by blackturtle.us » Fri Aug 09, 2019 12:27 pm
REGULAR BOARD MEETING - August 08, 2019
Only a few people were present for this meeting. It started a half hour late and didn't conclude until about ten minutes after eight. Highlights as follows:
1) Employee Dismissal - Apparently a district office employee was dismissed. Not sure what that person did or who exactly it was except that the person was referred to using a feminine pronoun.
2) Superintendent - Talked about ongoing issues with preparing for late start of the school year and various related issues. The good news is that it appears that the state will help out by reimbursing up to 75% of expenditures spent by the district in order to recover from the earthquakes. This will enable the district to pay for a few more temporary classrooms. There was a plan to utilize two such classrooms and now that number is being bumped up to five or so....
3) Food Service Options: 1) Offsite kitchen (possibly a church); 2) Own cafeteria (if repaired in time); 3) Sierra Sands (delivered or picked up daily); 4) Food Service Company (aka, frozen dinners). No decision yet made. Still weighing options.
4) Emergency Repairs - Working with architects and contractors to develop plan for beginning of school year and then a long-term plan after that. It also sounds like the waterline to the gym is almost ready to use. The bad news is that a fiber optics cable supplying internet to elementary was cut while trenching. Hopefully this will be fixed early next week.
5) High School Principal reported to the board that a committee of four teachers are reviewing curricular materials for science and social studies. They are inspecting materials and will make recommendations after trying out some of the materials in their classrooms.
6) High School Mentors - Long discussion about responsibilities, expectations, and how mentors will be supervised.
7) Two Resignations - One person working in the business office resigned and our main technology person resigned. Regarding the technology resignation a board member had a complaint. Basically, it sounded like she felt that the tech person resigned since he was not properly consulted regarding tech issues. He retired from a highly paid tech job (not just a computer repair person or tech support type of job, but one involving high level skills) and was not properly appreciated by local leaders. One of the local leaders took offense at what was said, but hesitated to get into a public discussion regarding an employee. [EDITORIAL NOTE: I know that serving in a tech position can be frustrating since often local leaders make poor decisions regarding tech without properly consulting with local tech person. I can list lots of examples going back to the 1990s. It seems that local leaders are too trusting of sales reps for some reason.... not that there is any reason to believe that kickbacks going back to the 1990s have been involved.... but considering the nature of some of the poor decisions, it's hard not to be suspicious.]
8) Installation of Surveillance Cameras - Plans have been altered slightly to adjust to where students will now be located throughout the day. Originally, cameras were going to be installed at the old high school campus and now they will be installed only where students will be found through the course of the day.
9) Several club advisors and class sponsors approved. Clubs on the list included mathletes, hiking, Spanish, dungeons and dragons, entrepreneurship, art/photography, auto shop, and shooting (basketball).
NEXT REGULAR MEETING: SEPT 12
Emergency Meeting already scheduled for Wed, AUG 14