The Greene County School Board met last night in regular session.
The Board elected Ashley Johnston as Board President and Teresa Hagen as vice-president for the 2014-15 school year.
There were several committees that board members were assigned to. Johnston, Mark Peters and Sam Harding will serve on the negotiation committee, Susan Burkett, Hagen and David Ohrt are on the classified and administrative salaries committee, Jeff Lamoureux and Harding are on the facilities committee, Johnston will serve on the county conference committee, Harding is assigned to the Jefferson Parks and Recreation committee and he will also serve on the school foundation committee. Hagen was chosen as the delegate to the Iowa Association of School Boards.
The Board approved several agenda items. They approved all Title I applications for the 2014-15 school year for a schoolwide program, the 2013-14 Certified Annual Report was also approved. The request for funding for a negative $227,197 for special education deficit for allowable growth was approved along with a contract with the City of Rippey to provide its bus stop location for $15 per day and using the community center in case of inclement weather, all fundraising requests and an agreement with Cedar Falls School District and River Hills consortium were also approved.
The Board approved a contract that will allow the Ogden School District two miles into the Greene County School District to have their buses pick up open enrolled students to their district with the same deal implied for Greene County.
The Board approved to pay up to $28,500 to Shive-Hattery Architect Firm to make drawings for a proposed two building project that the district eventually wants to get down to for facilities with a pre-kindergarten through fourth grade building and a 5th-12th grade building.
An update to the student construction course was made to the Board. It was reported that there were only two students enrolled in the class and so the class isn’t offered this trimester and the Board wanted it to have at least six students to be fully offered. Plans are to offer it again for the second and third trimesters.
During the superintendent’s report, Tim Christensen said that they made changes to the bus routes since the beginning of the school year. He reported that they now have a bus that goes straight from Scranton to the Intermediate building in Grand Junction without stopping in Jefferson, there’s two more buses that make trips just on the outside of the City of Jefferson before coming into City limits to pick up students and a suburban now goes out to pick up two students that are seven miles away from the closest bus pick up area. He pointed out that the first set of students are picked up between 6:55 and 7am instead of 6:35am. The new bus routes were put into place this past Monday.
The Board also decided that their work sessions will be from 5:15-6:15pm on the third Wednesday of every month followed by the regular Board meeting at 6:30pm in the conference room of the Administrative Building in Jefferson.