| School
Board meets
The School Board held their regular April meeting Monday, April 20. The board members and administrators spread out in the meeting room to adhere to the social distancing guidelines. Superintendent Rene’ Forsmann reviewed the State Board of Education’s guidelines to possibly reopen the school and her opinion was that it was best to continue the soft closure until May 29. She said the online learning is working well to this point and felt the potential dangers of reopening the schools too early outweighed any benefits. Board member Gus Hoene commented that the board and administration is both fiscally and physically responsible for the district, employees and students and seconded the motion made by Pat Alfrey to keep the soft closure until May 29. The motion carried. The board also voted, in one motion, to approve the State Board decision to close school until April 6; to approve the State Board decision to extend the closure until April 20; to approve the emergency school closure for March 18 to March 26 and to approve the soft closure for April 6 to May 1. They also passed a motion to approve distance learning options for educating special education students. They also voted to approve suspending any conflicting procedures in the school policies due to the closures until Dec. 31. In more regular school board business the bus depreciation transfer of $34,342 from the general fund to the transportation fund was approved. They also approved making a maintenance transfer for the track of $5,000. In a final action item, the resignation of Marlene Forsmann as assistant volleyball coach was accepted. She has been the assistant coach for quite a few years, serving with several different head coaches. In the facilities report Forsmann said she is going to get some of the internal projects going early since the buildings are closed to students. Items already completed are the purchase of a portable, gas-powered hot water pressure washer for just under $5,000. It was purchase from a company in Orofino and will be used to clean buses among other uses. It was delivered the week of April 6-10. Also purchased was a John Deere mowerthat with trade in of their old mower cost just under $6,000. It was delivered April 13. Cracks were sealed at the high school parking lot and they are looking at resurfacing. An item added to the list from previous months was doing the gym floors. In her principal’s report she said they offered the special education position after interviewing 3 candidates but that candidate decided not to take it. They reopened the application period for the position but have had no applicants. All the staff are teaching online, some from home but others from the building due to lack of good enough internet access at home. They held a couple of staff meetings online through the Zoom app. In her superintendent’s report she said they closed the schools at 7 p.m. March 17 and extended Spring Break. On an April1 Zoom meeting they outlined how to roll out the Remote Online Learning. On April 6 all staff started Remote Online Learning. Buses delivered paper and pencil materials to students as well as meals. They have approximately 500 meals going out, 250 breakfasts and 250 lunches. She reported they received federal forest funds for 2019-20 in the amount of $334,881.91. Jon Rehder reported on the reshuffling of some staff due to not getting any qualified applicants for Todd Nygaard’s position. Renee Eckert is going to come out of retirement to help fill some English classes. He said they are also looking at combing the junior high and high school bands as there are only about 5 high school students who will be back next year. This would also allow the music teacher to spend extra time at the Elementary building. Rehder reported the blood drive, held on what turned out to be the last day of school in the building, went well with 32 donors. He has already received the $2,000 STEM grant for meeting their goal. He gave a shoutout and shared photos of some of the school efforts to help hospitals with masks. Della Gehring’s sewing students have been making fabric masks. She had a goal of 10 for each students but some have gone well beyond that. Also Jeff Martin got the designs online to 3D print masks and has been working on making some. It takes several hours each to make one on the 3D printer. He met with the senior class via Zoom on April 17 and he and Mrs. Quintal answered questions and discussed graduation options. He also reported that the #BeTheLightID campaign went very well Friday, April 10. There were a lot of vehicles participating. Dave Young and Ryan Hasselstrom had their drones up to take footage of the event and Kaylee Brotzman also took video. He said he is staying in contact with parents and students throughout the process. The meeting adjourned at 7:48 p.m. The next regular meeting is set for Monday May 19 at 7 p.m. |
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