August BOE Meeting Review
AUGUST, 2018 BOE MEETING REVIEW
The USD #399 Board of Education met for its regular meeting Monday August 13th at 7:00 PM in the IDL Room. All members were present for the meeting. No additions were needed to the agenda and all bills were paid. I reported on the following during my Superintendent’s Report:
The monsoon that hit the other day put the new building behind several days so it looks like the teachers will be able to start moving in next Tuesday after Dale gets the floors waxed Monday. They should be finished tiling today and will work on hanging cabinets and installing the sinks and bathroom fixtures as well. He said they will work Sunday if they need to so it’s ready to go for the teachers. They still have to run the sidewalk from the building to the main building, but they can do that while the teachers are moving in. Heating and A/C are installed.
The new dishwasher is hooked up but we have a few glitches in it. The company we bought it from is standing behind it and has already contacted Hobart in Hays to come check it out and fix it at their expense. The guys think there is some hard water build up stopping it from working correctly. Hobart will be here early next week to get it going for us.
I talked with Bob the Builder and he is agreeable to pay for at least if not all of the cubbies I built. Those were not part of the original plan so it was an add on, that’s why I built them so it would be less expensive to purchase if we had to. He was open to helping with them.
It doesn’t look like we will have enough for HS volleyball this year unless some of the other girls come out that didn’t sign up. Taylor Crain is willing to work with the girls three days a week after school to keep them interested in volleyball so when we do have enough girls, they will be ready to go. She will begin practice with them Monday afternoon and will work with Rhonda for the first week until school starts and then will work with them after school and if nothing else get them in shape in case we have enough for basketball.
Our enrollment is pretty flat again this year. We enrolled some new students but we also had several leave. We’ll just keep on keepin on.
We had a leak in the roof at the high school where the old building meets the commons area. Kevin went up and checked it out and we did have some tree debris blocking the downspouts which he cleaned out but he will also calk along the seam to see if we can get it stopped. It is in the same spots as where it has leaked in the past and it probably had something to do with the nearly two inches of rain we had that morning. We’ll keep an eye on it.
It looks like the people wanting to buy the land to start a ranch for at-risk boys have hit a road block with their funding. I did talk with the director about what is expected from the school for these boys and she informed me they will be looking at around 10 boys to start out with and would hope to send the boys to school here to help with their social skills as well as with their academics. None of the boys have been in trouble but just need a solid place to live. She told me they already have several other funding options they are looking at so she wasn’t too concerned with getting it going.
Our annual Faculty/Staff/ and BOE potluck supper will be next Thursday, August 16th from 5-6 in the commons area. The BOE will furnish the hamburgers and brats and the teachers and staff will bring other dishes. This is for families as well so I hope you all can come and listen to Rick’s speech to the teachers and staff on behalf of the BOE!!
The local insurance company that wanted to submit a bid for our property insurance has backed out so we will get the bid from the current company we had last year around the 23rd of this month as it comes due September 1st. Since we won’t have a chance to get other bids, we will have to go with whatever they throw at us. They’ve been more than fair in the past so I’m not too worried about it.
Mr. Ostmeyer reported on the activities going on in the district. Fall sports have begun and unfortunately we did not have enough girls to field a volleyball team this year so he contacted the schools we had on our schedule to tell them we would not be playing. Wilson has once again shown interest in bringing several girls over to play basketball this year but they were still trying to work out the details. With our limited number of girls signed up to play basketball, this would help insure we would be able to field a girls’ basketball team this year.
Mrs. Mettlen reported on the new reading series we have adopted for grades Pre-K-2 and the training the teachers went through this summer to become more familiar with the new series.
Under new business, the heating and cooling system in the Vo-Ag room is on its last legs and so we need to look at replacing it sometime soon. The cooling unit is still working but is over 13 years old and the heating unit isn’t working at all so we will need to get bids to replace either the furnace or both. We had received a bid from one company but I asked the BOE to get more bids to insure we were getting the best deal out there. The issue was tabled until a later meeting date.
The BOE then entered into executive session to discuss changes in our Crisis Plan. Discussion of the crisis plan is one of the few policies that can be discussed in executive session. This is to protect the information of what students and staff are expected to do during different crisis situations from getting to the general public and thus to anyone who might be considering creating a reason to initiate the crisis plan. The laws have changed this year for the number and type of drills schools are required to have. The law now calls for: four fire drills, three tornado drills, and nine crisis drills. The plan for practicing the different crisis drills were given to the BOE.
