by Garrick Moritz, Gazette
The Garretson School board met in regular session on Dec. 12. The key points of the meeting were an opt out discussion, special educational resources and the new bus grants.
At the start of the meeting, after approval of the agenda and consent agenda items, Board President Shannon Nordstrom commented that quotes for diesel fuel had gone down significantly, which was good news. Board member Tana Clark asked if Vollan Oil ever submitted quotes to the district and Superintendent Guy Johnson said that they usually do, but that quotes from them had been intermittent of late.
The first item of business the board tackled was the Covid Mitigation plan. As required by law, they must revisit this plan twice annually. President Nordstrom said that, though not over, he feels that the district and the world is in a much better place now. Supt. Johnson said that the school is in the green zone and recommended only minor changes to the plan to mirror CDC recommendations. The board, which had last visited this plan in May of 2022, passed the re-approval.
Because of the pandemic, the district has not been following the five-year strategic plan that the state requires they set. Garretson, and all other districts in the state, were allowed to throw out those plans to deal with the pandemic situation. Now, the state would like the schools to get back to normal operations. As part of their accreditation process, they need to have one in place.
“If you look at this plan, it looks a lot similar to the plan we had in place for the 2018-2019/2019-2020 school years,” said Supt. Johnson. “That’s because it pretty much is that plan. We didn’t revise it a whole lot. Things just got shifted around. We’ll adopt this plan for now to meet our requirements and this spring/summer we’ll get with our teachers and staffs and get input to create a new strategic plan going forward.”
Shannon Nordstrom, who is the appointed board member to represent the District at the Associated School Boards of South Dakota, also agreed to be the Legislative Action Network representative. Essentially if during the legislative session, something comes up that the ASBSD takes a keen interest in, he’ll be the point of contact for the district.
After policy reviews, the board moved on to administrative reports. Supt. Johnson said that they had intended to get bids for the Athletic Complex project out by the end of December, but due to a publishing break for the Gazette on Dec. 29th for the holidays, they will instead publish them the first week of January.
Board continues opt-out discussion
As far as the Opt-Out vote, Supt. Johnson gave three examples on how that could proceed. If an Opt-Out was voted on in the January meeting, they could set an election date for March 14th, March 26th or the latest date of April 11th. Supt. Johnson said that earlier is better, because if the district would have to face the possibility of staff reduction and non-renewal of employment contracts, the latest possible to do that would be by the April deadlines. Supt. Johnson said that he and the business manager would be recommending a $500,000 opt out, just like the first one in 2016. This would give the school the budgetary breathing room it needed, and like before, if the full amount wasn’t needed it could be reduced on an annual basis.
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