August 18, 2016 School Board Meeting

It's been a while since I wrote a blog. There were some important issues I felt I needed to give my opinion on and explain more about. Every year we are presented a safety bussing plan. With busy roads and canals it's not safe for kids to walk to school, so they are bused to school. There are eight bus routes, one of them a special needs bus. Approximately 450 kids ride the bus to school. 

Probably the biggest issue discussed was the change in the school lunch program. The district was informed about the time school started that our district didn't qualify for the free breakfast and snack break anymore. Amy Dye came to our meeting to explain the situation and answer questions. This issue is very complicated and I think will be hard to change for the better. I think the biggest underlying problem is the nationally mandated wellness program guidelines. In other words many of the kids don't like the meals that the cooks are required to serve. There are two parts for a district to qualify for free breakfast. The first part is a majority of the students in the district need to qualify for the free or reduced meals. Amy hadn't gone through all the forms yet, but numbers were coming in around only 40% qualifying, instead of the needed 60%. If these numbers are correct it would indicate the community is better off financially than in the past. Another part of qualifying for the program is, the kids who qualify for the free and reduced meal prices need to actually eat the meals. I asked her how many kids eat in the high school. She said the day before only 47 kids out of about 250 ate lunch. Kids either bring a lunch, go home, or go to town to eat. With the requirement for many to pay for breakfast now, only 37 kids ate breakfast in the elementary, out of 200 kids. By these numbers the cooks won't be near as busy as in past years, which brings up another issue. With low meal participation and no longer having the funding to provide an afternoon snack for the elementary kids, someone will probably end up losing their job. The problem is what can be done to change all of these issues. Closing campus, not allowing students to leave during lunch was suggested. I don't think it's a good idea for kids to hurry down to Blackfoot or up to Shelley to eat, for safety reasons, but I don't support closing campus. I don't think closing campus would solve the problem, and I don't like to take away their freedom. If parents are okay with their kids leaving school to eat, I'm not going to tell them they can't. 

I'm am mostly concerned about not having a snack break in the elementary. With our four day schedule with long school days, kids will get hungry. We heard that in at least some classes crackers and other snacks have been donated. On the surface this seems like a good idea, but in the long run there might be problems. Remember what I said about the nationally mandated wellness policy, well the snacks brought into the school though good intentioned, probably don't meet the wellness policy guidelines. I will call them the food police, whoever comes to the district to verify district compliance to the wellness program, could find out about these good intentioned snacks and find our district out of compliance. If they do find us out of compliance the food police can withhold our funding until the situation is corrected. 

Another problem with this whole issue is the stigma of the students knowing who the free and reduced meal kids are. Most likely many parents won't want to pay for breakfast for their kids, so mostly the kids who would or could eat breakfast are the ones who get a reduced or free meal. Will some of the kids who really need to eat school breakfast choose not to now?

It was decided to form a committee of parents and others to try and figure out some kind of solution. April volunteered to represent the board on the committee. I thanked her for volunteering. I sure can't see a way to solve this. I hope they come up with something. 

The dress code and cellphone policy was discussed. I think the dress code is followed pretty good. The school has a procedure that makes sense. I would encourage parents to make sure their kids are properly dressed before they go to school. The cellphone problems are harder to resolve. In some classes last year teachers permitted their students to look things up on their phones. When phones are being used for good, they can also easily be used to cheat. This year every high school class should have access to a chromebook, to look up whatever they need. So there shouldn't be any reason for a student to use their phone during class. The teachers give the student a zero on any test or quiz they are caught cheating on. It was suggested we could ban cellphones from school. I'm not sure how we could do this, even if we could, should we? I personally think kids need to keep their phones in their pockets, or some other secure place. If they are caught cheating the penalty should be severe. But much like the closed campus issue, I don't support banning phones from the school. I think some parents believe strongly that they want their kids to have access to a phone. I felt that way when my kids were in high school. 

We talked about the extra-curricular stipends. The c team and seventh grade coaches are not compensated for their coaching. At times it's hard to get coaches and hard to keep them very long. The other coaching stipends haven't increased for several years. Cuts were made when the state reduced our funding. Even though stipend increases or changes aren't in the budget, I think we need to make some improvements. We added girls soccer a few years ago, and likely will add boys soccer. So we found money to pay for their coaches, can't we do something for our other coaches? We were also told we don't pay quite as much as other similar sized districts. We will talk about it again next month. I think at a minimum we should pay our c team and seventh grade coaches again, and raise the pay to some degree for the other coaches this year, and look at the budget again next year and potentially raise them more. 

The gender identity bathroom and locker room issues was discussed again. It was determined putting new signs on the individual school bathrooms would solve this issue for now. I did hear since the meeting that a federal judge blocked the new policies from going into affect. Hope his judgment lasts.

The needs survey was discussed some. More work needs to be done to come up with the questions to ask. 

Superintendent and school board goals were discussed. To be honest I didn't take many notes on this topic. Many of the goals are similar as other years. The board talked about needing to understand the budget better and getting some training. We would like to be more involved with the planning of what school improvement projects get done each year. The board will also plan on having many more work sessions, before the board meeting. The needs survey and finding was to increase elective class options is also a board goal. 

A new blower was installed to replace the old one in the elementary. The actual boiler will be replaced, hopefully early next spring once it warms up. The district is putting out bids to repair the leaky elementary roof. I think the repairs will be done during harvest break. It was also decided to leave the harvest break the same as planned. 

The last thing discussed was the school board convention in November. This year it's in Boise, at the Boise Center downtown. Much better location than the old hotel. Our November board meeting will be held there. All the rest of the board plans to attend. I'm still not 100% sure if I will go. I have long meetings the week before and the week after the school board convention. If I go to the school board meeting it will require me being gone for 15 out of 21 days. I will probably end up going, especially since we are going to hold our board meeting too. Some months get pretty crazy with meetings. 

Well I have written plenty, probably more than plenty. If you have any questions or concerns, let me know. If you want to be involved with the school lunch committee, contact Mr. Tubbs. Thank you, Brian