At the Thursday, February 18 meeting, school board members saw a demonstration of the school’s new telepresence system. Helping with the demonstration was student Kyle Nelson.
Student Kyle Nelson gave an overview of his new business Cowboy Kyle’s Recycling Service to open the February 18, 2016 board meetings of ISD 166 – Cook County Schools. Nelson also acts as a mail runner, greeter, bulletin hanger and helps with other jobs around the school. With the assistance of special education teacher Melissa Oberg, Nelson used the new large screen telepresence system to make his presentation.
The telepresence system, which had just become operational the previous day, has already been used by Principal Adam Nelson to attend a meeting in Two Harbors instead of traveling. The system can interact with other similar systems in the same network as well as use the Internet for other remote applications. In addition to the large screen there is also a desktop version installed in the office.
The camera is designed around voice recognition and will automatically follow a speaker as he moves around a room. This feature makes for a very positive step toward the future sharing of teachers and classes with other districts.
The system may also be used for an upcoming meeting with the board of the Lake Superior School District, which has met and would like to further consider sharing a superintendent with Cook County Schools.
Superintendent Search
Sandy Gundlach of the Minnesota School Board Association (MSBA) was on hand with an update on their part in the search for a new superintendent as well. Thirteen potential candidates have initiated applications and she expects that number to double by the March 7 application deadline. She would expect that a few of those will not actually apply for the position.
Once the application deadline closes, MSBA will conduct an initial screening and pre-interview of the applicants before forwarding the applications to Board Chair Jeanne Anderson for consideration by the full board. The board will narrow the pool to approximately four to six finalists at their March 17 meeting. Due to privacy rules all names and specific information remains confidential until the finalists get interviewed.
Gundlach conducted an interview training session with the board. Since all interviews are considered open public meetings, the board must walk the fine line of conducting a public interview while protecting the private personal information of the candidates. She also covered protected categories of information such as race, religion and other areas in order to avoid potential discrimination issues.
The board developed a list of questions that will be standard throughout the interviews which will take place March 19 to March 23. The first round of interviews will each be held to one hour while the second round will include tours of the school and community as well as meet and greet sessions. During the process references will be checked and two board members may conduct site visits to the top candidate’s home districts March 29 to March 31.
Budgeting
Superintendent Beth Schwarz and Business Manager Lori Backlund have continued to work on budgeting.
Schwarz presented the current year’s revised budget along with the preliminary budget for the next fiscal year of 2016-17. The last budget update from November showed an operating deficit for 2015-16 of $186,882 in the total general fund and a deficit of $175,078 overall. In the current revision of the 15-16 budget, those figures have improved to a deficit of $21,433 in the total general fund and surplus of $6,861 overall. The next revision will be completed by early May.
The general fund consists of unreserved funds which can be used for general operating expenses as well as reserved funds that have already been earmarked for specific expenditures. The unreserved portion is projected to carry a fund balance of $649,179 at the end of the current fiscal year, June 30, 2016. The reserved portion however is projected to have a negative balance of $203,100. Together they are anticipated to have a total balance of $446,079. Down $21,433 from a year earlier due to the operating deficit mentioned earlier. Overall funds are estimated to total $624,331 at that time.
The target put forth by policy is to have an unrestricted fund balance of $800,000 as of June 30, 2017. In order to reach that benchmark the adopted 16-17 budget will need to have revenues of $150,821 higher than expenditures from the unassigned general fund. The current projection accomplishes that with a decrease of $777,061 in expenses, while income decreases $599,423.
The preliminary ’16-’17 budget includes $400,000 for roofing projects. The high school roof which has been put off previously is in urgent need of repair and must be done at an estimated cost of $225,000. The balance is meant for the varsity gym roof but may be avoidable for five to 10 years if approximately $35,000 is spent on patching and re-doing the flashing.
Other key expenditures would include $25,000 and $100,000 for updates to the math and science curriculums. An option concerning the science renovation which has already been put off a year, would be to delay it one more year and ask voters to approve a general obligation bond to cover this cost along with costs for roofing projects. Left in the preliminary budget was $20,000 toward preschool, down from the $30,000 figure anticipated.
Reductions in the preliminary budget include: $19,000 in technology due to the phased retirement of a technology employee; $320,000 for four teaching and one paraprofessional positions; $90,000 in administration; $24,700 in custodial staff; $15,000 in school board cost mostly attributable to the board declining an annual stipend; $10,000 and $7,000 reductions respectively in athletics and operating costs of the Arrowhead Center for the Arts. How to attain those decreases will be determined by the individual staffs. Preliminary reductions also include $12,400 for a half time reduction in community education staff, and $98,000 in various other expenses.
Board Member Terry Collins observed that while the district anticipates losing 18 students, the reductions amount to the loss of four teaching positions. It would seem that teaching is being hit harder than some non-teaching areas. Schwarz will look further to see if alternate reductions could be made. Collins commented, “I don’t think you will find it by reductions. We will need to stop doing some things altogether.”
Anderson asked that the board sees the complete community education budget along with a breakdown of athletics and how many students are involved in each sport.
Although the preliminary budget would create a fund balance of unreserved funds of over $1,000,000 by the June 30, 2017 target date, it would also increase the deficit in the reserved portion of the fund to $428,000. The state allows for the reserved fund to operate in the red for up to three consecutive years due to the timing of revenues associated with it. However ISD 166 is already in its second year of carrying a shortfall in this fund. If that is to be rectified in the upcoming budget year, additional reductions would need to be implemented. Schwarz will research the potential repercussions if this is not corrected and report back to the board with her findings. The board postponed any action until then as well.
Concerns about Spanish cuts
Spanish Teacher Carrie Jansen spoke during the community comment portion of the meeting. Speaking against moving the Spanish program to a strictly online curriculum, she cited the benefit of personal interactions between teachers and students. She also questioned the cost savings of such a change as there would still be fees per student for online access.
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