Plains School Board of Trustees announces updates

PLAINS – The School Board of Trustees met on Monday, October 21st, providing building updates and discussing slight changes to protocol.

After the approval of the minutes, High School Principal Larry McDonald said first quarter was coming to an end. McDonald said the quarter had been less stress filled and he applauded both the teachers and the students for their hard work.

Elementary School Principal Jim Holland then spoke about Red Ribbon Week, a week full of activities aimed to educate kids on the dangers of drugs and alcohol.

Holland had a number of thanks to give, thanking the Plains Grange for donating brand new dictionaries to the third grade class, something they do on an annual basis. He also thanked those involved with the Sanders County Water Festival, which the eighth graders attended.

Superintendent Thom Chisholm updated the board on the new building addition, something that is currently on schedule.

On September 30th, Chisholm met with architects from CTA as well as mechanical engineers and people responsible for the water and sewer. The group inspected the current building and tried to troubleshoot any problems they may have.

“It’s a very interesting process and it’s lots of fun,” said Chisholm. After another meeting on October 28th, the design plan was 95 percent finished.

“Everything else is still on track for the annual schedule,” said Chisholm, explaining the information would be released to contractors for bids in early to mid December. The bid would be selected in January, breaking ground would begin in April or May and if all goes well on August 1st, the new building would be fully operational.

To kick the process into full gear, two maple trees were removed from the new building site.

“It’s going to look stark this winter and we’re going to fill it up with a building this spring,” said Chisholm.

Along with that, a few minor construction projects are also in the works, including a new 35 foot flagpole in the rear of the school in what Chisholm refers to as the “sports complex.”

The softball field was reseeded from a Babe Ruth field back into a softball field and Chisholm said the new seeding was coming in rather nicely. As for the Plains Booster Club, a permanent home for the club is also in the works.

“Hopefully the booster club will have a permanent residency to work on their projects,” said Chisholm, explaining the exterior of the building has been completed.

Moving on from the construction projects, Chisholm spoke about the Annual Data Count and changes to protocol, which has been changed through legislative action.

He stated the school currently does not have the ADC completed but that is a common trend throughout the schools in Montana. Chisholm supported the motion to do without double testing within the Montana’s Common Core curriculum.

“We are not going to waste our resources,” explained Chisholm, explaining there is redundancy in taking duplicate tests. Although this has yet to be approved, it is currently in the works.

Fourth grade teacher Jill Rice gave a presentation on the school website and walked the board through how her students use the site for educational purposes.

“I have everything already set up for them,” explained Rice. “I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface with what we can do with these websites for our own classroom. I want it to be a resource for them.”

Although, the fourth graders are not quite ready to submit their assignment electronically, last year the students learned to do just that.

The website has pages from the student’s workbooks, an online textbook and daily folders for certain subjects.

“Right now I just teach off (the website.) I project it off the Smart Board,” said Rice. “This is our hub. I only ever have to go to our website.”

The parents have yet to receive pass codes but once they do they will be able to log on to view their children’s grades.

Rice hopes that eventually the website will turn into a hub for the parents as well. Parents will be able to log on to see if their child has any homework and if a student forgot their backpack at school, they would be able to print off the necessary assignments, bringing excuses to a halt.

Once the presentation wrapped up and all questions were answered, First Security Bank requested to use Plains’ school logo on their debit cards. Eventually, their hope is to have cards for all of the high schools in Sanders County. After the board gave their approval, Hot Springs was the next on their list.

In return for using the logo, the bank said they would pay the school something in return. The idea of sponsoring the Plains Booster Club for $200 was brought up, although details are still being ironed out.

The board then went on to adopt Steps to Respect Curriculum, a curriculum that has been in use for the last four or five years.

No changes to the curriculum were made, however, in a housekeeping effort it was formally adopted.

The board approved personnel and moved on to making an amendment to the fingerprint and criminal background investigation.

According to Chisholm, criminal background checks are necessary for the school district, however, the process has become more complicated in the last few years. In order to protect applicant’s privacy rights, the amount of people who view the background checks needs to be limited.

“Standard operations in the past, relatively speaking, throughout Montana schools, a background check once taken and approved was placed in a person’s personnel file where anybody who had authority to that file could view it,” explained Chisholm “That is not the case anymore. The only person who has access to that information in this particular district and most of them throughout the state is the superintendent.”

The board voted to change the wording to reflect the policy.

Last on the agenda was the approval of the 2013-2014 Bus Route amendments, something that was accepted with little discussion.

The next school board meeting lands on Monday, November 18, at 7 p.m.