LUSK – Chairman Joel Richardson called the regular meeting of the Niobrara County School District #1 Board to order at 7:15 p.m. The agenda was approved with addition of WYVA report, Principal Garhart’s report Superintendent items under Information Items.

There were no visitor comments.

Information Items:

WYVA-William Johnston announced the new Head of Schools: Dr. Joe Haywood has accepted the offer of the Head of Schools position. He is currently the WYVA K-8 Principal. He will continue to work in that capacity as well until a new principal can be hired. Mr. Haywood enjoys working in the virtual environment and looks forward to continuing his career.

Phil Garhart, NCHS Principal-Mr. Garhart presented a master schedule from the high school. Every teacher now has a common plan with his or her content area. Switched up some of the classes so that each teacher has a section for each age range (2 sophomore english, 2 junior english, etc.) with the exception of the senior class since the size of the class does not necessitate two sections. The school is evaluating going to all online foreign language classes to ease the scheduling burden on the existing teacher who currently has three subjects and to offer more variety to the students. Jim Lyons will be teaching some business classes at the high school for the 2019-2020 year.

George Mirich,Superintendent Items- Administration has received a policy recommendation from the State School Board Association on expulsions and suspensions. He presented this to the board. The will review and discuss at the next July meeting.

Mirich presented a job description for a Building and Grounds coordinator position. The current system has specific position of oversight for the entire district. There is no one supervising grounds employees taking care of the campuses six months out of the year. While there are two head custodians in two different buildings there is no significant coordination of work or resources between those two departments at this time. There is a need to streamline and improve that department. As presented, this is not a full-time job and may need to be combined with another position. There have been conversations with the district transportation coordinator and mechanic to see if it could be combined with that position.

Had some discussion to revisit the vacation and sick leave policy as far as classified employees go regardless of 10, 11 or 12-month employees. The existing policy creates hardship for employees in their first year of work since they are not allowed any vacation days. It also creates a significant financial liability from carry-over of vacation day that count as liability on the balance sheet. The policy for carry-over needs to be enforced and the existing distribution policy needs revised. This will be revisited at the next board meeting.

The Consent agenda was approved as presented.

Action items: None

Old Business: Classified staff and bus drivers will be attending PLCs that are being done in-house. The weeds need taken care of out in front of the administrative building. Mirich will contract for this. The board requested that a flag be placed on the flag pole in front of the administrative building and that the light on the LEMS flag be fixed so the flag can be appropriately displayed. Following the vandalism on the LEMS playground the destroyed backboard on the basketball is still broken and needs to be fixed

Chairman Richardson pointed out the revised Mission and Vision found at the top of the agenda. These items need to be considered at every meeting and will be discussed at length. They will be the basis for policy and decision making and a unifying concept for the direction of the district.

The next regular meeting is Juy 8 at 7 p.m. Policy committee will meet at 6 p.m. The budget hearing will be held during the regular meeting.

Meeting was adjourned at 7:57pm