The Perry Community School District Board of Education held their monthly meeting last night.

At the meeting, two high school speech students performed their ensemble acting piece that received a winning rating at the state speech contest.

A representative from Nolte, Comman and Johnson then reviewed the Independent Auditor’s Report for the board via Skype.

Megan Maylum then presented the board with information on the Grow-School Garden.  The goal is to build a large garden for high school special education students to use along with help from the National Honor Society and City Council.  The group recently received a $1,000 grant from the Perry RAGBRAI committee to help start the project.  The plan is to have the garden and greenhouse  built behind the high school.  Organizers hope the items harvested from the garden and greenhouse can be sold at the local farmer’s market with money going back to the non-profit running the project and also to the high school food pantry.  Approval of the project has been delayed and expected to addressed again at the March meeting.

Learning Supports Director Kelly Schloss then presented on elementary tutoring and special education.  She did a few activities with the board, showing them what kind of things are done with students.  She says attendance has increased and parents are already asking about the next tutoring session.

Superintendent Lynn Ubben then shared information from the School Administrators of Iowa, the executive leaders meeting and Iowa School Board Association Legislative Day at the Capital.

The high school gym roof condensation problem was then discussed.  Building and grounds supervisor Kevin McLaughlin says several people have looked to see where the cool air is coming from that leads to the problem in the summer.  This issue has existed since the gym was built in 2002.  After some discussion, the board decided to ask that experts come in and share information on the options that are available to the district.

The board then approved the 2012-2013 school audit, along with board policy revisions and an early start calendar request.  The upcoming school calendar was then approved with the 2014-2015 year starting on August 20th, May 28th scheduled as the last day and spring break scheduled to coincide with DMACC’s break.

Early graduation requests for Grace Colman, Hailee Dencklau, Garmela Espinoza and Selena Estrata were then approved, pending completion of their current classes.

Cooperative activity sponsorships were then approved for girls and boys bowling with Waukee, boys swimming with Boone and girls and boys soccer with Panorama.  Finally, custodian Dwayne Dowd was then approved for early retirement along with other personnel changes and the board agreed to purchase state tournament t-shirts for wrestlers who might qualify for the contest.  April’s board meeting has also been moved up one week to April 7th since the district’s budget needs to be certified by the state by the 15th.

For more on the meeting, tune into today’s Let’s Talk Dallas County when we speak with Superintendent Lynn Ubben during the 9am, noon and 5pm hours.