February 16, 2026 at 6:00 PM - Regular Meeting

Rationale:  Members of the public will be permitted to speak at Board meetings. Members of the public may also speak when invited to make a presentation or when recognized by the President.

For all meetings of the Board, individual speakers shall have up to 5 minutes to address the Board, and the Board shall hear up to 30 cumulative minutes of public comment. The Board may vote to modify these time limits when the Board deems appropriate. The President may implement other reasonable requirements for public comment, consistent with the Open Meetings Act.

Members of the public will not be required to have their name placed on the agenda prior to the meeting in order to speak about items on the agenda.

Any member of the public desiring to address the Board shall be required to identify himself or herself, including an address and the name of any organization represented by such person, unless the address requirement is waived to protect the security of the individual.

Speakers will be permitted to address the Board consistent with free speech rights. However, offensive language, defamatory remarks, and hostile conduct will not be tolerated. Further, charges or complaints against employees shall not be made for the first time at a public Board meeting without having followed the school’s complaint procedure.

Rationale:  The county treasurer's balance has been updated based on the final figures from our 2024-2025 audit.  The balance has increased by around $3,000. 

Rationale:  02/17/26 21232 Apptegy, Inc. - $9,900.00
Apptegy will be the new website platform for www.esu8.org.  The implementation fee for our new website is $3,400, and the annual subscription is $6,500.  This will be up and running this spring.

02/17/26 58459 ESU Coordinating Council - $1,000.00
Sparq negotiations is an online platform that ESU's and schools use for their negotiation comparisons.  Corey has used this for the last couple of years to assist in determining where our staff are at in comparison to others in the state.

01/19/26 58431 Gerry Brooks - $11,125.00
Gerry Brooks was the speaker at the Winter Workshop that ESU 8 hosted at Norfolk Public Schools last month.  The total cost of the presenter and additional supplies for this event will be billed out to participating districts to offset the expense.  The cost per attendee will end up being approximately $20.

01/28/26 21056 Huddle Up Care, Inc. - $8,064.90
This is one of our speech teletherapy companies.  They had an invoice from October that didn't make it to our accounting department for payment last Fall so we are just now paying it.

02/17/26 3987 Mandt System, The - $8,985.00
We have certified trainers at ESU 8 for Mandt.  These trainers must be re-certified every few years to train ESU 8 staff and school staff in Mandt. This recertification is for Tracy Booth, Gina Ohnesorg, and Jodie Tagel and will be held in North Platte this year.

02/17/26 58478 Romans Wiemer & Associates - $9,025.00
This is the fee for the 2024-2025 fiscal audit.  The price did increase $675 over last year.  There are not many auditors left in the state that will take on new educational clients.  Our current auditor, Gayle, has always done a nice job for ESU 8.

02/17/26 58479 Schindler Elevator Corporation - $3,942.25
We have an annual agreement with Schindler to take care of all of the elevator things. They make sure our maintenance is handled and that we are in compliance with the state.  This increased less than $150 from last year.

01/28/26 58434 Young, Rylee - $1,953.00
Rylee is our current Learning Center teacher (provisionally-licensed) who signed a tuition reimbursement agreement back in 2024 to go back and get her SPED K-12 Generalist endorsement.  She is on track to be a fully licensed SPED Teacher for ESU 8 starting August 1, 2027.  The current total for tuition reimbursement to Rylee is $7,765. 

Rationale:  As in the past, the only finding on ESU 8's independent audit was that ESU 8 does not have enough personnel to assign responsibilities in such a way that different employees handle different parts of the same transactions.  This material weakness is something that we do segregate as much as we can with the Business Office staff that we employ, however we will most likely never be able to segregate it enough to meet the standards of the Government Auditing Standards.

Rationale:  The desktop computers used by the Business Office staff and the assistants need to be replaced, as several are starting to experience functional issues.  This will be the first batch of computers to be replaced in our 4-year cycle.  

Attached, you will find a quote from DakTech.  This is the brand many of us are currently using.  We are also waiting on a quote for Dell desktops.

Rationale:  Last month, the board approved the SLP Grow Your Own Tuition Reimbursement application for Cynthia Meyer.  After the meeting, it was determined that she had miscalculated the rate for her graduate-level courses, increasing the total reimbursement estimate from $32,434.75 to $56,834.75 - $62,236.25.  The range being shown on the high end of these figures is due to the possibility that our applicant may need an additional 5 credit hours at the graduate level, which she has not included on the attached updated application.

Rationale:  Part of the budget process gives boards the ability to increase their budget authority by 1%.  To do this, however, we need to have a super majority approve that motion.  I would recommend that we do this as it gives us more flexibility with future budget years.  
If we do not have a super majority at our February meeting, we will include this in our next agenda.  

Rationale:  The negotiations committee has been meeting with administration and will provide a recommendation to the board.  The Negotiations Packet is attached.