November 13, 2017 at 5:30 PM - Board of Education Regular Meeting

The Norfolk Public School District's board of education meeting is called to order.  

If any board member is absent, there will need to be a  motion to excuse the absence.

This is a legal meeting of the board of education, as advertised by the means specified in board policy. A complete copy of the Open Meetings Act is posted in the board room for your review. A copy of the agenda is available at the desk of the recording secretary.

Enrollment Projections - Dr. Thompson

Building Visits - Board members

Rethinking Recess

Meagan Priebe--Norfolk Middle School 6th Grade Language Arts and Math Teacher

October 2017 Success Pin Recipients

This is the time during the meeting when the public may request to address the Board. If you wish to comment, we ask that you identify yourself and the topic that you wish to address. Each individual's comments will be limited to five minutes.

 Please note that  the Board cannot discuss or act upon matters that are not listed on the agenda. Therefore, Board  members will not respond to your comments or questions.  If you wish to request that an item be placed on a future Board agenda, you may contact the Superintendent or her assistant during normal business hours.

Also note that concerns related to school personnel need to be addressed to the Superintendent using the approved district protocol.

Total amount of claims to be approved in the consent agenda for the month of November, 2017 by specific fund are as follows:

General Fund = $487,411.02

Nutrition Services Fund = $308,719.68

Cooperative Fund = $13,907.71

Depreciation Fund= $20,333.59

Special Building Fund = $186,696.03

QCPUF = $918,345.76

Employee Benefit Fund = $395.75

Bond Fund = $1,825,155

Student Fee Fund = $1,928.19

The total amount of claims for the month of October, 2017 in the Activities fund are as follows:
Activity Fund =$116,823.08

All of these claims were reviewed earlier today by the Finance and Facility Committee.  All required budget, tax and audit documents have been submitted and accepted by the state and federal departments that required these documents for 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 fiscal years.

Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment

• Science standard work has occurred with 3-12^th grades so far. We are just in the beginning stages of learning and understanding the changes, differences & similarities.
• Training or exposure on Test Wiz, the state practice test software, has been sent out to most 3-8 grade teachers.
• We are constantly learning new information from the state regarding our College and Career Ready Standards and testing. I have and will continue to attend NDE sessions regarding testing updates and changes. The state has released the name of the new state test:  Nebraska Student-Centered Assessment System (NSCAS).
• Oct. 30^th was a huge professional development day for the district. We are on our pathway to work on target based grading. As a district we are at a point where most areas have sifted through standards, prioritized and met vertically to compare our prioritization. Some have moved forward in writing specific learning targets. Garth Larson, of Education First will be back again at the beginning of January before school is in session to lead us on working on the next steps. I’m impressed with our progress already as a district.
• Simultaneously, we have many curriculum activities going on, in particular, we are tackling creating a scope and sequence for technology. This is difficult because technology changes so quickly and at the same time we have to take into consideration appropriate expectations of certain ages.

Technology

• We see big bills this time of the year to keep our licensing and services up to date. A major filter update occurred at the end of October.
• Bill and I met regarding our 5 year plan and feel we’ve planned responsibly to keep the technology budget healthy.
• A very old back-up server died on us but we’ve replaced it and did not lose anything important in the process.

1. I, along with other district employees, attended the Tri-State Special Education conference in Omaha, November 2nd & 3rd.
2. Wednesday, November 8th I met with the SpEd leadership team to discuss our next steps in the Targeted Improvement Plan.
3. Friday, November 10th the buildings celebrated Veteran’s Day.  
4. November brings Thanksgiving vacation. There will be NO school on Wednesday, November 22nd - Friday, November 24th.
5. The attached chart reports the attendance at Fall Parent Conferences in our district schools.

Instructional Model:

• Our district Instructional Model Task Force met on Wednesday, November 1st. The Instructional Model Task Force has developed a high quality and sustainable Instructional Model that we will be able to use effectively to train our new teachers and reinforce essential instructional elements with all of our staff. The Instructional Model will be ready for introduction and implementation during the latter part of second semester.  

Career Fairs:

• This past month, we were busy visiting several area Career Fairs. The purpose for attending these events is to recruit the very best candidates to teach and serve in our schools and promote the great things happening in our district. We are committed to providing our students the highest quality teachers and support staff possible and we are pleased to report that we have identified some excellent candidates who may be able to help us fill some of our current vacant slots.

Suicide Awareness Training:

• In compliance with state requirements, all of our staff that interact with students on a daily basis have participated in Suicide Awareness training (or will soon finish the online training to meet the state requirement). This training is extremely valuable in helping all staff recognize warning signs of when someone may be in “crisis” and remain proactive about immediate intervention options.  

Staff Development Day (ESU # 8 Winter Workshop):

• The Winter Workshop (a collaborative staff development day with a multitude of area schools) will be held at Norfolk Senior High School on Monday, January 22, 2018.
• This event is an excellent way to bring together area school districts for consistent and relevant staff development on topics designed to enhance educational effectiveness.
• The keynote speaker for the 2018 Winter Workshop will be Dr. Adolph Brown.
• For more information on the Winter Workshop, please go to: esu8winterworkshop.weebly.com.

Personnel Update:

Current Openings:

• Activity Bus Drivers
• Bel Air Elementary: Resource Teacher
• General Maint. /Transp.
• General Maintenance/ Electrician
• Speech/Language Pathologist
• Substitute Custodians
• Junior High: LIFE Paraprofessional/Driver
• Westside Elementary: Resource Paraprofessional/Driver-F/T
• Westside Elementary: ED Paraprofessional/Driver-F/T
• Westside Elementary: ED Paraprofessional-P/T
• Full Time Substitute Teacher
• Substitute Teachers
• Substitute Paraprofessionals

Current Coaching Openings:

• Head Softball Coach
• Assistant Swimming-Diving Coach
• 9th Assistant Boys Track

The 25th Street Strategic Facility Planning Committee is comprised of parent, teacher, administrator and community member representatives from our pre-school, Montessori and traditional elementary schools.  

They spent two long evenings touring the new facility and developing a list of needs and wants regarding the design and renovation of this facility, keeping in mind that the design needed to be flexible enough to accommodate preschool and/or elementary classrooms. They discussed a lot of details, including things such as the size and arrangement of the classrooms, safety considerations, and program needs.

This list of wants and needs will be given to potential architects on December 4th during their pre-bid meeting.

Then, a subgroup of this committee will meet with potential architects on December 20th. They will listen to the architect’s proposals and help select the best firm for this project.  The subgroup will continue to work with this firm to develop the final design for the building.

Our goal is to bring you our architect selection in January and have a final design ready for you to approve at our March or April Board meeting.

Committee members:

An asterisk denotes a sub-committee member.

The committee met today at 12:00 p.m., we reviewed all claims for November, 2017, Activity claims for October, 2017 and current fund balances.  We also discussed the following items:

• Legal information 
• Proposals for the Carson Field and Track
• Proposals for Tennis Courts and 6th Street Track
• Renovation update on the 2500 West Norfolk Ave. building
• Information on staff negotiations for 18-19

Our next meeting will be at 12:00 noon on December 11, 2017 at NPS central office.

The Policy Committee met at 1:30 on Monday, November 6th. 

No changes were recommended to policies 5001-5007 which are up for Second Reading tonight.

A typo was fixed in Policy 5008 and the words "and his/her designee" were added to Policy 5009.  All policies in this section 5008-5012 are recommended for First Reading.

The committee is recommending that policy 4005 (Weather Related Absences) also be approved for first reading.  It has been revised to indicate that two extra days will be added in Spring (not necessarily to our official spring break) for "snow make up days." If approved, this policy will go into effect for 2018-2019. It will not effect our current school year.

The committee is also recommending that policy 1040 be approved for first reading tonight. The words "during the fall semester" are being removed, as Rule 10 does not specify which semester the 
Annual Report needs to be completed in -- and this is the second  year that we have had trouble with NeSA scores not being available in a timely fashion.

The Activities Committee did not meet this month. Our next meeting is scheduled for noon on Monday, December 18th.

Minutes from the November 7, 2017 Nurses and Student Health Fund meetings are attached for review.

Minutes from BOE meetings on 9-11-2017 and 9-28-2017 are attached for review.

Amy Haisch - Speech Language Pathologist 

Starting 2nd semester 2017-2018

Master of Science Degree in Speech Language Pathology from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Currently is a Speech Language Pathologist at Lincoln Public Schools.

None at this time.

The claims for the month of November have been reviewed as stated earlier and are recommended for approval.

The district received the following qualifying bids from Pro-Track and Midwest Track. 

Pro-Track - $209,966

Midwest Track - $151,852

These bids include a base bid and bids for two alternates that the district would like to accept.  The final price also includes vendor recommended additions to meet quality standards as well as additional engineering fees where needed recommended by JEO to ensure specification compliance. These bids were reviewed by our Finance and Facilities Committee earlier today with detailed explanation.  Funds for this project will come from the Special Building Fund, Depreciation Fund, General Fund and Activities Fund.

The district received the following bids for the repair of the tennis court surfaces at the High School and also the repair of cracks at the 6th street track using the "Armor" repair system.  These bids were discussed in detail at our Finance and Facility Committee meeting:

Midwest Track - $121,265

Pro-Track - $117,784

Funds for this project will come from the Special Building Fund, Depreciation and General Funds.

No changes have been recommended to these policies since their first reading last month.  The Policy Committee recommends that they be approved as presented.

The Calendar committee asked that we change our policy to indicate that two additional days will be added to the calendar in the spring for the sake of "Snow Day make up days". They did not want us to specify that these days would be adjacent to our official Spring Break, as this caused difficulties with testing dates.

This policy change is for the 2018-2019 school year and beyond. It does not apply to our current school year.

The Policy Committee recommends that we approve this policy as written for First Reading, as it is a significant change from our previous First Reading.

Rule 10 requires each school district to create and distribute an annual report.  Our policy indicated that this would be done in the Fall semester.  However, this is the second year in a row that we have had difficulties completing this in the fall due to embargoed NeSA data.  We are recommending the the words "during the fall semester" be removed from our policy so that we have the flexibility to complete and distribute the report whenever data is made available by NDE (fall or spring semester).

The Policy Committee reviewed these policies and is recommending that they be approved for First Reading tonight.

A typo was fixed in Policy 5008 and the words "and his/her designee" were added to Policy 5009.  

No other changes were necessary.

Our next Board meeting will be held on Monday, December 11, 2017. The study session will begin at 5:30 and will be followed by the Business Meeting at 6:30.  All components of the meeting will be had at the NPS Central Administration Office and will be open to the pubic unless an Executive Session is required.