Either the readership of this page must be low or whatever readers it attracts must be quite apathetic and/or uninvolved concerning Eden Prairie School affairs, for my comment to be the first posted in this forum. Unmentioned in this article is the Board's current preoccupation with changing management principles from so-called "coherence" governance to something called "policy" governance. At an initial cost of $13,000, the Board has hired a consulting firm named, perhaps appropriately and certainly memorably, Out of the Woods. As unbelievable as it sounds, Eden Prairie school staff with management responsibilities are apparently in need of training in how to manage. One would have thought any manager, let's a principal, would have had credentials that included both training (course work) and experience in how to DO HIS JOB so that the Board would not have to incur additional expense in qualifying such managers to perform their duties. What are their education and/or management degrees for if not to prepare them for their work? On the humorous and satirical side, the fact that the Board saw fit to hire a firm with the name Out of the Woods to train district managers implies that district management to date has been "in the woods." Where I grew up in northern Wisconsin, the colloquial expression describing someone as being "in the woods" meant he/she was totally inept, isolated and clueless as to what was going on and what should be done. Suffice it to conclude here that the Board's implied acknowledgement that Eden Prairie School management has been 'in the woods" all these years is indeed astounding. From an Eden Prairie resident since 1985. Mel Hoke EPMEL10@AOL.co