by Garrick Moritz, Editor
Just before press time, we learned that the Garretson School Board scheduled a special meeting on Wednesday Feb. 23rd to discuss a personnel matter. This was reportedly the meeting that they will tackle the issue of the employment of Chris Long that we’ve been covering for the last month. Though coverage of the meeting was too late for this week’s publication, we will post information on our website and social media accounts and cover the meeting in our next issue.
We left off our coverage of last week’s Garretson’s school board meeting as they were moving to their consent agenda items.
Board President Nordstrom noted the resignation of two long-time teachers. Kari Stoltenberg and Julie Mueller are both retiring from their positions at the end of this school year. Stoltenberg has taught for 40 years at the school, and Mueller for 25 years. Nordstrom and the board wanted to officially thank them for their years of service to the district.
Superintendent Guy Johnson also listed the resignation of Tina Reiter and Anna Nelson effective that coming Friday and told the board that both employees had been informed about the potential for liquidated damages clause of their contracts.
With that, the consent agenda was approved.
With no old business and no conflicts of interest to note, Board President Nordstrom stated that this week was School Board Recognition week and had a certificate of thanks for each board member present, recognizing them for their service.
Addressing the gathered crowd of constituents gathered for the meeting, he also reminded them that anyone who wants to become a school board member can take out a petition to file for election to the office from the school’s business administrator Jacob Schweitzer.
The deadline for said petitions is Monday, Feb. 28, so there is little time remaining to get the paperwork filed. All school board seats except for the seat held by Kari Flanagan are up for election this year.
The next item for discussion was the School’s COVID-19 Mitigation Plan. The board had chosen not to update their COVID-19 plan at the prior meeting, and to continue their practice of requiring a 10-day quarantine period for staff and students with a confirmed case of COVID. The CDC had confidently reduced the recommended standard quarantine period to 5 days instead of 10 at the end of December.
Supt. Johnson said that the 5-day recommendation was the right call, as the number of cases among students and staff had reduced significantly since then. Currently, Supt. Johnson said, there were only three cases of COVID in the active student population and there were no infections among the staff. He said that Monday was the first day in some time that there were no substitute teachers at work in the building, and that was something he’s not been able to say for some time now.
Supt. Johnson recommended the board approve a revision to the COVID mitigation plan to reflect the new CDC guidelines. They voted to do so.
Next item of discussion was a new potential team sport for the Garretson School District, sanctioned girls’ softball. The South Dakota High School Activities Association approved softball as a sanctioned sport, and now schools across the state are deciding if they want to participate. It will be a spring sport, sharing a season time with Track and Field.
Supt. Johnson asked Assistant Athletic Director Kevin Steckler for his assessment of the situation.
“We’ve already got more sports programs than many other districts within our conference,” Steckler said. “I don’t know if the school will be able to handle one more and with softball being an intensive team sport, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect a student to be able to participate in both track and softball at the same time.”
Steckler said that an initial student survey was favorable to having a softball team (with 26 students expressing an initial interest), but that as of right now, he had no idea what other districts in the area were going to do about creating a team and a program for the sport. Initially he said he was not in favor of it at this time, but he did say that if a true interest grew in the community, the SDHSAA is welcoming schools with open and late enrollment. His advice to the board was to adopt a wait-and-see approach, not to step through the door, but to leave it open if the school chooses to go through it.
The school board then approved an exemption for use of the facilities by JO Volleyball to host their annual volleyball camp at the school.
Next, the board considered a measure increasing substitute teacher pay to $130 per day and $135 per day after 10 consecutive days. This increase is after Sioux Falls and other districts in the area have likewise raised their prices to $150 per day. In this way, we can stay competitive and encourage local area substitutes to stick closer to home. As a recent South Dakota Newswatch story reported, there is a great shortage of substitute teachers all across the state and Garretson has felt this pinch just as keenly as other districts.
“With fast food places in Sioux Falls increasing wages to $15 per-hour with benefits I don’t see that we have any choice but to increase our base pay,” said Board Member Ryan Longhenry.
The board voted to do exactly that.
The board then read over policy items, informational items, first readings and final passage of two policy revisions on expense reimbursement and alternative instruction participation.
The meeting then moved to the Supt.’s legislative update. This one was a doozy as there were a lot of education bills proposed, and nearly all of them were detrimental to the daily operation of the school in one form or another in Mr. Johnson’s opinion.
First was the “Critical Race Theory” bill that has received so much traction from some cable TV news networks. Supt. Johnson said that the bill proposed was badly put together, but the worst aspects of it have been amended away and the form it will take if it does pass will be that of a toothless resolution rather than a law with any unfunded mandates that interfere with the district’s curriculum selection.
Supt. Johnson then spoke about HB 1310.
“As an administrator and educator, I have to wonder sometimes if certain legislators delight in coming up with new bills and laws that are deliberately trying to get our teachers to leave our school districts,” Johnson said. “That can only be the result of HB 1310. It’s really ridiculous. It would require teachers to post their entire lesson plans a year in advance online so it would be open for parental review. I don’t know in what world that they think this is feasible, but that is not how we do business at our school. Nobody does their lesson plans that far in advance. They are always making changes and improvements to their curriculum, sometimes on a daily basis. If something comes up in class, and the students want to learn about it, and the teacher is capable of teaching it, then we do that. We can’t set a structure like they’re proposing in this bill. It would never, ever work. The ASBSD will oppose this bill, as should anyone else with any sense.”
Board President Nordstrom asked if this bill was proposed by anyone local to address any issues the state actually had, or if it was from an out of state legislative bill mill creation. Supt. Johnson responded by saying that it was most certainly a fabrication of an out of state interest. Nordstrom said that it’s one thing if a bill was created by a local legislator trying to address a need they see within the state, but that it’s quite another thing if it’s just someone’s legislative experiment they want to try out, and that the state could certainly do without that kind of bill.
HB 1246 Supt. Johnson said is also a bill that is a solution in search of a problem. It expresses the fundamental rights of parents to decide the educational future of their students, which is something that already exists in their right to take their children out of school if they desire to do so.
Supt. Jonson prefaced his last legislative item with some history. Back in 2016 under the Daugaard administration, they pushed forward a JV reform package aimed at helping students get the services they might need rather than going after juveniles for criminal charges. The side effect of this is that now, law enforcement only focuses on serious crimes. Truancy, for example, is much less enforced. SB 198 is set to do a reset on those laws. However, it shakes out, and Johnson said that he hopes for better methods going forward in the future.
Supt. Johnson then gave a report on the latest parent teacher conferences and teacher in-service day to the board. Board member Rachel Hanisch also gave a very brief update on the Prairie Lakes cooperative, stating that open positions in the coop have been successfully filled.
With that the board went into executive session at 6:35 to discuss a personnel matter. They emerged from executive session at 7:29 p.m. and adjourned.
