PLC Trainings have been well attended

Heather Goddard
Posted 12/4/19

Vice-chair Katie Kruse called the meeting to order at 6:05 p.m. The Mission and Vision were reviewed. Student of the month Brady Swisher was recognized and Staff Member of the Quarter Officer Tyler Stream was acknowledged.

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

PLC Trainings have been well attended

Posted

LUSK – Vice-chair Katie Kruse called the meeting to order at 6:05 p.m. The Mission and Vision were reviewed. Student of the month Brady Swisher was recognized and Staff Member of the Quarter Officer Tyler Stream was acknowledged.

Information Items

SPED Director Robyn Heth invited the School Board for a dinner at the WYVA building before the next board member. The dinner will be at 5 p.m. and they are also invited to hold a meeting at the building some time.

LEMS Principal Lu Kaspers reported that all of the LEMS certified staff have now attended the PLC conferences. This should help staff meetings to be more productive. The staff are really going to start focusing on the core values that have been established. Teachers agreed that respect and integrity will be the main focus. Mrs. Zerbe has taught all students and teachers the sign language to go with the core values and this helps to make it an activity that students can get engaged with. There have been some attendance issues that Officer Stream is addressing and overall attendance has held at 97 percent. Kaspers has also been making changes to the school improvement plan based on the peer review feedback.

NCHS Principal Phil Garhart emphasized that the PLC conferences have been integral in moving forward with the process that the district has undertaken. Like LEMS, the high school has been focusing on evaluating where they are at in the process and what they can adjust for future activities and mindsets. Winter sports have all started and while boys basketball is down in numbers, wrestling is up.

Stuart Larson reported that other than the final audit results he was busy updating the SPED grant.

District Superintendent George Mirich provided updates from his legislative and state school board meetings that were attended over the last few weeks. There are going to be changes in the transportation and computer science areas. He state that efficiencies were a point of review at the joint committee meeting and that some interpretations of the statutes will be changing and the ramifications from that could be interesting state-wide.Computer science standards are again changing. There are over 300 standards set up and these had been prioritized and now there is some discussion regarding the need to ensure all standards are met, not just the prioritized standards. More information will be forthcoming. Another issue is that of the state required reports and the various student management software programs that are used by districts.There is some discussion of requiring all districts to use the same software. Mirich stated that is is strongly against this at this time unless it would significantly reduce the number of reports that have to be created and submitted to the state. This will be a point for future discussion.At the State School Board Convention the Niobrara County District was awarded the School Board Standard of Excellence. This is awarded with the majority of the current members have received or are eligible to be certified master board members. Additionally, Mr. Rick Luchsinger was awarded the Golden Bell Award. This Award will be presented to Mr. Luchsinger at the Christmas party. The December 6 staff development day will be a Solution Tree training with the company representative.

Multiple board members reported that the sessions attended at the state school board meeting were very beneficial and full of good information. They are excited to continue in the PLC improvement process and also begin incorporating the concepts they learned at their work sessions into the district policies in the future.

Action Items:

Policy BDDA passed third reading. This policy was changed to schedule all board meetings at 6 p.m. all year instead of changing with the seasons.

Old Business

Board members discussed potential changes to the Superintendent Evaluation Process and participating in the Board Self-Evaluation.

Meeting adjourned.