May 10th School Board Meeting

If you looked at the agenda before our meeting you would have thought this would have been a fairly short meeting without much to discuss. But as it turned out it was one of the longest we have had in a long time. By the time we got out of the executive session it was almost midnight. Much of the added discussion came from patron input that April and I received at our cottage meeting. For those who were at the cottage meeting, at the end of it I said we wouldn't overlook their concerns, that they would be brought up at the board meeting. I believe between the regular board meeting, and the executive session, we discussed everything that was brought to us at the cottage meeting, and in some emails or other communication.

Here goes my summary of what was discussed. There wasn't a report from the Excellence in Education Committee, because we had the last meeting the week before our last board meeting. I did bring up the items we intend to discuss at our meeting next Thursday. We plan to develop a mission statement, so we can better define the purpose and direction of the committee. Mr. Tubbs will also present some information about how our school funding works. He will go over all the sources for our funding and how it's spent. We should learn how much is discretionary, and an idea of how this funding has changed the last few years. Since our budget isn't quite defined for this next year, we won't have exact numbers to work with, but I think we can have a good discussion.

We then discussed the calendar options. There was a lot of opinions expressed about the calendar. We were presented with four options. Two versions would move the last day of school into June, with a later starting date, or more breaks during the year. Two others were presented, option #1 was just about the same as the one the calendar committee recommended last time and option #2 that has us starting on August 20th and ending on May 23rd, also there will be no student days on any Friday. The way option #2 reduces the days to fit between those dates is mostly achieved is by adding 7 minutes to the daily schedule and also having no day off for Presidents day. There were two parents that expressed concern about starting on the 13th, and a suggestion that we reduce spud harvest to one week. I had talked to a couple farmers, not my family, that said if we reduced the harvest break to one week, we might as well not have a break. They wouldn't want to hire kids for just one week. We also can't afford to have students miss much school, it really can hurt our funding. Since the calendar committee still recommended option #1, I made a motion to support this option but got no support. So option #2 was presented for a vote and  I supported it along with three other board members. Mr. Cook also preferred option #1, and had concerns about making the school day longer. Option #2 also has more scheduled teacher inservice days on Fridays. I do think this is a good compromise. The high school hours for next year will now start at 8:00 and end at 3:59. I hope the later time won't hurt too much.

We then had a presentation by David Schiess. The city of Firth received a grant to improve Center street. The road that goes from the highway between the seminary building and the park. The project will end at the intersection in front of the school. Mr Schiess is proposing the school district take this opportunity to make improvements, between the seminary building and the school, and to tie into the new road that will be built. He is recommending we take out the old trees, remove the old asphalt, put in french drains and sidewalks. Then it would be repaved with a stripped parking lot and a better defined road through that area. He also said the road in front of the Ag shop running along the park is school property. The city road was vacated many years ago. So he wondered if we would want to control access along that road. There was quite a bit of discussion about this idea. He at first didn't have a cost estimate of the project, but later came up with some estimates. He said the surveying would be $1800, removing the trees and asphalt $5000, putting in sidewalks and gutters $5000, two catch basins for $2000 each, gravel fill and pavement would be $40,000, design of the project would be $18,000, and they would need a contingency fund of $20,000. He quoted this very fast, so I might have this a little off. The total cost would be around $80 to $100 thousand. The pavement alone would be about $20,000. There was discussion if it were to be just graveled, and maybe paved later. Maybe some volunteer work could be done to remove the trees. Maybe the city would help with some of the work. The project for the city won't start until next year, so we have some time to think about it. Much like the fund we are using to buy the high school bleachers, there is another fund for outside improvements, that could be used for something like this. Mr. Tubbs didn't know at the meeting just how much this fund had in it but it is a substantial amount. There are probably other areas that could use some improvements around the school. We will have more discussions about this idea, how much this fund balance is, and if we think this is the best use of these funds. There was also some discussion how much might be saved doing some of the work in other ways, or not doing all that was suggested.

Wow this is already long and I haven't even started talking about the cottage meeting yet. I have been out of town most of the last two weeks. April had done some research about district policies and had given Mr. Tubbs a list of the questions we wanted him to answer at the meeting, so he could be prepared to respond.

The first question was about cell phone use. There is a growing problem about kids using them in class. There was a report of someone googling answers to tests during class and texting answers. The policy we have is dated back to 2005. Cell phone use has changed a lot since then. The policy is that if a cell phone is used during class the teacher confiscates it and returns it at the end of class, if this happens several times the phone is taken to the office and parents are called before it is returned. Different ideas were discussed at the meeting but no real answers. The management team will discuss this further and come to the board with some recommendations.

Dress code issues were then talked about. Some  examples given were girls with too short of pants or skirts and to reveling of tops being worn. This policy is also old and probably needs some updating. Part of the policy is to have the student change into something more appropriate or have a parent bring some different clothing. Maybe just more inforcement is needed on both of these issues. This will also be discussed among the management team.

One other policy issue that I asked Mr. Tubbs to address is the drug policy. I asked if the recent use of prescription drugs was dealt with correctly and fairly. He stated the basics of what happened. He admitted that he should have informed the board about this issue at the time. He stated the policy and procedure that was used and assured us that is was followed appropriately. One reason he gave for not providing us with the details is, if after the administration suspends students or other punishment, the student can then appeal this judgement to the board. So it's in our best interest not to know a lot about the issue.

We asked about Pay for Performance. He said the school is using the state plan this year. I asked for more details of what exactly the state plan is. He is working with the teacher representative to see how the teachers would like us to allocate this fund in the future. We are going to get some information from some other schools to get an idea of how they are setting up their plans. I think the board needs to be informed of what they come up with and have further discussions on this matter. We need to have this done by September.

April also asked about getting more training to understand our school budget. Mr. Tubbs provided an outline of the school funding that I think he will present in our committee meeting. Maybe I will write another blog about the information provided at that meeting next week. She also asked about the savings of the four day week. Attendance was also talked about. I thought we were told our attendance had improved, but the handout we received was mostly the opposite. 2011 we had 74 kindergartners with attendance at 91.89%, this year there are 60 enrolled with 94.18 % attendance. Grades 1-6 last year had 356 students with 92.76% attendance, this year there are 339 students with 90.27% attendance. Grades 7-12 last year 334 with an average of 98.54%, this year 341 with 96.45%. There was a question if this information was correct, I believe there is an issue of our numbers not being the same as the states numbers. I am a Little unclear as I write this what the problem is and will have to investigate further. I didn't see this information before the meeting. Bottom line if our attendance is much less it means less funding.

I then asked some more questions that I had from the cottage meeting and other input I had received. I asked how our plans for technology were proceeding. They are getting ideas in place, but are waiting to see what might happen with the legislation this fall. I asked about concurrent college credits and having the state pay for them. This was something Senator Bair had told me about. I was told the students have to have all their credits for graduation earned before the state will step in and pay for the online courses for college credits. Students can do this on their own before graduation requirements are met, but the state won't pay for them.

It was asked if we have a grant writer in the school. Mr. Tubbs said some of the administration had written grants, but it didn't sound like there has been much time dedicated doing this. They are trying to get two grants to help pay the cost of the bleachers. One of these had expired before the grant was applied for and they are still waiting for word on the other. I asked if maybe this could be one area we might provide a pay for performance incentive to encourage someone to take on writing grants. I think if we had someone with the right skills writing for grants we could acquire more funding for the schools.

It was asked about the problem of not having administrators in the buildings when they were needed. The biggest problem with this issue is the lack of administrators. With Mr. Tubbs both Superintendent and Principal and Mr. Gee both Principal and Athletic Director, they can't be everywhere. This wasn't talked about a lot during general session, but I might add without going into details because it was during the executive session, that this issue was talked about a lot during executive session. We will work on some ideas that might help improve this situation. But again, it's mostly a funding issue.

I brought up the concern about some classes may be behind on the lessons because of the four day schedule, and the problem that being behind might lower ISAT scores. The administration wasn't aware of any problems with this, but I think they will check into it.

Title 1 Funding was talked about some and how this money is used. This funding comes from federal funds and has been reduced. We use most of these funds for our Aides. There was a concern brought to me that the lower grades didn't have enough Aides to always be available to help in the classroom when needed. Not having a summer school program and also not having enough Aides for the younger kids, is a big concern to me. But sad to say this is another issue where lack of funding makes it hard to improve. I don't know what has been done for sure myself, but I wonder if there would be a way to get more parents involved in the classroom to help these kids.

Common Core Standards were briefly mentioned during the meeting, and I remembered to follow up and ask more about it later. This is where several states are getting together and trying to establish common  grade level material. So a student can move to any of these states and receive the same education in whatever grade they are in. They are working on this, but I think have more to do. One concern about this is we are supposed to be on the same material, we might need to be using the same books, which would require us buying different books than we currently are using or newer books. And as you might guess books are very expensive. As far as I know, I doubt the state will also provide the funding for these new books. I hope to hear more about this as they work on it. At some point in the future the schools will go to different testing based on these Common Core Standards.

I also brought up a board training session that the ISBA is putting on August 2nd in Rigby. The topics they plan on teaching about is many of the items I have just talked about, and more. The cost is $70 each if we sign up for this soon. I think it would be very worthwhile for us to attend, and I think most of the board is now planing on going. I had been told also we qualified for some private training in our school. Mr. Tubbs will check on that also.

We are going to have a budget work session May 23 at 7:00 in the high school library. By then we should have the budget information we need to establish our budget for next year, and know how we will end up this year. I think we will need to have a serious discussion about where our funding stands, and if we need to try for another Levy to provide funding for the things we are lacking to better educate our students. If anyone would like to sit in on our committee meeting next week to better understand how our school budget works you are welcome to attend. All these meetings are open meetings to the public.

There was a first reading of a new policy update regarding Evaluation of Certified Staff. Part of it includes an evaluation from parents. There was a concern brought to me about how many of these evaluations would be put into the teacher's file and how they would be selected. There was a concern with the way it had been done it might not be fair to the teachers. There is also a problem getting evaluations from parents especally in the high school, and concern in some cases only parents with complaints would fill out an evaluation. This is all part of the new education laws that were passed last year.  I am not sure how exatly this will be changed, but there will be improvements made to this process.

I might add that other items that were brought to our attention at our cottage meeting, and in private were also discussed in depth during the executive session, that is mainly why it went so late. All I can say about these things are, you have to trust me that I want to see improvement, and will keep doing what I can to see that the other concerns brought up will improve.

Sorry this is so long I hope you made it to the end. There was a lot discussed. Thank you for your input. I got asked how I learned about some of the things I talked about, and if the concerns I brought up came from more than one person. I told them I have been getting quite a lot of input, and that some of it was generated from the blog that I write, and the fact that I respond to the input I get. I think of the board members only April reads my blog, maybe I'm wrong, but doubt it. I feel like my blog is getting read by more all the time. I think word is spreading. It is providing a way to get information out to those who can't attend the meetings, plus hopefully provide a way for those who choose to, to be able to respond. Thank you for the response. I always welcome ideas and concerns you might have. If I don't hear these things, I'm not able to help improve them. Thank you again, Brian

Reply to Anonymous Patron

I wrote a reply to this comment, but somehow it was erased. So I decided to make it a new blog so it can be seen easier.

I hope you look back and read my comments. I can understand how you might not want to identify yourself on my blog, but I wish you would email me on my school address. If you did and wanted your comments kept private, I wouldn't tell anyone who you are. It is hard to address you concerns not knowing anymore details. I don't think any student should be bullied for any reason, including differences in religious beliefs. I would hope that any teacher or administrator would stop this from happening if they saw it. But not knowing any details it is hard to know how to address your specific concerns.

When I hear comments like, accounting for past spending. I would like to ask in what ways do you think we haven't spent money appropriately? When I hear the board needs to make a lot of changes but no details are given. I would like to ask. What changes do you think we should make? If you think the board doesn't try and respond to problems that you see going on but you don't make us aware of them, what can we do?
If you can't attend board meetings, you can still contact me or the administrators or other board members. I always respond to emails.

If you have followed my past blogs, you should know some ways I have tried to change things for the better. A couple things. We now have a lot better committee structure. We meet each month and discuss things to bring to the board. We have made many cuts to save money, including going to a four day week, and laying off teachers. Adjusting to the cuts has caused some problems that we have had to deal with. There are still more adjustments to make.

Again I would welcome you comments in a private email. Thank you, Brian