May 12, 2016 School Board Meeting

I missed writing a blog last month. There wasn't a lot of business and I have been gone a lot. There wasn't a lot of business at this meeting either, but I wanted to express my thoughts on some things. I will get to it a bit later. 

The first thing I want to do is thank everyone that supported our Supplemental Levy. The levy money will really help with our technology needs. We soon will be the only district in the county with a one to one device for each student. I really hope the time will come where we won't need to ask for any more Supplemental Levies. At least we were able to lower the amount substantially.

The first matter of business was the resignation of Carla Reeves. She will be teaching next year in Shelley. I know she will be missed. I wish her the best in her new position in Shelley. We also approved the hiring of five new teachers. Patrice Williams 2nd grade, Sarah Bates 4th grade, Elizabeth Grosbeck 5th grade, Tracy Messick MS English, and Nicole Hopkins Special Education. Darren Jolley will also move to MS Social Studies. These teachers all have local ties. I'm glad the district was able to hire such a good group of teachers. 

We then had a long discussion about the possibility of bringing back humanities courses. Mr. Tubbs has heard that the state is going to change the current highly qualified certification teacher requirements. We used to have drama for example, but when they changed the requirements, drama had to be dropped because the teacher wasn't highly qualified. Hopefully this will change so more electives could be offered. I don't know how soon we will know if, or how this will change. 

There is a strong desire by some to start a band and choir program. A few years ago this was tried, but in the end it didn't work out very well and when the funding was cut from the state, the music program was dropped. There were some patrons in attendance who spoke in favor of starting a music program. Other board members said they have heard from several patrons who would like the district to offer band again. Nobody in my zone has indicated any desire to start band, at least not to me. I wish there was a way to find out how many kids would sign up and stay in band. If band was started the district would probably require a humanities credit, which would be just one semester, for graduation. Several years ago when there was a successful band program our class sizes were larger, and there were less requirements for graduation. With smaller classes, band students would need to stay in band throughout high school. As you can tell I'm not convinced a band program would be successful now. But my biggest concern is how to fund a full time music teacher and maintain the funding indefinitely. In the past the funding came from a certified teaching position. All our teaching positions are currently filled. One thing that was done before is having one less teacher in a grade that had less students. I don't think it was very easy to move teachers around so much to accommodate the changing class sizes. We do have one class of about 47 students. If we had an open teacher position, which we don't, would it be okay to only have two teachers in this grade, so there would be more students in each of the two classes? If a position opened up, I'm not sure if this would be a good option.

Another idea suggested by other board members was to use some of our Contingency Fund. We currently have over $800,000 in this account. This money is set aside as a savings account. Our accountant has recommended we maintain a minimum of at least two months of our operating budget. As long as I've been on the board our contingency has been pretty close to this amount. I asked the business manager how long it took to build the fund up to this level. She said when she started, I can't remember for sure how long ago she said, but around 30 years ago, the Contingency Fund was around $700,000. So this fund may go up and down a little over time, but stays close to the same. I made it very clear during this meeting that I will not support funding a music teacher out of our Contingency Fund. I was definitely in the minority over not wanting to use this fund. Next month will be our budget meeting, where all our projected funding and expenses will be presented to us. They also estimate where our Contingency fund will end up. There is no guarantee that our funding will continue to improve or even drop in the future. Mr. Tubbs was asked to discuss with the management team how we might go forward with a music program. Our district has done a very good job operating with a conservative budget. I think it would be irresponsible to start a band program without a secure plan to fund it.

Mr. Tubbs talked about the district funding. But as I said they will present the budget for our approval next month. He also talked about the Leadership Premium Plan. This year every certified teacher earned the premium. The state doesn't like how we allow every teacher the opportunity to earn the same premium. They changed it for next year. They raised the minimum amount from $850 to $900, but the catch is the state won't fund the extra $50. So if we want to maintain our program the same, we will have to come up with the extra $50 for each premium earned. We are going to continue the program the same as in the past. Some teachers were asked to be there to tell us how they earned their premium. They truly work for the little extra money, and I sure wouldn't want to purposely exclude anyone. 

Well that is all that was discussed. If you want to, let me know what you think about the challenges of starting a music program. It's not a simple decision. I played in the band from the fifth grade through the first part of my senior year.  I enjoyed my time in band until my senior year. We had a new teacher that was terrible and the program struggled. She would literally degrade and swear at anyone over the littlest things. I refused to listen to her do things like that, so I quit. I do think it's hard to find the right person to teach band, which is another concern. 

Thank you. I welcome your comments, or input. Brian 

March 17, 2016 School Board Meeting

I guess if I wanted to title this blog with something, it would be the Supplemental Levy request that almost wasn't, but I will get to that later. 

The board meeting started with the many achievements of the winter sports and activity programs. The wrestlers that made it to state did well with a sixth, third and first place finish. The girls basketball team was third in a tough district, with some upset wins along the way. The boys basketball team won state for the third year in a row and the seventh time in ten years. They also won the district championship for the tenth year in a row. The cheerleaders won all four categories of competition at districts. BPA did very well, and so did the FCCLA at their district competitions. 

Four resignations were accepted by the board. Kathy Beckwith, Marcele Tanner, Hallie Crockett, and Katy Killpack. Everyone accept Katy is retiring after many years of service to our district. I wish them well in their retirement, and thank them for all they did for the students of the Firth school district. 

A short update from our last meeting was given about the boys soccer program. Mr. Harrison said fourteen boys paid to play last year, and their budget was only $100 in the hole, instead of the much higher amount we were told last month. The district also hired another coach that will help with both the boys and girls soccer programs. Having another coach should help a lot. The boys are also working on figuring out fundraisers to raise the money they need for this years program. 

We then had a long discussion about the idea of asking for a new Supplemental Levy. The $230,000 two year levy expired this year. We recently had a two hour or so long work meeting to go over the Strategic Planning Committee's Supplemental Levy recommendation. I have thought a lot about this since the idea of continuing a levy was first brought up. I so much wanted not to have to be one of the around 100 districts in the state who depend on Supplemental Levies to survive. The state is restoring more of the school districts maintenance and operation budgets. They intend to fund us back to the level we were in 2009 before the recession hit the state budget, but this increase won't come close to providing enough funds for the technology needed. The original request was for $200,000, less than our last levy, so taxes would go down a little. During our work meeting I think there was somewhat of a consensus that a lessor amount would work to cover most of what they wanted. Since our work meeting I had thought of several more questions that I then emailed to Mr. Tubbs. Mr. Tubbs found out no other district in our county is anywhere close to having one to one devices for their students. Shelley stated they only have 60 in the whole district with the hope of buying another 100 this year. One main reason the other districts are so far behind on getting this technology is their lack of bandwidth in their buildings to provide the needed bandwidth to run all the devices. Firth is fortunate to have all the bandwidth we need. I think we received a grant that helped this process along. Kind of satisfying that we lead the county districts in being prepared to provide one to one technology to our district students. After many comments from the board about the needed technology and other district needs, I made the motion to request a $130,000 two year Supplemental Levy. The levy would be used to buy chromebooks, chromebook charging stations, projectors, and other technology needs. It would also be used to help support our current second IT Tech. We were told without these funds it would be very hard to fund the second position, and without the Tech our district couldn't keep up on maintaining all our technology. Technology is moving school districts to e-books instead of paper text books. The election will be May 17th, the same as the states primary election. 

That was pretty much all that we discussed at our meeting. Now to explain my first statement. The next day I received a text from the Morning News asking me if we had voted to ask for a levy. I answered explaining the amount we asked for and what it would be used for. This was about 2:45 on Friday. A few minutes later I got a call at home from the county election office. The election officer asked if I knew the district had until 5:00 that day to have all the proper paperwork submitted for the levy. I'm not sure why, but I was the first one she had called. I'm not usually around that time of day. Well I called Mr. Tubbs and asked him about it. He thought we had another week to submit the information. He said he would get to work on it, to get it sent in. I received another text, telling me basically the same thing I heard from the county office, other than it said there would need to be a board signature. I got thinking maybe I, as vice chairman,  would have to sign the paper, since Casey works in Pocatello and probably wouldn't be available in time. I called Mr. Tubbs and asked if he needed my help, and offered to do so. It was about 3:40 by then. I had an appointment at 4:00, but decided I better do what I needed to do to help out.  I went to the elementary office where Mr. Tubbs was working on the forms. The county had emailed him the ballot papers from Aberdeen's last levy, so he could easily edited it to the information we needed. Julie has been sick so she wasn't in the loop as to what needed done. After doing the necessary editing Mr. Tubbs tried to print the paperwork. No matter what he tried it wouldn't work. As the time past, he decided we should go to the district office and try it there. By this time it was about 4:40. He had to do the edits all over again. He got the edits done and tried to print the forms, it still didn't work. I looked at the printer and it said to insert legal paper. It then dawned on Mr. Tubbs that was probably the same problem we were having at the elementary. After adding the right paper, and finally getting them printed, Mr. Tubbs realized he didn't have the fax number. I looked it up and he faxed it in, but a couple minutes later he found out the county didn't get the paperwork. He then realized he needed to dial 8 first. He then sent it in the right way and it went through. He was on the phone with the county when it came through and she timed stamped the forms. I think the time was about 4:58 when she stamped it.

The significance of this is if it would have been after 5:00 it would have been past the deadline. This is the last date an election can be held to receive the funding for the  next school year. It would have been hard to afford our second ITperson. It would also have been embarrassing for the board and administration to have missed the deadline. Now it will be up to the district patrons to decide if they are willing to support our levy request. I think it's a good thing I have tried to be transparent and willing to communicate with those who want to communicate with me. If I hadn't responded to the first text when I did, the deadline would have passed and we would have been out of luck until next year. 

Well this turned out very long. I have also been out of town at a dairy meeting since Sunday morning. If anyone has questions about the Supplemental Levy, let me know. I personally determined to maintain our progress toward technology and to afford the much needed Tech, we need this levy. There are other areas the district will need to spend additional money on. I don't think it would be a good idea to overspend our M&O budget on technology. Thanks, Brian

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