September 14, 2017 School Board Meeting

I didn't take many notes from last weeks long board meeting, so I hope I can remember enough of the details to explain what occurred. I was about a half hour late getting to the work session, so I missed some of the discussion about goals. The board has these four basic goals, which I think are still not cast in stone yet. 

  1. Increase the use of academic assessments. We want to look at the various testing done closer to monitor how things are going better. 

 2. Analyze the impact of extra-curricular programs on the districts budget. I missed              

the discussion about this topic, but I know there is concern about the number of extra-curricular activities, if there is adequate numbers of kids participating in the sports to be able to continue everything. We have also talked a lot about those who volunteer their time to coach, and if we can go a little further in being able to restore some funding for coaches. 

3. Evaluate the number and effectiveness of courses offered by the district. Missed the discussion on this point too. I know we would like to be able to add more electives however we can, but this will take time. 

4. Analyze the need for a full time Superintendent, which would also give us a full time Elementary Principal. I know we all feel like things would be better accomplished if we had both. My personal opinion on this is we aren't there yet. I don't know where the funding will come from. Our contingency fund isn't growing. Our district budget is still very tight. I guess we will talk more about it.

Superintendent goals are somewhat tied to our board goals, also a work in progress. The ones a little different are. 

1. To provide us an assessment of the district's digital technology capabilities through 2020. The district has invested a lot in technology over the last few years. We want to make sure we stay on top of what's needed and upgrades that might need to be made. 

2. Include the board in pre-budget planning. We haven't really been involved in this area before. 

3. Provide the board with an analysis of the physical facilities of the district. What does he recommend we do with things like the old bus barn and storage building for example. 

4. Provide the board with an analysis of the current employee benefits. Casey working for an insurance company has some ideas on this. We haven't discussed any particulars yet. 

We went over the committee's drug policy recommendation and ideas. I won't get into all the details of the policy now. The committee put a lot of effort into their ideas, and I thank them for that. Before we go any further we decided to have our district lawyer look at the proposed policy to see if he sees any legal issues. 

Now some personal thoughts on this. Every once in a while we are faced with some difficult decisions that have no simple answers. To me this is one of them. The procedure part is where it could get complicated. How many kids would we require to be drug tested is a big question. This policy can't be to costly. Is 10% of the kids enough? 20%, what's the right number? There would be a blinded random draw to determine who would be tested. Parents would be required to sign a consent form to allow their child to be tested to be able to participate in any extra or co curricular activity. There seems to be some parents that want a certain kid or kids to be tested. There is no guarantee that any certain kid will be tested. Will this satisfy the parents that are encouraging the board to implement a testing policy? There were three options presented for what would happen if there are violations. The first one wouldn't require any suspension of any activity, but would require weekly testing and counseling. The second would suspend the student for 20% of the games. But how would this be applied to non sport, or co-curricular activities? The last one would end the students participating after a single violation. It's obvious there are strong differing opinions on this issue, even among the board to some degree. I for one will not support a policy that kicks the student out of the activity on a first violation. I think we want to try and help these kids, and to end their participation, I think would be wrong. As far as a co-curricular activity. I think if we go the route of a 20% suspension, for them the suspension would have to be loosely defined. I think the suspension would have to be determined by the teacher and administrator. If the co-curricular class only had one simple route to a district and state competition, I wouldn't want the student to be eliminated from their chance to go to state on a single violation. There are also potentially a lot of legal concerns in how this is all implemented. I'm beginning to understand why several districts in the area have testing policies, but are not being implemented. I also have a concern that, "catching" a certain kid using drugs is the responsibility of the district. Where is the parents responsibly in all of this? I think if possible it's much better if the offending students own parents took care of the problem, and didn't leave it up to the school district. I'm very much undecided about this issue. 

We received the audit report. Mr. Hatt our accountant was unable to be there. Just a couple things. Our financial status is very good. Our Business Manager and Administrators do a very good job managing the districts money. Our district is growing. Mr. Tubbs stated that he thinks we have more students this year than we have had for around fifteen years. Our contingency fund ended the year at about the same level it started, $850,000. Our total revenue increased 5.28%, much of which went to the teachers. Actual district expense per student was $6,291. The state average was $8,250. 

There was a discussion about our out of district policy, or non resident student policy. The policy has been not to allow any out of district students to attend if the class they would be attending is currently over 70 students. The district doesn't want class sizes to get too big for the resident students. The main change is to allow the 7-12 grades to be able to go to 75 students. Only one grade, the current seventh grade is above that limit, most have considerably smaller classes. I think they said there are 34 non residents attending Firth. There are a total of 57 new students this year, 5 of them non residents. There are 234 in the high school. I think the A2 classification goes up to 319, so we are a long ways from that.

We voted to support the purchase of a new special needs bus. The same Thomas brand bus as the last couple we bought.

Mr. Mecham presented a chart and information for discussion about the challenges of offering a particular elective for the middle school students. With the required core classes, it ends up being hard to juggle all the teachers schedules around. I think he did a good job explaining it. If anyone has questions about this you need to talk more to him about it. 

We talked about what's appropriate for official board minutes. How much detail should be listed. Is there ways to improve them, and what can the district do to show better transparency. This discussion reminded me one main reason why I started writing this blog several years ago. I am a big believer in transparency, and if you want to read this, I can bore you with a lot of details, mingled in with my personal opinions. I also had a teacher come up to me at the end of the meeting, asking me why I wasn't writing this anymore. I get busy and probably a little lazy. It was good to be thanked for writing it. More discussion will take place about this issue.  

One last thing. We talked about our school walk through we did recently. As I talked about in my recent blog, the elementary is in great shape for an old building. The middle school is twenty two years old and is in bad need of some expensive maintenance. The roof has leaking problems. Mr. Tubbs indicated about every time they patch it, it cost $5,000. He just got a bid for a new metal roof, and it was $1,100,000. I don't think we will replace it with metal. The Whole building when it was new was $2,500,000. He is going to look into the cost of a new single roof. I don't like the idea of patches. That money will just be wasted when a new roof is put on. I would like to find out the cost for singles, then figure out how we can get it replaced as soon as possible. Maybe this will be an issue for a potential continuation of our Supplemental Levy. There is talk about what we need to do with our buildings 5-10 years from now. I think we need to worry more about the next five years and what needs done to maintain our current buildings. I won't be on the board forever, but in my opinion we have no need to build any new school buildings for at least 15 or more years, long after I'm off of the board. There was some talk of the idea of a new gym, which I again don't think we need or can afford. I wonder about some kind of bus shop and storage building. There is no place to pull a bus inside to work on it. He has to lay on the ground regardless of the weather to work on a bus. Doesn't seem like a good thing. All of these things need looked at, and the Strategic Planning Committee is going to meet soon to discuss these issues too.

Well so much for not coming up with enough to write about. It was a five hour meeting, so at least you didn't have to sit through all that. I'm currently in Chicago for a National Dairy Management Incorporated meeting. I'm here for a few days. After three years on the National Dairy Board followed by five years and counting on the United Dairy Industry Association Board, they know me pretty well around here too. I've been known to voice my opinion here too. If you have any questions go ahead and ask. Thanks for reading my ramblings. I don't have my personal editor with me, my Wife, so forgive all my errors.

Thanks, Brian

My Thoughts About Our School Buildings

I have resisted commenting on this issue, but now I feel compelled to comment. I understand there are some patrons in our school district that would like us to build a new high school. I think the idea is to abandon our elementary building. There has been statements that our elementary building is no longer worth maintaining. If we as a school board had considered the building to old and in poor enough shape not to reinvest in its maintenance, do you think we would have asked for a Supplemental Levy to replace the original boiler? The boiler was just installed right before school started. Do you think we would have authorized the funds to replace the tar and gravel roof, with a new rubberized long lasting roof? Both of these items cost somewhere around $300,000 together. There has been other updates recently too, like adding a fiber optics system to the building and a new and improved entryway, among other things. I personally can't think of a more irresponsible thing to do with the patrons money than to ask for funding for these improvements only to now consider abandoning the building. 

For me there are really only two logical reasons to consider a new building. One is if the student population has outgrown the size of the facilities. The other reason is if the buildings aren't structurally sound. First, we currently have plenty of room in all our buildings. Second the buildings including the elementary are in good shape. Their are no structural issues with the elementary. It's a solid old building. We replaced the roof and the boiler. There are no other major repairs needed that I'm aware of. It's ironic that the worst roof leaking problems were in the very newest part of the building, which by the way was built, I think around 1990, so not that old at all. 

The building with the most current issues is probably the middle school. It is to the age that some major repairs need done, or items replaced. There are a lot of original furnaces that are now on a schedule to be replaced over the next few years. The original shingle roof has had some leaking problems and will soon need to be replaced. There are some leaks around the berm along the building that need fixed. All of these things are normal for a twenty plus year old building. These items are funded through our Plant Facilities Levy funds, and our non student and student occupied funds we are required to set aside each year. 

I have no real idea what a new building would cost, but I can imagine a new high school with the addition of a new gym and auditorium being very expensive. I very much question that our small school district could afford such a building. 

The School Board followed the recommendation of the Strategic Planning Committee when we requested the support of the patrons for our $230,000 Supplemental Levy. To now change course and abandon a very good old building and waste all the taxpayers money, to me would be totally irresponsible, and I wouldn't support it. Only two of us are still on the board that were on the board at the time we requested the Supplemental Levy. I feel accountable for the decisions made, and still think we made the right decision.