Ryals to Chair Board
The Council School Board met on January 1st for their first regular meeting of the new year. Bob Grossen, Julie Pate and Steve Ryals were present with Earl Henderson attending via video call. Mr. Ryals did leave early as he wasn’t feeling well.
After the pledge of allegiance they immediately went into executive session. No actions were taken after this session.
The standard public comment period had no input from the public.
This meeting served as the annual organization meeting where they select the board chair and vice-chair and set their meeting dates and times for the year. After a call for nominations for board chairman, Julie Pate nominated Steve Ryals. This was seconded by Earl Henderson. Bob Grossen had been the board chair for at least the last several years. He was nominated as the board’s vice-chair. Meeting dates and times will remain the same as last year - third Tuesday of the month, 6:00 p.m. in the high school library.
Where district staff post agendas for public review has changed a little this year. The agendas will be posted on the school’s website (csd13.org), the school’s Facebook pages, at the school and at the Post Office. They chose to no longer post the agendas at the courthouse.
Mr. Griffin then gave his administrative report as the superintendent. He reported that state funds from HB521 will increase by about $66,000 for a total of about $1.1M. These funds will be used to update and modernize the school buildings. They cannot be used towards new construction.
The federal programs on-site review will be on January 31st.
Griffin also reported that the city donated $1,000 from Mayor Gardner’s walking challenge award. These funds can be used toward athletic equipment. The district also received a $2,000 grant from the state Department of Education to help with specialized training for special ed staff.
Mr. Joyce reported that several students had withdrawn after the Christmas break. (I emailed him for more info and he reported that enrollment at the High School is at 65 full time and 3 part time. He also said that 6 full time students and 1 part time student had withdrawn since the Christmas break)
Joyce stated that he thinks the new cell phone ban policy is going well. He was happy to share that he is seeing students have real conversations in the hallway instead of playing on phones.
Joyce mentioned a couple of programs that the school has access to. The first being SchoolPulse (schoolpulse.org) which is an online counseling service that does need parent opt-in. There is no cost to the district as the state has provided it. Joyce stated that letters will be going out soon to parents.
The next program is Qustudio which is an app that parents can use to monitor and control what their children access on school chromebooks at home.
Joyce reported that 52% of high school students have a 3.0 GPA or above.
Chloe Lucas reported on the second parent night that was held recently. Lucas is a teacher in the district but is not teaching this year as she is on an extended leave of absence.
She has organized two meetings so far where parents and community members can gather to discuss what they would like to see improve at the school. The primary concerns of this group were the condition of the school buildings, communication between staff and parents, school culture, classroom aides, superintendent evaluations and the relationship the school district has with the community overall. Lucas stated that ‘It hurts my heart but their is definitely a mistrust between the community and the staff. The perception out there is not very good.’ Later in her presentation she stated that their seems to be some antagonism from the board about these meetings and that she didn’t appreciate it.
Rorrie Blanton would like to get a talent show started again and asked the board for permission to use the stage in the gym for this. This talent show would be a fundraiser for the music and arts program. She would like to see all kids in the community participate, enrolled or not, and compete against the teachers in a fun way and to have a good time. The date for the first show is not yet set.
The board then tabled the 2nd readings of policies 3523 and 5110 until a future meeting and the meeting was adjourned.
