The board meeting began about ten minutes late and there were a few community members on hand as well as several staff members in addition to school board members and the superintendent.
1) Board Member Comments:
a) Trona Care - Community clean up event March 16 from 8am to 12 noon. Meet at gas station in Argus. High school students encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity to pick up community service hours.
b) HR1399 - Pending royalty reduction legislation. A bill is on the docket which would reduce royalty monies paid to the school district by two-thirds. This would produce a hardship on the school and so community members are urged to write letters explaining to representatives that this bill is not a good idea. Our local representative is Paul Cook and he can be reached at 760-247-1815 (Apple Valley office) or 202-225-5861 (Washington D.C. office).
2) TTA Report - Teachers at the high school are concerned about the amount of time student athletes spend out of class due to athletic events. Some weeks students are only in class two days, especially in the case of afternoon classes. Student grades are suffering as a result and teachers feel that they are being blamed for poor student performance which is obviously caused by the students not being in class.
3) Superintendent’s Report: The superintendent briefly talked about several issues. Most interesting was info about the gymnasium.
a) Gymnasium - Geological study results explained. The gym will remain in use for at least the next several years although the end nearest to the highway has sunk by several inches causing the foundation to slope a bit. The likely cause is a change in the depth of groundwater. When the gymnasium was constructed (about 60-70 years ago) the depth to hit water was ten feet. It is now 30-40 feet. Most likely this change is due to activities of the chemical plant.
4) ALICE - Active shooter training - A teacher shared information with the board about a training which she and several other staff members attended. Basically the training covered strategies and techniques to enhance preparedness for emergency events involving armed assailants.
5) Lead Test - Drinking water tested at both sites and passed tests for safety.
6) Consent Calendar - Rejected with a 0-5 vote. Board members were not satisfied that they were provided with sufficient info to vote with confidence. [NOTE: I’ve attended 98% of all regular board meetings since 2006 and I don’t recall this ever happening before.]
7) Travel Policy - Board approved revisions to travel policy making it easier for employees to be reimbursed for expenses incurred while traveling on school business.
8) Retirement Funds - The board voted to take measures to ensure that funding to cover expenses associated with benefits for retirees will be adequate to cover district obligations.
9) New maintenance vehicle - The board approved the purchase of a new truck needed by maintenance.
NEXT REGULAR MEETING: March 14th, 2019