Garrick Moritz, Gazette
Continuing our coverage from last week, there were several other items of note that happened at the School Board meeting on Monday April 8th, so much so that the Gazette staff felt a secondary article was warranted. Some of these items were the board giving the Superintendent the authority to give away school land to Blue Dragon Academy and some costly items mentioned in the Superintendent’s report.
“You might recall, years ago, that we did a property transfer, land for land, with the Garretson Childcare Development Cooperation, the governing entity of Blue Dragon Academy,” said Board President Shannon Nordstrom. “Well, up at the daycare they need to do a little cleanup work in preparation for new construction, and that led to some discoveries about the property itself, so I’ll let Mr. Johnson explain it.”
“Yeah, so the good news is that they need to expand their services and structure at the BDA,” Supt. Johnson said. “As part of that process, they learned something that I was unaware of, that the district actually owns the property that includes the road that goes past the facility, and curves around east to the south to the swimming pool on the left and the ballfield on the right. That’s all actually school district property. Also, the ground where they have their storage shed and park cars is school district property as well.”
“What happened was this,” Supt. Johnson said. “They wanted to clear the ground and pour some concrete there for parking, and when they went to the city to get the permits they realized, oh wait this isn’t our ground. Obviously, they can’t get the permits or build on it if it doesn’t belong to them. So, I had a meeting with Heidi Fink and Kris Frerk, and I really just don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t simply transfer that land to their organization. That land doesn’t serve the district in any way, and they’ve been paying for the upkeep of the gravel road there for years now, since our last land swap deal. In fairness, it should have been part of the last deal, but it seems it was overlooked.”
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“I believe that it would make things simpler out there for them to work on their continued expansion if we just gifted the land in question to them,” he said. “SD Law does allow us as a public entity to transfer land to a nonprofit organization. Shannon mentioned we did a land swap with them a number of years ago, and the only cost to the district was the legal fees for the paperwork. So, when I met with Heidi and Kris, I suggested that maybe this time your organization can pay the legal fees, since we’ll simply be giving you the land in question, and they seemed amenable to that.”
“There will be a process for all of this, documents to sign and approve at the board level, but tonight I need your permission and board action to proceed with the process, set the ball in motion so we can get it done,” Johnson said. “Then they can do what they need to do with the property to make it as effective as they can.”
Though Nordstrom called for discussion on the issue, there was none, just a motion by board member Tana Clark to authorize Supt. Johnson to begin the process of the transfer of ownership of said property at no cost to the Garretson Childcare Corporation. The board all voted in favor to make it so.
At the tail end of the meeting, Mr. Johnson had several items to refer to the board’s attention in his Superintendent's Report.
“Back before Christmas, our Special Ed. Department was under review from the State,” Supt. Johnson said. “It was late January, when we got the list of things that they wanted us to change. All of the items on the list were relatively minor as far as kind of the paperwork, things that needed to be done a little bit differently. We did just today get confirmation that everything has been checked off the list and we are fully compliant. And so, congrats to our Special Ed. staff and Mrs. Coburn. It's always a little bit stressful when you go through one of those because everybody has their files reviewed and all of that, and there are always a few things that they find it seems. But we have checked everything off the list and gotten our official okay. So that is good news.”
“Now, I figured I'd give the official school safety grant update from Homeland Security,” Supt. Johnson said. “If you could recall, we had Brett Garland come in and do an assessment of our building and procedures. A couple of their recommendations were that we upgrade our video system and also recommend that again, in some of our glass entrances, putting a bulletproof film on them or bullet resistant film, I guess is a better term for it. We put in for the grants, and we felt like we were kind of a slam dunk on those because Mr. Garland recommended that we do both of those things. While we got notification that we have only a partial approval. So they did approve the films, but did not approve the new camera system.”
Johnson said that was somewhat disappointing. Though functional, the cameras the school is using have a known security compromise in the industry, and some have been difficult to keep working.
“We've got some components that are just flat out old,” he said. “I was not aware of this, but the last time Mr. Schrank needed to gather some video from our playground, the system crashed five different times. So, we're disappointed that we didn't get that piece of the grant. But I think that it's safe to say that this is an important enough item that we want to build it into our capital outlay plan for this next year.”
Supt. Johnson said that next month the board will be presented with our preliminary budget for next year.
“Jacob and I will be working on that and figuring out what else needs to be there,” Johnson said. “But that (a camera system) is something that we believe is pretty important. Of course, this time of year we're always looking at other upgrades to the building and our equipment and all of that kind of stuff as well.”
“One of the things that was pointed out last year by the fire marshal is that our theater curtain system is old enough that it is not as flame retardant as it was. It’s a special coating they use, but that wears off over time apparently and ours is old enough that we either need to have a company come in and re-apply the chemicals or else we needed to replace it. The advantage of replacement is that the technology has moved forward enough that the fabrics used to make new ones now have flame retardant built into them as part of the fabric itself and it won't expire like the old cotton-based ones did. It'll be roughly the same color as the ones currently on the main stage.”
“Also, we’re looking at new lunchroom tables for this next year, and they're surprisingly costly. The current ones in use we believe were purchased in the early 2000s, probably when the upgrade of the building happened in 2002. They’ve served their time well, but are showing wear.”
Supt. Johnson also wanted to remind the board that though they’d talked about the scoreboard, the guest side bleachers were still an issue, and a quote that had so far yet to be fulfilled. He was seeking quotes from various vendors and would have an update for the board by the next meeting. The board’s debate on this matter was that the bleachers perhaps should take precedence over a scoreboard upgrade, as they wanted guests to feel welcome and it would create a more complete facility.
The next regular meeting for the Garretson School Board will be held on Monday, May 13 at 6:00 p.m. in the school library. All members of the public are invited and encouraged to attend.
