Agenda - 02-12-2004-6 - Laserfiche WebLink

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II•' Chair Jacobs: Other comments on collaborative efforts? Commissioner Brown: I'll start that discussion a little bit. It has been I think an initiative of the Commissioners for many, many years now. It certainly dates back to my first years on the Board. We have not been good at that We haven't been good at asking either school board to initiate discussions on how they can share resources and a list of things that I think would be very beneficial, So we all pretty much recognize that. And to bring it up, how can we do something that will perhaps generate a stronger commitment by both school systems to that. And there was somewhere here, and I think our Manager mentioned that our last proposal was to hire Mr. Boyle from the Institute of Government, but he is leaving the Institute of Government and there does not seem to be anyone left there that would want to do it. So we could move on to another format, which 1 see the collaboration issue as kind of breaking down into two or three ways we could work on it simultaneously. There was the issue of Mr. Boyle just kind of getting a structure of communication and working on that. Unfortunately, it didn't include all of the members of the boards of education and us. It only included six or seven people that were going to be involved in that process, which I don't think would be very fruitful. We need to have much fuller efforts to develop this process. I think it's been mentioned that the Dispute Settlement Center could offer up someone. And I think it would be very wise to do that in a public format so people could come in and watch the process and be invited, I'd certainly be interested in looking at the previous outline for that and maybe going through it and editing it a little bit and seeing if some of it is still valid, and so on. We've also had a proposal to have a citizens' task force to look at school operations and be involved in helping that collaboration or coming up with data. There's parents and citizens at both school systems. I think that in a timeframe would be excellent too. I don't want to leave out anything here. And then I made the proposal that we work with the School of Education to have them look at both school systems, and basically do an educational resource paper for us, or a report, and look at both of our systems. And I feel very strongly that I don't really understand how both of our systems operate, what they offer and don't offer to the children of Orange County, what they're needs are, both systems have needs. We see that budget time every year. And just do a nice, simple, straightforward analysis of what our two school systems look like and do some recommendations that they as professionals at the University could bring forward some positive, creative proposals that everyone could look at in the County and see what across the country that they know of that has worked, that's practical, that's cost efficient for sharing resources in each district, for creating opportunities on how those resources can be shared, and really looking out into the future of what the County Commissioners and the school boards can try to achieve to offer better education to all of our children in both districts. That would help me a lot to get a solid basis of information that everyone could take a look at. And then hopefully that group can also offer their expertise in suggesting some real creative pieces and we don't really see right now. Chair Jacobs: Understanding that that's an offshoot of collaboration. If I can just bring us back to collaboration, and then we'll talk about that group. Commissioner Brown: That's what I meant. This information would be a piece of the collaboration discussion. Chair Jacobs: Is there anyone else who wants to say anything about collaboration at this point? Commissioner Halkiotis: Just a couple of quick comments. I think we should recognize that there were some issues with the whole topic of collaboration