Board approves school calendar

The El Dorado Springs R-II Board, at its regular March 7 meeting, a week earlier than normal to avoid spring break, held a hearing as required by law to approve starting school more than 10 days before the first Monday in September then approved the 2019-20 school calendar with a starting date of Aug. 21 and the final day, barring snow days, May 20.

The board president presented a plaque to Vice President Greg Beydler in recognition of his 13 years of service on the board (four years previously then nine in the last stint).

Superintendent Mark Koca introduced the new school resource officer, Cedar County Deputy Joshua King, to the board. There were accusations in jest that Deputy King had paid the various administrators for the praise they gave him in their interviews with the Sun newspaper. He took it all in stride and agreed with them.

All board members were present: Chad Whitesell, Benny Brower, Mark Burley, Terry Sheperd, Josh Brower, Greg Beydler and Darrell Eason – presiding. Also present was Nathan Murry who is unopposed for the seat Greg Beydler will vacate.

The board went out into the High School foyer to view three seats proposed for the upper gym. They decided on one and will get the exact pricing.

In closed session, the board rehired the certified staff. The board accepted resignations from Mike Durnell – activities director, Derek Scroggins – weights and coach, Amy Scroggins – Chemistry and Physics, SuAnn Lundy – Elementary, Justin Pflug – computers and coach and Randy Bland – part time in school detention.

Greg said, “I’ve been on nine years this time and I’ve really enjoyed it. I think we done some good things for the school and I think we have a good school board.”

The journalism class gave an audio – visual presentation to the board on the journalism program.

The board approved the transportation count and mileage report. Riders went from 695 to 691.

The superintendent presented a budget revision which the board approved. He said, “Right now I’m showing a budget surplus maybe as much as $300,000. Based on these numbers we are projecting ahead to next year to see what we can do salary-wise. All-in-all we are in a little better shape than I had hoped. Which is good news. A lot of that, we haven’t spent as much of the bond money as I though we were going to spend. I said that wrong. We spent all of the bond money. We didn’t spend a lot of the extra money I thought we were going to have to spend alongside of that.”

Food service – Supt. Koca said food service has lost about $38,000+ this year to date with 3 1⁄2 months left to go.

“I will work very hard next year to be sure to get the Elementary Building in next  year. I think they will qualify, but I don’t think Middle School and High School will. I think maybe we can provide free breakfast and paid lunch. We’ll do that if we can. It’s one thing to lose a little bit of money but when it gets to be a teacher’s salary, that’s getting pretty serious. The good news is that it is not hurting us too much because of those excess food services balances, but I think this is the year I’m finally going to get a handle on that and get it under the threshold where we are not getting hassled about those excess balances. That’s been a problem eight years in the running and I’m going to be glad to be done with it.”

Construction report- “We had our final inspection a week ago. A few things on the punch list yet, most of them are cosmetic in nature. We still have some issues with the heat in the stairwell over there, not being very even floor-to-floor. They have some ideas they are going to try there. We are going to swap out some thermostats for better control especially the ones in the lower gym.”

Beydler asked if all the thermostats were tied together. Supt. Koca said, “All except the two gyms. The reason is the thermostats we bought to control the rest of the building not sophisticated enough to control the new units in that gym with the dehumidification circuits they have in them so they are going to have kind of a stand alone system in there for just those two. Everywhere else will be all the same.  Part of the problem is I pushed them too hard toward getting them all the same and they tried to make it work and it didn’t. Part of that is on us as well. The good news is we have a plan how to fix it.”

“I should mention that the seniors wanted the new building on their diploma cover. So we took a picture and sent it to Josten’s. They did a black line drawing of it and it’s sharp. It looks good. It’s going to be a nice looking diploma cover. The seniors are going to be real proud of that.”

“Financially, I’m down to $41,000 left in our bond money so it’s just about all gone. Interest earned on the bond funds to date is $84,575. I feel really good about that. I did a lot of monkeying around with that trying to squeeze a few more bucks out of that and it seemed to work pretty well. Right now our balance to finish including retainage is $145,784. Right now we are probably going to have about $55,000 shaved off the top of the contract because of construction at risk. The architect said something about $75,000 but I wouldn’t try to hang a horseshoe on that. That will get it down to about $100,000 owed.”

“We have spent about $123,000 on furnishings. We’ve probably got about $23,000 left to spend. We have not bought volleyball standards and nets for the lower gym.”

“The juniors decided to hold prom here at school this year. They haven’t done that in awhile. They will have it in the High School gym. They will go right from that to the after prom activities which will be on campus as well.”

As his final act, Greg Beydler made the motion to adjourn.