School board ties up loose ends before first day

PLAINS – The Plains School Board of Trustees met on Monday, August 19 to provide updates and help tie up any loose ends before the school year began.

After approving the minutes, bills and warrants, High School Principal Larry McDonald, gave his report.

According to McDonald, this year 145 students signed up for grades 9 through 12, with a small senior class of 28.

With a smaller senior class, McDonald looked into combining the JMG program with the Business Essentials Class – two different classes that “basically mirror the same thing.”

Because of smaller class sizes, the JMG program may cut the Plains High School’s funding. In order to keep the funding, the two classes would combine and integrate the curricula.

“We’ve done that before…and we’d like to do it again this year. It meets graduation requirements and all that,” said McDonald.

Superintendent Thom Chisholm explained that because the litmus test for the JMG course is student enrollment, the smaller class sizes show a two-year decrease.

“There are some schools that are taking the monies and not fulfilling their requirements. We are not one of them,” said Chisholm. “We’re not in jeopardy of losing the program but they are looking to make cuts and they are going to do it bureaucratically and say these are the stats – Plains enrollment dropped two years.”

Combining the two classes would bring the enrollment number up in the JMG program and would not affect the criteria being covered in each of the classes.

With a new school year in gear, many changes have taken place in preparing for the school expansion.

Chisholm gave an update on the different varieties of things that had taken place since June getting ready for the new school addition.

The Altercare building was moved, the power was transitioned, among other steps in the right direction to get the addition ready for the next school year.

The school also busied itself with custodial work, repainting the gym floors and walls, while also completing the façade on the building – a project that was started two years ago.

The industrial art shop underwent some updates and received a new floor and the shop was washed, primed and painted.

The counselor’s office also got a facelift, painting over the original colors of yellow and blue and replacing them with what Chisholm called “patriotic colors” of gray, orange, black and white – the colors of the Horsemen and Trotters.

Chisholm hopes to have the whole school repainted in the school colors in the next couple years to have a more uniformed and pleasing look.

The school’s new website is up and running, now functioning at full capacity. The site address remains the same, however major changes took place to the site, making it easier and more efficient to use.

Changes were added to the 2013-2014 High School Student Handbook. McDonald explained that last year there were a number of students with high absence rates. In order to deter that problem, a 14-day limit of absences was added into the handbook. If that amount of absences were incurred, a faculty committee would review the circumstances to determine whether there were any extenuating circumstances validating the absences. If no extenuating circumstances took place to warrant those absences, then a student would have to appeal to the school board in order to get a class credit.

“The appeal would come if we found that there were not extenuating circumstances and (the student) wished to come to the board. I can’t see that happening but it could,” said McDonald.

Board member John Holland voiced his concern that 14 days per semester was a lot of days, a number he felt was too high. During the continued discussion of the addition, McDonald added that if a child had three to five absences then himself or a teacher in the school would adopt that child.

“We’re going to jump on it so each one of us have someone to be responsible for,” said McDonald. The adoption program would help the faculty closely watch over a student and help them through any rough times they may experience, in an attempt to curb future absences.

The board accepted the changes with two votes voting against the amount of days allowed for absences.

Another revision to the handbook was the test exemption criteria. In the past, if a student had no unexcused absences in a class, they were exempt from that particular class’s testing. However, the policy was changed to a stricter one, stating that if there were any unexcused absences in any class then the student does not earn the exemption to their testing.

“If you had an unexcused absence in your math class, you had to take your math test but not necessarily in English. If there’s any unexcused absence you would have to take the tests,” said McDonald.

Once the changes were approved, the board moved onto new business where the Elementary Classroom Construction Project was the main concern. Chisholm presented the board with two different packets from both of the local banks: Rocky Mountain Bank and First Security Bank.

“I approached both institutes locally and explained we had the $240,000 loan to work in conjunction to our grant,” said Chisholm, adding that the school would be offering up the properties of the Wildhorse Elementary School as collateral.

A problem arose when chairman of the board, Ron Warren, pointed out that the school sits on three lots instead of one.

As the discussion unfolded, it was uncertain whether or not the banks understood that the property was divided.

Although one large chunk of land is fenced in, the school sits on one lot, while two other lots remain vacant.

It was agreed upon that the chosen bank would be made aware of the situation and if they were unhappy, changes would be made.

The board decided to go with the First Security Bank for the loan.

The board then moved to accept the 2013-14 Sanders County Education Services Cooperative Contract, involving both a psychologist and a speech pathologist.

The idea is that the Plains School District would provide a speech pathologist to other schools in the cooperative in exchange of the services of a psychologist to help with special needs.

“We pay them for their services through special ed. testing and in like turn, they pay us for the speech pathology services,” said Chisholm.

This opportunity was brought up after the school’s psychologist took on a new position and was no longer able to provide the services the school needed.

After acceptance of the cooperative contract, the board of trustees approved a variety of different personnel and the final budget was adopted, the board ready to take on the new year.

The next school board meeting will take place on Monday, September 16th.