| School
board meets
It was reported that all the buildings are being spruced up for the upcoming school year at the July meeting of the school board Monday, July 17. They’ve had NICI work crews at each building at various times doing a lot of painting and Rene’ Forsmann reported they’ve even been helping input library book information into the computer system. Two people were recommended for hire. Wendy Stauffer, a recent U of I graduate, was approved as the new band teacher. Also Paul Schmidt was approved as junior high assistant football coach. He was actually approved previously but the information provided to the Chronicle last month was wrong. Schmidt will be working with Ken Mader. Schmidt also helped coach the team last year. John Nida was again elected as board chairman with Brit Groom as vice-chairman as the board passed a motion to keep everything the same. The board also passed a blanket motion to keep the meeting dates and times, hot lunch prices, bus rental rates, per diem rates and facility use rates the same as last year. Proposed bus routes were presented to the board for review. They will take action on them at the August meeting. In administrative reports Greg Diess reported they’ve had 26 students in summer school, 15 from the elementary and 11 from the middle school. It will finish up this week. He also reported the summer lunch program is going well with 40-45 students participating most days and up to 90 when there is a special event such as a basketball camp. He reported they also allowed use of a couple classrooms at a very low rental rate to the church when they had overflow from their Vacation Bible School. He also wanted to give huge kudos to summer hire Daniel Sigler. Middle School principal Rene’ Forsmann echoed those sentiments. Forsmann reported the new sign is now installed. A photo is elsewhere in this week’s Chronicle. She said they’ve started work on the gym floor. Also the hallway floor past the office is getting some work done to do something about the cracking. She reported that in addition to all the painting and other work, an NICI crew will be building some picnic tables for the school. They will be upgrading their T-1 lines this summer. Prices have dropped to the point they can get two lines for about what their one line had been costing them. They will have the high school connected to their own line with the elementary and middle schools sharing the other. Forsmann said she hopes this helps ease the load they’ve been seeing, particularly during the middle part of the day. She also reported that this year the middle and high schools will hold registration on the same day and time. Registration for both will be Tuesday, August 15 from 8 to 11:30 a.m. She reported the bleachers are to be in the third week of September. The contract stipulates they’re to be done by the end of September. In the meantime they will have the first 3 junior high girls home basketball games at the elementary school gym. Stan Kress reported for high school principal Dave Snodgrass that they had the inmate crews paint almost anything that wasn’t moving. The cabinets, hallways, trim, etc. He reported the results from the Idaho Standards and Achievement Test show Prairie students performing well above state averages across the board. He also shared an operating expense comparison of the 15 school districts in this area that was compiled by Genesee using data from the 2003-04 school year. In general it shows that Prairie schools are getting more for their dollars than most other schools in the area. One of note is that only schools that didn’t pass an override levy had a lower number of dollars per student from override money. He also reported he’s still working on filling positions with bus driver being one of those. They lost two bus drivers and are looking at combining the 7 routes into six but the only applicant they have so far is willing only to do a route part of the time necessitating subs to cover the rest. Also a maternity leave request was granted for Tara Duclos who will miss the first 9 weeks of the school year. The board adjourned to a short executive session at 8 p.m. The next regular meeting will be Monday, August 21. The board will meet at the high school at 6 to start a building tour and finish at the elementary school for the regular meeting. |
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