Woodstock CT Café

Having read the article this morning here are some of my thoughts:
- I don’t have access the WA BoD meeting minutes, but it would be interesting as to when the recruiting of foreign students was established as a game plan to provide a viable income stream for WA? This question is based on the concept of bringing the light of day on to the full decision processes being made at WA. Was this WA BoD meetings minutes in/prior to 2008-2009 or just when the first student enrolled?

- A business trip to Russia was done this past fall. Is the expenses being incurred by WA staff for recruitment being paid by funds of the foreign students, or out of the general budget?

- Are these money based matters that WA has done been fully disclosed to the sending towns BoE’s or just kind of hidden within the different budget groups/line items on the yearly WA published documents?

WA does a great job of controlling their costs and is run more like a business than any other school district in the area. But if WA’s is still getting 85% or more of it’s operational budget from town taxes does this allow them to obscure the views into how the money is being spent? We know that all publicly owned businesses have to disclose this level of detail to the stock holders so why is WA not?

BTW: This was a great article for WA but how much is just spin prior to the budget seasons getting into full swing? All schools are spinning to the press/publicity but Public schools have to provide data that is typically not very flattering…