June 4, 2012 at 6:30 PM - Board of Education Meeting Agenda

Rationale:  A motion will be necessary if a member of the elected Board is absent.

Rationale:  The Bellevue Board of Education abides by the Nebraska Open Meetings Law.  A copy of the law is posted on the wall of our Board room.

Rationale:  Approve by consent items in section B of the Agenda identified with an asterisk and receive the information and proposals in section D identified with an asterisk.

Rationale:  The Minutes of the May 7, 2012, Board of Education meeting were sent to all members of the Board of Education for review.

Rationale:  Acknowledge receipt of the Treasurer's Report for May, 2012.

Rationale:  Approve the payment of claims totaling $1,522,895.70.

Rationale:  Release (1) Jill Bakewell, (2) Erica Franzluebbers, (3) Amy Frost, (4) Jessica Halsey, (5) Tymesia Heath, (6) Colleen Jeffrey, (7) Kimberly Mathias, (8) Joli Munch, (9) Charlotte Weyler, and (10) Sarah Zimmerman from their contracts effective May 23, 2012.

Rationale:  Elect (1) Ronald Oltman to the certified staff for the 2012-13 school year effective July 1, 2012, and (2) Jean Bond, (3) Jacqueline Canty, (4) Scott DeBoer, (5) Jessie DeBuhr, (6) Jessica Frank, (7) Jennifer Harms, (8) Chelsea Hoglund, (9) Rachel Huntoon, (10) Andrea Jenkins, (11) Brian Johnson-Strawn, (12) Melinda Krause, (13) Matthew Lauritsen, (14) Robert Mason, (15) Sunny McKaig, (16) Christina Musgrave, (17) Daniel Nakai, (18) Crystal Olson, (19) Donald Payne III, (20) Kylee Rempe, (21) Korisa Schoepke, (22) Joel Scholten, (23) Rachael Talbitzer, and (24) Diane Thomas to the certified staff for the 2012-13 school year effective August 9, 2012, and (25) Kara Bobbitt to the certified staff for the 2012-13 school year effective August 14, 2012, subject to their release from any contractual agreements with other school districts.

Rationale:  Approve the following amendment to the contract between Jean Bond and the Bellevue Board of Education dated June 4, 2012:  As a qualification to such contract, the employee agrees to be paid forty percent of salary and fringe benefits for fulfilling forty percent of the usual daily assignment.  All other contractual rights and responsibilities including in-service days, counseling, PTA meetings, and parent conferences shall remain unchanged.

Rationale:  Approve the following amendment to the contract between Melinda Krause and the Bellevue Board of Education dated June 4, 2012:  As a qualification to such contract, the employee agrees to be paid sixty percent of salary and fringe benefits for fulfilling sixty percent of the usual daily assignment.  All other contractual rights and responsibilities including in-service days, counseling, PTA meetings, and parent conferences shall remain unchanged.

Rationale:  The Board reviewed the proposed changes to Board Policies 410.011, Certificated Employees-Vacations, Holidays and Length of Contract, and 415.01, Classified Employee Vacation, at the May 7, 2012, Board meeting. The attached proposed Board policies are presented tonight for final approval.

Rationale:  Bellevue Public Schools entered into a partnership with Metropolitan Community College in 2005.  The proposal is to continue the partnership through May 2013.  The partnership focuses on improving educational opportunities for our students and community by offering dual-credit classes and locating classes in the Bellevue/Offutt Community, where Metro's highest student population is located.

Attached is the proposed Partnership for Learning Agreement.

Rationale:  SkillsUSA Nebraska, a Nebraska Department of Education student organization, recently recognized award winners during its 2012 conference in Hastings.

About 1,400 people attended the conference, including 1,000 high school, college and technical students and advisors.

Students participated in 90 hands-on skill and leadership contests.  First place winners qualify for the SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Championship Conference, June 23-27, in Kansas City, Missouri.  The winners are:

Cody Shellgren, Collision Repair Technology-third place, Bellevue West
Ericka Metz, First Aid/CPR-second place, Bellevue West
Steven Whitfield, Mobile Electronics Installation-second place, Bellevue West
Seth Gabriel, Plumbing-third place, Bellevue West
Bellevue East Team 2, Team Works-second place
 

Rationale:  Judges considered the nominations of 1,082 remarkable students, 950 in Nebraska and 132 in Iowa.  The credentials are stellar:  8 perfect ACT test scores, 176 scores of 34 or better on the ACT, 9 scores of 2300 or better on the SAT, and 95 National Merit Finalists.  Beyond these statistics, the judges weighed classroom performance by reviewing curriculum and the rigor of the senior schedule, involvement in school activities, academic competitions and school leadership.  Each honored student was pictured in the Omaha World-Herald Special Scholars section published Sunday, May 13.

Our winners included:

All Regional First Team
Roosevelt Boyland III, Bellevue East

Honorable Mention
Brianna Boehne, Bellevue East
Sam Ervin, Bellevue East
Lindsey Pfender, Bellevue East
Timothy Rolling, Bellevue East
Trevor Savage, Bellevue East
Nicholas Trojanowski, Bellevue East
Victoria Trojanowski, Bellevue East
Christopher Clark, Bellevue West
Matthew Hahn, Bellevue West
Andrew Jeter, Bellevue West
Aaron Kruger, Bellevue West
Heather Layne, Bellevue West
Andy Peterson, Bellevue West
Michelle Pham, Bellevue West
Bradley Schrag, Bellevue West
Kyra Valentine, Bellevue West
Maximillian Werner, Bellevue West

Rationale:  The Mission team won the middle school division of the state tournament out of twenty-nine schools and advanced to the national tournament.  Mission Middle School students participated in the National Science Olympiad Tournament in Orlando, FL, on May 18-19.

Mary-Francis Laporte and Trevor Fellbaum took second place in Forestry.  Chloe Schwarting and Michelle Ruzicka took fourth place in Disease Detective.  Monica Pham and Trevor Fellbaum took ninth place in Meteorology.  Kristen Hall, Mary-Francis Laporte, and Andrew Nelson placed fourteenth in Experimental Design.  The Mission team placed twenty-eighth out of sixty teams overall, representing 47 states.

The team is coached by Melody Kjerstad and Norma Thompson.

Rationale:  The following Bellevue East and West students earned medals at the NSAA State Journalism Competition held at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on May 7.

Bellevue East
Christine Blair and Nicole Bartlett-4th place for In-Depth News Coverage
Nicole Bartlett and AJ Bedore-4th place for Yearbook Theme Development
Christine Blair-4th place for News Writing

Bellevue West
Sydney Zuelke-6th place for Column Writing

Rationale:  Three Bellevue West seniors, Brandon Pecka, Erik Anderson, and Kirsten Kingston, competed at the Nebraska Council on Economic Education Personal Finance State Competition.  The students were given a family scenario and then asked to make a presentation on their recommendations for the family's financial well-being.  The students earned first place in the competition qualifying them for the national competition in St. Louis on May 13.

Rationale:  Bellevue West competed in the OPPD PowerDrive Championships on Saturday, May 5.  West's standard/or first year car finished in 15th place out of 33 cars, and their exhibition car finished in 7th place out of 10 cars.

Rationale:  Bellevue West Envirothon Teams competed in the 2012 Nebraska Envirothon Regional Tournament on May 5 at the 4-H Camp in Halsey at the Nebraska National Forest, the largest hand-planted forest in the United States.  Winning regional teams compete in the areas of Forestry, Aquatics, Wildlife, Soil, Policy, Range and Special Topic which this year is "Nonpoint Pollution Source/Low Impact Development."

Bellevue West Team 1 won the state championship in the area of Environmental Policy and finished third place overall.  Team members were Maxwell Lydiatt, Cole Burmeister, Sarah Bethel, Matthew Kruger, and Bradley Schrag.

Bellevue West Team 2 finished sixth place overall in the state.  Team members were Ashley Weed, Erica Dalen, Zach Williams, Kevin Hanna, and Alex Gangwish.

The team is coached by Bradley Nord.

Rationale:  A team of students (Team One) representing the Bellevue Public Schools' HAL Program recently won highest honors in the WordMasters Challenge, a national language arts competition entered by over 220,000 students annually consisting of three separate meets held at intervals during the school year.

Competing in the difficult Gold Division of the Challenge, and supervised in their preparation by Sandra Sykora, the team's sixth graders placed third in the nation in the year-end cumulative standings among 191 school teams participating in this grade level and in this division.

Three of the team's students won highest honors for year-long individual achievement:  sixth graders Mia Thomas and Asja Woodard both placed among the 10 highest scoring sixth graders in the entire country in the year-end standings, while their teammate Grace Wilson was one of the 17 highest scorers at this grade level nationwide.

In addition, several of the team's students won highest honors for individual achievement in the year's final meet held in April:  fifth grader Kahea Chai and sixth graders Hannah Harstad, Mia Thomas, Alexandrea Welch, Grace Wilson, and Asja Woodard all earned perfect scores in this meet with only 74 fifth graders and 118 sixth graders doing so in the entire country.

Others who excelled in the meet included fifth graders Marcos Labrado, Emma Mullendore, and Caitlin Maloney; and sixth graders Adam Forbes, Helen Jacobson, Samantha Lydiatt, Holly Schwarting, Dalton Fischer, Jack Hansen-Reed, Brandon Kurtz, Eden Liebenthal, Morgan McArthur, and Alissa Schroeder.

The WordMasters Challenge is an exercise in critical thinking that first encourages students to become familiar with a set of interesting new words (considerably harder than grade level), and then challenges them to use those words to complete analogies expressing various kinds of relationships.  Working to solve the Challenge analogies helps students learn to think both analytically and metaphorically.  Though most vocabulary boosting and analogy solving activities have been created for high school students, the WordMasters materials have been specifically designed for younger students in grades 3 through 8.  They are particularly well suited for able and interested children who rise to the challenge of learning new words and enjoy the logical puzzles posted by analogies.

The WordMasters Challenge has been administered for the past 25 years by a company based in Allendale, New Jersey, which is dedicated to inspiring high achievement in American schools.  Now that all three of the year's meets have been completed, medals and certificates will be awarded to those students who achieved and/or improved the most in the course of the year.

Rationale:  The Board of Education discussed results of the District Governance Survey and Superintendent's Goals at the July, 2011, Board Retreat.  At the September, 2011, meeting the Board reviewed goals focusing on four areas:  student achievement, school finance, governmental relations, and technology.  In October, 2011, the Board of Education Goals for 2011-2012 were approved.

Tonight, Mr. Harwood will provide a report for the Board on the attached updated goals.

Rationale:  Tonight, the Board will discuss the possible date change for the July, 2012, Board of Education meeting, a possible summer work session, and the 2012-2013 Board Meeting Calendar.

Attached is a copy of the tentative 2012-2013 Board Meeting Calendar.

Rationale:  An oral report will be provided on the recent meetings of the Learning Community.

Rationale:  None

Rationale:  June 19-20, Beyond Diversity Training, Support Center
July 2, Board of Education Meeting, Welcome Center, 6:30 pm  (The July meeting was discussed and changed to July 9)

Rationale:  Adjourn to executive session to consider matters relating to strategy sessions with respect to collective bargaining which are necessary to be considered in closed session for the protection of the public interest.