February 8, 2021 at 6:30 PM - Board of Education Regular Meeting

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STRIVE  -  COMMIT  -  SUCCEED  -  District Mission Statement

Schuyler Community Schools in partnership with parents, students, and the community is committed to educate students to become skilled, knowledgeable and responsible citizens in a global society - District Vision Statement

Notice of this meeting was given in advance according to State Law 84-1411, by giving notice of the meeting to the public.  Notice of this meeting was also given in advance to all members of the Board of Education

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This meeting has been preceded by advance notice and is hereby declared to be in open session.  A copy of the Open Meetings Act is posted in the front of the meeting room.

Nebraska Open Meetings Act:  http://nitc.nebraska.gov/documents/statutes/NebraskaOpenMeetingsAct_current.pdf

Rationale:  Discuss, Consider and Take Action on the consent agenda

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Rationale:  This committee is responsible for budget, finance, and contract negotiations with administration, certificated staff, and support staff.

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1.  Jasmin Alarcon:  SES Teacher
2.  Serena Sanchez:  SES Teacher
 

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Rationale:  Discuss meeting meeting times for board committees to meet with staff to discuss plan recommendations.  The STRAT Team will meet on Monday morning to organize the action items so that the board may select the groups they would like to meet with to review the 2021 plan.

The STRAT Team has been working for the past three months to get input from staff, board, community leaders and parents to identify priority items to be included in the 2021 strategic plan.  The plan is written as a 3 year plan and progress is monitored, reviewed and modified annually.  See attached draft plan and calendar recommendations. 

The 1st draft of the calendar is an updated calendar with corresponding dates to the 2020-21 year.  The 2nd draft is with the recommendations from staff.  Following this meeting, we will meet one more time with support staff, food service, custodial/maintenance, and the SEA to review any other recommendations or concerns.

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Priority Plan Update

The administrative team met with our consultants and our state department representatives on January 27th and 28th via zoom.  We had two very productive days and were excited to share some of our success stories and begin the process of planning for the remainder of the school year.

We began our meetings with updates from administrators and moved into reviewing our ACT action plan as well as examining and reviewing data collections.  We spent a good amount of time discussing high school participation numbers in testing and were proud to have MAP (NWEA) tested 94% of our high school students.  When we have good testing data, this will help drive our instructional practices.  We also discussed our program review process that was completed during our in-service days.  The process was very successful and led to some excellent conversations. 

During our second day of meetings, we were able to meet with EL and Priority School contacts from the Nebraska Department of Education, our consultants, and an ESU 7 team member.  Our team consisting of Drey Keairnes, Melanie Gustafson, Joey Lefdal, Brandi Zavadil, Kara Blase, Jim Kasik, Stephen Grammer, and Dave Gibbons had the opportunity to share our success and brainstorm ideas for improvement regarding our EL program.  We were all very excited at how well the meeting went and how supportive the department of education was during our time together.  We have set some meetings to discuss other ideas in the near future.

We closed the last day with a reflection on how the days went by sharing "Glows and Grows" from the meeting.  We all felt the days were very worthwhile and really gave us some great insight on how our programs are running and where we can focus our energy during the second semester.  

https://core-docs.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/asset/uploaded_file/908802/Draft_2018-2021_Schuyler_Priority_Plan__1_.pdf  (Priority Plan)

https://5il.co/nlww   (Newsletter)

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Preschool and SES 3-5 Principal's Report:  Mr. Comley
Program/Staff Member Spotlight:  This month I want to highlight with mixed emotions Laurie Schlautman. As you see in this month's report, Mrs. Schlautman is retiring at the end of the school year. Mrs. Schlautman does an outstanding job in the library at SES. She is always so eager to give children a book or introduce them to a new book in the library. Her passion for books and excitement for children is inspiring. She is also a fantastic resource for our staff helping in the copy room and all that involves.  She always has a great attitude and a smiling face which will be truly missed.

SES K-2 Principal's Report:  Mrs. Neesen
Program/Staff Member Spotlight: Meridith Riha and Ingrid Rodriguez. The week of February 1st-5th is National School Counselor Week. Our Elementary Counselors do a phenomenal job of building relationships with our students and promoting social-emotional awareness while teaching strategies for students to use to help themselves self-regulate. Mrs. Riha and Ms. Rodriguez always makes themselves available to students when they demonstrate need for their services. They also serve as the bridge between community resources and the school to help ensure the best services possible for our students. They ensure a safe learning environment for all students and promotes an atmosphere of acceptance and understanding. Thank you Mrs. Riha and Ms. Rodriguez for all that you do for our students!!

Fisher’s & Richland Principal's Report:  Ms. Bebout
Spotlight Staff:  I would like to highlight Lisa Terrell and Rachel Stuehmer. Lisa Terrell  was born in Orange City, Iowa and grew up in Chatsworth, Iowa.  She attended college at Wayne State and earned a degree in Elementary Education.  After Lisa graduated she moved to Schuyler and started teaching 2nd grade.  This is her 11th year in Schuyler School District.  She taught 2nd grade for one year, 3rd grade for 9 years at SES, and this year she transferred to Richland and is teaching the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade combination classroom.  Lisa also earned her Master's degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Wayne State during this time.  Lisa has been married to Cheyne Terrell for 10 years.  He serves on the police department for Schuyler.  They have three children; Grace (8), Kaylynn (6), Braxton (3).  Grace and Kaylynn both attend the Dual Lang program at Richland!

Rachel Stuehmer was born in David City, Ne.  She grew up on a farm near Octavia and also lived in the town of Richland.  Rachel attended college at Midland University and earned a degree in Elementary Education & Special Education.  After graduating Rachel got a job in the Schuyler School District at Richland School where she taught 2nd-5th grade, depending on the year, for four years.  This year she is working at Fisher’s School teaching 4th & 5th grade.  She is currently working on her Master’s Degree.  Rachel has been married to Brett for three years.  They have one daughter, Anna, who is three and a half years old.  They are also expecting another daughter any day now!!!

I would like to highlight Rachel and Lisa, they both serve as our Discovery Ed Innovators for the rural schools!!!  They are getting trained 13 times this year with a personal coach on ways to use Discovery ED in their classroom.  They also attend other trainings with a group of Innovators in our district.  Both Lisa and Rachel have presented at our staff meetings, to their coworkers, different nuggets of information they have learned.  This has been an amazing experience for both of them and I have seen the great ideas they are using in their classrooms.  This is a big commitment as it has taken a lot of their time, but both of them have done an good job with it!  I appreciate their time and effort in making our students and staff successful.

Middle School Assistant Principal's Report:  Mr. Banahan
Spotlight Program: The program I would like to highlight is our RtI/Intervention program that we implemented in October. When checking in with teachers on the intervention, some of the ELA teachers noticed some big growth with a number of the students they were working on specific things in their interventions. This data was collected from the Fall STAR and the Winter STAR assessments that were given in the class in October and January. Student A grew from a 525 to a 624, Student B grew from a 462 to a 637, Student C  grew from a 343 to a 476, and Student D grew from 517 to a 705. These are just a few examples of some of the awesome things our students are doing within the restructured intervention time that we have seen since we began to implement a small scale intervention into our schedule. 

Spotlight Staff: The staff member I would like to highlight is Miss Odalys Cruz . Miss Cruz is one of the math teachers in the 7th grade and she has done an amazing job in her first three years in the building. She was recently  honored as the 2020 NATM (Nebraska Association of Teachers of Mathematics) Rookie of the Year! She does a great job working with our students and making math fun and enjoyable. She goes above and beyond for our students, and she even has created songs for her students to help them remember how to solve four step equations. Along with teaching math, she also teaches Spanish to our 8th graders, and is an assistant coach for middle school volleyball. 

Spotlight Upcoming Events: Our students will begin taking their ELPA 21 test in the month of February. This assessment is for any student whose family's home language is not English. Students will have to continue to take this test until they are able to test out in the four areas that the test focuses. The four areas that ELPA 21 focuses on include, writing, speaking, listening, and reading in the English language. Students are then given a score in those areas on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the highest level for each area. How students do on this assessment will determine whether or not they are on the LEP (Limited English Proficiency) identified. Once students have tested out of their LEP program they no longer need to take the ELPA 21 assessment, as they have been identified as mastery of the English language.
 

Middle School Principal's Report:  Mr. Zavadil
Program Spotlight:  I mentioned in last month’s board report that January and February are months that teachers and principals use to grind and get a ton of material and work done.  This next month will involve a lot of work toward writing plans for next year and getting through as much content as possible.  January and February are also months that can drag on and cause stress for students and staff. We have a group of teachers that serve on our Capturing Kids’ Hearts process champions committee.  These teachers work every month to promote the CKH program within our school and keep momentum going toward a positive climate in our building.  I am very thankful for these teachers that help keep our building climate strong.  They are:  Bobbie Rocheford, Paula Kment, Cindy Beebe, Lauri Novacek, Shanda Hall, Evelyn Recinos, Todd Block, Andy Hall, Mike Baptiste, Odalys Cruz, Amanda Richards, Miranda Mally, Jenna Saalfeld, Samantha Ladwig.

Staff Member Spotlight:  This month I would like to highlight the work of Mrs. Jennifer Hanna.  Mrs. Hanna is our 8th grade Science teacher.  She teaches 5 sections of 8th grade Science and 1 section of Physical Science for high school credit.  Mrs. Hanna has done a great job this year of building engaging lessons for her students that are project based.  These lessons build very well on the Nebraska NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards) by starting each unit with a phenomenon, or question that needs to be answered.  Mrs. Hanna has been teaching at SMS for the past three years and has done a phenomenal job of following our instructional model and building relationships using the CKH model. 
Upcoming Events:  In the upcoming weeks we will start ELPA  (English Language Proficiency Assessment). testing at the Middle School.  This is a large undertaking and is very important to track the work that our teachers are doing to advance our students that come from non-English speaking homes and have had to learn English from our building.  We are excited to get the data and get to work with the information.

High School Assistant Principal's Report:  Mr. Kasik
Program/Staff Member Spotlight:  Elizabeth Lickei is a staff member I would like to spotlight.  Over the years she has been a consistent partner with the American Red Cross.  She lines up the drives that we host in our school and help run when at other locations around the town.  With the increased need for Blood, she is always there to promote this important service.  Way to go Elizabeth!
Person Spotlight:  Sally Jakub has spent a number of years behind the scenes taking care of activity accounts, writing checks for officials and keeping a number of things rolling.  She does a great job with these tasks and we appreciate it!
Upcoming Events:  Spring is always a time for assessment and this year is no different with MAP testing and the upcoming ACT test.  Now is the time to make the final push for securing our best scores for our students.

High School Principal's Report:  Mr. Grammer
Program Spotlight:  The program I would like to acknowledge at Schuyler Central High School this month is our Culture Club. The idea of Culture Club is to give our students opportunities to try things they may not have tried before. It is a social club that has some fun events and some service events. In the past we have gone roller skating, ice skating, and bowling. We attend Warrior sporting events together. To raise funds for our activities we work concession stands at games.  The Culture club was developed to address the many cultures in our school.  It is a program which is truly developed and implemented with our students best interests in mind. We are fortunate to have a teacher on staff, who has a passion to work with our students through the club. This staff member genuinely cares about her students and she is diligent in working with her students to be successful both at school and within the community. Through the club, they organize activities throughout the school year through community service connected with the different cultures in our school and community.  Each year we visit The Latino Museum in South Omaha. We usually go to Omaha on the Friday of fall break. After the museum we explore the shops and restaurants in the area. We have volunteered at the Colfax Theatre and rung Salvation Army bells during the holidays. We host the SCHS bloodmobiles, one in December and one in April. Of course this year our club looks very different. We hope to resume normal operations next year! Thank you to Ms. Lickei for making our students feel welcome and successful at SCHS.
Staff Member Spotlight:  As the Principal of SCHS, it is my honor and to recognize Elizabeth Lickei, the sponsor of the culture at Schuyler Central High School. The Culture Club was established as an organization to help new students from different cultures feel welcome at SCHS.  Ms. Lickei was an integral part of the development and implementation of this club in our district. Ms. Lickei’s’s passion for her student’s success is bar none, she works hard to ensure the that her students feel welcome, she has a caring attitude, which enables her to develop a positive rapport with her students, and a dedication to her students academic well-being is unmatched. She strives to be a strong advocate for her students and ensure they have a positive school experience. With Ms. Lickei’s’s rapport and genuine caring for his students, her club will be a successful program at SCHS for years to come..  Congratulations goes out to Ms. Lickei for making her program a positive experience for her students.
 Event Highlight:  We are continuing our work with the state priority team, UNL EL team, DE cohort groups, with the SIG grant, and STEM through DE.  It is cumbersome at times to schedule and plan for all the groups.  But, it is worthwhile as we see growth and development of our students.
Our winter athletics and activities are coming to an end and we will begin working with our spring programs.   
 

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Warrior Academy - After-School Program Director's Report:  Ms. Bebout
Staff Spotlight:  I would like to spotlight Julie Kreikemeier!  Julie was born in West Point, Ne.  She grew up just outside of Dodge, Ne on their family farm. She lived in Lincoln while attending UNL and now lives in Columbus.  Julie has her degree in Leadership Education and her Master’s Degree in Youth Development from UNL. 

Julie works for 4-H Extension here in Schuyler and helps Warrior Academy with programing, professional development, and in many other ways.  I met Julie when I became the Afterschool Program Director six years ago.  We both started this adventure at the same time.  She has been an essential part of our programing since the beginning!  Julie teaches clubs at the elementary and the middle school.  She brings quality programming to students, usually STEM based.  The students all enjoy attending her clubs.  She also provides professional development for my high school and college age students who work for the afterschool program.  This is a necessity as they have never been trained in how to work with students.  She is always willing to work around our schedule and always has a positive attitude!  ASP would not be the same without Julie!  She also provides STEM activities during the school day in classrooms at the elementary, Richland, and Fisher’s.  Thanks for all you do Julie!!!!

K-6 Youth Sports Director's Report: Mrs. Neesen
Program/Staff Member Spotlight: Kady Arps - Through the Strategic Planning Process, it was determined that Youth Sports would benefit from having a page on the school website. Kady has been working closely with the Director and Coordinator on their aspirations for the website, and making them into a reality. Kady has been exhibiting professionalism while demonstrating her expertise in website knowledge and management. It has been a pleasure working with Kady during this process and it is greatly appreciated.

Middle School Activities Director's Report:  Mr. Banahan
Spotlight Program: My program spotlight for this month is MS Boys Basketball. We have 35 boys out for basketball this season. With 16 seventh grade boys and 19 eighth grade boys out for basketball. Currently our 7th grade A team is 1- 2 and our 8th grade team is 1-2 with both teams picking up impressive wins over Madison on 1/28 with our 7th grade winning 41-8 and our 8th grade winning 40-18. On Monday 2/1 we hosted the Scotus 8th grade teams and battled hard with two very good teams.  On Tuesday we hosted Clarkson-Leigh and both teams came away victorious, with our 7th grade winning 28-17 and the 8th grade boys winning a nail biter 40-37. On Thursday we host Aquinas for three games 7A, 8B, and 8A in the Middle School gym.

Spotlight Staff: For the program staff spotlight this month I would like to highlight our boys basketball coaching staff which led by Dana Schultz and includes Tyler Petersen , Pat Halvorsen, and Tom Nelson. They have been working extremely hard with our middle school boys to get them ready to compete each week. This is Dana’s first season at the helm of the middle school boys basketball team, and he has been helping the boys make some big strides in their game play each week. In 8th grade he is assisted by Coach Petersen, who is in his first season as a coach and has been showing tremendous growth and insight into the game for our students. The 7th grade team is coached by Coach Halvorsen and Nelson, who have been working together for sometime. They have been working really hard to get our players used to playing together, and have seen great improvement over the past couple of weeks with the guys. We look forward to seeing how the season ends up as we begin to make our final push to the end of our winter sports season. 

Spotlight Upcoming Events: Our upcoming basketball games for this week include 2/8 @ David City Public, 2/9 vs Seward, 2/11 @ Columbus Middle School, and will finish up the week 2/13 @ Fullerton for a tournament with Lakeview, Fullerton, and Aquinas.

High School Activities Director's Report:  Mr. Kasik
Program/Staff Member Spotlight:  I would like to spotlight our Speech Program.  It is led by Melanie Gustafson in  her 4^th year here.  This group of students has been working on their speeches for months and the recently began to compete.  This Saturday we will host the 3^rd annual Speech Invite at Schuyler.  Like so many activities this event has had to make a lot of adjustments to be able to compete.  Their strongest finish came at their last Invite at Scotus with a 3^rd place finish.
Person Spotlight:  Cori Vavricek is my spotlight person.  Cori, along with the rest of our Nursing staff have done a phenomenal job of keeping our staff and students safe during these times. She handles all of our contact tracing and reporting, which has become a full-time job this year.  Thanks for all that you do.
Upcoming Events:  As I mentioned earlier, we are hosting our own Speech meet on February 6^th and we will be hosting a District Wrestling meet on February 13^th.  We are also hosting a District Welding event for FFA on February 27^th.  There is a lot going on this month.
 

High School Student Services Director's Report:  Dr. Lefdal
Program Spotlight/Teacher Spotlight:  I have the privilege of supervising and coaching Kara Blase.  This is Kara’s first year at SCHS and she has brought a ton of expertise and compassion to our district.  Kara is part of our EL program at the high school and has stood out as one of our top teachers.  She has always been willing to try new lessons, always challenges our students to be better learners, and is continuously working on developing the whole child.  She has been an amazing asset to our school!
Notable Topics:  I continue to be impressed with the discussions that are taking place between our priority team, KLK, and NDE representatives.  These meetings have been thought provoking and challenging, and I feel they will continue to make us better as a school.
Looking ahead:  I am excited to see how our students do on the ELPA21 test.  Testing starts February 9th in our school.  Mrs. Zavadil and I have been working with our students who are listed as LEP (Limited English Proficient), and we feel students are excited to take the test and are willing to give it the best effort this year.  We have also worked on developing individual plans for each of these students and we believe that mapping out a plan for each student will help them visualize a path toward graduation.

Special Education Director's Report:  Mrs. Vrba
Spotlight Program/Staff Member:  Doreen Gibbons started the 2020-2021 school year off with one of the most challenging students that we have had in awhile at SES. Last year, this little learner had an one-on-one para-educator with him at all times which really didn't address his Kindergarten classroom behaviors. This year, he is with Doreen and her co-teaching partner, Jodi Brabec, all by himself. These, two, teachers did a lot of brainstorming, meeting with colleagues, reaching out to others for any helpful suggestions, meeting with parents and I even think at one point, Doreen was ready to throw her resignation at me. This little guy has done an absolute 180 degree turn around with making his academic and his behavior choices. Every time I am in their classroom, I am totally amazed at his development and his evolution into becoming a "normal" first grade student. Doreen worked relentlessly day in and day out to build a relationship with this "little person"...her worked paid off because now he says "I love you, Mrs. Gibbons!"...all the time and will try to do anything for her! (Footnote: Most of the time that is!)
A special note: Our SCS's Special Education department would like to publicly share a heart-felt thank you to the Colfax ARC Organization! We received a gift of $1,600. to use for various materials/supplies in every one of our school buildings' SPED program.

Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment Director's Report:  Dr. Gibbons
Spotlight Program/Staff Member:   I’m putting a spotlight on Kim Powell. Kim is our data steward and runs our student information system, Infinite Campus.  She is also our main registrar for the district.  When we adopt a new program, Kim is responsible for connecting the data in Infinite Campus to that new program.  For example, we recently adopted a program called Schoolzilla.  It helps us quickly analyze data.  To get it to work, Kim needed to work with them to map Infinite Campus data into Schoolzilla.

Spotlight Upcoming Events: 

•  As part of the School Improvement Grants, the NDE has partnered with a company called SchoolKit to provide schools with professional development regarding unfinished learning and accelerating learning for students that have missed due to the covid situation.  We were able to choose either the math or language arts pathway so we are working with our Math team.  They will meet on the following dates.

  • January 20, 2021

  • February 24, 2021

  • March 24, 2021

  • April 21, 2021

  • May 2021 (End of year presentations)

• This year, state testing will take place during the following dates:

  • ELPA 21 - February 8 - March 19 (English Language Proficiency Assessment - given to all EL students).

  • NSCAS Assessments - March 22 - May 7 (All students in grades 3 - 8; Math, Language Arts and Science for 5th and 8th grade)

  • ACT - April 6 (All students in the 3rd year cohort; juniors)

• There are changes occurring in the state assessments so this year is being considered a pilot and will not be considered for accountability purposes.

Rationale:  Program/Staff Member Spotlight:  Ronnie Mundil is currently in his 41st year as an employee of Schuyler Community Schools.  Several years ago, the positions of facilities and transportation directors were combined into one position, Director of Facilities and Transportation.  Ronnie provides oversight of 20 maintenance and custodial staff responsible for cleaning and maintaining over 90 million dollars of buildings and grounds and over 2 million dollars in vehicles and maintenance equipment.  Ronnie is also responsible for managing purchasing of equipment, furniture and maintenance supplies for all buildings in the district.  All buildings and transportation fleet are on a maintenance plan and budget schedule that is reviewed and adjusted annually to make sure maintenance and upgrades are completed in a timely manner.  All buildings and transportation data information is transparent and is entered into a computer system and available on the district webpage for the public to access.  Thank you Ronnie for your commitment to our school and community.

Program/Staff Member Spotlight:  Paul Dirkschneider is currently in his 16th year as the district's maintenance engineer.  Paul is responsible for maintenance on all electrical, plumbing, and HVAC systems in the district.  In addition to keeping all systems going, Paul takes great pride in his work to reduce costs in for plumbing, lighting, and electrical projects and is always willing to support snow removal, construction projects, and maintenance on equipment.  Thank you Paul for your dedication to Schuyler Community Schools.

Additional Considerations
1.  Scooters Gift Cards:  Lonnie and Patti Kitt have provided 300 Scooters gift cards to all staff in appreciation for their commitment to our school and community.  Thank you to Lonnie and Patti Kitt for their continued generosity. 

2.  School Board Appreciation:  In February we celebrate School Board Appreciation week for your work and dedication to our students, staff and community for your work and dedication as school board members.  We appreciate your commitment and work to guide our district and the leadership demonstrated through your work as school board members.

3.  COVID-19 Report:  Attached is the last COVID-19 Report as of 2/5/2021.  We continue to have no staff out on protocol or with positive tests.  As of Friday, we had 3 positive students and 27 students out on. protocol due to exposure.  Even though the State has moved into GREEN, we remain with our current ORANGE protocols for school and with the more restrictive NSAA guidelines.  See attached report.

4.  2021 Legislation:  Attached below are the bill summaries provided by NCSA for the 2021 legislative session.  The NASB, NCSA, GNSA, and NRCSA are all extremely active in recruiting continued testimony and input on all legislation affecting schools.  You may want to pay particular attention to school funding, mental health, and early childhood bills affecting schools.  See  attached bill summaries or go to the Nebraska Legislature site for a full copy of proposed legislation. 
https://nebraskalegislature.gov/bills/search_by_date.php?SessionDay=2021
 

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1.  February Foundation Meeting:  Due to new website coming line, the February meeting information is linked under EXPLORE on the district website.