September 10, 2015 School Board Meeting

I'm sorry I didn't write a blog about last months meeting. There wasn't very much business last month. The agenda was pretty short this month too. 

I conducted the board meeting again this month, Casey wasn't able to come. April also had to leave town. Paul had a 4H project going on that day at the fair, so he was late arriving for the meeting. We couldn't start for lack of a quorum until Paul was able to get there. 

Our main matter of business was a discussion about the heating and cooling in the elementary. We were given a report by an engineering firm. They did a very detailed feasibility study. The study was very surprising. When the strategic planning committee looked into the costs of a new heating system before our levy, they didn't study it in very much detail. The amount we levied for would cover a lot of the cost of just replacing the boiler, but is not nearly enough to add air conditioning. The engineering firm was asked to evaluate putting in HVAC units. These units would provide heat and air conditioning for each room. There is a lot more to doing this than any of us thought there would be. Their total cost estimate was $487,000. Our levy was only for $70,000. We were able to set aside another $70,000 in this years budget to help cover the cost. With only $140,000 to cover the cost, obviously the grand plan to put in HVAC units isn't going to happen. Some of the engineering estimated cost were. Strengthening the roof, the structure isn't strong enough to support these heavy units. The building power supply is not sufficient to power the required 33 units. Just the electrical requirements alone would cost $184,000. The existing air conditioners would have to be removed. The required gas piping isn't cheap. All of this work would cost a lot of money. Far more than we can afford.

So what do we do now? Mr. Tubbs said he had talked to boiler companies earlier when he was recommending we just replace the boiler. He thinks a new boiler can be put in next to the old boiler. New ones are much smaller than our 60 year old one. The cost for just a boiler would be around the $70,000 we levied for. But this doesn't do anything to improve the air conditioning problem we wanted to address originally. There is no obvious problem with our old boiler, just the fact it is past it's life expectancy and if it failed it would take several weeks to replace. The management team has done some contingency planning of what they would do to accommodate the students into the other buildings. There was some talk again about how sound the elementary building is. It is an old building but in very good shape. Mr. Tubbs had told me when they drilled a hole into the wall to put fiber optics into the building it took them all day. They kept breaking drill bits hitting metal rebar in the block wall. 

My opinion is this. We go ahead and put in a new boiler next summer. Hopefully if the state provides us some additional M&O funding we can set aside some more money in next years budget. If we end up with close to $200,000, we spend whatever it takes to replace the boiler, and add air conditioning units to as many rooms as we can afford. We then add more air conditioners as we can afford them.  I asked if any rooms needed air conditioning anymore than another. I guess there isn't any specific rooms that need it more. Air conditioners alone wouldn't be as heavy for the roof or require as much electricity. More power would be needed at some point in the process, but not near as much as the HVAC units would require. There was some talk about doing a survey to see what the public thinks we should do, even proposing tearing down or selling the elementary building and building a new building by the other buildings or adding onto the middle school. I think we already decided the best option was to fix up the elementary. I'm totally against the idea of abandoning the elementary building or building a new one. I don't support doing a survey either. There are other things I would like to see improved, like putting in a cold weather entry on the front of the building, and improving the appearance of it. I would like to see a cost estimate of installing a boiler and some air conditioning units. We have some time to figure this out, but if we are going to replace the boiler, we need to decide in time to do it next summer.

We talked briefly about setting goals, but without April and Casey there, we didn't go into much depth. April has some good ideas about goals, some of which she learned about at the ISBA regional meeting. I suggested we discuss it next month when hopefully the full board can attend. Since I have been on the board we haven't been very good at following up on goals we have set. It was brought up that a board member needed to replace Bart on the strategic planning committee, which by the way is getting a name change by a policy change to the District Planning committee. I asked if Wade or Paul was interested in being on the committee. Wade volunteered, so he will serve on the Planning Committee. 

We then went over some policy updates. Nothing that we had any real say in or not,  just expected to approve. A new parental rights policy was given to us. It goes into the rights parents have, and what their kids are taught. It is to long to list here, but worth reading when it's put into our district policies. It goes into parents rights regarding removing your kids from testing you might not want them to have. 

Well that pretty much sums it up. If you have any questions or concerns let me know. Next month the auditor reports to us about our district finances. He is always good to listen to. Thank you, Brian