NRHEG School Board
By REED WALLER
Staff Writer
Co-op Sports transportation
The NRHEG Board of Education, at its February meeting last week, moved to discontinue providing transportation of students to cooperatively held athletics activities as of the next school year.
This will include gymnastics.
This issue was brought up at the October meeting, when the board moved to add JWP to the cooperative of school sports, which now includes boys’ and girls’ hockey and soccer as well as gymnastics.
The district has been providing transportation for all co-op sports on paper, but it was waived for soccer and for hockey. But gymnastics students have been provided with transportation on a daily basis since the co-op agreement started in 2009.
Transportation for all co-op sports, including gymnastics, will be discontinued at the beginning of the 2020-21 school year.
“In the old days, like 40 years ago, people signed up to provide rides,” commented board member Neil Schlaak. He suggested that the district go back to the volunteer system.
Recognition Week
The members of the NRHEG School Board were honored on School Board Recognition Week, February 17-23. See the board elsewhere in this issue.
YSL
Frank Whitcomb was present to inform the Board about Youth Service Leadership (YSL). This program, introduced by Mrs. Dinneen some years ago, is for 11th and 12th graders, who meet third hour in the classroom one day a week, and the other days they go out into the community, and serve in non-profit institutions, such as the New Richland Care Center, the Media Center and the preschool.
There are currently nine students participating. They are presented with issues like senior care and daycare, and are challenged to make a positive contribution. Students were asked, what did you learn? And what challenges were you presented with?
Among the answers were “I surprised myself,” “Helping others is going to help me in the long run,” “It’s improving my patience,” and, “I often get back something I didn’t expect.”
Donations
Donations were accepted from: NRHEG Basketball $674.10 for Basketball Jerseys, and Dale and Sharon Carlson, books for the Elementary Media Center.
The total donations to date is now $30,957.54.
Workforce
Retirements were accepted with gratitude from:
• John Schultz, Secondary Health and PE teacher, after 30 years at NRHEG and 35 years in Education;
• Mark Rud, Drivers Training instructor since 1997, who will be retiring at the end of this summer, and
• Judy Tweeten, secondary paraprofessional, retiring after six years.
A contract was approved for Marcus Fischer, Junior High Baseball Coach.
Letters of Agreement were renewed for Stacy Hutchens and Michelle Thiele, preschool paraprofessionals, with raise to align with the Paraprofessional Master Agreement.
Board member Dan Schmidt was approved as junior high softball coach. Since he is a board member, board action was required to approve his appointment.
Teacher Jackie Shultz will not be returning following her three-year leave of absence. Schultz served 24 years prior to her leave.
Calendar
The calendar draft was approved. It allows for six teacher staff development days, four teacher planning days, two days for parent teacher conferences, three required in-service days for paras.
The first day for teachers is August 31, with the first day for students to be Tuesday, September 8. It is still not permitted for schools to begin before Labor Day.
Five Flexible Learning Days are included.
Budget Revision
A deficit increase from an estimated $74,913 in November to about $104,060 as of February was approved. There are also $31,000 in increased revenues and $10,000 more in Federal aid.
Audit
The board moved to seek proposals from other CPA firms for the audit of the district’s financial statement. The district has been with Eide Bailly for over 20 years, and Business Manager Karl Christopherson believes it’s time to look around. This action doesn’t imply that the district is unhappy with their current auditor, only that it’s responsible to seek comparative proposals.
The next regular meeting of the NRHEG board of education will be March 16, at the Elementary Media Center at 6:30 p.m.