The school board held their May meeting Monday, May 15, and approved the hire of a new music teacher.
Isabella Baldwin was hired as the new music teacher. She had been at Grangeville last year as a new teacher right out of college. Grangeville didn’t renew her contract as they had someone else they wanted who wasn’t able to start last year. Current band teacher John Eynon knows her from the Idaho County Orchestra and apparently she can play almost any musical instrument. Superintendent Jon Rehder said she is excited about keeping the music program going at Prairie.
Whitney Westhoff was approved for hire as the new elementary paraprofessional replacing Cami Shears who moved to a teaching position.
Julia Rehder was approved for hire as summer maintenance help. Jon Rehder said they had 4 applicants and all were great candidates.
Sasha Schacher was hired as a new bus driver. She will take over Doug Schumacher’s route while Schumacher will move to the route David Shears has been driving. This will free Shears up to have more time for maintenance.
Deborah Walker was approved for hire as the new Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) instructor. She will mostly help with the clinicals for the students taking the classes online.
The board voted to approve the use of the school’s football equipment for use at the summer football camp team members will be attending.
Rehder looked into several speech/language pathology online programs since it is near impossible to find a certified person for that position. He recommends eLUMA as the best option financially for the District. They are based out of Utah and are already being used by over 40 schools in Idaho. The board voted to approve a contract with eLUMA.
Amber Nuxoll submitted her resignation as a part-time cook to spend more time with her young children.
Rehder said he would like to advertise for a full-time food service person at the Elementary and was given a go-ahead by the board.
Laurie Workman resigned from the REAP paraprofessional position.  To fill her position, Rehder would like to be able to add an IDLA stipend. He said when Workman was hired they had only about 20 students taking IDLA classes. This year there were about 100.
The District received 1 bid for the Elementary classroom addition. It came in at $934,150. This is substantially higher than Rehder had hoped. He said this is very much needed for classroom instruction as opposed to the high school gym foyer project which would have been nice to have but not a necessity. The board voted to accept the bid and they will look and see if there are some places they can change order some cost cutting measures. Apparently removing the deadline date of August 31 can save about $20,000.
The open enrollment policy was discussed after the state’s passage of a looser open enrollment policy. Rehder said regarding athletics, the Idaho High School Activities Association is going to keep the same transfer rules regarding sports. Matt Elven said he has had 3 open enrollment requests in the past few days. It is already in the policy that requests have to be submitted during January for the following school year. The board asked Rehder and Elven to come up with some criteria and bring it back to the next meeting.
In the administrative reports both Rehder and Elven shared ISAT results. Both said they were pleased with the performance of the Prairie students and their improvements over last year.
Elven reported the Knowledge Bowl team won the points championship for the third straight year.
79 people attended the Prairie League Night of Mystery which combined the former Mother Daughter Tea and Daddy Date Night events into one function.
The Jr./Sr. High Band attended the District II band festival at CV and received a superior rating.
Prom had 78 students attending.
On May 3 Dusty Arnzen from Compunet finalized installation of cameras in the metal and wood shop areas.
It has been voted in that Junior High volleyball and girls basketball seasons will be swapped. Prairie may need to find a coach for junior high volleyball as it will now be during the high school season and the same coaches had been doing both programs.
The Spring concert is set for May 23 at 6:30 p.m. at the high school cafeteria.
State baseball is May 17-19 at Lewiston while state track is May 19-20 at Middleton.
ASB elections will be May 25.
The PHS awards assembly is June 1 with graduation on June 2.
Rehder reported the Elementary Spring Concert will be Friday, May 26 at 1 p.m.
Tuesday, May 31 is the Kindergarten graduation.
Jennifer Riener as food service director, received some grant money that had to be used within the next several months. They purchased new convections ovens, a new refrigerator for the high school and new dishwashers for both school kitchens.
They purchased a new floor scrubber for the elementary school and plan to get one for the high school. The new machines are dual purpose. They can be used for daily cleaning and can also be used as wax removers in the summer for floor refinishing.
Gym floors will be refinished on July 1-2.
An elevator at the high school may be revisited if they get a new floor scrubber as it would enable Laurie Lorentz to get the scrubber from the main level to the upper level.
Rick Forsmann and David Shears are installing the new shot clocks for the high school gym this week.
The new bus ordered last summer should arrive late this summer,
The meeting adjourned to an executive session at 8:24 p.m.
The next regular meeting of the board will be Monday, June 19 at 7 p.m.