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

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DRAFT that we need to get money to the Orange County school system If we can do it sooner rather than later, that was my point. Chair Jacobs: And if the sense of the Board is we'll come back to this in late January when we reconvene, that's fine with me, but I would just reiterate that that makes it even less likely that I would support an early decision because we're going to lose almost two months in gathering any information.. And I think we need information for ourselves and for the public. Commissioner Gordon: What kind of information do you need? Chair Jacobs: The efficiency study. Commissioner Brown: Are we going to then accommodate all of our proposals and get back information that we need from John and move ahead? Commissioner Gordon: I think that we should have all of our proposals looked at, Chair Jacobs: If that's the sense of the Board. Commissioner Brown: Then we will bring all of them to our annual retreat in January. Is that correct? Chair Jacobs: Well, we'll put it on the regular agenda or the retreat. One or the other, but as soon as we can. John Link: We, I think, would rely on the Board to, at that point in time, get further instruction or have further discussion on your education excellence evaluation group, because basically you're at the point of talking about a charge and the composition of that element. But we'll be happy to come back by your retreat or by the first meeting either one and try to give you further detail on what specific areas, other studies have probed into as it relates to efficiency and try to give you some further ideas as to what the potential costs would be in this County. We won't be going out for proposals, of course, by that time, but I think we can give you some further detailed information. Commissioner Gordon: I thought that was part of what we wanted to do. Commissioner Halkiotis: I just wanted to put a caution out there because some of the companies that we've seen some of their PR work and materials they put out, it's a slash and burn approach, They come in and tell you to lower your thermostats 20 degrees so everybody's freezing, raise them 20 degrees in the summer so everybody's dying of perspiration, fire 20 people, cut back this, cut back that. I don't think that's what I'm interested in. I'm looking for something creative, something that's going to blend in with collaboration that we're talking about, something that's going to blend in with co- location. Some of those other things have been quick fixers, "Give me my Commission money and I'm out of here, and you guys go wrestle with the after effects." I'm not interested in that. Commissioner Jacobs: And if I might just suggest, if you're going to flesh out specifically the efficiency study possibility, to confer with the two school systems and their staffs to get an idea of areas that they might be interested in getting more information about, or what kind of timeline they can see working with someone, understanding that if we're going to try and use this information to make a decision that we have to have an aggressive schedule. Commissioner Brown: And I could give you a specific that I'd be interested in for both systems. When they decide that they'd like to do a program that's going to cost a certain amount of money, I'd like to know how those programs, how they do. What are the results? What do we see for our money? And I know we've invested in several programs that are supposed to address the needs of disadvantaged students or lower achieving students, but I've really never seen how these programs actually bring forth results. Then that money gets refunded, and M