Saline School Board Meets Tonight

The Board of Education meets at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Media Center.
Here’s what’s on the agenda:
• A motion to hire Joe Palka as assistant principal and athletic director. Palka will coach the varsity football team. It is recommended that Palka be paid $88,128 in his administrative role. As coach, he’d make $10,211.
• The board will discuss the Foundation for Saline Area Schools proposal asking the district to help pay for full-time director for the foundation. The goal is to tap more private donations to fund the district. Superintendent Scot Graden, in a memo to the board, said while reaction to the proposal has been positive, there are questions. He said he’d like to see two board members sit down with two members of the foundation to work out some of the issues. Graden also wants to see a legal opinion on the proposal.
• The board will discuss the possibility of placing check registers on the website a possible way to increase spending transparency. According to a memo to the board from interim Finance Director Janice Warner, many districts post check registers on the site while others do not. In the memo said that posting the check register could be misleading, as checks from Community Education, CARES, food services, capital projects, the scholarship trust fund and the Southwest Washtenaw Consortium would also show up as general fund expenditures. Warner went on to write so that the district provides financial information in monthly board reports on the district website, and that even more information is now available on the site because of the state-mandated financial dashboard posted on the site.
• A motion to approved a revised 2012 board meeting schedule.