Lakeville board debates dashboard metrics, meeting schedule conflicts and a faster timeline for goals

Lakeville Area School directors spent the second half of their Aug. 12 meeting debating what performance metrics should appear on a district dashboard, how often the board should review them, and whether the board should adjust meeting dates to avoid recurring conflicts with a regional 09-17 board to which several members belong.

Finance director Bill Holmgren (presenting) recommended monthly monitoring of three core financial indicators — monthly spend vs. budget (with a three-year comparison), unassigned fund balance and total fund percentage — plus periodic reporting of budget-to-actual variances, audit findings and other procedural measures. “Number 1 is looking at the monthly spend versus our budget and always looking at a 3 year period so we can truly compare what's going on with our budget over a period of time,” Holmgren said.

Board members proposed additional dashboard items, including enrollment versus forecast, staff hiring mix and average FTE compensation by category (teachers, non-teaching staff, administrators), and measures of operational health such as building utilization and service-level performance. Director Thompson urged an HR staffing metric showing whether the district’s compensation and hiring mix is “optimal” for the district’s needs; other directors pushed back that some staff-level detail belongs in HR or collective bargaining discussions and might not need monthly publication. “As a board, you should be able to look at a dashboard quickly and say, do I have staffing that is compensated? Do I have a mix of staff?” Thompson said.

Directors also discussed student engagement indicators: absenteeism and tardiness rates, behavioral incidents, mental-health referral rates and co-curricular participation. Superintendent Baumann said the district has been working on a consolidated set of key performance indicators across finance, HR, teaching and learning, student engagement and operations and would present a more complete package at a follow-up meeting. “We have been building that, and working on that for some time now,” Baumann said, and he asked staff to accelerate bringing the work forward.

Separately, Director Kim Baker requested the board make scheduling accommodations for the regional 09-17 board on which she serves because its meetings often start at 4:30 p.m. and run into Lakeville’s regular meeting times. Baker said she will not leave the 09-17 meeting early when it covers sensitive items such as the superintendent evaluation. “I refuse to leave that meeting early to come to this meeting because they deserve my time,” Baker said. Several directors proposed moving Lakeville meeting dates on the two conflicting months or staggering start times so members can attend both bodies; staff said scheduling adjustments are feasible but would require either cancelling a regular meeting and calling a special meeting or changing start times for specific dates.

Next steps: directors asked finance and HR to return with baseline data and recommended dashboard tiles; the superintendent said staff will accelerate a quarterly business-review format covering the five domains discussed. The board also agreed to discuss a near-term plan for board goals and superintendent goals and to revisit schedules to avoid conflicts where possible.

Ending: Directors emphasized the need to move quickly. Several said a consolidated dashboard and clearer, earlier board goals are necessary for timely oversight and to inform the public about district priorities.