March 18, 2016 at 4:00 PM - Superintendent's Weekly Update to the Board of Education

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Mary will have the five year financial projection model ready for presentation on Monday.  She is still working on fine tuning the details.  Reviewing it with her this morning it looks positive!  We are projected to be a little over our fund balance goal in the upcoming FY17 and FY18.  This does include the addition of the technology integration position, adding another .5 FTE for a social science teacher, and adding another custodian..  

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LSI Corporation of America was awarded the cabinetry contract in the construction project.  They have gone out of business to many peoples surprise.  Fortunately for us they were bonded properly and the district will NOT have to pay additional dollars to the second highest bidder.  

The difference between the first and second bids will be covered for us.  The same is true for all of the other awarded contracts for other companies.  This is one of many reasons why you hire a construction management firm like Winkelman.

In the board packet we have two motions the Royalton School Board needs to approve.  This is all legal language and process under the guidance of our school law firm.  We are not the first nor only school district this has happened to.  Our law firm has already processed one of them for another school district.        

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I have it in the board agenda to approve the elementary school bids.  We need to do this immediately if we're going to complete the project this summer.  The short version is it takes weeks for the state to approve the plans, etc.

If my memory serves me right we have approximately $425,000 set aside for the elementary school.  Winkelman is still waiting on someone's bid to be returned before sending me the list.

It doesn't look good.  Chris from Winkelman said we're already at $550,000.  This does include items in the lunchroom that will need to be taken out.  I'm really hoping we can keep the front entry office and bathrooms under the $425,000.  The cost of business has gone WAY UP.

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We have talked about a district-wide technology integration person for a few years.  I now feel comfortable recommending to add it as the latest additions of improved opportunities and academics for our students.  Please see attached a job description for the position.

The position will be on a similar at will contract as the Gifted, Talented and Enrichment teacher.  It will be different in that it's a full-time position for 205 working days.  The position is nonunion and can be terminated with 30 days notice.  The salary and benefits will be comparable to that of a Masters degree teacher with up to 4 years experience. 

Description: 
Our Human Resource/Payroll Director will be going on maternity leave this May.  Kelsie and Mary first asked our secretaries if anyone is interested in being hired for the summer.  We did not have anyone interested.  Kelsie contacted various places about hiring an intern and that didn't work either.

After trying different avenues Kelsie asked me if my daughter Abby would be interested in a temporary summer job shared with Michael.  I told her I'd ask and she is.  The reason why two people are needed is because of the summer document scanning project we have in store.  We've been putting this off for a number of years now - too busy.

Please see below an explanation from Mary.  I also encourage you to visit with Kelsie if you have any questions about how and why her position will be split up among two temporary workers.  Please know they will not be paid HR/Payroll salary.  Instead the pay will be lowest of the lowest paid secretary.    

Hi Jon, attached is the proposal we received from Ricoh to do our scanning and document storage. The cost to hire this out is $9,857, and only includes their labor and project management fees.  It’s actually a cost savings to hire someone and have them work in-district to do this.  We can hire someone for the majority of the summer, full-time at a cost of about $6,863, a savings of almost $3,000.  They would be paid at the secretary bottom step, $12.40 per hour increasing to $12.65 per hour July 1.  There would be no benefits for a temp position.

There are 2 pieces to this proposal.  One full-time hire is Kelsie’s sub.  The other is the full-time temporary scanning work.  We have come up with a detailed plan of how all of Kelsies duties will be split over the summer between these two positions and current district staff.  We chose to split up the duties in the way presented because we feel having a person scanning full-time would be very monotonous. 

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With anticipation of girls basketball parents coming to the board meeting on Monday, I emailed a few procedural questions to Cathy Miller at MSBA.  I also asked her for the MN statute referencing closed meeting for supt. evals.  Please read through our email conversation and open the related attached documents.

Description: 
Kevin Gadacz called Brent Lieser requesting the district's support in the Club paying Paul Blombon for the additional hours he worked as the strength and conditioning coordinator in summer 2015.  In addition, the Club wants the district to write a statement that no MSHSL rules were violated.

Please see attached the letter Brent intends on mailing Kevin and the Royals Wrestling Club.  
1.  "Upon reviewing the weight training student log, it appears that there were not any MSHSL violations."  It does NOT appear that Paul only worked with wrestlers.  It appears there were male and female students from all sports.  This is good! 

2. " It is the position of the district that the individual is not be compensated for his services after four hours per day as this was the agreement before the program began."  Paul, Brent and I had an understanding Paul was to work and be paid for four (4) hours each day.  We find out in the last several weeks Paul worked an additional four (4) hours each day with the promise to be paid by the Royals Wrestling Club.  This is NOT good.   

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Please see attached the most recent copy of floor and site plans for the MS-HS and Early Childhood.  You will also find them blown up very large and posted in the MS-HS and elementary hallways. 

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Please see attached a document with confidential personnel information.

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Please see attached the weekly bills for your approval.