hudson Schools an outstanding environment to raise a family and have all of our children receive a top rate education.
In 2006, I was encouraged to run for school board and was elected with 100% of the vote. Needless to say, I was the only candidate on the ballot, but it was still nice to get that vote of confidence that stakeholders in the school cast their vote for me. Ever since that first election, as well as the subsequent elections I won in 2009 and 2013, I have taken my responsibility as a school board member very seriously. Often times, we get asked as board members why we decided to take the action or make the decisions that we do as a board. My thoughts on this are if others were to study the issues and understand all the facts with clarity without mixing in personal opinions, rumors, or only a part of the whole story, they would very likely come to the same conclusion.
There are four areas of accomplishments of the school board over the last 11 years I would like to elaborate on: leadership, financial responsibility, student achievement, and facilities enhancements.
Leadership
One of the most important roles of the school board is making sure we have excellent leadership in our Superintendent of Schools. During my time on the board, we have worked with four different Superintendents: Mr. Dave Pappone was just leaving our district as I was coming on the board. Due to the timing of his departure, after the school year had begun, we had an interim Superintendent for a year in Mr. Ron Crooks. We then hired, in my opinion, two outstanding Superintendents to lead our district, Dr. Roark Horn, 2008-2011, and Dr. Anthony Voss, 2011-present. It has been a pleasure to work with them in that relationship between the School Board and lead administrator of our district.
Financial Responsibility
During the first several years on the board, our financial position was slowly deteriorating. There are many financial metrics we monitor and try to manage, but the most important gauge of our financial health is that of Unspent Balance. It was quickly going to be in the “red” if we didn’t take action. The primary contributors to our Unspent Balance are student enrollment and employee salaries. We have been on a downward trend in enrollment almost every year during my time on the school board. The good news is, there appears to be some optimism that this trend will start to reverse itself soon as we are seeing several developments and housing opportunities to allow families to move into our school district with school-age children. But while we continued to see reduced numbers of children enrolled in our schools it became necessary to make some adjustments to our staffing and curriculum to balance our funding available and start to turn the trend around regarding the status of our Unspent Balance. Some of these required adjustments were not very popular with certain stakeholders in our district. They were not taken lightly and much debate and thorough analysis took place at the board table to try to make the best decision for our students, staff, parents, and others invested in our schools. I am happy to report we have achieved a much more comfortable level of Unspent Balance during the last several years given the size of our budget, and continue to monitor it very closely.
Student Achievement
In addition to our regular review of student achievement goals, navigating our direction due to changes at the state and national level regarding the core standards for education, measures of academic progress, and funding support for new curriculum materials, there have been four paramount initiatives the board has worked hard to fund and support our administration and staff to incorporate into our learning environment: Professional Learning Communities (PLC), the Teacher Leadership System, Connected Learning, and 4 Year Old Pre-School.
The school board has provided the funding and support for the entire staff to participate in training during the summers over the last several years to become knowledgeable and proficient in the use of the concept of professional learning communities. This has allowed them to be more effective team members and problem solvers.
Hudson Schools was fortunate to be one of the first schools chosen to participate in the new Iowa Teacher Leadership System. Now, four years later, all schools in the state of Iowa have the ability to participate in this system and gain the benefits that it provides through an additional emphasis on teacher coaching and support.
A few years ago we began our connected learning initiative, which some refer to as a one-to-one computer environment where every student has a school-issued laptop. We were deliberate in how we rolled this out and funded this initiative, as this is a very expensive undertaking. But when you measure this against the expense of continuing to support computer laboratories or other technology in the classrooms, the numbers started to make sense when we began the initiative, and now we have a connected learning environment at all grade levels, with laptops available for every student in grades 5-12.
I am excited to see Hudson Schools begin a four-year-old preschool this year. For many reasons, this took a lot of persistence and persuasion by our administration to convince the state that we should be allowed to proceed, but in the end, we now can provide this education service that had been a gap for our school district relative to almost all other schools in the state.
Every graduation during the past 11 years I have had the privilege of being a participant in the graduation ceremonies. This is, in my opinion, one of the best parts of being a school board member. Almost every year, we have 100 percent graduation rate for our seniors. It is with great pride we hand out the diplomas to our graduating seniors, especially when I can be the proud father to hand a Hudson High School diploma to each of our three children.
Facilities Enhancements
The last area I would like to reflect on is some of the improvements we have made in our facilities over the last 11 years. These are often times much more visible to the public than the first three areas above that I have discussed concerning leadership, financial responsibility, and student achievement. During each board meeting, we first focus on these items as well and then discuss our needs regarding facilities.
One of the first improvements I sought as a board member early in my time on the board was a five-year plan for investments of PPEL (Physical Plant and Equipment Levy) and SAVE (Secure an Advanced Vision for Education) funds. This is a rolling plan that is a living document and serves as our roadmap of spending for projects to improve our facilities through the use of these funds. I have appreciated the board’s approach to funding our facilities improvements. We have been patient and waited until the funds were available before we have taken on new projects. We could get anxious and aggressive and try to fund much larger projects through seeking bond referendum approval, but I much prefer the pay as you go philosophy, which provides much more flexibility to changing needs and careful consideration on how the school’s limited funds are being utilized while minimizing the tax burden on our constituents.
We have accomplished many facilities improvements over the last 11 years through funding solely from the PPEL and SAVE funds directly under the control of the school board, but many projects have been done in conjunction with other school support groups such as the athletic boosters, music boosters, FFA support groups, and PTO, to name a few:
- Greenhouse for Vo-Ag and Science curriculum
- Parking lot and lighting improvements: East of Elementary/Middle School, North of Middle School, and High School
- Weight Room, Concession and Restroom enlargement
- Baseball/Softball Lights, new Concessions Building, and Dugouts
- Acquisition and Development of adjacent hotel property for additional green space and future campus expansion flexibility if needed.
- High School Auditorium upgrades for Fine Arts
- Recurring budget committed for band instrument needs
- Carpet and flooring replacement throughout campus
- All locker rooms refurbished
- Wrestling practice room refurbished
- Middle School Commons and restrooms refurbished
- High School Commons refurbished
- High School Gymnasium bleacher seating and enhancements
- Elementary restrooms refurbished
- Building entrance security improvements
- Bus, van, and automobile fleet upgrades
A study was commissioned several years ago titled Hudson 2020. One of the results of this study was the priority we should put on updating our Elementary School facility. As a result, we are on a several year project to do just that. The first phase was completed this summer and as a result, 100 percent of our campus is now air-conditioned. During the first phase this summer, air conditioning, new windows, LED lighting, ceiling tiles, exterior lighting, and handicapped parking stalls were established for the East portion of the elementary school. Future phases will accomplish similar improvements to the remainder of the building. But one of the enhancements I am most proud of is the completion of handicap access to our competition gymnasium in the Middle School for our students as well as our visitors via a ramp along with an ADA (Americans with Disability Act) accessible restroom in this hallway.
In summary, my goal 11 years ago was to have a better understanding of what was happening at our schools and to have a positive impact on the education for all of our students. I wanted Hudson to come to mind first when people think of a vibrant, thriving mid-sized school. We have exceptional students, outstanding faculty and staff and a forward-thinking administration. I worked cooperatively with fellow school board members, administration, faculty, staff, and other stakeholders in the community to continue building on the positive momentum we have at Hudson Schools.
I encourage everyone to get involved in Hudson Schools in some way, whether you have children in school or not. The vitality of our school has a big impact on the vitality of our town. Whether it is as a classroom volunteer, student mentor, PTO, Lego League coach, music, athletic, of FFA booster, an audience member at a fine arts performance, a fan at an athletic event, or maybe even consider serving as a school board member, all of these actions help support our students and the mission statement of our school board, “We create effective learning environments that result in success for all students.”
It has been a pleasure and an honor to serve the Hudson Community School District.
Thank you for this opportunity and Go Pirates!
Jerry Griffith
Director, Hudson School Board
2006-2017
President, Hudson School Board
2011-2016
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