Seeley Lake Elementary School Board
SEELEY LAKE - The Seeley Lake Elementary School Board unanimously approved updates on their 3000 policy series during their regularly scheduled monthly meeting Monday, June 21. During the meeting they also approved a stipend for staff as well as the Safe School Reopening and Continuity Plan.
Much of the updates on the 3000 series dealt with wording clarification and redundancy reduction for policies including bullying and harassment, attendance and enrollment and student records. Some of the updates came as a result of statewide legislative changes.
The Board also approved a $1,500 “COVID effort compensation” for 26 full-time SLE staff members plus two part-time employees. The staff did not receive raises this past year and there were some leftover COVID-19 relief funds the District received. This money will come out of the general fund because otherwise it cannot be used after July 1, the end of the fiscal year.
“[District Clerk] Heather [Mincey] and I both agreed that every one of our staff members, it doesn’t matter if it’s a teacher, a janitor, a cook, office ladies, paras, they all did much more than their job descriptions,” said Superintendent Josh Gibbs.
As of the meeting there was $86,706 available. Around $10,000 of it had to be used for classified staff payroll for the last couple of weeks as well as summer help. This left around $76,706.
Gibbs said it was their priority to direct a sizable portion of these funds into their reserve so the Board decided to designate around $35,000 of the available funds into the reserve with the remaining $40,000 going towards the staff compensation.
Board Chair Kyle Marx said that he wanted members of the public to understand that there was extra money in the budget due to money that was brought in by COVID-19 funds. The levy that was recently approved does not apply to this year’s fiscal year budget.
The Board also unanimously re-approved the Safe School Reopening and Continuity Plan. This plan was approved last summer. To receive ESSER III Funds the school is required to update the document periodically and have it posted on their website by June 24 with Board approval. This does not mean that new COVID-19 spread prevention policies, including reinstating the mask mandate, will be immediately implemented next school year.
During his report, Gibbs said that in August he and the School Improvement Team will look at updating the staff, student and activities handbooks. Specifically for the activities handbook they will check that homeschooled students are being held to the same academic standards as SLE students if they would like to participate in school activities. The team is currently working on their technology inventory.
Gibbs said they are considering switching their website host to Apptegy which could allow the school to offer its own app.
He hopes to create a list of surplus items that can be put up for auction by the Board’s July meeting.
In other new business, the Board unanimously approved the following:
• The math and music curriculum.
• The hiring of David Cahoon as the school’s new physical education teacher.
• The hiring of Cora Stone as the 21st Century Summer Intern for the school’s summer programs.
• Replacing the school’s educational software Powerschool with Infinite Campus.
• Closing the school’s lunch account with Citizens Alliance Bank.
Board members then broke out into executive session for a superintendent evaluation.
The next meeting will take place in the school gym at 5:30 p.m. Monday, July 19.
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