March 14, 2022 at 8:00 PM - Board of Education Regular Meeting

Rationale:  SEM State Speech Qualifiers.

• Ariel Nash 
• Joelle Gilmore
• Mikayla Schoeder -- DISTRICT CHAMPION

State Speech is in Kearney at UNK on March 17th and 18th. 

Rationale:  PUBLIC PARTICIPATION
INSTRUCTIONS FOR MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC WHO WISH TO SPEAK: This is the portion of the meeting when members of the public may speak to the Board about matters of public concern. 

• Getting Started:  When you have been recognized, please stand and state your name.  
•  Time Limit:  The Board will generally allow a total of 30 minutes for the presentation of all public comments.  Individuals may speak only one time and must limit comments to around 5 minutes.  If there are more than six individuals who wish to address the Board, the 30 minutes will be divided equally between the number of speakers.   These time limits may be changed by a majority vote of the board members in attendance to extend the time for a specific item or speaker.
• Personnel or Student Topic:  If you are planning to speak about a personnel or a student matter involving an individual, please understand that the district has a complaint policy and/or procedures to resolve such complaints and concerns.  The Board requests that you follow the policy and procedures before addressing these matters with the Board.  Board members will generally not respond to any questions you ask or comments about individual staff members or students. 
• General Rules: This is a public meeting for the conduct of business.  Comments from the audience while others are speaking will not be tolerated.  Lewd, obscene, profane, slanderous, threatening, and hostile conduct or statements and fighting words (words whose mere utterance entails a call to violence) will not be tolerated.
• No Action by the Board:  The Board will not act on any matter unless it is on the published agenda. 

Rationale:  Executive Summary:

Provided in the attachments are examples of teacher in-service professional development that was specifically designed to help coach and instruct teachers. 

Rationale:  Executive Summary:

The two attached forms are EXAMPLES of an evaluation, and of a remediation (improvement) plan. Although the board is restricted from viewing any completed certified staff evaluation or remediation, it is important to see what is being evaluated, and then the corrective process. 

Rationale:  Executive Summary:

The policy committee met prior to the March BOE meeting.  They will report out their review and recommendations for the 2022-2023 Student Handbook.
 

Rationale:  BOE UPDATE of Core Curriculum Standards.

• Math -- Adopted Eurika Math in 2020.
  • New standards were originally due to be released in 2022. 
• ELA --  Standards are due to be released in 2022.  (NDE is putting this out a year late)
  • SEM staff and ESU 10 specialists will develop a new SEM curriculum to align with new standards. 
• Science --New standards are due to be released in 2023.
  • The current Science Curriculum is Amplify in 6-8 and Mystery Science below 6th. 
• Social Studies -- The last revision put out by NDE was 2019.
  • There is a horizontal alignment in each class, but we are lacking a full vertical alignment. 

Rationale:  Executive Summary:

Three candidates were interviewed for the elementary teaching position.  In total, there were six applicants; three accepted other positions prior to this interview. 

There were three different committee groups that interviewed the applicants.  Following the interviews, all the members of each interview team met to discuss the candidates.  Miss. Lichty was unanimously recommended for the position. The staff committee was especially impressed with her during the interview and feels like she will fit in without any problems. 

Rationale:  With the approval of the 6000 Series Policies, the Policy manual will be completely reviewed within the last two years and ready for publication on our website and this Sparq board meetings site. 

Rationale:  Recommendation of the following certified staff members for contract renewal:
Beavers, Bosak, Bowie, Brown, Doud, Franzen, Jones, Kappel, Kenton, Kociemba, Lewandowski, McArthur, McKenzie, Martin, Ourada, Pierce, Rohde, Schroeder, Smith, Trampe, Unick, Williams, and Schmidt. 

With renewal, Mrs. Tierra Bowie and Mrs. Angie Ourada will move from probationary status to tenured status at SEM. 

Rationale:  Executive Summary:

The Board Retreat showed all signs of being positive and successful.  Marcia provided the board with two proposals, dealing with Strategic Planning and Community Engagement. 

These two proposals work well, being developed at the same time, or they can be completed one at a time.  If the decision is to do one first, then the other, I would recommend doing the Strategic Planning first.

Cost:

• Strategic Planning -- $3,500 - $5,000
• Comm Engagement -- 2,600 - $3,750

Rationale:  Executive Summary

On February 23, 2022, the Nebraska Department of Education released information to all public school districts indicating their Certified State Aid for 2022-2023.  (See attachment).  

• The district "needs" calculation has been set at $3,878,554.
  • Basic funding                $3,443,680.
  • Poverty Allowance.            $85,941.
  • LEP Allowance.                 $42,171.
  • Special Receipts.             $113,372.
  • Transportation.                $111,048. 

    ---

       
• Total Calculate Needs.              $3,796,212
• Formula Stabilization.                    $82,342

  ---

• Total Needs Formula.                $3,878,554

Yield from local effort rate
 

Rationale:  Executive Summary. 

The NDE requires schools to be accredited and to be in compliance with Rule 10.  External visitations of Nebraska Schools happen once every five years.  You may recall the zoom meeting we had in 2021 with NDE explaining the system.  It was explained that this visitation time frame was changing, and that school would require the next visitations to happen between 4 and 7 years. This was dependent on the findings of the external team. 

Our visitation will be on March 29th and 30th.  Mr. Schmidt will be providing everyone with a detailed agenda.  The board will be involved on the evening of the 29th, as we meet the external team and have some informal conversations with the team.  

Then, on the 30th, there will be a board group comprised of three members that will meet with the team during the day, and at 3:30 a report out on their evaluation. 

 

Rationale:  Review of ELPA plan 

Rationale:  Executive Summary:

The NSAA will sanction Girls Wrestling.  The girl's program is gaining interest, as demonstrated by the turnout at the State Championships.  I know that in our youth program we currently have some girls wrestling, and may wish to continue.  

There will be some issues that will have to be faced, the biggest being the coaching and supervision, but I think that is something we can handle.