03-27-2014 Minutes_Work_Session-Special_Meeting

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r r°^ I Ft °t,,aau6na „, 7 +',,e,pr:er A t,irci „ }'� f,tro�dt + >rttc 3497 North Ammon Road, Idaho Falls, Idaho, 83401 (208) 525 -4400 Fax (208) 529 -0104 www.d93schools.org iisi:'I,:c ), r;lr,'t'i;r lt; trlat ii,t€ itciC`Itt ; i..trj,',tat i (Coniwll, Dullmy supuri ill endow Work Session/Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees March 27, 2014 District Board Room 11:30 AM 1. Call to Order Chairperson Winchester called the meeting to order at 11:39 a.m. She stated that this is a work session and the Board will not take input from public. If you would like to give input, contact your Board member, II. Roll Call Those Board members in attendance were Chairperson Annette Winchester, Vice - chairperson Kip Nelson, Treasurer Amy Landers, and Trustee Brian McBride, and Trustee Jeff Bird. Others in attendance were Superintendent Chuck Shackett, Deputy Superintendent Marjean McConnell, Director of Human Resources Shalene French, Chief Financial and Operations Officer April Burton, Director of Operations Todd Hicks, Director of Technology Services Scott Woolstenhulme, Energy Education Specialist Don Trauntvein, Food Services Director Heather Plain, Director of Curriculum and Instruction, and Board Clerk Valerie Messick. III, Welcoming Visitors and Deleaates Chairperson Winchester welcomed SueAnn Dabell, Arin Layton, Amy Hales, Shawn Seedall, LQAnn Belnap, Heidi Southwick, Tammie McCammon, Holly Giglio, Karla Harris, and Renee Cook, IV. Items for Discussion A. Handlina Enrollment Growth in the District - Marjean McConnell Mrs, McConnell stated that the goal is to have planned by November of this year what we will do for the following school year because students begin scheduling in January and the Course Description Books are published prior to that. We don't believe we will need to make any changes for next year even though it will be crowded. She wants to begin to discus with the Board what the ultimate goal is so the administration can align their plans with the Board's ultimate goal. If the Board still feels strongly about high schools, then we want to keep 91h through 12th grade at that level and try to solve it there. If you chose middle schools, then we would like to move in that direction. We want to know what the Board's non - negotiables are. We want to talk about what we feel and then start planning, looking at numbers, looking at space, looking at what we need to do to handle the kids that are coming in the near future. Mr. McBride believes that we still need a lot of input from the community regarding non- negotiables. We need to develop focus groups and gain insight and information. This is more than just the Board's decision. The more the community is involved and we get their input, that helps us better understand where we want to go. Chairperson Winchester asked Mr. Woolstenhulme when the survey would go out to all those who voted in the election. He believes the survey could be ready next week. Mrs. Landers asked how we can get information out to those who did not vote. The intent is that it will be an online survey. We were thinking of sending a post card showing a link to the survey and asking the voters to provide us with feedback regarding the bond election. Notifying non - voters and non- parents is a challenge. One suggestion is that we might be able to send information home with utility bills. We haven't looked at that yet and don't know the feasibility. People can go online to respond or they could request that we mail a survey to them. The concern is that trying to send out 6,000 paper copies and then tabulating them by hand would be very time consuming. We have talked about giving people three options on the postcard. One would be to go online, second people can call and request a paper copy to be mailed to them, and third would be to do the survey on the phone. The hope was to try to match as many styles as we could to get the information we need. There are people who voted that don't have kids in school and they don't go to the website so the utility bill idea is a good one. Maybe we could use marquees and street signs to let people know about the survey. We want to look at as many opportunities as we can to let people know that the survey is available, It comes down to establishing a budget to move forward. If we can piggyback on to other utilities or mailings it may be cheaper for us. To mail the survey out to all the registered voters would be around $8,000. Many of those would never bother to send them back or to go online. Once we get the information back, we can talk again. Mrs. McConnell stated that the administration has been in discussions with the principals and supervisors. She asked the Board to think about grade configuration, schedules at the high school, do we want to change from AB schedule, it is diffiCUlt to offer two lunch hours with that schedule because some would have lunch at 10:30 a.m, and others would have it scheduled really late or we would have to split a period which is not very good educationally. The high school principals are looking at what their building needs will be. We can have roving teachers and fill classrooms but that won't solve the problem of the number of bathrooms, how wide the hallways are, or how big the cafeterias and commons areas are. Next year should be ok. Our 81h grade class doesn't have as many kids but after that they ramp up pretty quick. There was a question about whether there is an occupancy code for the school buildings. There is a code with regard to how many students are in a classroom. There are different issues, students in the classrooms is one and safety of the commons areas is another. The commons areas are where there are problems. There is not a fire code for the hallways. There are building codes that tell you the number of restrooms you have to have for the population you anticipate prior to building. Our safety inspector gives us a feel for the amount of square footage per student (20 sq. ft. per student in classrooms) we are allowed and the number of restrooms needed. They can't enforce that other than a suggestion. Then you need to work to alleviate the problems. When we add modular classrooms, we don't add restroom space. Every 40 additional kids that come in out of the modulars, are all accessing the same number of bathrooms. If that becomes a safety issue and we have claims against us because of kids that got hurt in the restrooms or there was a ruckus because there are no facilities for the kids to use, we would have to act at that point. Mr. Hicks doesn't think there is a dictated state law regarding occupancy regulations for school buildings, it is the recommendation when you build the building and from the state safety inspector when he feels the overall facility is overcrowded. We have been warned and that is why we have gone to modulars at times and that is why we keep the carpets in the hallways changed so there is less chance of tripping. The amount of egress is controlled by the fire department. So if you have 600 people per wing and they are trying to funnel down to four exits for example, that is also determined by the fire marshal. They inspect that once a year. V% il''',.L..Y