February 17, 2016 Blog Update

I thought I would give a short update about the soccer program that I talked about in my blog. I have received some new information and wanted to reassure soccer supporters that I support your efforts to make the boys soccer program a success. 

I heard there were 14 boys playing soccer last year instead of the 12 we heard at the meeting. They had numerous fundraisers with a lot of parental involvement. Their efforts to fully fund the program fell short, but not by very much at all. Only one player graduated from last years team, and there are five freshman that are planning on playing this year. They are practicing every Saturday, to get ready for the season. It takes a lot of work to start a new program, and from what I heard today the boys and their parents are doing their best to make boys, and girls soccer for that matter a success. I'm sorry if I gave anyone the impression that I was not supporting your efforts. Good luck to both teams this year. Thank you, Brian

February 11, 2016 School Board Meeting

Since I missed the last two meetings it's been quite awhile since I wrote a blog. I would have made it to the last meeting if they hadn't changed the date. I don't like missing meetings, because it's hard to find out what happened and I like to be involved in the discussions. There was board training before the board meeting. I was traveling home from the California Ag Equipment Show, so I missed the training.

The meeting started out with a Strategic Planning  Committee report given by Mr. Gee. The report was all about the technology needs of the district. Student education is moving away from paper textbooks, to personal tablets. The district has quite a few chromebooks. They are an inexpensive, what you might call a mini laptop. They work off wifi. There are controls and monitoring of what they can access on the Internet. They can't store data directly on them. The students use an Internet based program to save their information on. To be able to eventually move away from most textbooks, the district will need a lot more chromebooks. There is also a need for projectors, whiteboards, teacher laptops, chromebook carts (to plug them into) and the need to fund a second IT person to support all the district's technology. The cost estimate for all of these  needs is just shy of $200,000 a year over the next two years. I asked what the ongoing costs estimates would be. He didn't have that information available. It was asked how much direct funding we get now from the state for technology. Mr. Tubbs said somewhere around $34,000. 

The discussion moved into the idea of continuing a Supplemental Levy to fund our district technology needs. We currently have around a $230,000 levy. It was recommended by the Planning Committee to ask for a levy to support this technology plan. Other district needs-like facility maintenance issues-could be funded with other funds. We spent quite a bit in the last couple years upgrading computer labs. Now it looks like the direction is to move away from the labs to the  chromebooks. Without the state providing a substantial amount more funding  that we could use for technology in future years, it looks like we would have to maintain some level of Supplemental Levy funding. I haven't liked the idea of being a district that depends on supplemental tax funding. We are going to have a Board Work Meeting on February 26th at 4:00, to go over everything so we know what direction we would like to go. We won't vote on anything until our next board meeting on March 10th. We need more information to be able to make the decision. 

Some more thoughts I have on this issue. Paper textbooks, in at least most subjects, have been used for many years  before they are replaced. From what we learned, chromebooks would need to be replaced every three to four years. Textbook software for the chromebooks is thought to be cheaper than paper books, but not as much as you would think. I would also guess that since this software is supported by a textbook company, they would have some kind of constant updating and replacement program. No keeping the same thing for ten or more years anymore. How expensive might this be? Will the state recognize the needs of districts to move toward more technology and appropriately fund it? I'm actually in Boise today for a dairy meeting. There is a dinner  with some of our state legislators. I'm going to try and talk to our county legislators if they are there tonight. We have to decide if we want to go forward with a new levy by our March board meeting to get it on the ballot in time for next year's  funding. Will the patrons of the district support a continuation of a levy? Is it right to limp along and do the best we can to provide the needed technology? 

I did get a chance to talk to the Idaho House Chairman  Bedke today. I asked him about funding as he was leaving the meeting. He said the priorities are teacher funding and the Maintenance and Operations Budget. Technology  funding is probably third in priorities. Their goal is to increase our M&O funding back to pre recession levels. If they accomplish this level of funding, we will get some additional funding, but not near as much as we need to fund this proposal.

Well to move on. We also talked about the status of the Boy's Soccer Program. They were given two years to prove the program would be viable. From my assessment, so far it doesn't look very good. It is supposed to be self funding. Last year it fell short, the amount of the shortfall was unclear. We were also told  when the proposal was made, they would have 18-20 boys ready to play. They had twelve. It takes eleven to make a team. They don't seem to have near as much parental support as the Girl's Program  had when they were going through the trial period. I asked how many they anticipate will play this year. They will try and find out. Unless things look better after another year and they step up and pay the costs they committed to, I will have a hard time supporting the program's continuation. 

After some policy reviews and a little more public comment, we moved into executive session. We talked about personnel evaluations. After the executive session, we voted to extend Mr. Tubbs contract for another year, for a total of three years. 

This ended up a lot longer than I thought it would. I don't take asking for Supplemental Funding  lightly. We will have a lot to discuss at our Work Meeting. I had been optimistic we wouldn't need another levy. But to properly educate our kids, it's looking like we can't get there with our current amount of funding. Let me know if you have any ideas, and what you think about it. If the board knows the community is behind us, it will make it a lot easier to go forward. If you have any other questions or comments let me know. Thank you, Brian

November 12, 2015 School Board Meeting

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

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

July 9, 2015 School Board Meeting

This meeting was very short and I debated on writing a blog or not but decided I might as well. Casey Park was out of town so I conducted the meeting. The first matter of business was for myself and Wade Christensen to be sworn into office. I welcomed Wade on the board. Next the election of officers were held. The same officers were elected. Casey Park will remain chairman, me vice chairman, and April Christensen as treasurer. 

Mr. Tubbs talked about two new teachers hired. J Thane will teach 5th grade, he is the husband of Becky Thane, who was recently rehired as a high school teacher. Chris Mecham was hired to teach 4th grade. He comes to Firth from Ririe. Chris's dad, Danny grew up in Firth, and is the Nephew of Dave Mecham. I understand both of these men are excited to come to Firth. 

We discussed when to have our board meetings for the next year. A suggestion was made to start our meetings at 7:00, since they sometimes go so late. I think all of us supported that idea, but since Casey wasn't there to express his opinion on this, we later tabled the vote until our next meeting. I wonder if more patrons would attend if we started earlier?

There is an ISBA training meeting this Thursday at Rigby. I am not able to attend. April said she wanted to go, which is a good thing. I asked her to report back to the board next month about what she learned. 

We then talked at length about the school food service program. Amy Dye presented a lot of information to us. It was brought out to us in last months board meeting that we are having to subsidize the lunch program more than we had to do in the past. Amy talked about the challenges of complying with the regulations. Partly because of the new nutrition standards, food costs have gone up and participation has dropped. The school food service is also mandated this year to charge the students the same price for their meals as the district gets reimbursed for. Because of this the elementary meal price will go up .35, and the middle school and high school will go up .10. Amy gave us the number of meals served in each building over the last four years. Basically the district grossed about $35,000 less than we did four years ago. The lunch staff keeps trying to improve what they serve the kids within the regulations they have to live by. One example she mentioned was how they now make their own pizza to comply with the whole grain requirements, which is much improved over when they bought it from another source. Some of the loss of participation was blamed on when they have flex time. The high school students have had more time to go off campus because of the flex time being right before lunch. There is now a plan to have flex time earlier in the morning, so more kids should stay on campus. One challenge of food service is the fact that the district loses more on the full price meals than the free and reduced meals that are served. Two positive things are, the district still qualifies for free breakfast for all students who want it, and we were able to get a grant again to cover the cost of a snack break for the elementary. I think the lunch staff is doing a very good job dealing with the increased challenges they have. It was nice to get an update. 

That was pretty much all that was discussed at the meeting. There are a lot of summer projects being worked on, including the bus lane by the high school, playground work, and buffing the cement in the 7-8 grade hallway. It is always good to see improvements being done. Thank you, and if you have questions or concerns let me know. Brian

June 11, 2015 School Board Meeting

This blog begins the fifth year I have written a blog. It's also the 70th blog I have written. As you know I'm not the best writer or very good at grammar, but at least I try. I hope for those who take the time to read this find it worthwhile. I'm getting close to 10,000 page views, thank you for your support.

This meeting started with the recognition of Bart Cook. This was his last meeting after 17 years of board service, many of those as chairman. I didn't always agree with Bart on issues, especially when I first came onto the board, but I have a great deal of respect for him. His experience and problem solving skills will be missed, and so will his sense of humor. The next meeting Wade Christensen and I will begin our four year term of office. I will also start my 8th year on the board. Time sure flys by. Now I'm the second most senior member, behind Casey. 

Roger Harrison then gave us an update of the spring sports. Both track teams won their district competition. The girls ended up second at state, the boys took  seventh. The girls are sixth district softball champions, and the boys ended up third in the combined fifth and sixth district baseball. There were also many recognitions of individual accomplishments. It is truly amazing how well the Firth kids do in all sports. Thanks to all the hard working coaches. I know you don't get compensated very well for all the time you spend working with the athletes. I really appreciate your dedication to the kids. 

The resignation of Lisa Nelson and the hiring of Jotien Adams was mentioned. Jotien was in attendance, she comes from Blackfoot, and will teach 1st grade. She said she is excited to be here. There are still a couple positions that offers have been made but not finalized yet. Mr. Tubbs thinks they have next years staff in place. 

Julie Cederberg presented the proposed district budget for next year. The contingency fund is projected to be the same as last year, close to $800,000. The district will have an additional teacher compared to last year. Most of the increased budget amount will go to teacher and staff salaries. One income item that stood out was $85,000 from the lottery. A few years ago there was no line item for lottery income. I think the state increases or decreases the lottery money based on other state funding. Maybe this year they wanted to make the lottery look good so they credited far more money to it. 

The school lunch program will need to be subsidized about $15,000 from the general fund budget to support it. I asked about the reasons for this, and if there was any plan to try and balance the lunch program budget. This issue is very complicated. In my opinion the new nutrition standards championed by Mrs. Obama are the biggest problem. Less kids all the time are eating school lunches. Less participation really hurts the program. If the free and reduced participation falls too far the district will no longer qualify for free breakfast. Julie wasn't sure, but she thought we might have dropped below the participation minimum. Changing the lunch price is also not practical. The projection for next year is to receive $180,000 in meal re-embursments, for free and reduced student meals. Paid lunch funds are only projected to add up to $50,000, so you really can't raise the lunch price for the few that pay for it. The goal has been to have the lunch program as balanced as possible. I think the lunch ladies do a great job with the challenges of all the new requirements and paperwork they have to do. I have hope they will change the requirements, but more likely nothing will change for the better.

The budget for the new heating system in the elementary is $140,000, $70,000 funded through the levy. I asked if there was progress getting a company in to make recommendations on how we go forward with the heating system. When the idea came up at the last meeting that we just replace the old boiler with a new boiler for $140,000 and still have no air conditioning, we were all disappointed. Mr. Tubbs has talked further with some heating people from Idaho Falls. I think one concern replacing the old boiler with a new one is dealing with asbestos removing the old boiler. It was determined that if the roof heating and air conditioning will work out, that the boiler room can just be closed up and left alone. I asked questions about the student occupied and non occupied funds. These funds would need to be used to help pay for the new system. The non student occupied fund balance is around $830,000, the student occupied fund is much less. I think after expenditures are taken out the balance will be around $200,000. I'm not sure about this balance. It may be more. Some expenses  besides the boiler is $40,000 to complete the bus lane work, $10,000 for elementary playground maintenance, and the same for the middle school, and other repairs. The middle school will have the hall carpets removed and buffed like the high school. This budget is for $14,000. There is other money for carpets, painting and other repairs. When we find out our options for the elementary heating, we will need to decide if we can afford what we originally planned. 

Julie does a very good job managing our district funds. I sure don't anticipate the need to ask for another supplemental levy, unless maybe the state funding reverses course. The funding looks like it's going in the right direction, but I remember hearing if the revenue didn't keep improving something like 5% a year they won't be able to sustain their planned school budget increases. 

The teacher contract negotiations were discussed. All teachers, I think, will get a 3% raise. The district will also cover the increased insurance costs. It is good that the state is finally starting to increase teacher salaries. I hope this trend will continue. 

We then moved into executive session to discuss personnel. After our discussion we came out of executive session and voted to give Mr. Tubbs a one year pay  stipend of $2,000, to be reviewed for possible renewal. Mr. Tubbs a few years ago took a pay cut along with the staff. With all his responsibilities as both the Superintendent and elementary principal, we thought we should at least restore his wages closer to what he used to get. 

Well that is pretty much all for this meeting. It sure is easier to manage an increase in our budget revenue than decreases. I sure hope our funding can continue to improve. Thanks for your support. If you have any questions or concerns please let me know. Thanks, Brian

May 14, 2015 School Board Meeting

Sorry this is so late getting written. The first matter of business was talking about the resignation of Tamara Jolley as a first grade teacher and the retirement of Carol Barbre. Valerie Bame will teach 1st grade. She has been teaching in Burley. Becky Thane will be back again to teach secondary math, and Bob Lambert was hired to teach 9th and 10th grade English. There still is a need to hire teachers for the 1st and 5th grades. The district will also need to hire a special education teacher. I assume the new hires will be made soon. Thanks to all the teachers who left the district and welcome to those joining the district. 

We then had a discussion about replacing the elementary boiler. Administration has talked to several companies about how to go foreword. Many ideas were given. The estimated cost to replace the boiler is anywhere from $130,000 to $150,000, far more than the estimate that was done before the supplemental levy. The levy money will only cover $70,000 of the cost. Another problem is, even at this high estimate it doesn't include air conditioning. At this cost estimate we couldn't afford air conditioning. The air conditioning would add another $8,000 to $10,000 per unit, and this amount wouldn't include electrical upgrades that would be needed. As you might guess this was very disappointing to hear. I know the boiler is very old and needs replaced pretty soon, although it seems to still be working okay for now, one major goal in replacing it was to add air conditioning. After a long discussion and patron input, it was decided to go to an engineer who designs air systems for buildings like this and pay to have them give us their recommendations. This is a big investment and we need to have all the correct information we can get to be able to make the right decision.  Because of this delay in being able to proceed with bids, it's likely now that the heating system won't be replaced until next year. 

We then had a discussion about some concerns brought to the administration by the cheerleaders. Mr. Gee presented us a procedure recommendation for determining how many athletes can travel to state in each sport, and what costs the district pays for. Making sure only the students who qualify to participate in the state tournaments travel on the bus is part of the plan. By doing this it provides room for six cheerleaders to travel with them. The transportation recommendations also apply to district tournaments. When traveling to state basketball and football, the recommendation was to provide three rooms, two for cheerleaders and one to the advisor. 

Cheerleaders will not travel to regular season away games. There has been some concern about how to many cheerleaders should stand along the sidelines during basketball games. This past year there were 15 cheerleaders, next year there will be 21. The recommendation was for there to be 6 at one time. They can all perform during the normal breaks, but more than 6 on the floor at a time was thought to be a problem. All the cheerleaders can perform at their state competition. 

There was a lot of comments from cheerleaders and some parents. One question was if parents could take the cheerleaders to some away games so they can cheer at them. The cheerleaders would really like to cheer at some regular season away games. This is against policy for athletics and would apply to the cheerleaders too. All athletes have to travel by bus for safety reasons. If something were to happen to a student athlete traveling to away games in any other way than by bus the district could be held liable. This is the 

policy at other schools too. There were questions about taking an extra bus to some away games so students and cheerleaders could travel and cheer. Mr. Gee said it costs about $1,500 to take a bus almost anywhere. The district can't afford to provide an extra bus. There was talk about providing an activity bus and have students pay the cost. I guess this was tried once last year but not enough students signed up, so it didn't happen. There was also requests made to let more cheerleaders stand along the court than just six. I wondered if they need to have a limit to the number of cheerleaders. The way varsity cheerleaders are chosen was mentioned. There will be 17 of them, so that makes it harder to decide which six can travel to state. 

It seemed to me like we were being asked to make decisions that really should be left up to the coach, athletic director, and administration. I mentioned this and encouraged them to work this out, we as a board shouldn't micromanage this issue. I said the program has to stay within budget, beyond that everyone else needs to talk further to decide if anything needs changed from what was presented to us. I appreciate the cheerleaders and I'm glad their program is going well.  

Mr. Tubbs talked about the budget again, but he didn't have much new information. Next month we will have the budget meeting, so we should know a lot more then.

We talked over some policy updates and then went into executive session. I think that pretty well covers it. I thought the graduation went well. The graduating class was 67 students. My class, many years ago was 68. I for one am glad our district stays about the same. I'm sure glad I'm not on a board like District 93 and have all their growth issues. Hard to believe another school year is over. Good luck to all the graduating seniors. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Thanks, Brian