Government : Recap of Vinton-Shellsburg School Board Meeting

Below is a recap of the second September school board meeting held last night:
Special Board Recognition: Don Entas for being a DIFFERENCE MAKER in our community. Don is our neighbor across the street from the middle school and goes out of his way to clean our community and school grounds. Don was given a difference maker certificate and t-shirt.

Admin Reports: Mr. Kingsbury spoke about a new plan to recognize academic achievement awards this fall including digital sessions. Homecoming modifications including masks and social distancing for the activities, Zoom sessions for meetings, a Plan A and B for the community parade, Thursday activities at the Karr athletic complex will still take place but with specific guidelines from Mr. Kingsbury to promote safety.
Middle school: Mrs. Petersen spoke about the middle school activities ongoing this fall. Mrs. Petersen had the opportunity to visit many classrooms and has been excited about the student learning she has been seeing. She also highlighted the schools work on universal screening and intervention planning which has already taken place.
Elementary: Mr. Reeve spoke about fall assessments and sorting data, working with the "hot list" of students. Picture day successes. PBIS team is working on making homecoming week fun and exciting. Mr. Reeve gave a special shout out to the special education team for all the extra time spent on updating IEPs. Mr. Davis added information about professional development regarding math talks and team collaboration meetings. Highlighted the trail at Shellsburg is becoming more accessible with work being done by a tree company. A naturalist is coming to do lessons with the students along the trail.
Board Reports: Mrs. Gates highlighted her attendance at the auditor exit meeting and highlighted our work as a district in regards to the finance work. Mr. Levis reiterated all the auditors comments were verbal suggestions and not written. Mr. Levis also recognized the work of district staff in making in-person learning and the various options for families available and knows how much work it has been to make it possible.
Superintendent Report: Approved three open enrollments into the Vinton-Shellsburg district! Recapped the audit review. Highlighted the USDA meal continuation provided free meals to students. Update on the bus barn project. Updated on our solar energy project, a solar committee will be reviewing firms presentations about who would be the best partner to help design our solar project. Discussed the November school board convention and who would be attending from the board. Shared the work around initial assessment and interventions occuring. Scheduled upcoming board meetings for October 12 (location HS) and November 9 (location Shellsburg) 7:00 PM start times. The board also tentatively reserved October 26th if a meeting is needed for COVID reasons.
Consent Items: Minutes, claims and financial transfers were approved. A contract for Systems Unlimited was approved. This addon contract will allow our Systems Unlimited servers to move to "cloud" based. This will allow everyone to access the system anywhere there is internet access. Staff members will be able to access their employee information anywhere as well. A contract for LifeTime Fence Company was approved to rebuild the fencing at the Shellsburg fields following the storm damage. There was two personnel resignations; George Baker (custodian) and Darci Walter (associate). The Post Prom Committee fundraisers were approved, with more items to be reviewed and discussed in October.
COVID Review: The board discussed how in-person learning was progressing and the number of students/staff in quarantine and isolation. None of our positive cases have been community spread from inside of the school buildings. It was discussed that people who have possible exposure from home or outside of school environments should not attend school until verified not COVID positive. This would help reduce others from having to quarantine.
Application for Allowable Growth for Negative Special Education Deficit: The special ed deficit grew from $699,000 to $1,055,935.59 last year. The increase is partially contributed to not being reimbursed by medicaid during the COVID spring closure last school year. We will have to account for this deficit in the spring budgeting process.
New Board Policy: The board had a first reading of a new policy relating to Title IX and the reporting of sexual harassment. Last spring the United States Department of Education released final rulemaking which included addressing sexual harassment complaints under Title IX. The rulemaking changes were sweeping and resulted in large scale changes for processing these claims. This rulemaking is effective for school districts and community colleges beginning this school year. Our new policy outlines the reporting process and rules surrounding the reporting process.