El Dorado listed in Best Schools in America

The El Dorado Springs R-II School Board met Thursday, Oct. 11 in the High School Library with all present: Chad Whitesell, Bennie Brower, Mark Burley, Terri Shepard, Josh Floyd and Greg Beydler, along with Superintendent Mark Koca and School Board Secretary Tonia Molz.

Supt. Koca announced that once again El Dorado Springs is listed among the Best Schools of America in U. S. News and World Report magazine.

In his construction report, Supt. Koca said, “We had a construction meeting yesterday and things are happening out there. They are out there painting stripes on the floor as we speak. That should be finished by Tuesday morning. So that’s some good new.”

“Wayne and his crew should be back tomorrow to start the final painting. They’ve got a cleaning crew in here cleaning the building up.”

“We are kinda concerned about the floors right now. They don’t really match my image of how they should look.  There are footprints in the floors. And cracks in their machine. So we are going to be fighting with those guys a little. What we’ve got is not what we speced. “

“You notice that they’ve done some seeding out here. “

“All the concrete work is done. The guy who’s supposed to caulk all the cracks between the concrete was here today, but he’s got a lot of work to do yet.”

“Everything is coming to closure here. I don’t think we will a have any trouble making the date for the junior high basketball tournament.”

“The architect said we are probably going to get a pretty good amount of money back on the contract for all the forced amounts we had that we didn’t have to use.”

“I’d say this Construction At Risk was probably the best thing we could have done. It gave us the ability to negotiate with Branco and no have to go to the change order table. It’s just been pretty good. It’s worked really good for us this time. I’m really glad we went down that road.”

“We are looking at an open house the second full week in November. We thought about having it in conjunction with the Veterans Day assembly. That would be on Monday, the 11th. That’s not set in stone. Just an idea we are kicking around. “

“Things are going well. Building looks great. “

“While we had the gym guy here today, I grabbed him and took him up to the High School gym. He pulled some material back on the edge of the gym. He said, ‘You guys bought the Cadillac floor. This is full inch maple. There is half an inch of wear on the floor before it gets down to the tongue. You’ve got three or four sandings left in this floor.’ So that is really good new.”

“I’m probably going to put an RFP out real soon to refinish that floor.”

“The elevator passed inspection. We are waiting on the company to come back and train us on how to use it before they will turn it over to us. The issue is: if it is operated incorrectly the system will lock out and it requires a service call to unlock it.”

Supt. Koca said the School Board needs to meet with the City Council about the School Resource Officer. He said, I feel we really need for it to be a commissioned officer otherwise all you’ve got is a security guard.”

The board also said that if the SRO is sick, the city could fill in with another officer, which would not happen if the school went with an SRO on its own.

The board asked Supt. Koca to arrange a meeting between the board and the council.

The board approved the FY 19 budget amendment as presented.

The board approved the Food Service financial report.

The board will put out for bid property insurance coverage.

The board reviewed the Catapult Summer School Program.

The board declared an old freezer as surplus property to put out for bid.

The board donated some old bleachers to the Youth Fair as requested.

The board adopted a procurement plan for the Food Service.