Thank You!

I would like to thank all of you for your insight into communication and collaboration over the past eight weeks.  This class flew by for me and I know that it because of the rich discussions that we had weekly. I would not have been as successful in my coursework without you all.  I wish you all continued success. This is my second to last class to complete towards my Masters and I will be done at the end of June.  I don't know where you are each at individually on your coursework but know that there is an end insight and that you can do it when you think you can't. 

Adjourning

When I think about groups that I have been in there are a lot of groups that I have been a part of.  When I was in high school I was a part of the girls basketball team.  My senior year there was 7 seniors on the time.  All 7 of us met in 7th grade and played together on our school team, fall league team, spring league team and summer league for 6 years.  2 of the girls I met on my first day of kindergarten.  We all had the goal our senior year that we wanted to go to State and that we all wanted to continue playing basketball after our high school careers were over with.   Our season ended with us going to State and placing and all 7 of us were offered some type of basketball scholarship.  Some of decided not to continue playing after high school even with offers to continue to play.  Leaving high school was hard because it was going to be a change and something new.  Leaving this group of girls was even harder.   I had been with these girls more than I had been with my own family members due to our travel and game schedule over the 4 years of high school.  We a banquet after the season.  We were able to gather as a team and each of us seniors were able to speak to our teammates and family members that were there.  We were able to personnally thank everyone and share are favorite memories.  I think that this is important to be able to have closure in a group whether it is face to face, by email or a phonecall. 

To be honest when I leave Walden I think that it will be easy to leave.  I have not formed relationships with my colleagues that are meaningful to me.  I think that if our classes would have been face to face or even telephonically a different type of relationship would have been formed and I would have had more of a connection with my classmates. 

Adjourning with any group is important because it brings closure to myself indvidually.

Conflicts

I worked as a director for a Head Start program for 7 school years.  During that time I came into many conflicts/disagreements with staff, parents, supervisor, accounting, HR and even children. 

One conflict I remember was during budget cuts.  I was working on the budget of the program for the upcoming school year and found that due to increase costs in insurance, building maintenance and salaries etc we were not going to be able to operate all of our classrooms.  This meant that we would need to shut down a full center and/or a couple of classrooms.  When I brought the information to my supervisor he just kept telling me that "they" were not going to like this.  "They" referred to the Board and the President.   I kept telling him I knew this and I worked on three different proposals to present to the President and the Board.  Suprisingly the President and Board were accepting of the proposals and I did not even have to attend one of their meetings to answer any questions.  I was told that there was a lot of discussion because no one was happy about the situation but knew that a decision needed to be made.  They chose one of the proposals that they felt would have the less impact to the program.  This mean shutting down one of our smaller sites.  When we announced the shut down the local school district was not happy about this.  This caused another conflict which we had to work through, explain and justify why we were shutting down a site.  Within this one issue there was many different conflicts that arose. 

I feel that we looked at different alternatives, we listened from different viewpoints of the people and community that was going to be impacted and what it would look like long term.

The three different proposals were very thought out becuase I wanted to make the least impact on our program.  These are just summaries of what I can remember of what we proposed to our Board. 

Proposal 1: Shut down Site W.  Currently we do not have a staff person there and the position is advertised.  We would not have to lay anyone off.  School district is currently operating a Pre K program that would allow Pre K services to continue to operate in the community. 

Proposal 2: Shut down Site G.  Average daily attendance for the past school year was less than 50% .  Costs to operate the building was given.  High mainteance costs due to owning the building.  Has a waitlist of 20 children.  We would have to lay off 3 staff members. 

Proposal 3: Shut down Site W & S.  Currently we do not have staff at either site as both positions are being advertised.  School district is currently operating a Pre K program that would allow Pre K services to continue to operate for 4 year olds only in the community. 

Have any of you experienced the impacts of budget cuts and what were some of your solutions?