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HomeMy WebLinkAbout11-28-2012_Work_SessionDr. Charles J. Shackett, Superintendent 3497 North Ammon Road, Idaho Falls, Idaho, 83401  (208) 525-4400  Fax (208) 529-0104  www.d93schools.org Board of Trustees  Craig Lords  Annette Winchester  Wendy Horman  Kip Nelson  DeVere Hunt Bonneville Joint School District No. 93 is an Equal Opportunity Employer Marjean McConnell, Deputy Superintendent Work Session of the Board of Trustees Hillview Elementary Library November 28, 2012 11:30 AM Mr. Miller welcomed the Board to Hillview. He offered to conduct a tour of the facility after the meeting if anyone is interested. Mr. Miller reported that since the remodel operations are so much better. It is nice to have a separate cafeteria from gym. Parents seem happy. We have had no issues with safety at this point. I. Call to Order Chairman Lords called the meeting to order at 11:45 a.m. He invited people to get lunch and then asked Mr. Hill to be ready to present. II. Roll Call Those Board members in attendance were Chairman Craig Lords, Vice-chairman Annette Winchester, Trustee DeVere Hunt, and Trustee Wendy Horman arrived at 12:40. Trustee Kip Nelson was excused. Others in attendance were Deputy Superintendent Marjean McConnell, Human Resources Director Shalene French, Director of Plant Facility/Purchasing Roger Hill, Director of Operations Todd Hicks, Director of Curriculum and Instruction Michaelena Hix, Director of School Improvement and Technology Scott Woolstenhulme, Health and Safety Coordinator Guy Bliesner, Chief Financial/Operations Officer April Burton, Federal Programs Director Susan Searle, Food Services Manager Heather Plain, Principal Rex Miller, and Board Clerk Valerie Messick. III. Welcome Delegates and Visitors Stephanie Hale-Lopez (Channels 8 and 3), Julie Ann Anderson, Lana Gonzales, Linsay Begley, Emilee Cornull, and Joyce Smith IV. Items for Discussion A. Construction Update – Roger Hill Mr. Hill reported that construction on the new elementary school is going well. HK construction should be finished with parking lot today. The final projected completion date is July 6, 2013. There have been a few small change orders. We are required to place a vault under the transformer to allow access to wiring. A few people have looked at the color charts for the inside of the school and there have been a few changes. The Cal Ranch warehouse is also progressing well. The framing, duct work, garage doors, and egress doors have been completed. Sheet rocking is in progress. The maintenance warehouse, and custodial should be able to move in by February. By May Maintenance will move. There will be a fenced area for equipment between food services and maintenance in lieu of a wall. This saves space. There are two loading docks per department. Mr. Hill then spoke of the donated steal building. R & M Steel Company plans has included plans for erection of the building. He has met with the architect and engineer, and civil engineer. They are working on the best placement for the building. Mr. Lords asked if we have a contract. Mr. Hill replied that he hasn’t seen anything yet. It was suggested that the donation may need to go through the foundation. The donation is just a portion of the project. There was some discussion regarding a plaque stating who donated the building. B. Softball and Baseball Complex at Bonneville High School - Roger Hill Mr. Hill reported that we only funds for power. When a score board is donated, we can work on hooking it up. The power and plumbing are out there but no lighting is available. There was discussion regarding the need to have equal equipment for softball. The source of funding is not the issue. There was some discussion regarding the Hillcrest soccer field. It gets a lot of use. About 20 holes have been patched and it should be ready for use again in the fall. The sprinkler heads are level and safe. The principal will be asked to defer the use of others to the area outside the field. C. Aides Work and Salary Schedules - April Burton Mrs. Burton provided a copy of salary schedule for paraprofessionals in the District to the Board. She reported that we requested an increase to classified staff and the Board allowed that. We have tried to standardize the steps in the salary schedules and balance it out so there was more equity throughout the District. We increased from 6 steps to 10 steps. The salaries on these schedules are not a lot and the current budget is based on these schedules. Until we know what the legislature will allocate for next year, we cannot entertain any changes. We offer about $2.00 less per hour than our competitor. Mrs. Burton just analyzed the aides salary schedules. We can’t offer work for 20 hours or more because we are then obligated to pay benefits. We are also required to pay into PERSI and if offer health benefit to certified staff, we must offer the same to classified. That amounts to $7,000 per employee. There is a committee to screen requests for additional aide time for students. Principals can request an exception. The decision is made based on student’s individual circumstances. There is no limit to the hours when substituting for a professional person. We saved by creating two part time positions when we were forced to do so because of cuts to funding. We also reduced aides from 7 to 6 hours. We are constantly looking at the needs of children and address them. The problem is created by the funding situation. Full time aides are more valuable to the kids. We don’t have a choice. If brought aides up it would cost the district $350,000. We simply don’t have the funds available. We talked about prorating benefits but that would probably mean that people would be working for benefits only. We are also concerned because we don’t know how health care will impact us in the future. It will be significant. It may be cheaper to pay the penalty than to pay the cost of compliance. Mrs. Anderson stated that she was grateful for support but talk of funding is not appropriate when we are talking about our kids. He child needs Braille and his part time aide hasn’t had training. She is concerned about the high turnover in aids. Personnel from the Idaho School for the Deaf and Blind are supposed to come in on a regular basis and train but they don’t. It is not okay that teachers don’t know the alphabet or numbers. Mrs. Winchester suggested that Mrs. Anderson contact legislators. Mr. Hunt stated that the legislators don’t see our kids and suggested that Mrs. Anderson take the opportunity to testify to the legislators and let them know how their decisions are affecting students at the local level. The Board understands that we need to train and value our employees. But, we are barely functioning and not just at the bare bones level. One of the glaring issues is that we need to train our aides. Mrs. Searle has met with representatives from the Idaho School for Deaf and Blind. Their problem is that they employ one (1) full time and two (2) part time aides in our area and they must serve all districts from Blackfoot up to here. They need to provide the training but they don’t have enough man power and enough money. We can’t control the resources for the School for Deaf and Blind as a school district They will give us as much time as they can. There is concern with compensation for aides as well. There is no incentive to want to train. Once an individual is trained, we want to be able to keep them. Offering certification pay was discussed. We have tried to do something to help with pay in the past but now we are back to a system where we can’t recognize higher performers or those with more education. We would like to look locally to see what we can do to pay qualified people for positions needing special training. We start aides at $8:00 per hour and that is up from $7.25 per hour. They can move up steps. We can place a person for education and experience up to Step 4 to begin. Mr. Hunt asked if we could purchase webinars or materials for training manuals. Mrs. Searle has a couple of leads on people who already know Braille who could possibly help in this situation. Others have trained on their own. Chairman Lords directed that we do what we can while we wait for the slow wheels of justice to roll. We could offer in house training to numerous individuals by identifying the needs and the District would then have a pool of people to draw from. If people are willing to put in time, we can help out with materials. One solution is the supplemental levy. This will provide more money locally. We are concerned about the education of all 11,000 students in the District. If we lose the supplemental levy election in the spring, we will be in trouble. D. 2009 Bond Expenditures - April Burton Mrs. Burton reported that there is $800,000 from the 2009 Bond that has not been allocated for the purchase of land. There is no time limit for expending the funds. She asked if the Board wanted to leave funds for the purchase of additional land or move them to any item the voters approved. Mr. Hill reported that we own two properties and are in the process of getting an appraisal on 28 acres across from Hillcrest. That could become an elementary sight. Mr. Lords explained that we need to allocate some money for future properties. There was discussion regarding the recent Neo purchases. We are not sure where we are on being able to purchase devices for the 1st through 3rd grade student. Mr. Woolstenhulme wrote a $115,000 technology grant that will keep us whole with our current purchases. We need to upgrade our network and internet as well as cable. We still lease the network that connects our schools. If we build our own, it would be about $1 million to $1½ million to build our own. Mr. Hunt stated that higher performing students have been given an opportunity to increase their learning from having the Neos. We can put the bond funds toward anything listed on the bond question. We could lose $2 million in funding from the State this year. We want to provide funding for the District to accomplish its goals. Mrs. Burton needs to understand what the Board wants to do with the additional funds. The Board has given the administration the leeway to move the funds as needed. E. Supplemental Levy - April Burton Mrs. Burton reported that currently we have a $3 million supplemental levy. She proposed that we go out in March to renew that levy. If we are going to do that, we need to notify the county in January. She is not sure where we will be with funding at that time. Mrs. Burton requested that we not wait until May to go out for a vote on the issue because of budgeting. She asked to place a resolution on the Board agenda for January. When asked whether we could increase the levy amount, Mrs. Burton stated that we can increase the amount but, that would increase tax levy rate. The question was asked about what can we do to keep the current levy rate. We could not levy for the full amount of plant facility to keep the levy rate the same. The concern is that we could have a $2 million cut to funding and it would significantly impact us. That would be devastating to the District. We would be solvent to June 30th. Then after that, we would have to cut again. That would mean that we would be cutting into the bone because we are very lean now. Use it or lose it is a key factor for our District. That has allowed us to offer choice to our children. Without that option, we will lose programs and staff. We can restructure our current levies but any increase in the levy would increase tax rate. We can run an additional levy election in May if we need to do so. There was concern voiced regarding the fact that contracts are required to be out in May now that the referendums failed. So having a supplemental levy in May would not be a good scenario. Chairman Lords asked Mrs. Burton to provide the Board with a report on the funding we have lost over the past Mr. Lords is concerned about the salaries of educators. Pay-for-performance was more money for teachers. He stated that we want to get as much money as we can for our teachers. F. 2013-2014 Calendar Options - Marjean McConnell Mrs. McConnell presented two draft calendars. One ends before Memorial Day and the other ends after Memorial Day. They both have a two week block for Christmas, one week for Thanksgiving, and one week for spring break. We put work days back in the calendar at the end of the quarters. These calendars show five professional work days and six in-service days. There is the same number of contract days, vacation days, compensation day, and one principal directed in-service day. These drafts were given to the principals at administrative meeting yesterday. We left early release days in the drafts. At resolutions meeting, the teachers were grateful for early release. Chairman Lords stated that the Board wants to validate how productive early release has been. Teachers are willing to come and talk to the Board. The time has been used for PLC implementation, time to work with student data, and implementation of the Common Core. Principals are keeping agendas and an outline by school. The information needs to be discussed with parents so they know what is going on. District liaisons have been in their schools on early release Wednesdays. We had an all-day PLC training here in town yesterday. It was a self-evaluation, as well as training on mile posts, renaissance, and common core. Mrs. Horman has had more logistical questions on the early release. These are probably more associated with protected tutoring at the high schools. These schedules should be put on the front page on the schools webpages. There has been some negative feedback that the time is too structured and collaboration has been hard. Most buildings meet in the departments. Hillcrest has built unit plans for the common core. Some schools are spending more time building the PLC community. Once this is established, there will be more time in the future. Mrs. McConnell wants to talk to the resolutions committee about the calendars. There is feedback that starting in August is not productive because the buildings are hot. Mrs. Winchester is opposed to an early August start. Mrs. McConnell will share the drafts with the BEA leadership tomorrow. She would like to put the calendar on December meeting agenda. We will then put the calendars on the website for public comment for 30-day review. If we modify the drafts, there will be two-day weeks. We lose attendance on 2 day weeks and consequently funding. The full week breaks give people a chance to step back and regroup. Mrs. Horman suggested that the calendar could be modified to start August 26th and be out by May 30th. We need to make it work the best we can for the student’s educational experience and for parents. The question was asked if we could coordinate with District 91. We will check to see when spring break will happen. Principals will gather feedback from staff then we will let parents comment. G. Change February 27th Work Session to a Special Meeting to discuss and approve School Improvement Plans for Sandcreek and Telford – Scott Woolstenhulme Will need some school improvement plans approved. Mr. Woolstenhulme will present the plans for approval at that time. Mrs. Messick will notice a special meeting for that date. Chairman Lords asked for a motion to enter into Executive Session per Idaho Code Section 67-2345 (1)(c) To conduct deliberations concerning labor negotiations.. MOTION: Annette Winchester made the motion to enter into executive session for the purpose stated by Chairman Lords. DeVere Hunt sec onded. Roll call vote was: Wendy Horman – Yes, Devere Hunt – Yes, Annette Winchester – Yes, and Craig Lords - Yes V. Executive Session A. Negotiations – Marjean McConnell Mrs. McConnell reported that the Master Agreement is in force for this year. Contracts are in force until the end of the year. She discussed what may happen if we lose $2 million in funding from the State. She also discussed the possibility of getting a legal opinion regarding Master Agreement language and moving forward with negotiations. Chairman Lords asked for a motion to move back into open meeting. MOTION DeVere Hunt made the motion to move back into open meeting. Annette Winchester seconded. The vote was 4 in favor with 0 oppo sed and 0 abstentions. Motion passed VI. Call for Agenda Items for Upcoming Meetings A. Legislative Luncheon - December 12, 2012 - District Board Room - 11:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. Chairman Lords asked Mrs. Messick to invite the student body presidents from Bonneville and Hillcrest to participate as well as one additional student from the student council of each school. They should be prepared to take a couple of minutes to tell what is happening at their schools. Hopefully it will be an opportunity for them to network and establish relationships with legislators. B. Regular Meeting - December 12, 2012 C. Regular Meeting - January 9, 2013 D. Work Session - Wednesday January 23, 2013 - Rocky Mountain Middle School Library- 11:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. V. Adjournment Chairman Lords asked for a motion to adjourn. MOTION: DeVere Hunt made the motion to adjourn at 2:00 p.m. Wendy Horman seconded. The vote was 4 in favor with 0 opposed and 0 abstentions. Motion passed. APPROVED: _________________________ Chairperson ATTESTED: __________________________ Clerk Date: ___________________