School board discusses construction, budget, graduation and ballpark sale

By Garrick Moritz, Gazette

The Garretson School Board met in regular session on June 8 via teleconference. The board started their meeting without board member Tony Martens, who joined about 10 minutes into the meeting.

The board approved two items of note on the consent agenda, namely to renew their contract with auditors Quam, Berglin & Post P.C. and to approve the hiring of a new fourth grade teacher, Lauren McCafferty.

Supt. Guy Johnson wanted to make a note about Business Manager Jacob Schweitzer’s

reports, which contained some big-ticket items in the school’s expenses this month. With the second half of their payment to the Dell Rapids district for the services of their Spanish teacher via virtual classroom, new chiller expenses, and bond payments, it was an expensive month for the school. However, he also noted that this is the last of the school’s bond payments, and that debt against the capital outlay fund will now be gone.

The next large item of discussion was the 2020-2021 budget. Supt. Johnson and Board President Shannon Nordstrom both expressed hope that there would be no revision to the laws and funds allocation passed by the state legislature. There has been talk statewide of reducing school funding due to potential budget shortfalls because of the COVID-19 pandemic. There has been speculation of a special session, potentially to be held in September, where the legislature would revisit their budgeted school fund allocations.

Supt. Johnson has said to this newspaper that this would be catastrophic, not just for our district, but for schools statewide, since most salaries of teachers and staff have already been negotiated and set. President Nordstrom said that they would move forward with the school’s budget planning according to the law that was passed, trusting the legislature would do the right thing for South Dakota schools and not change the budgetary allocation as is.

Next, Supt. Johnson detailed a change order concerning the lighting improvement project. Unforeseen modifications needed to be made to make the system uniform and the lighting options the same for each classroom.  This change would update the lighting project to include additional switches for each room, at a cost of $1,100 for each instance. The total amount of the change order was $14,265. Board members who had been in the building and had seen the modifications were impressed and pleased with the new lighting system, and the board voted to approve the change order.

Next, the board voted to approve a new contract with Lunchtime Solutions to provide food service for the district. Though they were underbid for last year’s contract, the company that underbid them is now dissolving, so the board was generally happy to give the contract back to a company that is familiar with the district and to set up this new process in the first place.

Speaking of food service, the next item the board discussed was to vote on continuing the summer feeding program through August 14. The COVID-19 crisis has strained society and been a hardship on everyone. The school’s initiative of providing free lunches, at first just to district students and then getting approval to provide free meals to anyone under 18 years old within the district’s borders every Monday through Friday, has been a boon to the community. Supt. Johnson said that they are serving at least 170 meals per day and are having meals delivered to rural stops all around the district. He’s confident that as Lunchtime Solutions takes over the food service program, they will be able to manage the remainder of the program. Kitchen staff are currently being directly paid as temporary workers by the district to keep the program going between now and then. He said this program has been so successful that the board might wish to consider a version of it during next summer as well. The board voted to keep the program going until August 14.

The board then voted on applying for a waiver to SDCL-13-26-1, which is the required hours and days of education that a school is mandated to meet for teaching students. No school in the state will meet this quota because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which canceled schools per the Governor’s order in March. Supt. Johnson said that they’ve been instructed by the Department of Education to apply for this waiver, which he fully expects to be rubber stamped and approved. If it was not approved by the State, then Garretson and every other district in the state could be penalized for doing as they were ordered to do by the State government for not having enough teaching days. Supt. Johnson said he does not expect that to happen. The board approved having Supt. Johnson and President Nordstrom sign the waiver.

Next the board heard from Assistant Director Kevin Steckler about the South Dakota High School Activities Association (SDHSAA), and their three-phase plans to re-start high school sporting activities. This plan is highly detailed and extremely strict. Steckler said that he and the coaches plan to implement it with extreme care.

Phase 1 limits activities to 10 people at a time. This includes screening student athletes, social distancing and sterilization of all equipment and facilities used. Phase 2 will expand to allowing 10 people indoors and 50 people outdoors, and Phase 3 will allow 50 people at a time to practice together indoors or outdoors. Steckler says he hopes that by the start of football season they will arrive at phase 3, but that Phase 2 could be manageable if necessary.

“We want to get this right,” Steckler said. “We are going to protect our students and ourselves from the potential spread of the coronavirus and follow all these guidelines with strict adherence, caution and with the safety of our students in mind. That said, our coaches and students are ready and extremely happy to start holding practices together again. It means a lot to them to start spending time together, and nobody wants to jeopardize that, so everybody is going into this with a serious mindset and desire to do it correctly and safely.”

The board approved the implementation of Phase 1 of the SDHSAA plan.

While on the subject of athletics, the board also approved the board an exception to Policy KG, which allows Orthopedic Institute to provide athletic development service for $50 per student. Student groups, as per the SDHAA plan that was just adopted, would be limited to groups of 10 at a time.

The board then spent some time reviewing board policy items. Polices to go under review continue to be the student and employee communicable disease policies.

Supt. Johnson said that the school nurses would be assisting on these revisions and that bluntly, the days of giving a child a dose of Tylenol and sending him or her to school might just be a thing of the past in a post-COVID-19 world. The same goes for school employees. The policy will probably be, if one is sick, they stay off school property, period.

First readings of policies named Public Gifts to Schools, Public Solicitation and Advertising in Schools, and Distributions of Promotional Materials in schools were discussed.

Second readings and approval of policies on staff health and safety, and staff members’ participation in political activities (i.e. running for political offices) were discussed and approved after grammatical and word choice edits by board members Ruth Sarar, Rachel Hanisch and Nordstrom.

Moving right along to the Administrator Reports, Supt. Johnson gave the board an update on what changes to federal funding dollars would look like for the coming year.

He also gave the board a report on the newly started HVAC & roof projects. The new chiller has arrived and has been craned up to the roof. Installation has begun for both the HVAC system and new controls across the building, with new infrastructure to support it.

The roof project is slated to start soon, with the company already unloading supplies in the school’s parking lot. With all the high winds lately, everyone around the virtual table hoped that there would be no repeat of the awful storm that hit in 2015. Supt. Johnson said he’d keep the board updated as construction progressed on all projects.

Supt. Johnson then relayed conversations he’d had with the local baseball association about the potential sale of the school property to the City. The local baseball programs have not been allowed to start on the field because the school that owns the property, and due to the coronavirus pandemic and required closures, they cannot host games. This has led to an inquiry as to whether or not the school would be willing to sell the property in question. Supt. Johnson didn’t want to begin any negotiations for the sale of the property without the consent of the board. The board gave that consent and empowered him to negotiate a potential sale on behalf of the district.

Lastly, High School/Middle School Principal Chris Long gave the board an update on what the district would do for the graduation ceremony. He detailed this in a letter to parents and the public, which we will reprint here:

The board reviewed this information with Mr. Long and hoped for a good day with good weather on the 20th.

The board spent just over an hour in executive session for staff negotiations.

Board President Nordstrom informed everyone during the meeting that the plan right now for next month’s July meeting would be an actual in-person meeting. Likely, he said, there would have to be a special meeting or two to conduct more contract negotiations before then.