| School
Board meets
The school board voted to approve a the 1% bonus for all employees as well as an insurance holiday at their regular September meeting held Wednesday, Sept. 21. The 1% pay bonus comes from the state, which had approved such a bonus if the carryover from last year allowed it. The district will put the bonus into the November paychecks to give employees a little extra for Christmas shopping. The insurance holiday was a result of the insurance buydown program the district instituted last year. Their carryover in the fund of $160,000 will allow the district to pay the district’s premium and pay the employees family coverages for a month. They will also give employees who have only themselves covered a $100. This would cost about $37,000 and still leave plenty of money in the fund. This would save the district about $23,000 on the premium and give about $13-14,000 to the employees. They will do this in December as sort of a Christmas bonus for the district. Jerry Richardson informed the board of the Idaho Education Association’s proposed initiative for the Nov. 2006 election. They will be putting out petitions to put the 1% sales tax increase back and earmark it entirely for education. Brit Groom said he hopes the language of the proposal would keep that money for education as the original 3% sales tax invoked in the 1960’s was supposed to be entirely for education but eventually wound up in the state’s general fund. The 1% sales tax hike costs Idahoans on average about $15-20 each over a year’s time. The board approved ICRMP’s insurance policy proposal. The premiums actually went down from last year. All the schools passed all the criteria for Annual Yearly Progress. Enrollment was reported to be about the same as last year overall. The high school is up a little as the incoming freshman class is bigger than the outgoing senior class was. The middle school stayed about the same while the elementary school is down a couple. The Mentoring Policy discussed last month was approved. This was changed to meet the change in the state law. The state had instituted a mentoring policy a few years ago and funded it. Then they removed the funding but left the requirements in place. This year they finally removed the requirements. In administrative reports Greg Deiss reported the Elementary School open house was very well attended with 95% of parents attending. They started Idaho Standards and Achievement Testing with Idaho Reading Indicator testing to have started the 22nd. Dave Snodgrass reported that he attended an IHSAA rules meeting. They start ISATs on the 26th with the 9th graders. Sophomores will start Tuesday and junior and senior makeups for those that didn’t pass it as sophomores will start Wednesday. They were to attend Lewis & Clark Day at Kamiah on Monday, Sept. 26. Grades 3-8 and 10-11 will be attending. Superintendent Stan Kress reported that the Idaho Supreme Court hearing didn’t go well for the state Attorney General’s office and the legislature. The AG’s office changed attorneys and the new guy got grilled by the judges. It looks like the case will be remanded back to Judge Bail to monitor the legislative action to see if they are doing enough to satisfy their constitutional requirements. He also reported there will be a hearing at LCSC at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 18 on the new high school graduation requirements. Kress said the superintendents recently met with the State Board of Education and voiced their concerns about making these new graduation requirements but not providing funding to hire the new science and math teachers needed to teach the extra classes required. The board adjourned at 9:30 to an executive session. The next regular meeting will be Monday Oct. 17 at 7 p.m. |
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