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.
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