May 9, 2016 at 7:30 PM - Board of Education Regular Meeting

This agenda contains a list of subjects known at the time of its distribution.  A copy of the agenda reflecting any changes will be available for public inspection during normal business hours in the District Office.  Except for items of an emergency nature, the agenda shall not be altered later than twenty-four hours before the meeting.  The Board reserves the right to alter the order of items, as it deems necessary.

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This is the public’s opportunity to speak to items on the agenda. This is also the public’s opportunity to speak to any topic concerning the school district – since it is not an agenda item the board cannot discuss or take action on the matter at this time. Future discussion can be requested as an agenda item. To be recognized, all participants must complete the Request to Address the Milford Board of Education Form. No complaints regarding specific staff members will be heard during a public meeting. The District has established separate procedures for complaints against individual employees. Thank you for your participation.

General Fund for $129,118.27
Payroll for $509,694.81
Total $638,813.08

Special Building Fund for $2,108.30

Bond Fund for $7,280.25

Items to point out:

1. Bond Fund - payment was for $6,356.25 interest and $924 in fees
2. Building Fund - is for architect fees and expenses
3. Continuum Natural Gas is now CenterPoint Energy Services Retail
4. Preschool bills through Lakeshore and School Specialty will be reimbursed through IDEA funds.
5. Cornhusker International - $31,576 was for a share of the new bus ($47,354 came from Depreciation Fund)
6. $6,843 is for the purchase of 16-17 English workbooks.  We order early now since in the past we have waited until summer and do not receive them in time for the start of the school year.  Our order through McGraw Hill for Social Studies books is the same story.
7. $1,804 to Kidwell is for repair of our fiber internet connection.  I have talked about this at previous meetings.  Kidwell did a great job and their repairs saved us $25,000+.
8. $212 to Northern Lawn is for a rain sensor for the practice field sprinklers.  As I was coming to school early one morning the sprinklers were running while the rain was falling.
9. $7,423 to Oswald says it was for the weight room but that was only a piece of it.  This bill is for a number of the fire marshal repairs and additions that were required.  Just finishing all the projects. $718 to Joyce Potthoff is for reimbursement for travel to the National ProStart Competition.  We felt we needed to send her so she could experience the competition and attend training sessions and start preparing to take over for Mrs. Meyer-Thompson.  This is one of those events that you cannot learn without experiencing it.

That is it for now.  Please call or email with questions.

Well my plan was to have Jon Carlson attend our June meeting to present the track plans to the whole board and answer any questions the board has at this point, but Jon cannot move a meeting he has with another district.  They are further along than we are and they have decisions with timelines.

Jon is available to come to our July 11th meeting and it would work best if we could move the start of that meeting to 4:00 or 4:30 as well.  In visiting with Jon, we would not need a decision to move forward on the project until September or October.

Any questions at this point on the project?  Does the building committee want to get with Jon one more time to see final drawings?

We have attached the responses document again and this time it does contain some administrative comments.  These are general comments and the administrative team plans on adding to this as soon as we have a day we can commit to it to give it the time it deserves and that we need.

In the meantime...at last month's meeting Ned talked about finding a few items that we can focus on as a District to help confirm the work of the committee.  I agree.  A few things we discussed administratively included many items since there are several responses that fit so many areas.  Here are a few we want to mention tonight:

1. Continued accountability with teachers/student evaluations of teachers
   • This item fits right into our work on updating our evaluation process and ties perfectly into our staff development program that we have been updating you on all year.  I think this becomes even more important as we start having staff turnover. 
2. Keeping students engaged
   • This is always an interesting topic for us as a staff as there are a lot of factors involved in this topic.  Student focus and engagement are always discussed.  Item number 1 ties into this and so does most of our staff development processes.  Depending on time, I may have Dr. Olson talk about this item in relation to something we use called BART - it will be information you have heard already but a good reminder of where we are at.
3. School safety and preparedness
   • This came up more than I thought it would but should not be surprising with what is taking place across the country.
   • We have made many changes and building updates but need to refine all of our safety procedures and obviously do a better job of communicating some of our activities.
4. Facilities
   • Facilities in one way or another came up many times.  Obviously, the track is an item.  Joint projects with the city for betterment of the community also came up.  I thought it was interesting that facility improvements or additions for the technical areas had a lot of votes.
   • Obviously, these are discussions that are taking place now and we will be looking at the district as a whole for these discussions.
   • The weight room or fitness area were discussed and I do have bids and plans to start updating those areas.  Many of the pieces of equipment are older than our students!  And do to safety changes and just overall changes in the equipment needed, we will look at starting this process. Some of it is due strictly to safety after comparing our equipment to new models.

These are just a few things that we wanted to point out that had a lot of votes and are items that we are working on all the time.  We will continue to get more detailed as we continue studying the responses.

I just want to start general discussions.

I have attached the rough plat map of the proposed housing project north of the elementary. 

We are trying to get a better handle on future kindergarten students.  We are trying to use social media and notes home in an attempt to get parents with young children to contact us so we can make sure we have their children on our census.  We are only a few days into this and here is what we have so far:

2017-18 - 57 students

2018-19 - 42 students

2019-20 - 30 students

2020-21 - 22 students

The city would like to start meeting again.  I would like to start with the building committee to look at space issues, broad plans and financing options. 

I want to start this discussion as I truly am worried about space at the elementary and the lunchroom cafeteria space as well.  I know discussing a Bond Issue is tough but while we are discussing the track I think we need to also look at the buildings overall and what we may need in the future.  This discussion will also include the HS building.

I am also trying to get a discussion going with the city again regarding a joint project focused on a community library.  I am working on what financing options the groups may have on a joint project and on locating possible grants.

Adam Sparks

• We are recommending Adam Sparks for our middle school social studies position
• Adam graduated from Creighton University
• Adam has taught in Louisville, NE for one year and at Yi Zhong High School in Hengyang, China for one year

Joyce Potthoff

• We are recommending Joyce Potthoff for our Family and Consumer Science position
• Joyce has subbed in Milford for four (4) years.
• Joyce has seven (7) years experience and has taught in Crete, Overton, and Battle Creek.

I would like to move the June meeting time to 4:00 so we can have our Board appreciation dinner that we canceled in January.

This is an annual item and one that we just need to approve.  There are not financial committments to the agreement but does allow us to use the group's equipment and trainings when needed - and it seems like we use some of their resources every year. 

An information sheet is included.

We have included the information received from NASB.

In the past I have asked for a motion.  If we receive a motion and second and a confirmative vote for the candidate, I then complete the paperwork and send it in to NASB.  If a motion is not received, the item dies and our District just does not vote.

We will complete the motion if we have a positive vote for one of the candidates.

Providence Working Canines is the group we worked with this year for our safety sweeps.  Their canines are trained to search for a wide variety of items.  A basic information sheet is included.

We discussed this at a meeting last year, but the group was sponsored by a grant through the Seward County BRIDGES organization and the Prevention Coalition.  We are hoping they will once again have a grant to pay for all or a portion of the program.

I have this as an agenda item as I would like action by the the Board to approve using Providence for one more year so we can properly study the program.  And as a blessing for budgeting the use of this group in our school safety account in case a grant does not cover the expenses.

The fee is generally $300 to $400 per visit.  We would be looking at 3 to 4 random visits each semester.  When I say random, I mean random, as we do not even know when they are going to show up.  We are required to send them a calendar and they ask us to mark days that we know just will not work - testing, activities, or too many students/staff out of the building, etc.  Then they just pick a date and show up.

I thought this year went well.  It is a little different for kids especially since the canines will "hit" on a vehicle that has ammunition, or cigarettes, or chewing tobacco in them.  Our canine sweeps in the past just focused on illegal drugs.  Was an interesting trial but feel we need a full years worth of visits to assess its overall effectiveness.  The few visits this spring were good for us and we did learn a lot about our District.

The Board of Education reserves the right to enter into Closed/Executive Session for 1) the protection of the public interest, or 2) the prevention of needless injury to the reputation of an individual, and/or the individual has not requested a public meeting. When making a motion to enter into Closed/Executive Session, the member making the motion should be as specific as possible as to the reason(s) for executive session.

The Board President will restate the reason for Closed/Executive Session after the motion has been acted on.

*We will move into Executive Session for purposes of discussing personnel issues.