March 14th School Board Meeting

I know it's been a long time since I wrote a blog. I don't know if anyone will still want to read my blog. I have been very busy trying to survive in a very challenging business. I hope to get back on track writing this. The last few months meetings have also been mostly about policy updates, not the most exciting information.

This meeting we had more going on. Three of the board seats are up for election. Casey, April, and John. John has decided not to run again. I think Paul Jensen is running for John's seat, and April and Casey are running for re-election. I don't know if anyone else is running. I think John has served for eight years and has done a good job.

This meeting was very well attended mostly because of the visiting government class. The sports teams were acknowledged for their accomplishments. The football team went 11-1 and repeated as state runner-up. Coach Drake was voted the coach of the year. The wrestlers had a great year and finished with one state champion, and four others who placed at state. The wrestlers also have been academic state champions nine times. The girls team went 15-8. In the last nine years the girls basketball team has gone to state five times, coming home with four trophies and has been academic champions four times. The boys basketball team went 17-9. Coach Adams was the coach of the year. They have been district champions eight out of the last nine years. They have won four state championships over that time with a record of 108-8. They also have won two academic and two sportsmanship awards. I hope I got the stats right. All of these groups have done very well. They are a great group of kids, with great very dedicated coaches. I also don't think the kids get the credit they deserve for doing so well academically. During our board walk through a few days ago Jeff Gee said about half the student body is currently participating in sports, besides all the students participating in clubs. I think it's great to live in a small district where so many students have the opportunity to participate and they all do so well.

Mr. Kunz went over the safe busing plan and proposed putting a 1994 bus up for auction. It has something like 140,000 miles, not as many as I would think it would have. He really likes the new bus we bought last summer. It is a different make than the rest of the busses, and is a lot nicer to drive.

April had asked Sid to give us an update about the four day week. He gave us information comparing the ISAT test score from this year compared to the year before we switched. Overall there isn't very much difference. The overall cost savings is estimated to be about 50,000. The student attendance is up a little. Overall I think the four day week has worked out well. I asked the students in attendance how they liked it. A couple comments were they liked the three day weekend and thought it was easier to have the long weekend to do home work. We did talk a little about needing to work on a calendar for next year pretty soon. We might add a few days back to the year. I am very much against going past Memorial Day. It is hard on some students to have such long days. I also don't think it's good to add very many days either, because if we do it reduces our savings.

We also had an update about the soccer program. They had a successful first year. There were fifteen girls who participated. I don't think most of these girls would have participated in any other sport. They had very good support from their boosters, raising funds, and helping to work on the field and goal posts. The program was approved for two years and will be evaluated again after next season.

Sid also talked about the work being done to set up new tee-ball, little league backstops. They are going to put four fields in back to back east of the soccer field. This is a much needed improvement.

There was some discussion about legislative issues, but not a lot known yet. I think we need to consider having a levy a year from now. We have a deficit of $100,000 in our budget this year. Our bond on the middle school ends next year, and I think it would be a good time to have one. We need to start talking about the schools needs, so we can establish a levy amount that will put us back into a positive spending balance.

Thanks to all those who read this. I plan in writing another blog about the cottage meeting. If you have questions or comments let me know. Thanks, Brian