July 17, 2017 at 5:00 PM - Committee as a Whole/Work Session

Doug Molczyk read the mission statement.

ELL District Coordinator Erica Earley said high school students created a video welcome for students coming from another country. She said the idea of the video was to help the new students feel comfortable and also inform them of the expectations of the school. The video is shown to both the students and their families. Earley said focus groups were also created to get new students’ prospective of what it was like being in a school. She said they found out that many of them don't understand activities, so they are not involved in any. At the secondary level, they found out it is hard for the students to be involved in activities because they had to work or didn't have transportation to get to practices. The students are from a wide variety of countries, and a few are also not Spanish speaking.  The ELL goals are integration and language achievement.

Dr. Loeffelholz said the thing people don't understand about fees is if the family qualifies for free and reduced lunches they can apply for a fee waiver. This policy explains all the fees associated by schools site for next year.

CHS Assistant Principal Jon Frey said there are not many changes to the high school handbook this year. Most of the changes were because of the move into the new school. The new bell schedule is in the handbook reflecting the seven period hour day. LEAD (Learn Engage Achieve and Discover) Time is for students to receive extra help or have extra enrichment opportunities for an hour on Wednesday. He said a line was added that said no district device may leave the U.S. for student travel. Frey said the administration will monitor credits to determine what will be required for graduation and adjustments may be made based on the seven period day. These changes in graduation requirements will also be started with the incoming freshmen class. The new freshmen class will be under a new 10 point grading class scale.

Robotics was added as an activity at the high school. Previously homeschool students could participate in activities if they were taking 20 credit hours at the high school. Nebraska reduced this to 10 credit hours per semester. CHS Activities Director Dave Hiebner said there may be a larger number of home school children who may want to participate. Last year there was only one student who participated. He said other states required only 10 credits and Nebraska was requiring 20 credits. Hiebner said this could be more challenging to track for eligibility purposes because 10 credits is a smaller number. He said many home school children didn’t want to participate because getting 20 credit hours could require them to spend a whole day at the high school. With the number of credits dropping, it may now be more feasible.

There will be no fee changes for next year, and this is in line with what other schools are doing. Hiebner said there were more 10 punch passes sold last year then in the past as well as full year passes. He said CHS is not trying to charge too high of prices but is trying to stay in line with what other schools are doing. Heibner said he doesn’t want the prices to get too high or people won’t come to games.

Superintendent Dr. Troy Loeffelholz said the policy now defines administrators, and these include: Superintendent, Directors, Building Principals, Assistant Principals and the Activities Director. Any of the current employees who accept one of these positions must follow this rule and live in district. Doug Willoughby said this policy bothers him because it may hurt future boards in hiring quality candidates if the district requires them to live in district. Candy Becher said if an administrator is being paid public money he or she must be required to live in the district because of the higher salary. She said this does not include teachers. Mike Goos said the average commute to a job is 18 miles, and this would fall outside the CPS boundary. He said he supports the policy but questioned if it will hurt future boards. Theresa Seipel said she would feel that way if Columbus was a small town where there were limited options. Doug Molczyk said with the shortage of housing in Columbus, is a year adequate time for a person to find housing? He asked if there was a way to put in a waiver if a person was building a home, and it wasn’t complete the time could be extended? Dr. Loeffelholz said there could be a waiver put in if a person was building a house and cannot get it done in a year. He said this will only be the second reading tonight and he will add in the part about the waiver and bring it back next month to the board for the third and final reading. The board wanted to know why this was suddenly an issue. Dr. Loeffelholz said he has heard this numerous time from people in the community about the highest paid employees not living in district.

Dr. Loeffelholz said starting in September the Committee as a Whole will meet the second Monday at 5:30 p.m.  There will still be a listening session on the second Monday beginning at 4:30. At 5:45 p.m., the building administrators and staff will give presentations. No public comment can be made at the Committee as a Whole meeting, and it is designed just for discussion and no action will be taken. The third meeting of the month will be the boards actual business meeting. Dr. Loeffelholz said this may help get a lot of the questions answered before the action meeting on the third Monday. At the annual organizational meeting in January board will be selecting their financial institutions, district attorney's and district auditor. Melick said the board should go out for bids for a new auditor every five years.

The board must have Americanism and Textbooks, Negotiations and Policy.

Other committees will be created in conjunction with the goals of the board. Two board members will be appointed to each of the board's strategic goals. These include: Curriculum Instruction and Assessment; Facilities ad Finance; and Social/emotional. The strategic plans will be reported on quarterly. This does not mean the board member will need to attend all the meetings but will receive minutes and other information.

Dr. Loeffelholz and Mr. Melick provided the board the consent information.

Seipel Repair was paid $571 for repairs made.

The $225 was tuition reimbursement for classes that Mike Goos' daughter took at Central Community College.

The board agreed to keep them the same for the 2017-18 school year.

The total contributions made for the month of June was $27,684.64 from the Foundation, Centennial PTO, Band Boosters, North Park PTO, Emerson PTO, West Park PTO Alumni and Sports Boosters. Dr. Loeffelholz said the Sports Boosters purchased new wrestling mats for $14,673. He said another large purchase was for $779.27 for STEM Equipment.

This is policy only affects people paying full price for meals, and if they get to $15 behind,  they will receive an alternative meal Melick said. All of these cases will be handled in a confidential manner.

This policy is to make sure CPS staff are not charging parents to teach students content that should have been taught in class. Melick said for example, a teacher can’t have a student stay after school for help in a class and then charge the parents.

This is a revision and states that at all times certified staff must have a valid teaching certificate.

Melick said the content in this policy is all new because it reflects the new teacher evaluation model.

Melick said the content in this policy is all new because it reflects the new teacher evaluation model.

The regular teacher still has control of the classroom, and the regular teacher can take over if the student teacher is not doing a lesson well.

All staff are required to participate in professional development activities.

Mr. Melick went through the changes of the teacher evaluation model.  Many teachers and administrators were involved in the creation of the new evaluation system.