Well this is a first for me. I am starting this as I'm flying back from a dairy board committee meeting in Chicago. I received a free iPad and training on different apps to use. We also received training from a media expert on how to use Facebook and a little about blogs. Even though I already use these things, I still learned a lot. I might try and write a dairy blog. They tell us, consumers really trust farmers and we need to tell our story and defend our industry against those who don't like us. I'm not sure if I will try and do this or if many would read it, or for that matter for sure what I would write about. The technology is amazing and changing all the time. I'm not sure who out there is reading my school blog obviously not just local district members. I often get over 200 page views after every blog I write. So maybe some would follow me on a dairy farm blog. I've had around 7,000 page views since I started writing it, and my page views are increasing.
Well enough of that here goes the school blog. I was surprised that hardly anybody attended since the topic of a supplemental levy was on the agenda. I don't know if that means the patrons except our proposal I posted last month or were just not interested in coming to the meeting. I won't go into all the details of what we are proposing you can read it on my blog from last month if you would like. We discussed the funding ideas further but didn't change anything from last month. One thing we talked more about was the elementary boiler. It still works but is original to the building. If it failed in the middle of the winter and wasn't fixable we would really be in trouble. We would have to try and crowd up the kids in the other buildings somehow until we could replace the heating system, which would take a lot of time to do. We also talked a little about other funding needs that we will not be able to address with this two year levy, like cooling units in the middle school. As our technology grows so does our need for air conditioning. As you know computers put out a lot of heat and can have operational problems if they get to warm. Let alone the kids needing to sit in those rooms working on the computers. I always hear about how hot it gets in the elementary, but not much about the middle school. I guess they are tougher there. But I'm sure if the teachers and students are more comfortable it is easier to teach them. After the two years have past we will need to reevaluate our financial situation and decide if we might need to continue with another levy.
I am disappointed that our state has been so slow restoring our funding. From what I've heard so far it doesn't sound like our funding will improve much this year either. Without trying to sound to political I find it interesting to hear Mr. Luna insist that the state restore the funding back to pre recession levels. I didn't hear him trying to encourage more funding near as much as this year. Maybe it's the coming issue of his re-election. Sadly I've even heard they might reduce teacher pay. If this trend doesn't change it will be hard to keep good teachers or for that matter get new teachers to replace those who move on or retire. We do have several teachers that are getting close to retirement. States like Wyoming pay a great deal more than Idaho pays. It's good that our teachers choose to live in Idaho for other reasons than what they are paid here.
Well back to the meeting. We did vote unanimously to request a supplemental levy for the amount of $230,000 each year for the next two years. This is about $20,000 less than our expiring middle school bond, so taxes shouldn't increase. I hope we can get the support we need. The election will be held in March. I would be happy to answer any questions about this.
We had a report from the Education Foundation. They were able to meet their goal of raising $20,000. They gave money to the school to help buy some little tablets that can be used to look up research information in a classroom. They have also granted teachers funding requests to better equip them with some needs they have had for their classes. I really appreciate all they have done for our schools.
After this we reviewed a few policies and went into executive session for employee evaluations.
That is pretty much all we did. Again if you have questions or comments let me know. Thanks, Brian
P.S. I sure don't like flying and will be glad to get back home late tonight.
