The board meeting started with the recognition of the football and volleyball teams. The football team ended up third at state. Coach Drake said that four players made all state, and several others were second team. The official honors weren't out yet. Coach Drake said he never had a harder working group of young men.
The volleyball team finished the season as state champions. They had an amazing season. At state they only lost one set, the very first one. From there they dominated winning every set and match on their way to become state champions. Coach Reeves talked about how proud she is of the team, and what wonderful young ladies they are. She talked about how supportive the team has been to her, helping her deal with some serious health issues in her family.
It was talked about how spoiled we are at Firth. Our teams constantly do very well, while many in our district struggle. It was mentioned that this was the first year in school history that North Fremont had made it to state in volleyball. Congratulations to the football and volleyball teams for a great year.
We then approved our emergency school closer day, when the power was out. A day of school is considered six and half hours of class time. We are provided eleven hours of emergency hours during a school year. It was also said our calendar has twenty two hours more built in. So we have twenty six and a half hours of emergency time left or something like four more days of school before we would have to go on an extra Friday to make up the time.
We then had a discussion from the Strategic Planning Committee. They have spent a lot of time going over the needs of the district. With the new Idaho Core Standards we will have to update our math and science curriculum. We will also have to do a lot more testing on computers. We don't have near enough computers in either the high school or middle school for the students to do the research and testing that will be required.
Our middle school bond pays off next June. The annual payments have been about $250,000. The committee is recommending to the board that we consider a two year supplemental levy for $230,000 each year. So taxes wouldn't go up. At the start of the school year we had about $800,000 in our contingency fund. Based on our current budget we will end up with around $600,000 or so. At our recent report from our district auditor, he recommended we maintain a three month budget reserve, just in case there is a problem getting the money from the state in a timely manner. I think our budget is around $4,500,000 a year, so $600,000 isn't even two full months worth.
This is the breakdown from the Strategic Planning Committee. The top needs identified for the year 2014-2015. Math curriculum $69,626. Science curriculum $54,547. I think they said the math books are 9 years old. Under technology they recommend $18,000 for 30 desktop computers @ $600, and $26,000 for 200 tablets @ $130. The tablets would be kept in the classrooms to do research. The students can't do testing on tablets. They recommend for the middle school, $18,000 for 30 desktops. More and more of the curriculum is moving to computers from textbooks. Mr. Gee said there are only 18 working computers in the high school computer lab. Most classes have around 25 students, so it will be hard to do the required testing. With 30 more computers for each building they can set up another lab, so the students can keep up with the new mandated testing requirements. With all the new technology we have in the district and the need to maintain the new tablets and computer labs, we will need to hire another IT person. The estimated annual cost of an IT person is $40,000. So for the school year 2014-2015 it adds up to $226,173.
For the school year 2015-2016 they recommend new english curriculum amounting to $69,626 and new social studies, history, and reading curriculum for $51,382. They were joking about how old our history books are. They also recommend $18,000 for 30 desktop computers for the elementary. Overall our curriculum is getting very old. With our budget cuts over the last few years we are behind on replacing the curriculum. The needed requirements for common core have also been slow coming out. The new requirements force us to update what we have been using. There isn't enough money in our contingency fund to cover these needed costs, and maintain our contingency fund anywhere close to the levels we need.
The next most important recommendation for the 2015-2016 school year, is for us to upgrade and replace the heating system in the elementary. The building heat is mostly from a boiler that is original to the building. There has been a big concern about the reliability of such an old system and the cost to replace it. It also has been a concern for many parents as to how hot it can get in the building at the start of the school year. The recommendation is to replace the boiler with a HVAC system to provide efficient heating and air conditioning for the building. The new system should also save us a lot on our heating bills. The cost of the new system is estimated to be $70,000. This is also a cost that would be hard to cover without some additional funds. So the total for the 2015-2016 year is $230,000.
At our next board meeting we will have a discussion about wether we should go forward with the committee's recommendations. It was also requested that they provide the board with other district needs that they have talked about. If the board decides to go forward with a levy, the district will submit the paper work to have an election in March. I personally think we should go forward with this. I hope with our needs specifically identified and the fact that taxes won't go up we can get the support we need for this. The state may miraculously increase our funding, but given recent history we can't count on much help from them. Even if they do decide to increase our funding we wouldn't know until the end of the legislative session, which would be too late to have a levy for next year.
We talked about the certified employee evaluations that were just completed on schedule, and reviewed some policy updates. We also changed next months board meeting from Thursday the 9th to Wednesday the 8th, to allow Bart and Paul to attend a girls basketball game.
Some final thoughts. I know we tried to pass two levies a couple years ago, which were close but we failed to get the necessary support. We fortunately have been able to get by without added funds, but this situation can't continue. Our contingency fund keeps dropping and our needs keep growing. To maintain our district at the high standards we have been able to achieve we really need to upgrade the items I listed and others.
I was recently told by a young man who is considering building a new house something I think is quite telling. He is trying to decide to build within Firth or Shelley school districts. He likes Firth but is concerned how well supported our district is. If we can't get support to meet the basic needs of the district, it will be hard to encourage young families to settle in our district.
We were asked to find out what the patrons in the district think of us requesting a levy. Do you agree with the needs as identified? If there are any questions about this proposal let me know. Almost all districts have been forced to supplement their budgets with supplemental levies, because of lack of funding. It's only because of good district management and holding back on updating things like curriculum that we have done okay. I would really like input. Thank you, Brian
