Missing last months board meeting makes it seem like a long time since I wrote a blog. Before I get into this months meeting I have one matter of old business to mention. When we extended the spud harvest break the question came up about how much it would cost the district to potentially have twenty kids miss two days of school during our counting weeks. It took a while to find out the answer, but worse case scenario the answer given to me is $12,000. This amount is a lot more than I thought it would be. This number is variable depending on a lot of things, but it will be good to know this for future considerations when it looks like a lot of kids might be absent from school. This is why we don't hold school on fair day. Too many kids would be out and it would cost us a lot.
The meeting started out with the recognition of the fall sports. The volleyball team won district and was second at state. They also won the sportsmanship award. The girls cross country team finished fifth at state and the boys ninth. The football team had a 5-4 record and made it to state, and the soccer team qualified for districts for the first time. Overall they all did very well.
Carla Reeves resigned from coaching volleyball. She did very well, and will be missed. Two of the senior volleyball players did so well they received scholarships to play volleyball in college. Thanks for all your efforts Mrs. Reeves.
Sherlyn Petersen resigned from teaching. Two half time teachers are teaching her classes until a new teacher can be hired, which should be pretty soon.
Reports were then given about the state convention by Paul and Casey. They learned a lot and enjoyed the meeting.
We then had a long discussion about potentially starting a boys soccer team. Since I missed last months meeting it took me awhile to get up to speed on what was discussed last month. Roger Harrison the AD, presented some information. He said there were twelve unpaid coaching positions. He went through the list. The middle school coaches and several assistant high school coaches are unpaid. The C team high school coaches aren't paid. Several of these positions used to be paid positions, but when we were forced to make big funding cuts this changed. Mr. Harrison also mentioned that ten of the girls soccer team are seniors. Because of this, there is a concern if there will be enough girls to field a team for next year. So far they only have about eleven girls interested in soccer for next year. This isn't enough and jeopardizes the continuation of girls soccer. If the girls program can't continue, it makes it harder to justify boys soccer. With both teams costs can be shared, like bussing. A student presented his ideas about a boys team. There were several interested boys to last months meeting, but just him this time. He says there are around sixteen boys interested in soccer. He had ideas about a coach. If we decide to start a boys team I think they would be required to sustain a program without costing very much to the school for two years, just like when we started the girls team. Questions I deal with, are there really enough boys to sustain all the fall sports teams? Would it be similar to the girls, once the initial support group of boys graduate, would there be enough other boys to follow? One of the reasons we started girls soccer was to improve title nine issues. Last year we had 159 boys in all sports combined. The girls with soccer only had 108. If we loose girls soccer and start boys soccer, this really gets out of balance. We talked about this issue at the board meeting. Other concerns I have is all the coaches unpaid now, that I already mentioned. The cost estimate was $3,000 to fund boys soccer, once the district would potentially start paying for it. I don't think this number includes the coaching stipend. Would it be better to work on restoring coaching stipends first? What about other school programs that are underfunded, some of which are core classes. I hear about things like the science department having fundraisers to buy needed supplies, for example. There were concerns about how the boys could raise the money to self fund. The boys need to show they have enough parent support with fundraisers in mind to better show we should consider this. There are other options for some of these boys to play soccer through clubs or maybe joining other schools teams, like a couple girls did before we started their program. We will need to decide if we should go forward with a boys program by next month, to get game scheduling worked out in time.
During public comment a concern was brought up about how many games the cheerleaders can cheer at. Mr. Tubbs addressed their concern. They only cheer at home games, some district games, and state playoff games. This has been the policy for a long time. Because of many factors this is unlikely to change, at least very much.
Because of girls basketball conflicts, next months board meeting was changes to January 14th.
Other than going over policies this was pretty much all that was talked about. As always if you have questions or concerns let me know. If you have thoughts about soccer let me know. This is one of those issues that no matter what we do not all will be happy. Thanks, Brian
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