The Garretson School Board met in regular session, and for the first time in-person since the pandemic began. The board and administrators all sat separated, to maintain social distance. About half the school board members (notably the ladies) wore masks. All members of the public who’d gathered to observe the meeting also wore masks.
Board President Shannon Nordstrom called the meeting to order, commenting that he was happy to actually see everybody in person for a change.
The library was quite cool, and Superintendent Guy Johnson said that’s because the new chiller was installed and working well. Johnson joked, saying he’d been reaching for warmer clothes when coming to work every day, and in summer that’s a rare thing.
They then approved the minutes, agenda and their monthly financials. There was no old business or final business for the 2019-2020 school board, so they adjourned and then reconvened as the 2020-2021 school board. Supt. Guy Johnson chaired the meeting until board officers could be elected. Starting off this section of the meeting, Kari Flanagan renewed her Oath of Office. Business Manager Jacob Schweitzer administered the oath.
Supt. Johnson then opened the floor for nominations for board president. Rachel Hanisch nominated Shannon Nordstrom for the position once again, Ruth Sarar seconded the motion. Tony Martins moved that nominations cease and the board voted unanimously to re-elect Nordstrom as board president. Nordstrom now chaired the meeting. He called for an election of a vice-president and Flanigan was nominated and voted to the post without opposition.
The budget hearing was set for 6 p.m. but the board had already come to that item on the list next. Since it had been advertised to start at 6, they tabled it to resume later and went onto other items. Likewise, they moved discussion on their new paperless formats to later in the meeting as well. Instead they approved many of their annual resolutions, board positions and official school designations. This includes authorizing a purchasing agent, an official bank depository, school board account manager, representative for federal programs, truancy officer, overseeing of the meal program, the joining of the Associated School Board, set regular meeting dates and time, designate an official newspaper, etc. There were no changes to any of these listed items and the board approved them in one lump.
The board did make some modifications to the following. First, they revised substitute teacher pay, increasing the baseline to $110 per day, with bonuses for working an entire week.
They revisited cost for activity ticket and decided to make no changes at this time except for one of policy vs. practice. Normally the school allows all local senior citizens free admission to sporting events, but to streamline policy with practice, Supt. Johnson recommended that it simply be the policy that anyone over the age of 65 simply gets into events at no charge, rather than muddle about with the senior citizen ticket activity pass. The board approved this change.
By this time, it was 6:04 p.m. so Nordstrom thought it was appropriate to start the Budget Hearing.
The annual budget for a school district must be adopted by Oct. 1 and sent to the state’s Department of Education. Supt. Johnson said that this initial budget is going forward with a lot of assumptions, the first that hopefully the Governor and the Legislature don’t have a special session that involves reducing school funding. The law on the books gives school districts across the state an annual cost of living increase, and this year that increase was 2%. Supt. Johnson said that he hopes the Governor and legislature continue to follow their own laws, but acknowledges that this has not always been the case in recent history. With the economic chaos resulting from the global coronavirus pandemic, it could easily happen that the state government could decide to make last minute budget cuts in a special session. He noted that they were asking for the maximum levy from the county government. This budget contained an estimate for the Capital Outlay fund as the county auditor had not given the school the final numbers.
In this budget, Johnson noted that replacing the artificial turf at the sports complex was a priority as the school had managed to get at least 10 years out of the current turf, much more than the general life expectancy of 5 years.
He noted that the aforementioned chiller and roof project payments were spread out between last year and this year’s budget, as planned.
He also noted some expenses, money from capital outlay that has been used to purchase infrared thermometers for use in every classroom in the elementary and additional lunchroom tables so that students can be more spread out at lunch.
No one on the board or in attendance had any questions about this initial budget so they moved on and scheduled the budget to be approved by the September meeting.
Next began an exercise in technology. The board had voted to make the move to paperless operation. School Tech Coordinator Matt Schrank presented each board member and administrator with new iPads, each with wireless keyboard and an Apple pencil/stylus to use. He then proceeded to show the board how to use their new equipment, and how to access the datafiles via the school’s network and the internet. The school’s financial and informational packets usually take up reams of paper to print out at once, and copies for each board member make for a lot paper. With this in mind, the board will now be able to view those documents digitally and make notations. Schrank gave the board an educational tutorial on how to do all of that, there and then. Obviously, they will need practice and training, but their plan is to start going all-digital by the next meeting.
Under state law the board is required to have a copy of their packets available for the public to examine. How they intend to solve that is to make all these documents available for view and download on their website, and using a digital projector, show the audience in real time what documents the board is discussing for all to see. Where the rubber meets the road on this issue will be how effective the deployment of this technology will be.
Resuming their regular business, the board approved their negotiated professional agreement with the Garretson Teacher’s Association.
The board approved a budgetary transfer to the preschool fund as there were no tuition dollars collected in the last quarter of the school year because of the pandemic.
There was a runoff election in the South Dakota High School Activities Association, and the board cast their ballot for Heath Larson of Chester, SD.
Though it has been tabled for a few months now, the Board had a revised and first reading of the new communicable disease policy. As per advice from the school nursing staff, the school would be a fever free zone. You must be fever free to attend school, without the aid of fever suppressants such as Tylenol or ibuprofen. Temperatures can and will be checked throughout the day and students with a temperature of 100.4 or above will be sent home.
Second readings and approval of the revised gifts to the school and solicitation and promotional materials policies were all approved. The only real change to these policies was stronger language determining that gifts given to the district (monetary or otherwise) were to be used at the district’s express discretion. Supt. Johnson said this was to protect the district from unintended consequences.
Supt. Johnson then gave his administrative report to the board. He first talked about the ongoing HVAC, lights and roof projects. He said that the light project is complete and the new lights are excellent. He reported that the roof project is ongoing and that the new chiller and HVAC are hooked up, and that control setup and finishing details are being worked on.
The Associated School Boards of South Dakota and the Superintendents Association of South Dakota’s joint conference this year will be all digital, using technology. In a way, he said that will make it easier for anyone from the board or administrative staff to attend, and if they can’t join the live event they can watch the recording at their leisure.
Supt. Johnson said that many residents and school patrons have had questions about the upcoming Garretson school year, and when and whether or not it will be open for business as usual this fall.
“A lot of people are wondering one what’s going to happen this year, and whether or not the school will open on time,” said Supt. Guy Johnson at the meeting Monday night. “People want guidance and want to know what our plan is, because there is a lot of uncertainty right now. We don’t have a concrete plan as of right now, but we’re are working on one.”
“It’s really unfortunate that this issue has become so political. One side is driving the school to open for business as usual. The other side seems determined that we not open at all. As educators, we’re caught in the middle. We know that students need teachers and teachers need students, and there are things we can do to open our school up with the health and safety of our students and staff as our highest priority.”
“Flexibility is going to be the key word this year,” he said. “Our staff showed how flexible they can be at the start of all these troubles and flexibility this coming year will be more important than ever. We’re all going to have to be flexible. Our initial plan as of right now is to open, face to face with our students with as many precautions as we can reasonably take. This week we’re going to meet with staff members representing each grade level and decide how we’re going to handle this thing. We’ll take this step by step, with caution. What works for one classroom, may not work for another classroom. And what works for Garretson, won’t necessarily work in Sioux Falls or vice versa. However, we and every other district in the state will be working and sharing information of what does work with each other.”
“A lot of the decisions that will have to be made will be done right here by this board,” said Shannon Nordstrom. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as I’m confident we can make the right judgments to keep our students and staff safe.”
During the course of the meeting, several items of interest came up related to this topic. As an example, infrared thermometers have been purchased for each elementary classroom to be used periodically throughout the day.
“We’re confident we can open safely and we’re going to go to teachers grade by grade with the initial plan from the administration offices which they will and should poke holes into. With that we can form better plans and go forward, because I can guarantee they’ ll think of things we hadn’t thought of. We’ll do all of this with a mind to responsibility and safety, and do everything in our power to get our kids in the building and get education happening again.”
Supt. Johnson reported that the ESSER federal funds have come through to support the summer-long lunch program that the school has been providing. However, he also noted that the GEER grants from the State of South Dakota have as yet failed to launch.
“The GEER (Governor’s Emergency Education Relief fund), was to be a competitive grant application system that schools could apply to offset additional costs because of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Supt. Johnson said. “However, this program has so far failed to launch. The application process hasn’t even started and we can’t even get an application document as of yet. As an example, those thermometers that were mentioned are an additional expense that could be covered by the grant, but we can’t get reimbursed if we can’t apply. Also, earlier we talked about lunchroom tables. Right now, we seat eight kids to a table, and under the current circumstances that’s probably not a good idea. So, we need more lunchroom tables. Well, if I ordered those today they aren’t just going to materialize by the start of the school year. Things take time to arrange, so we need this sooner rather than later.”
Though masks were not discussed, half of the present board members were wearing them at the meeting, as well as all of the three members of the public who were there for the meeting. Board members were distanced at least six feet apart along with the audience. The recent City Council meeting had zero masks worn at their recent in-person meeting, nor were councilors distanced more than four feet apart.
Nordstrom mentioned that he’ d received a news update on his phone that people were protesting the Sioux Falls school board meeting. Tony Martens asked what they were protesting about. Nordstrom replied that he wasn’t sure, but that he guessed it was that the school be opened for students. In fact, the Argus Leader and KELO reported that the protests at the Instructional Learning Center were by the teachers, because they were requesting that the proposed Sioux Falls school districts’ “Return to Learning” plans change from masks being “highly recommended” to “required.” Masks have remained highly contentious, as early guidelines recommended against mask-wearing, partly to protect medical workers from personal protective equipment shortages. However, as more evidence became available that Sars-CoV-2 was likely spread by airborne particles from those who are asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic, the CDC revised its guidelines to encourage covering the nose, mouth, and even eyes to help prevent the spread of the virus.
Johnson and board member Ruth Sarar gave the board an update on the Prairie Lakes Cooperative, but the only news from that, was that the board members had approved granting 10 days of sick leave to all councilor staff at the beginning of their employment year, rather than having to accrue time off, as had been practice.
Supt. Johnson also announced that the Prairie Rose Community Fund had provided funds the Garretson Parents association, which were used to purchase new bike racks, new benches, trash cans and picnic tables for the playground area. Supt. Johnson said that these new items have already been placed and that the old bike racks had been donated to the Garretson Pool for use there. He said that these items are already seeing a lot of use by local families.
Board member Tony Martens then motioned for adjournment, and the board voted to do so.
