July 13, 2015 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.

Information concerning the Open Meeting Law, Chapter 84, Article 14 of Nebraska State Statutes, is posted on the bulletin board in the back of the meeting room.

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 $173,642.49

Transfer to Activity for $20,000

Payroll for $435,770.78

Total $629,413.27

Items to point out:

1. $148.12 to David & Jenny Brinkmeyer is for mileage to speech therapy for a student on an IEP.
2. $4,310 to Electronic Contracting Co is for updates required by the Fire Marshall.
3. $15,981.06 to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co. is for textbooks and workbooks for various classes.  We will have other bills from them next month.
4. $7,700 to Johnson Hardware Company is to replace the shop doors.  This is a requirement of the Fire Marshall.  We will have other bills from them next month.
5. $13,848.96 to Mid-West 3D Solutions is for a 3D printer and accessories.  This will be covered by the anonymous donation.
6. $175.00 to UNL Barkley Speech Language is for speech therapy for a student on an IEP.
7. $8,916.46 to Vernier Software & Technology is for digital experiment equipment in our science department.  This will be covered by the anonymous donation.

Sixpence Grant - We received the grant!  This is the birth to age 3 grant we discussed a couple of months ago.  Head Start, Blue Valley, Seward, Centennial and Milford submitted an application as a group.  We have a lot of details to work out so not much to share yet.

Kids TLC - this is the group we discussed last month that is looking to expand their alternative school to Nebraska.  I received notice that everything is on hold until 2016 so they have a chance to do more research and develop plans.

Calendar of Trainings:

NASB’s Area meeting is Wednesday, September 9th.  A flyer is attached.  Let me know if you can attend.

August 10 - Regular meeting at 7:30 p.m.

I do not have updated numbers as PowerSchool (our student information system) is in between years mode and so I cannot run my report to get accurate numbers.

As soon as I can get accurate numbers I will send out an update.

This is an annual report.  You will see that we had an increase in sick days but a large portion of them were related to a maternity leave and a disability leave due to cancer.

Activity days saw a decrease.

We have attached the yearly mileage and beginning/ending mileage reports.

You will see we were down in total miles by 7,262. Athletics, curriculum trips, SPED, professional development and general administrative activities were lower.  So no one area stood out in my mind.

You will also see that we have some vehicles getting some high miles.  We will talk about this during the budgeting process.

I have updated you on the mudjacking a few times.  They will be here through July now.  I can tour you anytime - just call when you can view it.

 Other projects are moving along.  Some are on hold until the mudjacking is finished.

Fire marshall updates are moving slowly!  Waiting for Electronic Contracting to complete their work on the north end.  The fire marshall visits on August 6th.

We have discussed this project at several meetings and at our May meeting we discussed moving forward with plans but did not vote - just had discussions.

I would like to continue those discussions and act on moving forward if that is what the majority of the board is in favor of.

There is a lot of planning that still needs to take place and I do not want to spend a lot of time on it, or have Carlson West Povondra spend time, if we do not vote to move forward.

We discussed this last month and the information Brandon shared is below:

Career/Technical Education (Vocational) Credits

1. 1. Over the past 10 years, the state has required an increase in Math and Science credits for graduation. The number of dual credit/college offerings along with the development of the Career Academies and other factors at MHS has hindered some student’s ability to meet our current Career and Technical Education requirement for graduation.With the increase in class offerings, MHS has not adjusted graduation requirements to balance out student’s academic needs.
   2. Currently students are required to take 25 credits (5 classes) of Career and Technical Education and 10 Credits (2 classes) of Fine Arts Education.After comparing our graduation requirements to 20 other similar sized schools in the state, including all SNC Conference Schools, our requirements are near the top in regards to required credit hours for graduation.Only one school, Malcolm, requires more.
   3. To better meet the needs of our students and align to other similar schools I am recommending the following change to our Career and Technical Education graduation requirement.
      1. Students are required to complete 15 hours of Career and Vocational credit with five hours (1 semester) coming from Personal Finance.

This is a yearly item.  We are required through Statute and Rule 10 to have these hearings.  This is a policy that we might not follow correctly.  We have not used a student fee fund to this point as we generally cover students that qualify for free and reduced lunch, but we should use this fund when we collect funds from students for things that are required for a class or club.  I will work on this throughout the year.

Procedure:

Dave will ask for public input on the policy and after taking comments, Dave will ask for a motion to confirm the policy or we will make changes to the policy and need a motion to approve the policy with recommended changes.

This is a yearly item.  We are required through Statute and Rule 10 to have these hearings.

Procedure:

Dave will ask for public input on the policy and after taking comments, Dave will ask for a motion to confirm the policy or we will make changes to the policy and need a motion to approve the policy with recommended changes.

This is a yearly item.  We are required through Statute and Rule 10 to have these hearings.  We generally have the Title I Involvement Policy as well but we have it in a later agenda item so not including it this year.

Procedure:

There are two documents attached.  The actual documents are in one document so you don't have to open so many attachments.

The other document is an explanation for the proposed changes.

I have the motion written to approve all of the policies at once.  If we make changes we will need to change the motion to reflect adopting with changes.

We need to set this meeting.

Ned is out of town August 24th - 27th.  We can't do it on the 28th due to first FB game.  The week before is just too early as we will have bills coming the week of the 24th.

I am proposing that we meet on Monday, August 31st at 4:00 p.m. Hopefully, this will work in everyone's calendars.  I would like to go early as Tammy and I will need to finalize everything yet that night so expenditures post in the 14-15 budget.

Please be ready to discuss this and have calendars with you in case it does not work.

I am placing it as a motion but will update it if we change to a different date.

As you can see in the attached document, we are low on our lunch prices compared to other schools.  Our current balance in the hot lunch fund is at $35,000 and that does not include any of our August bills which is usually high.  A year ago we were at $50,000 and two years ago we were at $75,000.

Part of our issue is the price of food has gone up and will continue to go up for us - as you all know from your own purchases.  As we have discussed in the past, the whole grain and wheat (healthy) products that we are required to cook with are more expensive.  Not sure what the price of eggs is going to do to us either.

I feel we need to stay at $50,000 or above.  I worry that our equipment is getting older and a new stove or dishwasher, etc. will take a lot of our hot lunch balance - especially as food prices continue to rise.

I would like to see us raise our price $0.10 each.  Elementary would be at $2.30, 7-12 would be at $2.55 and adult would be $3.25.

Here are some numbers.  We served 38,149 full priced meals at the elementary last year and 32,896 at the high school.  These numbers do not reflect our free/reduced or guests/adults lunches served.

Raising the prices $0.10 would generate another $7,100 and cost a student (or the parents) $17.90 more for the years worth of lunches (not counting extras or side bar items) if they eat every day. 

$0.15 would generate an additional $10,600 and cost a student (or the parents) $26.85 more for the years worth of lunches (not counting extras or side bar items) if they eat every day. 

Currently the lunch fund is self-sufficient and we want to keep it that way. 

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.