School renovation projects, including remodeling the high school office area to house all administrative offices, are coming in on budget, ISD 166 Superintendent Beth Schwarz reported to the school board on July 25, 2013.
The renovations include new lockers for middle and high school students. The school will provide locks for all students who want them and will maintain a master key.
All the construction work will be done by the first part of August.
Schwarz reported other positive budget news, saying, “Our budget is right on track, maybe even on the positive side.” With most of the FY2012-13 bills in, expenditures were at 93 percent of the budget.
School calendar
The state is “not comfortable” with the school’s 2013-14 calendar, Schwarz reported. She said that one of the metro schools dropped its days into the 150s this last school year, upsetting the governor. After ISD 166 decided on its 2013-14 calendar in February, a new statute was made requiring that schools on a traditional calendar have at least 165 student days as well as the required number of minutes of student instruction. The Cook County Schools calendar had the required number of student instruction time but only 160 days.
Superintendent Schwarz submitted the district’s calendar as a “flexible learning calendar,” but it did not fit the formula for either a traditional calendar or a flexible learning calendar. The school will continue to alternate between four- and five-day weeks.
Changing the calendar at this point would be difficult. Schwarz said many factors are considered in setting the calendar, such as staff development and teacher contracts.
The board decided to discuss the issue at the next meeting on August 1 when all five board members could be there. Absent from this meeting were Ed Bolstad and Sissy Lunde.
Academic guidance and student support
With the resignation of School Counselor Bryan Hackbarth and the Human Development Center’s decision not to have a mental health worker onsite at the school, the board discussed its options for providing academic guidance and dealing with mental health needs.
Superintendent Schwarz asked the school board to approve hiring a licensed school guidance counselor and a ¾-time licensed school social worker to provide the needed services. In a memo outlining her proposal, she said, “ISD 166 has struggled to provide consistent ongoing support services in social/emotional and academic/ career guidance. Numerous meetings have been held over the past four years trying to develop a sustainable and effective model for these services. Given recent events, it is an appropriate time to evaluate our needs and implement a new and assertive approach to these services.”
Toward that end, Schwarz had advertised for both positions and interviewed four applicants for the school social worker position. She proposed calling the employee a “student success coordinator” who would “help ensure the success of every student by providing students and families social/ emotional support related to proactive skill development, crisis intervention, assistance with legal issues related to school, basic mental health services and triage, transition to therapeutic mental health services, etc.”
The candidate Schwarz recommended was Anna Sandstrom, a bachelor’s-level social worker currently living in the community.
Superintendent Schwarz said the former guidance counselor position did not leave enough time to adequately provide college guidance, help with college scholarships, or help students find jobs. In addition, the school-day schedule did not include enough after-school time to meet with working parents after hours. She proposed that this person, who would be called the “Academic and Career Guidance Center coordinator,” would also handle the credit recovery program and work from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on some days. She said she had conducted interviews and had one candidate in mind, Amanda Burggraf.
Superintendent Schwarz also proposed paying Cook County Higher Ed $2,000 a year to help students access post-secondary educational opportunities.
The total price for the guidance counselor, social worker, and Higher Ed assistance would be $101,500, approximately $4,106 more than the district paid for similar services last year. She estimated the cost of the new guidance counselor to be $58,410 (down from the previous $67,238) and the cost of the social worker to be $38,935. A full-time social work position would be offered at a cost of $51,913, but Great Expectations School would pay for ¼ of the cost in order to get a ¼-time social worker.
The board approved hiring both Sandstrom and Burggraf. HDC will continue to have therapists available to see students at the school.
Taconite funding
The state legislature has required 15 school districts that were allotted $38 million in a bonding bill for infrastructure improvements to come to consensus by August 15 on distribution of the funds – or risk losing the money altogether. One of the districts had taken issue with the amount it was slated to receive.
Superintendent Schwarz said that if the money were divided up per student, ISD 166 would receive about $900,000. When the money first became available, the amount suggested for this district was $1.3 million. Schwarz said that our state legislators had advised her to not give in and surrender potential funding to another district. She thought some legislators might want the funds divided up in a way that provides schools with urgent infrastructure needs the funding they need to make those repairs or improvements.
Jeanne Anderson said she would be “pretty disappointed” if $38 million were lost because superintendents could not come up with a consensus.
Personnel changes
The board approved the resignation of Spanish teacher Kristin Carlsgaard with appreciation for her service to the district. A teacher to replace Carlsgaard would need certain credentials in order for Spanish classes to continue to qualify as College in the Schools (CITS) classes in which students could earn college credit at some colleges for their high school Spanish classes.
If Cook County High School’s Spanish classes did not qualify for CITS, they could still help students pass Advanced Placement tests that would qualify as prerequisites for higher level college classes. Students with high enough advanced placement test scores can get college credit for their knowledge as well.
The board approved the resignation of math teacher Todd Toulouse with appreciation for his service to the district. Interviews for his replacement will be August 15.
The board approved hiring Karen Obinger to teach second grade and Lacey Smith to teach kindergarten.
Agreement with YMCA
A draft of a user agreement between the school district and the Cook County Community YMCA proposes that Cook County Community Education, a branch of the school district, continue to provide the open gym and fitness classes it is already providing, such as Zumba; “non-health focused classes” such as visual arts, life skills, driver’s ed, and youth academic classes; afterschool programs; the Incredible Exchange program; outdoor youth sports; and preschool. It proposes that the Y administer new group exercise classes, weight training, personal training, swim lessons, log rolling, open gym, camp, indoor youth sports, dance classes, nutrition and wellness classes, family programs, and “Active Older Adults” programs.
The fact that both entities list open gym as one of the activities they will manage reflects the fact that this part of the agreement is still being worked out.
The agreement states that “ISD 166 and the C.C. YMCA will work together in crisis or if a member of the public, media, or government official at any level questions or challenges the collaboration.”
Superintendent Schwarz recommended that the school board not vote on the agreement until late fall.
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