I have been so busy, and out of town so much I didn't get a blog written last month. The main issue from last month was our district audit report. Thanks to good district budgeting with some help from our Supplemental Levy money, the district is in good financial shape. That doesn't mean the district doesn't have many needs, or that everything is funded to the level we would like, but the district is living within the funds available. Many things like the school lunch program are out of our control. I have talked about this before. With the federal lunch requirements the district loses a lot of money on lunches. No fault to the cooks who are always trying to make things work better. The district completed many improvement projects in and around the buildings. Hopefully the state will continue to improve our funding.
This meeting started out with a presentation by the Education Foundation. We were given an impressive list of all the things the foundation has funded. They are really helping in areas the district falls short on. They are going to have another fund raiser soon. They want to coordinate the best they can with the district to help them decide how to use their funds.
Jeff Gee presented some findings from the Strategic Planning Committee. They have three main areas to go over, finance, facilities, and technology. So far they have mostly studied facilities. Some of the strengths of the facilities are, buildings that are paid for, they are not crowded, well maintained, grounds look better, working security systems, buildings are all structurally strong, and the polished floor improvements. The weakness list is longer. Leaks in the roofs and middle school berm. Electrical system deficiency in the elementary. Middle school furnaces are all getting old. There is a need for arctic entries in the elementary. High school bathrooms and locker rooms in the high school need a lot of work. The outside lighting at the middle school is poor. The middle school bus lane needs improved. Playground equipment is deficient. There are sidewalk problems at the elementary, and the kitchen needs upgrades.
They listed some opportunities to address these issues. Levy for more money, and grants. We have funds from the plant facilities levy to work on these needs. They also know the community is willing to help. It is hard to get grant money, and not easy to pass levies.They made suggestions to the board to work on several of these needs. The committee will meet next month to go over the technology needs.
Even tough we have made a lot of progress with addressing our technology needs, we have a long way to go. One key area is the lack of individual tablets for the kids. More teachers are using them all the time, if they have them available. It also seems like EBooks instead of paper textbooks are the better way to go. This need will be hard to fund.
We talked about board goals, many of them related to the needed improvements. Student achievement is our main goal. It's been very hard to analyze achievement because of all the testing changes. We need to settle on a plan we can track each year to evaluate the superintendent. Another goal is to go through some ISBA training.
We are in the process of getting boiler replacement bids for the elementary. There will be some issues dealing with asbestos, so we need to know the whole cost before we go forward this next summer.
We then talked a lot about policy updates. There are some new policies that are forced on us that we don't like but have to accept. The gender identity type policies come from the federal government and if we didn't approve them they would cut off our funding. I won't get more into these, other than to say, to me these policies go to far and I sure don't like to have to support them. Our liberal government leaders are pushing their agenda on us, and it's to bad we can't do anything about it.
We are going to have our yearly walkthrough of the buildings on December 9th.
That was pretty much all we talked about. When the idea of maybe running another Supplemental Levy came up, I questioned the need. We can address some of these needs each year, and hopefully the state will keep improving our funding. However after hearing about all our needs, especially our technology needs, I now think we might need to continue a levy. We don't have near enough tablets to use in the classrooms. We don't have the outlets to charge all of the tablets. Our funding for one of our IT employees will end after this school year, without having more levy funds. We need to provide the best education we can for our students. If we can't afford to continue improving our technology we aren't accomplishing this goal as well as I think we need to. Going for so many years without adequate state funding has left us in a hole with so many things that need funding to improve. We will talk more about the possible need for a levy during the next couple months.
I will not be able to attend next months meeting. I was recently elected to serve on my dairy co-op board. I now serve on four different dairy boards that require a lot of time away from home. I have a meeting in Boise the day of the school board meeting that I will attend. I shouldn't miss to many school board meetings, with all my other responsibilities, and will continue to do my best as a school board member. I encourage those wishing to know more about what's going on in the district to attend the board meetings. As always if you have questions or concerns please let me know. Not having any kids in the district anymore is a challenge for me to know what's going on.
Thanks, Brian
No comments:
Post a Comment