“Unlimited Openings” ?

Corbett School District Regular School Board Meeting

Wednesday May 21, 2014 7:00 PM

Notes taken by Karina Lande, who was in attendance and recorded the meeting.

* NOTE: This web site is provided as a courtesy for those interested in following along with the happenings in our district, especially those that live in Corbett.  This site and these board notes are not meant to replace official CSD board meeting minutes, which are usually online 3-4 months from each meeting. Thank you to Karina Lande for sharing the below update from the above meeting. Audio is also available and will be added at a future time.

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Superintendent’s contract terms and salary

The superintendents contract terms & salary negotiation/approval  was removed from the agenda for the third month in a row. Todd Mickelson states this is his fault as he was assigned by Charlie to negotiate the contract and he has just been too busy with work & baseball to do so.

Victoria Purvine asked Charlie to speak to this; and stated her understanding is that they should, as a board whole, decide what their sending the negotiator in to discuss prior to negotiations.

Charlie responds, No we don’t do it that way, we send one member then they bring it back to the board and we can accept or reject it.

Victoria – but isn’t it normal that a board, before they send a negotiator out, to set what the perimeters are for the negotiations?

Charlie – My understanding is you can’t go into executive session to do that.

Victoria – I think we should discuss that before we negotiate, not after.

Charlie – well we’d have to have the discussions in open meeting then for what your talking about.

Victoria – Right

Charlie – I don’t think that’d be fair for the boards point of view it’s like showing your cards before you play.

Victoria – except for I don’t know what Todd is going to negotiate, we’re sending him in on behalf of the board without the board having any say in what’s going on with negotiations, and if we’re discussing it after, it’s a little too late, and it seems backwards to me.

Todd – My intent is to talk with Randy Trani and bring his ideas back and my thoughts on those, back to the board at which point either you agree or we suggest changes. Nothing is final until approved by the board.

Charlie – moving on…..

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Meeting minutes 5 months behind now… ten plus meetings behind…

Meeting minutes from Jan 15 2014 were approved.

Victoria – I’m voting no because policy says we’re supposed to be getting the minutes the following meeting and we are 5 months behind at this point.

The other thing the policy says is we are supposed to be getting & approving all executive session minutes, which I have never seen after 3 years of being on the board. It appears that we have 0 executive session minutes. I’ve never seen them, we’ve never approved them but that is our policy, we’re supposed to approve them the same as regular board meeting minutes.

I’d also like to see on the next meeting agenda that we discuss starting transcription service. They can transcribe and have minutes up within 48hrs and it will take the burden off of Robin and everyone can know where we are.

Charlie – ok, next…..

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Public Comments

Tom Layton speaking on behalf of 30 parents regarding coach Lovitt. My understanding of the situation is that this coach is wanting a full time teaching position (PE) along with coaching track & football. The district does not have a teaching position and the coach plans to go elsewhere to seek a teaching job with coaching. Tom spoke to the benefits of sports & physical education and feels the district should add PE at the HS school level and keep the coach in Corbett. Many students also spoke on behalf of coach Lovitt regarding the positive impact he has had in their lives.

(Will be interesting to see how this pans out as it appears a much loved coach & supporters are lobbying for a position to be created that doesn’t currently exist.)

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Finances

May adjustment came in at $210,000 and will be shown at next meeting in the budget. Funds summaries updated. Will present supplemental budget in June. TSCC budget hearing next month.

Randy Trani Superintendents Report

Bond
43% Yes
57% No
That will be a topic for discussion starting next month.

Discussed field trips and listed off many and also stated we afford them because the adults donate their time. As an example; the big GS trip cost $250 gas for each bus but is reimbursed by the state at 70% for transportation. The costs for these trips are nothing for a district with a $13 million budget.

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Motion to spend 100,000 on a lease to own LED light system

Next up was a motion to approve a contract to go into a lease to own option for LED lighting in the gyms.

Randy – Creative Lighting is the company. 2% interest charge. Advantage to lease is not much $ put up front. The guy comes to board meetings sometimes but I’m not going to mention any names. (A friend getting another job?)

Victoria- I went over this and it appears we don’t start actually saving money until month 61. When I was going over it, it looks like we’re paying $100,000 with savings of $64,000. But $23,000 of that is just a projected rebate so it looks like we only actually save $37,000.

This was discussed further regarding energy rebates and laws etc..

Victoria – what I was wondering is what would it cost if someone came in with proposals and we just bought them outright. A projected rebate is not a guarantee, we don’t know, so if we were to get bids and buy best offer outright verses a lease deal….

Randy
Worse case scenario we’re saving $37,000

Victoria
Yes but we’re still paying $100,000 so I guess what’s the comparison to buying savings verses the leasing savings?

Charlie
I think the lease to own option is a good deal, it’s fairly new technology and it’d be nice to have that guarantee cause if you go out & buy them & something goes wrong then your on your own.

Victoria – well you’d still get a warranty

Charlie – well with only 2% interest I think the lease option is the best. I’d rather do that then spend all the money upfront. I think there’s an inherent guarantee with a lease.

Todd- With interest we’re paying $100,000 so if we buy we’re spending $90,000 up front. I like the lease so we can obtain our cash for whatever may come up.

Charlie asks if Victoria is satisfied and she states she still suggests we get a couple more bids to look at.

Randy – I’ll try to put this into a different perspective, what we’re arguing about is $30,000 over a five year period and in that time this organization has $65 million dollars so what we’re talking about is a teeny tiny little bit.

Bob – so this isn’t even the correct document right?

Randy – no this is a sample, only the first page is Corbett specific (about lights) it’s a general lease sample document.

Bob – so how can we approve if this is not the correct lease?

Randy – um I guess you would just authorize me to sign the actual lease. This example is worse case of what we’d save.

Discussion continues around rebate amount assumptions and number calculations.

Bob – I’m in favor of LED lights, I think it’s a good way to go but I think we need to have estimates. These guys have only been contractors since end of March of this year. We should ask our electricians of their price. If something fails with the lease they’re not going to cover labor anyway so there’s not much different If we have an electrician purchase the lights & install them.

It’s agreed it’s not a pressing concern and they can get other prices/bids and revisit the discussion after that.

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Unlimited Openings?

The following discussion is surrounding an action item as follows:

Resolved that the board confirm the inter-district transfer agreements under HB 2742 for approval to receive unlimited openings into the district and no denials for requests to release students out of our district 2014/2015

Randy explains this house bill gives multiple options to districts on how they let kids in or out. He states at any time the board can come back and set a limit after making it unlimited, or you set a limit by grade and then you have to set a date and do a lottery. These new changes in the laws are to prevent districts from hand selecting which kids they let out or in based on grades or needs etc..

He also states other districts are limiting the numbers of students they let out of their districts so we don’t need to worry about a flood of students coming into ours. We have situations where some charter kids didn’t get their applications in on time so those are the people we’re trying to help still get into Corbett.

Charlie – I’m not concerned about us losing kids, I’m concerned about which kids we get in if we get a flood that want in, so that’s not a problem.

Mark – relating to timing if there was a flood in & we say we’re taking “all” then we get all these applicants then a month later we have a board meeting and say “nah no, we were just kidding”?

Randy – yeah until the board has met the rules stand so if that did happen and a thousand turned in applications we would be stuck with those thousand. But I don’t think that’s going to happen, I think we’re talking more like 5 kids here, but I don’t have a crystal ball.

Victoria – I have a concern here, that is; we’re telling people we’re not planning on growing the district and then we’re going to add “unlimited” to the amount of students we’re going to allow in? In addition we’ve been told there’s like a 200 student waiting list, well then, we’re talking those 200 students not just 5. I think that we need to set a cap.

Randy – so we can easily set a cap but we want to be broad enough that the board doesn’t have to take individual action on them.

Victoria – to me it just doesn’t make sense, I mean you say one thing and then we turn around and do another. We need to be consistent in our message, either we’re going to grow the district or we’re not going to grow the district. We need to start making our judgements based on what we’re really going to do.

So if we’re going to open up inter district transfers to unlimited then me might as well just say “hey we are going to grow this district as big as we can get it”. Or hey ya know what we’ve been saying we’re going to cut it back so we need to set a limit. I think we’re sending mixed messages constantly from this board and it’s confusing the community.

(Lots of audience applause here)

Todd – questions if you can limit number you let in without limiting those that want out. Randy replies yes they are separate.

Randy – we can easily change the language and put a number in there, the question is what number?

Mark – well Randy I think you need to tell us what the number is to accomplish the objective of this resolution.

Randy – I would say it’s safe to go 2 per grade but I can almost guarantee if we do that we’ll have to revisit this because it’s not going to be even by grade. So if we get one more in a grade we’ll have to meet to approve.

Victoria – so then why don’t you tell us how many in each grade that missed the charter deadline because you obviously know the numbers.

Randy – I think 2 is the safe number.

The board agrees to change the unlimited verbiage to 2 students per grade to be admitted via a fair lottery for 2014/2015 All are ok with having to revisit on a case by case scenario beyond that.

Thankful this was not left as unlimited. Also note this does not affect the 530 spots already confirmed & added for next year, this is in addition to those.

Meeting closed with coming events.