Emily Filec, a junior will be SA president next year. She has many goals for Student Association, as well as for the school as a whole. Filec has been a member of SA for three years, and is currently vice president on Exec Board. “I plan to continue to work towards increasing school pride and spirit. I will also strive to voice the concerns of the student body with the administration,” said Filec.

The Student Association Exec Board plays a vital role in RB’s various social and charity functions, such as the school dances and blood drives. They also take many initiatives to promote school spirit, such as pep rallies and this year’s new Spirit Fridays. In addition to this, they also serve as the liaison between the School Board and the student body. As one can see, being on Student Association Executive Board requires not only hard work and careful planning, but also great creativity.

“They are expected to plan all school wide events. They also meet with the administration and school board. This year, we want to promote that SA is open to all. We want to bring more students into the club. Also, I want to make sure there is diversity in thinking and heart in the discussions within the club,” said Angela Ziola, sponsor of Student Association.

Next year’s Exec Board will face many obstacles when tackling tough issues in the school, such as low funding for the club. In addition to this, the club has faced the reduction of a sponsor this past year, which has made it more difficult to plan school functions. “I think the biggest challenge we will face will be voicing the opinions of all students and keeping school spirit high,” said Filec.

However, this doesn’t mean the new Exec Board isn’t up for the challenge. All of the officers have been a member of Student Association for years. Many also have past experience as a class officer or as a member of the Executive Board. Looking forward, the group plans to continue to promote school spirit by continuing with Spirit Fridays. They also want to encourage all students to get involved in Student Association.

“They are all very strong leaders. I feel next year’s Exec Board is going to be a very positive and energetic group,” said Ziola.

The students were greeted by the Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel. He welcomed the Laureates and noted that the speakers would, “discuss their crusade for human rights and peace, giving our students an experience that will both inspire them and give them something to aspire to.” Emanuel was followed by President of Robert F.Kennedy Center, Kerry Kennedy, who further explained the objective of the summit and how the students could let this impact their everyday lives.

The Laureates were then introduced and were recognized for their accomplishments. MSNBC correspondent Chris Jansing began a conversation with former President Jimmy Carter, former Polish President Lech Walesa, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Frederik Willem de Klerk of South Africa. The presidents all discussed the current problems the world is facing, such as the economy, lack of jobs, and man’s ongoing relationship with war. Every solution proposed relied greatly on the impact and creativity of the youth of the world. They explained how the only way things can get better are if young people come together and think of new ways to change the world. They also discussed how this would be easier than ever before because of the new technology we have developed. It will be much easier to converse with other countries due to web cameras, e-mail, etc. The idea of bringing the youth of the world was very prevalent, along with instilling the mind set of peace over war. Gorbachev said, “Humankind has got to say war comes last, peace comes first.”

After a short break, a new set of Laureates took place, but this discussion was primarily about the environment and global climate change. They discussed our reliance on machines that polluted the air and how to improve aspects of our planet. In discussing our advancement in technology/ fuel efficiency Dr. Rajendra Kumar Pachuari said, “It doesn’t matter how fast you’re going if you are headed in the wrong direction.” This discussion allowed students to discover new ways to change their life, for the better. New ways of being environmentally friendly were brought up, along with ideas of how the world needs to change or things will begin to spiral out of control.

RB students found this experience to very enriching and eye-opening. Senior Nina Wazsak said, “It was an honor to be invited to attend this event and I feel everyone at the summit realized how important our generation is for the future. It was a once in a life time opportunity and I really took a lot away from attending.”

The board voted on and approved a proposal from Athletic Director Art Ostrow that will return all existing sports teams, including several that were previously thought to be on the chopping block.  Boys and girls water polo, boys volleyball, and girls golf will all run next year.

At the meeting, almost the entire boys water polo team was in attendance to plead with the board to keep the sport at RB.  Several players spoke in front of the board along with many parents of players.

With the plan approved by the board, the supply budget for Athletics will be reduced by 30% across the board.  The cost of Pay to Play will increase from $75 to $200.  The gain of $125 from each athlete will result in an approximate revenue increase of $100,000 to the school.  The new Pay to Play fee that the board approved is one of the highest in the suburban Chicagoland area.

The board also discussed the larger budget for the 2012-2013 school year.  With the current reductions already in place, RB is expected to cut nearly $1.2 million dollars from expenses, mostly coming in the form of layoffs and part-time reductions of the teaching staff.  Unfortunately, that still leaves the school approximately $400,000 in deficit.

According to Superintendent Dr. Kevin Skinkis, the school currently has two viable options to raise revenue.  One of them would be holding another referendum which, if approved by the community, would raise property taxes.  The other option would be to reissue working cash bonds.  The school is in the process of paying off a previous round of bonds that were issued in 2008.  At this point, the current school board is planning on looking to bring in a financial consultant to explore all of their financial options.

Also in attendance at the meeting was Illinois State Representative Michael J. Zalewski.  Zalewski played a key role in getting the left turn signal installed at the 1st avenue stoplight.  Zalewski came to share advice and financial expertise with the school.  In particular, he spoke about the possible $8.9 million in state grant dollars that RB could receive.

“I remain optimistic.  I believe the money is coming very soon,” said Zalewski.

RB did not receive grant money when the State authorized $432 million in capital development grants during the last session of the General Assembly.  More money could be released this Spring during the current session.

While the school administration has been going through the interview process to hire a replacement for Assistant Principal of Curriculum and Instruction Tim Scanlon, who is retiring at the end of this school year, no official action was taken at last night’s meeting.

The board also discussed and voted on extracurricular offerings at RB next year.  One club, Ultimate Frisbee, was eliminated.  Math Club, Speech Team, and the Spring Musical were all reinstated.  To help pay for this, the board also will institute a Pay to Participate fee for competitive and performance activities.  Competitive activities like Chess Club will come with a $100 fee and performance activities like the Spring Musical will have a $75 fee.

The school board will hold its next general meeting in May.

“We’ve tried to get him to as many students as possible,” said Cabaj.

Earlier this year, Cabaj won the Margaret A. Edwards Award for her work with the library’s Abe Lincoln Readers program, and received a $500 award, so she decided to use the money to bring Anderson to speak to the students. She e-mailed Anderson’s publicist and Anderson ended up responding directly to her, which was something she wasn’t expecting.

Cabaj decided to use the money to have Anderson come speak because the staff working in the library was interested in bringing an author to speak to students.  Feed was a natural fit because the entire Freshman class had read the book as a common read this year.  Adding on former SEE Team students and some AP Lit students allowed her to reach over 500 students in total.

Moreover, Cabaj feels that the book is very relatable to teenagers. The book emphasizes the effects of an overload of technology on teenagers in the future.  Cabaj also thinks it speaks to the students’ perspective and what they enjoy in their world, which makes it easier for them to connect to the book.

Cabaj also wants the students to make an impression on Anderson. She wants Anderson to see how intelligent and hardworking our students are, something she says she sees every day.

The absence of Turnabout has left many students confused as to why the dance did not take place this year. SA members were confused themselves.

“I don’t agree with the way SA delegates responsibility to the things they run. I feel like they don’t use their resources to their fullest potential,” said an SA member who wished to remain anonymous, “I was disappointed in the efforts put forth into running this dance.”

SA President Julie Sinde disagreed with this comment. While she has enjoyed the dance for the past three years, Sinde realized it just was too much to handle this year.

“We didn’t have enough money and [Sponsor Angela] Ziola said the plate is full. I’m always in for a fun time, but because the referendum didn’t pass, our funding was cut in half. It just wasn’t an option this year,” said Sinde.

According to Ziola, Turnabout costs around $ 1,500 to run, while the homecoming dance costs around $2,000. Ideas were thrown around to cut the cost, but Ziola wanted to run the dance the right way if they were going to do it. Planning for Turnabout usually starts in early January and goes through the end of February.

“There are multiple committees involved,” said Ziola.

Ziola acknowledged that budget cuts impacted the decision to skip Turnabout.  “We do get a portion of the activity fee that students pay to get into events, but we were given less money this year from that and we lost a sponsor, so that makes it more time consuming.” Instead of Turnabout, SA still ran a blood drive and Glass Slipper Project.

The Student Association had to also cut other things from their usual budget this year. They could not sponsor girl’s powder puff football, which was taken on instead by National Honors Society, and one of the three blood drives was cut.

Other club sponsors were asked by students to take on the Turnabout dance as a part of their club. NHS and OLAS considered the project, but in the end decided it was too costly and time consuming as well.

Is this the future of RB with larger class sizes?

It’s no secret that class sizes at RB have gotten larger in recent years as the teaching staff is shrinking and the student population is growing.

Ultimately, the number of students in each class really depends on what type of class it is.  While Science classes are capped at 26 students due to lab space, Wellness and Music classes might be as large as 40.  Special Education classes run much smaller, between 13 to 17 students.

And the typical “regular” classroom like a Math class or an English class?  The current average is at 30.

Principal Pam Bylsma said, “I’ve observed the differences between this year and last year. [The class sizes] were definitely lower last year.”

According to the American Educational Research Association, a national research organization, small class sizes work because of changes in student and teacher behavior. Teachers are able to pay more attention to each student and students face more pressure to become involved in learning activities. With more students in a class, disruptive behavior increases while attention to learning decreases.

Math teacher Dan Bonarigo, who has the largest regular class size at RB with 35 students, said, “There are a lot less chances to interact with each student. Questions are left unanswered, there is more noise, and grading takes a longer time.”

Bonarigo’s smallest class has 27 students in it.

Bylsma agrees that that there have been some negative effects of the larger class sizes.

Even though it’s easy to tell that larger class sizes can impact the students in those classes, they can also have a large impact on the teachers as well. Bonarigo plans on adding a few changes to his teaching style for next year.

“I plan on being more efficient,” he said, “I’ve also been trying to make tests easier to grade.”

There is no doubt that having a larger class size can have negative effects. However, Bonarigo shares a different view on large class sizes, showing that they may not be so bad. He said that a big class size might help prepare students for college.  College courses typically have much larger class sizes than a high school.  However, he did note that what some people might forget to take into account is that college classes can be broken up into smaller sections. For example, a class size of 500 students could be broken up into sections of 125 students.

Although smaller class sizes reportedly eventually shrink the achievement gap in students, even research suggests it is not a cure-all for low achievement.  Nevertheless, Bylsma understands the emotional reality behind the numbers of class sizes.

“Teachers give lots of examples of how it’s harder to get to know the students. All learning is through relationships. Most students access their learning through relationships. The teachers can modify the assignments. It’s called differentiation. Intervention is the reason our school does so well. We build those relationships,” she said.

The RBEA collective bargaining agreement spells out which teachers may be riffed and in what order.  Teachers must be let go in reverse order of seniority, with the least senior teachers being riffed first and non-tenured teachers being riffed before tenured teachers.

Part-time teachers who were riffed in full included Gary Johnson (Applied Arts), Julie O’bradovic (World Language), Laurie Ritchey (CAP), Dominic Senese (Student Services), Dallas Till (Wellness), Kevin Turk (Social Studies), and Sarah Weis (Science).

Turk, who has taught at RB for seven years, said, “To have to start over after that long stinks, but that’s the situation that the school district is in.  It is not in my control, or even my boss’s control.  The financial situation that the district is in is pretty bad.”  Turk indicated that he has put out job applications, but understands the competition in the market.  As of right now, he does not know where he will be working next year.

Full-time teachers who saw their positions reduced to part-time or eliminated include Kirstin Bacon (English), Kellie Dean (Science), Thomas Dignan (English), Nick Gehl (Fine Arts and Applied Arts), Cherise Lopez (English), Lindsay Mynaugh (Math), Tim Olson (Math), Valerie Ostrow (Wellness), and Jenna Passananti (World Language).

Seven of these teachers were offered part-time positions, though it is unclear at this time whether all will accept those positions.  Of the two remaining full-time teachers, Lopez, who also sponsors the school yearbook, and Dignan will not be returning to RB next year.

“I have had two positions offered at other high schools,” said Lopez. “Both offered the yearbook position.”

These layoffs come as RB continues to try to close its financial gap and balance its budget.  Though the previous school board’s budget proposals did not indicate pursuing a balanced budget, but instead focused on maintaining a 20% operating fund balance as the school sought increased revenue from a referendum, current Board President Matt Sinde has made it clear that the new board is not intending to discuss increasing revenue through referendum until after a new RBEA contract is negotiated when the current contract expires at the end of the 2012-2013 school year.

At the same meeting, board member Tim Walsh made a motion asking the school board to accept an offer from the RBEA, apparently made several weeks ago, to discuss the current contract and possible renegotiations with the full school board.  After brief discussion, Board Vice President John Keen brought the motion to a vote.  It was defeated by a 5-2 vote.

Only Walsh and Hruska voted in favor of engaging in contract discussions between the full RBEA executive board and the full school board.

SPONSOR’S NOTE:
The story above has been corrected from its initial version to reflect the status of the full-time teachers listed more accurately. -D. Mancoff

Skinkis began by updating the board on what Board President Matt Sinde, Principal Pam Bylsma, and he had been doing to address this issue. They visited RB’s three primary feeder schools (Hauser, Gross, and Komarek) and RB’s Patrons’ Council to conduct four well-attended public sessions to inform the community about the current budget process and about how the board is planning to approach the budget.

At the sessions, Skinkis provided community members with an e-mail address (budgetfeedback2012-2013@rbhs208.net) for attendees to voice their concerns and provide feedback on the budgeting process.  According to Skinkis, around twenty emails had been received by February 14th.

Many of the parents of current students and community members who supported the referendum last year asked many questions at these sessions.  According to Skinkis, questions covered “the overall vision of the board and where the district is going in regards to addressing the revenue side of the budget deficit.”

Skinkis continued to say that the group was not surprised by the fact that approximately ten teachers will have to be let go and that the district will have to change the manner in which the school is run. He also reiterated that these are only short term cuts and that the board is working to solve financial concerns on a monthly basis. The board’s goal is to develop a budget for the 2012-2013 school year that will balance the budget as best as possible.

As part of this plan, Skinkis also recommended that administrators, who are not bound by the collective bargaining agreement, take a pay freeze for the upcoming school year.

He said, “This will be a budget reduction of anywhere between $15,000 to $17,000.”

In the spring and summer, the board will begin to address how the school will increase its revenue. Working cash bonds and referendums are the two main sources of revenue for public schools. Because RB is not attempting to pass another referendum this year, it will have to look at increasing its working cash bonds to make up the deficit.  Skinkis feels that by re-issuing the school’s working cash bonds, financial stability will increase and the school will be allowed to recover.

The school board is taking this approach to solving the budget deficit because they are a new board with a new perspective on how to balance the budget.

While board members have stated that they feel positive about how this issue is being addressed, others in the community are not quite so optimistic.

One of those community members is former Board of Education President Jim Marciniak.  Marciniak stepped down from his position rather than run for election in 2011.

Marciniak said, “As stewards of the district, the Board has a duty to continue to engage the community and secure adequate financial support from all of us for our public high school. Right now, it doesn’t look like the Board is interested in fighting for RB.”

Marciniak does not think the board has lived up to its mission.  He said, “It has failed to do what the voters said to do – reduce costs to match the available revenues. It has papered over this overspending by taking a deficit that it appears to have no intention of finding funds to repay – except by rifling the pockets of the families who have students at RB with an ever-growing list of fees.”

Everyone will have to wait until next year’s budget is finalized to really understand how the board will fix this major issue, or if it will merely continue to patch up the growing leakages.

The rest of the budgeting process will occur between now and the opening of school for the 2012-2013 school year.  Skinkis said that the board is working hard to ensure that RB remains “a comprehensive school.”

He also noted that one of the worst possible scenarios would be for RB to become a building that was only open from 8 am to 3 pm without any sort of extracurricular activities.  However, he noted that this has not occurred yet and that he hoped it would not occur in the future either.

“I didn’t think I had a chance to win,” Cabaj said, “but I was very excited and very shocked when I realized I had won.”

Cabaj said Librarian Alicia Duell urged her to send the application, with high hopes that Cabaj would win. A few weeks later Cabaj got an e-mail informing her that she had won.

“The first time I read the e-mail, I was confused,” Cabaj said. “But finally, at the end of the e-mail, it said the winner was Allison Cabaj.”

In order to be eligible for the award, a person must complete an application including a rationale for the program, as well as multiple documentation of the program.  These include photographs, news stories, and items of communication, evidence of a presence on the web, displays, and public relations advertisements.

The winner of the award received five hundred dollars. Cabaj is using that money to bring in M.T. Anderson, the author of the book feed, to speak to RB students.

In April of 2011, Garry Gryczan, Laura Hruska, John Keen and Tim Walsh were all elected to the school board, representing a majority of the seven-member board.   In addition to this, Matt Sinde became the new board president.

“I think we’ve made some strides in the right direction. The lengths of the meetings have become more manageable. The policy and decision making is moving more to a governance model rather than a management model. I think the board and I are building a good relationship,” said Superintendent Kevin Skinkis, who is also serving out his first year at RBHS.

The new board, however, has faced many challenges throughout the year. One of the most important of these would be the approval of the 2011-2012 budget. Though the previous year’s school board had drafted a budget, the new board decided to revise it.

“The previous board provided budget scenarios for cuts to the school except for staff [cuts], which were decided in March 2011.  The new board was responsible for developing and finalizing the 2011-2012 budget,” Sinde said.

Sinde believes that the new board has made many accomplishments this year, despite the many challenges they faced. “When you watch our board meetings, you see an increase in the interaction of the board, which provides for lively discussions and the ability to develop policy and review administrative programs to ensure that our students’ needs are being met,” he said.

Despite these improvements, the board still encountered many problems. Many in the community have claimed that the school board spends too much time arguing. Some in online forums have claimed that they are ‘dysfunctional.’  Skinkis disagrees with the characterization.

“I don’t believe the board is dysfunctional. They’re dealing with a very tough issue and they need to move at a pace that ensures they’re thinking not only of the short run, but also the long run impact of their decisions,” said Skinkis.

The school board had to make other decisions, as well. In addition to approving the budget, they also voted to give raises to most of the administration, including Pam Bylsma, Tim Scanlon, John Passarella, and Dave Sibley, again to the displeasure of some in the community who wondered about the choice of approving raises when programming was being cut for students.

“Everybody in the building received raises for the 2011-2012 budget,” said Sinde.  “Should we not give raises to the administrators because they are in management?”

Still, Sinde defends the choice as being fiscally responsible.

“Those administrators who were eligible for a salary increase were given a raise that was a percentage of CPI (Consumer Price Index), which is a fiscally sound way of not deficit spending for salary increases,” he said.

The board also initiated a new minimum course enrollment policy. Through this policy, any class with less than twenty students enrolled must seek special approval from the school board in order to run.

“This board and administration are constantly looking for ways to be able to meet our financial responsibility and still deliver a quality education to our students,” said Sinde. “This policy allows the board to review these low enrollment courses to make a decision if they are needed or if there is another alternative which will meet our students’ needs.”

Looking ahead to next year, the three senior board members (Matt Sinde, Mike Welch, and Dan Moon) will be up for reelection.  The four new board members will remain on the board for four years before their terms expire.

The next year will also bring more cuts to academics and extracurricular activities. In addition to this, the board is planning to negotiate a new contract with the teachers, whose contract expires at the end of next school year.  The school board will also finalize the 2012-2013 budget.

Admist these decisions, Sinde has indicated that the school board is not planning on having a referendum in the future, nor are they looking into any other large scale means to raise revenue for the school, such as working cash bonds.

“Once our financial future is clear, the board will look at other revenue enhancing options to help our budget,” said Sinde.

Skinkis believes these changes are not unexpected.

“I think people knew once the referendum failed that there would be reductions to the budget and to the high school. I think people are expecting the same for next year,” said Skinkis.