001Are you taking the boys hunting? No more boy trips, huh? Addie's like, "Am I going to go?" I was like, "Nope." Now, you want to buy your plane ticket? And she said, "Nope, I don't want to do that." So they will leave and we go travel around with down south with our parks and then we'll fly out Friday June 18th 19 she's in state school is probably I don't know yeah 15 She leaves Germany on the They're her school teachers. Yeah. So they stay down the road or up the road. that goes off. I know I don't have show come back in a few weeks. come back. Well, that's not cool. Is that when you're going to Africa? No. Oh, okay. No, I have I have other commitments. Oh, okay. Well, does Tyson have commitments
002that age? Yes. Oh, is it hunting? Shed season opens. I knew it. It would come to you. You just got to give it a little bit. Yeah. Priorities. Priorities. So, they go out and look for the antlers to fall off of like the deer. Scott told me it's a national. So this is Jiren Dennis. He's head of [Music] head of director of technologies but also facilities. So they're from Germany. They're Rey's teachers, English teachers. You wonder where Remy is on her spring break. She's on the island of Cit in Greece. Really? Yes. That sounds really rough. I know it's rough. Yeah, that's where she is right now. Want to set it up? Hi, how are you? I met your son the other day. Yeah, Joe. Well, he's Oh, he was out visiting with Dustin and
003I was like, "Hey, I need help moving this furniture and that furniture." He was like, "Okay, I did. I totally went to work." So, this is John Williams. He's a financial officer for the school district. This is Sabrina. Thank you. She's from Germany. did that state. And then this is also from So they came over here for their spring break and stop. They're Rey's teachers. So they're going to be a part of the exchange that we're trying to get started for them. [Music] I don't know if you're going to ski, but you want to go skirt. at home already. So, it's usually shut down. Yeah. Yeah. First of April is he got this far. It might be Three resorts right there. And unfortunately, it's not as cheap as Yeah, we looked up one day prices
004and then you got to rent your equipment on top of that. was very starting crazy. Wow. Especially [Music] Wow. Wow. Amazing. Well, I guess anyways. So, did you get you want the laptop? Hi, Sher. Hey, how are you? Good. How are you? Good. Good. We're all ready for you. That's awesome. I'm so sorry. This is very possibly. still It [Music] is very [Music] Okay. So I was walking back here. [Music] No worries. All right. I didn't have to Okay. [Music] That's fine. [Music] Heat. Heat. Okay. Well, I'll try to remove before I [Music] leave. Okay. There's this huge on the regular every stand right Okay. They don't Do you have a lot of my Please not. So every John, how many people watch 10 people? There's more people in here than I watch some on
005a really good day. really cool. I don't think my presentation And I'm trying to think she said there was still I think for any events in town where you can safely the Yes. That went back. [Music] I don't know here and here. Okay. So, [Music] Yeah. State levels. Let me just discuss procedures. So usually it's nice. could have I'm not saying, but they do Heat. Heat. Jesus Yes. I think I filled it out right once. Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh. Oh, that's crazy. page for All righty. I think we are all here. So I would like to call to order the Uni County School District number one board of trustees board meeting. I need a motion to go into set meeting. So moved. Second. I have a motion. I have a second. Any discussions? All in
006favor say I. I. Any opposed? Eyes have it. We are in uh school board meeting. Uh please rise and join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. If you're not from the United States, you're excused from Oh, I was supposed to watch to see if you stood or not. Did they stand? Yes. Really? Awesome. Thank you. Really? Yes. Welcome to the United States. I need a motion to approve tonight's uh uh agenda as presented. So moved. Second that motion. Any discussion? All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Eyes have it. Motion carries. The agenda is approved. I need a motion to approve
007the consent agenda items A minutes B payment of bill C approval of contracts for certified staff and D student uh uh privacy CIPA and FURPA COPA compliance. So moved. I have a motion. Second. I have a second. Any discussion? All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Eyes have it. The consent agenda has been approved. We will now move on to our presentations. Chairman Peterson, members of the board, I'll introduce Marty uh Woodward and she can introduce our visitors. So, come on up and welcome chairman of the board and board members. I am Marty Woodward. Um and today we have um two ladies who have traveled here from um Germany on their spring break. And what part? Um how do you say the state name? Terrenia. Terrenia. Terrenia is the state near uh what new
008house in M Remag is where they they are school teachers um in school. They teach English and then they teach a whole other bunch of other things. So it's not just a one subject. They participate in a lot of subjects. Um on the left is Lisa and um she is Rey's English teacher, Remy Woodward. So Brian and my daughter and then this is Sabrina and I cannot pronounce her last name. She is also teaches Remy in school English and some other subjects. So they are here to kind of just present to you an idea that we have of doing an exchange between our high school and their school in Germany. Um it would be a twoe exchange where our kids would go over there participate in school for a week and then spend another week
009traveling around visiting the local um culture and learning about Germany. um and how they live and and um anything else that's exciting. So um they would in turn send students over here who would go to our high school for a week and then tour around um the area to see what how we live. So very different. Even they said today they've went out um with Brian and and toured around a little bit of a county and they're like this is nothing like what we were used to. So um they are going to show you a quick video of the school um which Remy is attending right now and tell you a little bit about um their thoughts on this idea that we hope can come to fruition soon. So thank you. Thank you. Um, thank
010you very much for the introduction. Um, I'm Lisa Paul. I'm Rey's tutor teacher and English teacher and Sabrina's my colleague. And we want to show you a bit about the school first and then yeah talk about our ideas that we have and that we have come up kind of together with Remy actually. Um, and we also participated in a school exchange with the United States when we were students which is which has been a while ago. Um but we thought it was very beneficial. So we wanted to come here for our holiday and also use the chance to present our idea um yeah to you guys. Fore compent. Fore in the gardener workshop. So, we tried to put in some English subtitles because um it's currently in the process that we also have it in
011English, but it's not done yet. So, we hope you understood everything. Okay. So, our school actually has an interactive kind of um walk around um that you can do online. Um it's available for everybody. Um we are a small rural high school um grades 5 to 12 um which is the standard in Germany for high schools. We have about 450 students um in the southern tingia which is just north of Bavaria and um yeah the school serves a lot of little villages. There's no bigger city around um so yeah um the most important thing of our school is basically we are a very digital school which is not that normal yet in Germany. Um we have been teaching kids with iPads and we have tablet classes. So every student um works with some kind of
012digital um device and um we try to expand that even more. We also try to um include digital things in our normal everyday lessons um which I tried to do in the English lesson in last October. I think we had an online meeting with Mr. Woodward um my English class at Remy and he talked a bit about how life in the US is because it's also in our curriculum for 11th graders. Um that's just one example of how we try to um integrate that all of that and also cultural um things in our yeah in our everyday lessons. Yeah, if I could interject here, I'm hoping I represented us well because it was like 2:30 in the morning, our time that we had this Zoom call, but we had a wonderful conversation with with the
013the teachers and the students in the classroom and and we were able to exchange some information and some ideas. They were incredibly interested in our election process, which was kind of in the heat of the moment at that time. And so, uh, yeah, they they they had a a a great system there for us to have a a digital communication back and forth and and it was a great experience. Yeah. The students also enjoyed it very much and they gave me some feedback that they really appreciated that we could make this work even though it was in the middle of the night for you. Appreciate it. And and the other part was is that it wasn't just me. There was we had another person on the Zoom call that was uh uh Brigider General Max
014Stitzer from the Pentagon was a part of that as well. So in our little online presentation, we could also give you the link afterwards. Um you can see all of our school, all of the subjects we teach, um a little bit about sports at our school. Um and we want to show you um yeah that's that's the whole school area basically we have a big gymnasium um we have a big sports area for outdoor sports and then we have the school building itself uh which was built in 1993. So um yeah it's quite big. It was built for around 900 students. We just have 250 at the moment. Um, so there's, yeah, lots of space for also learning outside of the classroom as well. Yeah, we appreciate um that you give us the chance to
015show our school. So there is lots of different things going on obviously, but we want to focus on the international um kind of part. Um, we could give you the link afterwards to the digital presentation. Um, and so you are free to click on everything. Um, we try to keep it as updated as we can. Um, and it's translated automatically. So, sorry if not everything is completely right in English kind of way. Um, but we try our best. And now, um, Sabrina will talk a bit about our international things that are going on at the school and our idea for the exchange. Yeah. So uh first of all thank you very much for having us here today. Um we really appreciate the chance to to speak a bit about our school and as my colleague
016said um I would like to talk about our international things that we do at our school because um we are actually a school that often does u yeah that often does international work because we think that it is very important that our students do not just learn the culture from the books or out of the classroom. So um but they should also get out into the world and they should experience different cultures and they should experience different things that they are not used to. Um so this is one of the the goals that we have in our school next to the digital um things that we do and um as I said I would like to talk about a bit of the the things that we do in our school. So we have different exchanges
017and different um opportunities for our students. Uh for instance, we often do a ski course in Austria with um smaller ones in class 7 and then also the bigger students in in class 11. So, um, as you could probably see, our school is, um, in an area we where we have snow or sometimes even lots of snow, but we also take our students, um, to to visit, uh, different skiing areas, for instance, in Austria. So, this is one part of our school and Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that we also um linked some video so maybe if you get the chance to have a look at the presentation you can also see our kids screen. Um another uh important thing that we do is we often do study trips around Europe. So we
018have different partners in um France. We often um go with our ninth graders to Paris so that they can practice their French a bit. um since I I would say like four 4 months or for 2 months or 2 months ago we um had the chance to to get another partner school in France. So um they have been visiting us and we have been working together with them um digitally and so this is a very um important thing that we think that we can have different schools across Europe. We often visit uh Great Britain in order to practice English of course with our students. Um so we have been going to London. We have been going to to Scotland and this is always beneficial for our students to become a bit more fluent in in
019English because they will need it. Um we have a lot of different companies around our school campus and they are also um yeah they work internationally and so that is very important for our students to to practice English and to be very fluent in that. So those are the trips that we take to Great Britain. But we also did um different trips for instance to Italy to Rome. Um we also do different trips to Poland in order to um do historic projects. Um so the German history and Polish history they are close together and they are connected together. And so this is also important that we remember about the history that we have and that our students learn about the history that we have. So those are the projects that we currently do. And as
020we said um maybe there is the chance that we can also do another exchange again with America because we have been doing that until 2009. Uh we had a partner school in Basika and it was always beneficial for our students to go there to see the culture of America to speak to the people there um and to learn the about their way of life. And so this is um just a chance that we would like to take and um the other way around. It would also be um a chance maybe for your students to see how Germans live to see what traditions we have, what festivals uh we have and yeah just to see our everyday life. So that would be a pleasure um and a great honor to put together that happen at some
021point. I didn't know about that. Yeah. So if you have any questions Yeah. Um we're open to anything you want to know from us. Um it has been a pleasure teaching Remy actually. Um it's my first American student in a classroom. Uh it's been I thought it was going to be challenging but she was just immersing in the culture and the kids were just taking her in. So I was like we would also like to keep her. Well, let's talk. That's up for discussion. So there's all sorts of questions that have just been kind of going through my head a little bit. I mean, how do you see this working on the exchange? What time of year? Um, do they have to have any kind of obviously Remy didn't have German background when she went
022over zero zero going over there. Um, uh, the financial side of it, is it up to the parents who's going to select the individuals who are going to go cuz maybe end up with 20 or 30 kids decide they want to go, you know, and so is there going to be a committee with it? I I love the idea. I really do is there's just some really fine points. So, how does it work with France, you know, when you exchange with them or where you were exchanging with the United States before, is it a specific time during the year that you guys exchange and then then I guess just for the twoe period going back and forth it would be nice to learn c culturally um uh you know from from you guys too. So,
023so language wise they don't really need to have any German. Um our kids are live in English and um most parents are too. Um when we did it as students, my dad doesn't speak a word of English and it somehow worked as well. So um kids always find a way to communicate and then there's always the teachers who can help when there are some problems arising. Um uh when it comes to the the time of the year, we often did it that uh the American students were coming over in let's say May up to June um so they can see the rest of our school year when projects were going on and there was just different stuff that we can um show to them. And then when our students were going over to America, it
024was mostly in September or so it depends on the holidays that we have. We've um did it for three weeks and so we did one week of school and two weeks of holidays but now we would say um two weeks yeah it should be a starting point and then um maybe yeah also the financial aspects of it I don't think it's comparable did it in 2009 and all we paid was I think €900 and that got us the whole trip for three weeks. Um I think it's a good deal not going to work anymore this way. So we thought about maybe we could cut it down for 2 weeks is fine. Um 1 week is not enough we think um because they just arrive and the trip was quite long. I think for us it
025was 18 hours to come here. Um so yeah maybe as a starting point it would be 2 weeks and then um yeah we also have to consider financial aspect. So from our side it would be that the students have to pay their way. Um but um there's always some kind of fundings through companies and stuff but currently we don't really know yet how much that's going to be. Um it's not going to be a big group. Um it's probably going to be like 8 to 10 students for the first time we do it. Um just to get it started. Um yeah. And then um what we also did is we were choosing host family so the kids could stay in and um yeah it's always a nice thing if you can be in a family
026and if you can see how how they do their daily routine and what's going on in the family. So we have been doing that with host families on both sides uh because we think that is it's a better idea than staying in a hotel and staying into the whole time because then you don't know about the culture and also the host families will volunteer to do it. So they would first of all be very interested in doing that and we always find host families. So we never had a problem that people say oh we don't want anybody. Um and then it also keeps the costs down a bit. So the student once they once they paid for their trip to Germany, they'd have very little expense while they were there. So we often do trips
027that are being funded by companies around the school. So yeah, the costs are being kept quite low for the students. No, I do like it. So you're going to head it up. I I would just like Yes, we talked about that a little bit earlier, didn't you? All in favor? Heading up the exchange student program. All favor say I accept. How how far away? Uh I used to be in the military and I lived in Reagansburg for a year and then I lived in Lober for two years uh near Hoenfells. And uh the problem that we had with my kids going to school was they had a hard time learning German because the German people wanted to learn English. So anytime we'd go into a McDonald's, we would try to order in German. And they
028they say, "You American?" "Yes." They said, "Okay, what would you like to order?" So it was real. But it was fun. It was fun. Germany was my best assignment in the 20 years I was in the military. Absolutely. The best for my family as well. Lisa was telling me earlier today that that was somewhat what happened to Remy and we kind of expected that that when they found out she was American, they would be wanting to practice their English with her. Yeah, they were so excited to practice their English with an American instead of me. Then they just kept talking English to her. But she indicated that after a period Rey's German got good enough that that kind of stopped and now they just don't speak German. Yeah. Would you say the uh idea of
029learning English is because they're more marketable in the world as a universal language? I mean, for the kids. Yeah. Not exposed to it every day anyway. They listen to music, English music. They watch English movies. They watch English more than we did when when I was 16 or 17. But um yeah, that they're usually very motivated to learn English. We don't really have to motivate them much. Um, but it would be just nice to go somewhere where you can actually like see them what they learned to help them in the real world. So, yeah. No, I really like the idea. I I I really really do. It's just a matter of of getting it going and and how to um implement it. Um, I don't think we're going to have any problems with finding housing.
030I none whatsoever. Uh there's yeah I guarantee you we will have Peterson if I may. We we have our districts had a history of exchanges in the past. Typically it was teacher driven. So we had a French teacher that uh was very motivated and and did some exchanges and they were very impressive I thought. Um we also had a teacher an art teacher that uh we did exchanges in Africa with schools in Africa which were which was really pretty cool. Um, it's unfortunate as those teachers uh get more experienced in their career, the effort was kind of lost. So, it's time to get back to that. The key would be to find someone locally that was really motivated to get involved in this and to link back. Sounds like your daughter would be a good
031good pick in that uh to help us. Um, typically in exchanges in the past, the expenses were picked up by the individual. Yeah. Um, and the timing sounds perfect. Uh, May, June is perfect for an exchange for us. I think you've got a lot of businesses here that would support those students financially. John Stone, I think, is fluent in Germany. German He's fluent in Germany. He's all over the place. German. You need someone that that was really motivated, spearheaded, that that get involved. And like I said, the teachers that have done it in the past were exceptional uh educators and cuz it takes a great deal of work to make it work. So I I'm excited. I think uh in terms of the program we offer our students, educational program, the thing that's missing is
032an international link and uh um it's not for every student, but it should be available to those students that are interested. Well, and like she was talking about, so we would we would send students over in May, but they would send students over in September. Yeah. Peterson. I think we would do it in June. June. School is out. Oh. So, as soon as school ends, they would go so that we don't interfere in finals. We don't interfere in end of year activities. It's gardening season and and we wouldn't it would just be better to finish school then they could go there for 2 weeks then come back and then start some Does that make sense? Yep. Because I know it is important that they attend school. Yeah. So what what age group are we looking
033at? Are we looking sophomore through senior on it or we going to allow seniors to go if they've already graduated? We allow them. Lisa, were you talking like 16 to 18? So for us, we would probably open it to 10 plus 10. Okay. Cuz I have to be responsible before they I don't see any problem with allowing seniors to go. Okay. I I'm just I just didn't know it. You can open it to them. I don't know if you're going to get a bunch of them. Maybe it would be cool for their trip. The educational benefit would be for the sophomores and juniors. I think correct. I agree. Would there be some sort of requirement as to you know, you got to have a certain GPA. Eligibility. I would say, you know, there's got to
034be some requirements. Eligibility. I think we do that through the activities. Yes, we do. So, Mr. O'Neal, will you be the one to approve? How's your journey, Mr. O'Neal? My grandmother's name is so I have that connection. There you go. Well, then I guess there's your there's another person on the committee committee. So, if I can make one note, uh I Google it. I didn't mean to interrupt, but Germany is always in the top 10 in education in the world. Always. especially in higher education. Many of the school students outside of Germany go to Germany for higher education. So, congratulations on that. Kudos. Kudos. No, I think I think I I don't think there's any opposition on the board at all. Do you guys at all? No. It's just a matter of of finding that
035individual to head it up and get it going and who needs to coordinate with you on our end to to make it happen. What What would be the goal as to the like the first time the first time? So you're coming in September. We need big 6'4, 240, 250 pounds or soccer. Football's getting big in in Germany right now. So the first time for our students would be June. Well, yeah, there's some logistics they're working out on their end with their state, right? Yeah. And so, but yes, probably for our students would be next year 2026. Correct. So, would you anticipate your students coming here in September, the end of this summer, or would that be too soon? I think it would probably be too soon. We had a change of government administration and currently
036they're just trying to work passport. So, a year from so it would not work out September of 2026. September of 2026. Yeah. So everything happens in 26. Yep. Okay. We can have a good time for planning and then make everything as smooth as possible. It's a long trip. It would give time for fundraising information, you know. Um it's my understanding there's some tax dollars out there that may be available. I know someone who does this in Arizona. Her kids have never paid for a trip overseas. Wow. Okay. And so I'm working with her to get that information to probably work with John Williams a little bit about that because it has to be run through a school. Yeah. Looks like the chairman. I never heard of it. What's that? The committee chairman. So to alleviate
037any cost we can. We'll do what we can to help. So I guess my question is how do we go forward from here? who's going to head it up and because I don't want this just to walk away. It won't and that's what I'm saying because we we have so you will be following through with it and the first I will represent this project for the board. I I' I'd recommend what we do is meet with the high school administration and the counselors and kick it off that way. Even put it out there anyone who might be interested in leading it like our foreign language teachers and just start that way. So, what is happening tomorrow, Marty? What is happening tomorrow? So, we're going to the high school tomorrow. Scott Poler is going to show
038them around. Okay. Um and that, you know, so then they'll have a filter for that. Brian and I leave for Germany on Friday. When they return from holiday, we will be going to their school and reciprocating and seeing what their school's like. Cool. Good. No. No. I'm excited about it. I think it's a good thing. So, yeah. We'll make it happen. Remy will not allow it to die. So, see, I tell you, put Remy in charge. Mhm. Well, Remy is active in this process already and plans to be more active. She was thrilled to discover that the exchange would not happen sim simultaneously, that she could be a chaperone for the German kids when they come. That would be great. So 2026 in June. So we could have kids going over there before we have
039kids coming here then. Yes. Okay. So we've got to work towards that then we get you some of our more Oh Remy even said, "Hey, I want to go with our kids when they go over there." Is there any is there any particular criteria that you in the selection process for the students to come here? class. It's going to depend on how many students will want to go. Um I asked in my own class and because Reggie's in that class, basically all hands went up. But um when we did it years ago, it was always about 50 students that wanted to go and everybody was able to. Um but if it's too many students with probably GPA or something, you can. Yeah, we thought about doing a short application. doing an interview. Um what their
040motivation is for going. So yeah, that has to be some sort of selection process for us. I I have a question. So when you go back, what will you tell the students that Evston, Wyoming is like when they ask you what what is it like there? What will you tell them? A lot of landscape. A lot of like white fields and stuff. We talked to Brian today and said that it's not like this or us. Uh we have towns everywhere. So it's closer together. More people. Um but everyone is so nice and a lot of hospitality and kind people. So that's basically what we say. Good. Good. All right. So I took them out by the Carter interchange today and took them up on top of a mountain and let them look in every direction
041as far as the eye could see. And there were no towns. No, no, no. We like it that way. So, any questions for us at all? Not at the moment, I guess. Okay. We will we will probably have different chats with Brian and and to get that going and um we will tell our principal at school what we talked about today. And I he's on board. He's pretty on board with it because he wants to keep it going as well. So everyone from our entrance also pretty excited. Tell him if he comes we can take him fishing. We have a pretty good fisherman in our group. Yeah. Oh Bobby Knight. How'd that work out for you? Not so good man. But it was something I can say. Thank you very much. Yeah. Yeah. Part of
042your vacation here. Yeah. Thank you. Talk to us. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too. So, is there any American food you wanted to try? They tried Diner last night. It had bacon cheeseburgers. It's Americana. So have Brian take you to Bondrios. Whatever you want. Whatever you like. Get the country cut. You're such a nice. We are. That's why you're going to do it. Nice to meet you. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. We will now move on to our operational budget presentation. Mr. Dennis, Chairman Peterson, members of the board, I would like to introduce Jar Dennis to the group. Jiren, time's yours. Appreciate that. Superintendent Thomas, members of the board. I don't know how you top that. I guess I could offer you a twoe exchange in my department. Um,
043I don't have any pretty pictures to share of the beautiful Alps and some skiing opportunities. You going to switch with me, Jiren, right now? Yeah. Yeah, I'll switch you right now. I'll switch you right now for the next two weeks. That's exciting. Um, what a great opportunity for our for our students and and for their students. What a cool cool thing. So, thank you Mr. Woodwork for that. said facilities technology department I've told everybody I'm going to try to keep this with under uh 8 minutes 9 minutes that's a minute a slide so if we can keep our questions within that time frame as well so that'll be really good um just a big shout out thank you to our superintendent to you as members of our board for all your support um with our
044facilities warehouse technology custodial um I can't stand up here and just not thank them. Each one of them do an amazing job. It's amazing how many times we'll get individuals outside of our community who come into our buildings and they'll say, "How old is this building?" And I'll say, "Well, the high school is 40 years old." And they're like, "Oh, I would have guessed that this is only a 15-year-old building." Um because our facilities do look really, really good. Um, that's not to say they don't have their little issues and problems, but these these individuals have done a tremendous job in in what they do. I know every year I kind of show you this, but I think the information is really kind of um interesting as you look at just what takes place. Um,
045just the number of paper towels, toilet paper that's used. I should have put eggs up this year, but I know that would have gone more with Sheila. Um, but there's just a lot that goes on to make a school work and not only throughout the day, but all of the activities that happen in the evening. Um, both what our school does and then our community. And so, all of the things that take place, 13,650 lbs of ice melt is put down. Um, we could probably triple that and still not have enough ice melt to try to take care of what happens in the winter and all the slips and falls. Um, looking at that, almost a million square ft is what our custodians clean each and every night. Um, it's less than 60 individuals who
046go over a million square ft. And so, kudos to them and the work that they do. 468 rooms. That's a lot of spaces. Um, and so really appreciate again their work. I know it's hard for you to kind of see this if you're looking at it from your own device. This is just a snapshot of just the work order system from both the technology and facility side. Uh on the work orders um you see that we had over 9,000 work orders created in the last year. And um of that you look at the first bar or the first pie chart there it says 51% completed. And the reason why that one's completed is because the next ones talk about maybe completed on time or after the time. So, um 20% are completed overdue, which means
047and most of our time frame for most of our work orders is about a week. Um we strive to get them done within a week, but with parts that may be needed to be ordered or waiting on other things, that's where that other percentage comes in. And so, um our staff does a tremendous job in in the completion and and the work orders that they do. this is how we're able to to follow and make sure things are going well. And so we're constantly reminding our staff, our teachers, our parents, everybody involved, hey, if there's a if you're having an issue, please do a work order because this is what happens. I remind people, I say, you know, you might find me in the hallway and have we might have a great conversation and you
048might say, "Hey, um, my heater is having some issues. Can you let the guys know? And while I'm visiting with you, knowing that I've got to go visit with Mr. Bennett two doors down, by the time I'm done with that conversation with Mr. Bennett, I've already forgotten about yours. And so work order systems are a key to being able to to accomplish the things. If not, they're unintentionally or I should say not intentionally forgotten, but things slip through the cracks. So, we always encourage our staff to do those accomplishments over the summer of 2024 into 2025. Um, we replaced the Clark gym lights, the EHS gym lights. Those were just done last week. Um, I was telling the admin team, if they haven't, um, had a chance to get up to the high school, um,
049go into the high school. You're going to be able to see everything on that floor. where it is super super bright right now with the new LED fixtures that we just put in. Did the same thing out at transportation. Um Travis didn't realize what was on the floor after we put those new lights on. He could see see everything happening there. Um as we did the big remodel at North last year, we also did their um gym lights and doing a new LED fixtures. They got a new gym floor, then went through the classrooms um with new hallway and classroom flooring, and then their office got a huge remodel um in the things that they did. The same time we had um the high school outside waterline project um that took place and that was
050in partnership with the city of Evston and has been a wonderful thing. And then we did probably about 3/4 of the uh front panels of stucco um there on the front of the um high school which I think made a dramatic difference in kind of how that that looked. Our goal is to be able to complete that project um this next summer. Um the reason we didn't do it all last summer is there's about a $50,000 asbestous abatement that we need to do. So we'll abate those panels and then we'll complete the stucco project from there. And then um did the Aspen controls upgrade which was basically the controls for their heating system. So as we look at this upcoming summer um this is just the beginnings. A lot of these were in the process
051of bidding or waiting for final projects. Um we're looking at replacing the PE lockers at Davis Middle School. We were awarded last year through the state uh component level funding and so you see DMS electrical system. This is going to be a component level state project. They gave us roughly about somewhere between $2 to $3 million to go through and do any electrical upgrades. And so we'll be looking at replacing all of their light fixtures to new LED outlets um systems um related to the electrical system. So um we've got several of our IT closets will actually move over so that they're on generated power. Um so quite extensive work that'll also include hopefully upgrade to their auditorium lights and house lights. And one thing I've asked the state to include is um the fire
052alarm system. They actually separated that out, but we're hoping that they'll also include the fire alarm system into that. So, working on that. Um just finished with the electrical engineer who came and did a walk through and we just submitted that to the state last week. Um we've got some duct work to do at Davis. Some of that 40-year-old duck work has gotten to the point where it's starting to collapse. Um so, we've got to rework that. We're working on um right now the Aspen fire alarm is with the state fire marshall so we're waiting to hear back from them. Once that has the stamp of approval we go out to bid for that. EHS auditorium lighting. Um this has been a project I've been working on since last October trying to get um individuals
053I had a group out of Salt Lake finally come up and do a walk through in January and now I'm actually been calling them every week to try to say, "Hey, I've got a carrot to deal with here. Have some money. Will you please give me your quote?" So, still working with them on that. So, we talked about the EHS stucco. Um, they're going to do a little bit of an addition to the EHS locker room with the PE. Um, working on a second timeout room. Um, Clark playground. It's the one school that doesn't have a perimeter fence around their playground. And so for safety issues, working on trying to get that taken care of. And then a roof repair at Horizon. I'm not going to go through all of these, but it just kind
054of gives you an outline of some future projects that we have. These come from the facility study that was done uh a year and a half ago and work that needs to be completed. Um they label them ones and twos. One of our big one is the EHS boiler system up there that is original to the building and um it falls under it right now scores above one and one and a half meaning that we need to get that replaced but that's a pretty big number on that. Um with that once you start doing going down that road then you've got HBAC controls which is another big number. Um, at some point we're going to have to redo the gym floor at the high school. As you can see, just lots of different projects for
055that. So, there's some future projects there. These projects are probably 26 through um the year 2030 if we can we can get through them. So, again, just kind of a list of those projects there. So, a lot going on. Um, we are never idle. always things um taking place. I know I didn't talk a lot about what's going on on the tech side, but uh with technology, there's always things um we're in mind of. The big thing for technology is really centered around all the work with cyber security. Um, and with cyber security and some of the new mandates and stuff required with that, um, there's always going to be reallocation of funds for being able to take care of some of those cyber security needs. Um, as a district, I think we've done a
056tremendous job. Um, as many as we talked a couple months ago when we had the power school incident, our staff did a great job with that. Um, the technology department worked really hard. I think we communicated really really well with our parents. I actually didn't hear a whole lot back from our community. I think that was a result of just the processes and things that we put in place with that. Um naturally every year we're replacing uh onethird of all the Chromebooks. Since we're 1 one K through 12, we replace a third of those every year. And so, um, later on in the board meeting, you'll see kind of the outline of our technology budgets. And one of those big expenses is, of course, uh, 270 to almost $300,000 just allotted for those replacements and
057the things that we're doing. So, with that, um, I will open it up to you as board members to ask any questions that, uh, you would like. Mr. Um those parking lots those figures the cost are you redoing the asphalt is the whole thing total nine yards depending on where it's at. Um I was looking at this year completing just the remainder of Red Devil Drive in the south parking lot and that bid came in at almost $480,000. Um, just Mr. Peterson can attest, asphalt is gone up. I mean, it's and there are times that we can do what's called a mill, but these ones need to be actually taken out completely. Um, have the road base recompacted, just make sure everything's good. When you have a really good base layer, things work well. When
058you don't have a really good base, all asphalt valve, do the whole nine yard. Okay, that's the middle. So, it's this winter it's expensive. Well, I imagine So, Jiren, do you uh do you have any feel of what your major maintenance budget will be for this next year? right now somewhere between two and $2.7 million because there are with legislators they did approve some additional expenses with that. We just don't know where that's going to come in. Um that was another big part of the the lawsuit as you guys are all very much aware how underfunded um major maintenance is because when you look at some of these numbers if we say you know I'm at 2.2 two. Well, that's an entire north roof. Yep. Yeah. That was last year's cost. Add another 10% 10
059to 15% and you're and you're there. So, um that's why we work with both our major maintenance component level funding. I can tell you right now we are on docket to receive some more component level funding and that component level funding will be for the roof at Davis Middle School. We'll know about that um either the summer of 2026 or 2027 and then we have about a year to go through that process. Um it's hard to plan when you don't know for sure and so we don't expend any funds until we know for sure what those are. So you have major maintenance component level funding of course then the general funding that we have um is how we take care of from the maintenance side. All right. I think we talked last maybe last summer,
060last fall about the that north or behind north and the in the road that goes there where all the trees have fallen down and you were you were working with the city at that time I think any progress. So what um Mr. Wheeler is referring to if you've been to North Elementary and been along Washington Street, there's a retention pond. Well, kind of a retention at the time it was a retention pond. And now we actually just have water flowing through that all the time. Um, it's become kind of a safety issue. And so we've started the work of being able to actually reclaim all of that area. um seeing if we could just put a covert over all of that and then resaw reclaim that to the best we are. So right now we've
061had conversations with the city currently reaching out to the state because it's going to become something that the um state's going to need to need need to be involved with um because of where that water's being redverted from. And so, um, that's probably going to be a year-long process, just going through that. But our goal is to clear out all of those trees and just make that a lot safer. Um, used to be the water just trickled through there when the canal was open, but now it seems to be that water is constantly going through there and a lot more than what used to go through there. So, so the the roof at DMS, um, how much longer can we go before you have to replace it? It's a one right now. We've done We're
062continue to do the repairs that we need to. I anticipate I could probably get another three years until we're gonna have to do something which should be about the time we get that component level funding. So chasing water questions. I know I'm not as exciting. I don't speak German. Um the we're we've been talking as a community about the rec center pool reaching its end of life. So that just made me curious of what do we have an end of life kind of timeline for our pools. That was in high school about 10 years ago. Yeah. I'm going to go back to our opening slide. Our staff has done a tremendous job of maintaining the facilities that we have. Um, we have kept up on our pools and our preventative maintenance has been much different
063than perhaps the rec center has done. And so I think that as we continue to maintain, we probably have another good 10 years. Um the biggest problems that come into pools is your filteration systems, um your pumps, um boilers. Two years last year, excuse me, last year we replaced the boiler at the Davis pool. Um, I just had the pump go out this year. Um, which was about a $12,000 pump. Fortunately, I keep one on hand and so as soon as that one went out, we took that one down to Salt Lake to get rebuilt so it's ready the next time. So, we we do a good job, but like anything, there is a life expectancy. Um the high school pool again built at the same time. Both of these pools are getting close to
06450 years old. Um we'll continue to maintain until we can't. Um and then look at some other options. I have one other question and this is something that the public sees. I don't know how long it's going on. The only reason I know is cuz I got grandkids involved. But at Aspen Fields for soccer last year, that was the biggest damn joke I've ever seen. And it was like, whose fault is it? And we couldn't get the dad gum field watered. And so those kids played on dirt and they're tough now. Tough. So I I guess you're aware of that. So my recommendation u members of the board is in May um you will have an opportunity to visit with Kim and it is the park and recreck's responsibility as part of their job to
065maintain the aspen um fields and the grass around Aspen Elementary. Of course, they blamed us for not getting the parts. Okay. You know, so we need to get that straight. So, I would I would definitely pose that question to Kim as well. I will uh I've been asked by the principal, Mr. Peterson, to do the same thing. And so we are going to continue to be upon them and say, "Hey, we need we'd like a better outcome than what we've seen the last four or five years when it comes to the care and maintenance of that." And that field gives a lot of use. A lot of us use year round. But skiing too. Yeah. I have a comment. Um points all well taken. Uh Brian and I will uh uh convey the concerns uh
066at the rec board meeting on Thursday. Good. So that uh appreciate that that absolutely because that that needs to be uh you know it sounds to me like we need to address the issue of having a situation where one party blames the other because they're waiting for something else. Yeah. No. So if if they're blaming us because they were waiting on parts, then we need to make an adjustment of some kind there so that they don't so that we don't get in that situation again. Yep. And so and I had a conversation with Kim. I said, "Never wait on parts. Call me and we'll get whatever we need, but we cannot have this go this way." Just so you know, um again, part of the agreement starting this year, um they were taking care of
067Aspen as well as the EMS football field. EMS football field. now comes under us which we're excited for. We'll begin that maintenance this spring with that and so whatever you as a board feel we need to do in that regard and I appreciate Mr. Wheeler Mr. We would taking that to the parks and recck board and expressing our concern with that. That'd be great. Okay. Thank you. Thank you to your staff. Amazing. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. We'll now move on to our discussion items. Mr. Thomas, give me a second here to fire up. While we're waiting, you know what would be really nice? There's a lot of soccer complex. What would be nice indoor? We got one indoor. Yeah, it's called the It's called the bubbles. The bubbles. No, I mean like I don't know
068some area. Where's your IT guy? Hold on. Just takes a little time. Keep breathing. [Music] Chairman Peterson, members of the board, this is going to be really quick in terms of a budget update. But what I wanted to start with is you should have all received this document from LSO school board to present it. If you don't have it, let me know. I'll get you a copy. These every year are the best summation of what happened at the legislative session and what impact it has on us. There's usually six different charts in this document. This year, there's only three um because of some of the changes that were made in the legislative session, they don't have those those documents yet. One of them is our major maintenance funding. So, it's missing, but I I think
069it's important that we show you a couple of these documents. I'm going to show you this chart. And it looks like a lot of numbers, but on the far right you'll see at the top this is external cost adjustment impact. And this is every district um and the impact of external cost adjustment. And for us we are right here at $1,740,000. Now, this is an LSO um estimate. In other words, their best guess. But we have something much better than LSO. John actually takes these figures from the 400 to 100 and he puts them into a budget that actually takes our employees with their salaries and all of our budgets and calculates and estimates where we are. Um our estimate is about 1.6, six, maybe a little bit more in terms of new money that
070will come into the the district. That's great news, especially since we were looking at half of that for the whole legislative session to come last week. So, if you take $1.6 million and you put that into a budget like we do, 85% of that would go into salaries and benefits. So, $1.3 million is available for salaries and benefits, which is exciting. Um, and that's really the starting point. There are some caveats to this that this doesn't show. One of which is we know that uh the money that we get for health insurance will be about $70,000 less than last year because of some of the games that have been played in the state. Um, so that's a little disappointing. No new money, $70,000 less for funds that we provide for health insurance. So health insurance
071is pretty critical to us. Um, by the way, tomorrow we will have our consultants that will present to the health insurance committee. You're all welcome to attend if you would like. If more than four of you are coming, you need to let me know. Um, but uh uh we've hired some consultants that have looked at our numbers and will make some suggestions uh to the committee which will help us make a decision in terms of what we offer for health insurance benefits. It's important to remember that of our $50 million budget, $7.3 million of that is health insurance. So, it's a pricey item and really dictates what we can and cannot do. Um, one of the other things, any questions about kind of the new money that we're looking at? Still estimates, but John gives
072me a lot of confidence that we know where we're so roughly we have a month before we'll do uh our meet and confer. that gives us a month to tie those numbers down and we'll also by then we'll know what we're looking at in terms of health insurance um kind of uh strategies that we use moving forward with that. So again really quick shot at the budget. I wanted to show you one other set of these charts if I could find it. It's one of these. What I wanted to show you is staffing. One of the most interesting parts of these budgets is they actually show staff for the entire state. So, this is just the bottom half of that chart and you can see here's Evston. Um, it shows 21 administrators. The reason why
073I would like to talk about that for a minute is because I'm sure you've heard because I hear all the time that we're heavy in our central administration. Um, that number is up from last year because we added a full-time dean of students at the high school and a full-time dean of students to split between Davis and Evston Middle School. So, we're up two. That was part of our strategic plan to work on behavior and uh I'm very pleased with what we got out of that additional um those additional FTES and also a value in meadows. I forgot about that FTE. Um so, but what I want to show you is if you look right above us, you can see Jackson. Jackson has roughly 150 more students than we do, but they have more administrators.
074Better comparison is Green River. Spring River has 100 less students when we have roughly the same administrators. You look at this chart and you may say, "Well, that's that's good. We're comparable." But what really is interesting if you look where we put our money, look at the number of teachers we have, 222 for the number of students, much less at Green River with 100 few 100 less students. So, you think they'd have less, but really where we separate ourselves is general support, our support staff. Um you'll see that we have roughly 112 general and 116 um classified support. We are well staffed in terms of our support staff and and it's it's our choice and it's been a commitment I think from us. So if you look at other districts that have different kind of
075roles and different numbers, you can see how that plays out in terms of what what we put up on importance. If you walk into any of our classrooms, typically there's always two adults in there. And I think that is positive. One teacher and one typically as support. Usually there's more than that in our classrooms, but that's what these numbers are reflecting. And again, if you get into maintenance, um talked about our custodial, if you get into food service, you get into transportation, um we do put our money into our people. And that's important that you look at these numbers. And don't let anyone tell you that we're heavy in our administrative department. We're not. Um Riverton roughly smaller than us has 28 29 um administrators. So we are I think lean in that department. I
076think that's important to keep in mind as we enter meet. So how much bigger is Rock Springs than us? Um I mean uh they've got more administrators, but I'm just wonder is their district that much bigger? Yeah, they are. So here's here's Rock Springs. Oh, Rock Springs was on the other page, right? Yeah, they had 35 4700 students. Here it is. 47 26 almost double kids. They got 1500 kids in high school. So Rock Springs has 5,400 kids. Wow. So they are much bigger than us. And if you notice their staffing is way down. It's not because they choose to do it because they can't staff their positions. So interesting differences in our business. That's another important fact is we are unique and the way we manage our employees, the way we manage our budgets
077are unique to us because of the needs and the priorities we establish. So that's really the budget update. Um, uh, one of the things you've probably I think I've committed gifts, maybe I haven't, but last year we worked on support staff salary schedule. Took us a couple years to, I think, get it the shape we wanted it. Um, this year I'm going to propose a new certified staff salary schedule. Uh, that I think, uh, will put us hopefully in the lead in terms of competition in the future. That will, uh, be negotiated. So I will meet with DEA before meet and confer and let them take a look at it. You know, kind of pick their brains what they think and then it'll be part of our meet and confer negotiations. Next year we'll have
078to look at administrators salary schedule kind of the timeline that we put this in place. Okay. Any questions? Any comments about budget prep? Where did you say the memo was sent from? um should have been sent from Wyoming school boards, but uh Sherry sent it to us. Uh Dan didn't get it either. Yeah, I don't see it. I can make copies and get it to the best document they produce. Didn't Sher send it to us? No, I haven't seen it. I saw it from somewhere. Oh, did you? I thought it was either one of the school boards or someone sent it because that's all I had. Mr. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Mr. Thomas, don't get too comfortable. I won't get too comfortable. Uh we will move on to NIL. Uh members of the
079board, after kind of looking at this for a month, um really there's there's nothing new to add. Um what I assumed was a mistake. Now I'm to the point where I think our state is probably smart. Wyoming High School Activities Association is probably smart developing a policy for this. It protects schools. It protects the state. and hopefully in the long run it will protects our students in terms of the NIL. Um so this is not our policy. This is uh Wyoming high school activities. Really what I was looking for if you guys have had a chance if you have any input I know Mr. Wheeler's been in contact with some people. Um Mr. O'Neal is pretty close to this too. Do you have anything to add Mr. O'Neal? So I just have some quick facts
080for you guys. Uh there are 42 states that have NIL policies. You're one of those 42 states. Uh less than 2% uh of all high school students have some form of NIL. Less than 2% nationwide. Less than 1% actually receive cash as an NIL. And on average that that amount is between $50 and $60. And so in our state to protect us from a lot of this NIL stuff and we're going to get it. There's not a thing we can do about it. Um we have rules in place. There's it's called undue influence. And then we also have transfer rules. So, you're not going to see it in impact schools like it would in other places because because of those the rules that we have. Um, they can't be disgruntled and go to another school
081because they're going to make more money. It just isn't going to happen that way. What we see at the the college level is obviously it's an atrocity in my opinion. Amateurs played and uh the The payouts for one of those schools is about 30 or $40 million um for our amateur players. We're not going to see that for high school. $50 to $60. That's what we're seeing right now at the national level. Other than that, I really it's just insignificant. No. When I read through the document that the Wyoming High School Activities Association put together and everything that they bolded or put in red that they were adding to it, it's pretty restrictive of what they can do as far as as the NIL end of things. So, I think they got ahead of it
082and I think we're going to be in good shape. So, and that's really my recommendation is no recommendation. Just let it move forward. Okay. If if you happen to see it, uh it's not going to be coming from our school district. Obviously, we're not bending kids to play. It's just going to be a dad or a mom or aunt or uncle or grandma or grandpa, something like that. They may make a big deal about it, but it really is not coming from our school district. I mean for any school district around our state, it could be considered undue influence if that were occur. All righty. Any other questions or comments? NIL. All right. I see Mr. Williams coming to talk to us about dunning money. Dunning money. Yes. Um Mr. chairman and members of the
083board. Um 2023 uh if you were a member or if you were on the board, um Marian Dunning was the believe the lead contractor or was involved in the building of the Edmonson High School back in the 80s. He took out a a uh life insurance policy and uh he has bequeathed um at his passing a life insurance policy of 23,910 95 plus interest. I have not received any direction from his family um but other than the fact that it is uh in the other scholarship um thing. So, I'm asking the board uh to act as the proxy decision maker on what do you want to do with it? And so, I I outlined in the the memo um you you need to decide, all right, are you going to be the ones to to
084make the choice? Do you want to defer it to the high school? They have a scholarship committee and they do that. Um, do you want to direct that scholarship committee so that it is a principalbased which is the main corpus of the the body or interestbased which means hey you you you only spend uh you know you you just spend what the interest um is derived on that. Do you want to make it so that it's, you know, the class of 2025, woo, if you're if you're graduating that year, you know, you get the whole thing or do you want to spread this out? Um, so those are kind of the the ideas. So, as I seen that come forward, I I did do some thinking about it and kind of talked a little bit
085about it in the executive session. And um my thought personally, and then there were some other opinions, was I think the funds need to be extended as much as we can, but just not be interest based, right? Because we need to be able to make the the the scholarship at least somewhat uh usable, right? That it's just not throwaway money for a kid. Um, we've also talked about um, uh, who should be the recipient of it. And in my own personal opinion, and there was a couple other ones that I agree with as well, was that it should go to call it whatever you want, the Dunning attitude and effort, which would be individual kids that aren't um the ones the saludiatorans, the validictorians, the the ones that are normally getting the scholarships, but it's
086going to be those individuals that have the right attitude and the effort, but just can't get over that hump and has has put forth the effort to try to better themselves in school. The other thing that was brought up at that point was there was uh on the vocational side um of maybe going down that route and maybe going through the CTE and uh providing a scholarship on that end as well. So, we've had some discussions and I'm going to open it up to the rest of the board to maybe talk a little bit about what we discussed earlier and maybe we can come up with some kind of a I don't want to say a resolution tonight on way things were going to happen, but we can maybe vote on something in the next
087month or two. So, thank you. You you you pretty well said you know what I did for everybody I did well pretty well chairman Peterson members of the board what I'd recommend is to take the points that we've talked about um meet with the high school uh the scholarship committee kind of start laying some groundwork and on the kind of exactly the things that John indicated here the amount who uh who will decide and come back to the board and uh make a presentation as this is what the Dunning scholarship will look like in the future and who will actually select the candidates, the selection process, all the things that we have to make decisions of before we can get these scholarships out. So, do you think we should start through Bishop I mean Bishop,
088sorry, Coler? Bishop Bishop Coler and I went again. Yes, I'll meet with the high school and the the uh the counselors and the scholarship committee. They they are the experts in this. They uh who's going to contact Well, yeah. So, this is aware of Mrs. Dunning is alive, but the last I heard was that she didn't have any direction. That's what we'll do. It's kind of been a a punt. Okay, now it's to the board. And what I'm asking is how do you want to do it? you want to make the decisions or you want to say hey send it off to to scholarship whatever it just I think we kind of got a foundation of it it's just a matter of of talking with the high school at that point and and I don't
089know do we talk to to principal first or do we yeah I'll just meet with him and he'll put the group together and we'll just meet with all of them and go through it and like I said they're the experts they know the scholarships that are out there who's available how how they're picked and we'll just get that information to you and also make sure the Dunny family are aware of what we're proposing. So, you kind of know what we are looking for. So, we don't need to have anybody from the board meeting with with you guys at this point. Nope. And I'll when I get those set up, I'll make sure you guys are invited. Yeah. Okay. Again, only four. Only four. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At least. Yeah. So, thank you. Thank you.
090Okay, no more discussion items. We will now move on to public [Applause] comments. Jared Hton 234 Medicine View. Uh first apologize Mr. Thomas and uh Mr. Williams. I didn't have the opportunity last month to reach out to take you up on the offer to discuss the things from the last meeting. Anytime. But I'm definitely going to reach out. I promise. I won't speak anything more related to that until we have that conversation. I just did have a quick question because there's a lot of concerns brought up about the uh facility maintenance uh throughout the district. And so for the folks that that were here when the uh discussions about the domes came about, my question is is was that considered when these ma when these maintenance issues were coming up? And then the second question
091is is what is the life expectancy of those domes and what is going to be the yearly operating cost to keep those domes up to standard. [Music] Chairman Chairman Peterson members of the board as you know typically uh questions like that we can answer now or we can wait and respond within 30 days as our policy dictates. So we can put that those answers together and send them to you if that'll work. So I I will according to the I mean not according to but I want Mr. O'Neal to address how often are those domes used they're being used on a on a regular basis from basically 5:00 in the morning till sometimes 10:00 at night. They're being used on a regular basis not only by students but also by the community. was a community
092benefit as well. I I can't tell you how valuable those uh those two domes were during the winter time when our kids have no place to be. We we have an indoor track team of nearly 100 kids with no place to be. We chose to have indoor track as a sanctioned event in our state. Our kids participate in that. Both domes were filled with kids all winter long. our soccer teams. Um it's sort of an anomaly right now to have clean fields, place to to practice, a place to to play. Um but even with the exceptional gear, our soccer teams were in those facilities as well. Dance team at times, cheerleaders at times, wrestling team at times, basketball games being played there, um pickle ball, volleyball. We've done everything we could possibly do to to
093make sure that those facilities are used. And if you look at uh cost per student, I don't I don't I'm different than you. Um whatever it takes to give those kids an opportunity. I believe we need to provide it. We provided it. Thank you, Lord, for doing so. I don't care what it costs. I And I have no no loans at all. I don't have a single relative in this community that is benefiting from those. It's the kids of our community. If if I if I can, I echo that completely because when I was on the board and we talked about these domes, the one story that I remember that you gave us at that particular night was that you were standing looking at the football field being built and there was an older gentleman.
094I think he had a cane. Wasn't me. you don't have a key. But you if you recall, he he said, "Should have done this 20 years ago." Yeah. And and and that statement right there when I was a member of the board convinced me that the domes were the right decision because as you stated, the cost, yeah, there's a cost associated with it, but the benefit far outweighs with the students in the community completely. And I still and I still as a member of this board today still agree with that. And I'm glad that we as a board at that time said yes, let's do this. No, I don't want to beat up on you on this. I don't you know I know your opinion and and and the thing is is the thing that
095we've dealt with for the past 20 years is we are a 4A school and we are the only school at the 4A level and 3A level that does not have an auxiliary gym to put kids. The only one. So, the ability to bring in those domes and be able to put those kids, 125 kids running up and down our hallways in our high school was not good for the high school, not good for their shy, and not good for the carpet. So, we had to go after a facility that was going to allow the optimum space for kids to be able to go into and be able to to participate. How many kids do we have? 80 75%. 75 80% of our kids are involved in extracurricular activities. And I would just say we tried
096to pass a bond to build field. Yeah, that that old house will be in terms of square footage these two dogs and obviously I don't know that I don't know if that's going to happen or not. And I know this every single day our kids as long as they stay up keeping their place for our kids. So that's just my thought. I'm not I'm not going to put you down at all. What I'm saying is what it means to be personally for our kids. Thank you. Mr. O'Neal, I have a question too. When you experienced contact with other coaches and people from not in Evston. What were some of the comments that came from other people that came here that saw what we had? Very jealous. Every single I gave many tours during the fall.
097I wasn't supposed to last year, but I did. Um, and they were all impressed with what our kids had. Every single one of them said, "Let's bring our school over and let them see what you have." Nearly every school in Wyoming should have just because of the environment we live. We're in a unique situation, especially in the western side of the state. We usually have snow stacked on football stadium. I I can't recall. Maybe you can help me, Jiren. What would the cost have been for a brick and mortar structure of that square footage? $30 million something like that. Yeah. If we Yeah. For that facility that was off top for 22. Yeah. The fieldhouse we went for was 22 million but that included our money our contract. Yeah. It included remodeling the football field
098too and that was 3.5 million which we were able to do anyway. And so really you're talking about a 17 $18 million facility that again the square footage would have been reduced and and I guess the other thing the bonding side did not work for us and so we we we needed to go another route to be able to provide this for our kids and that's that's a very important point. The bonding didn't work for us. We tried to do it through the community. those needs for those kids didn't go away just because the bond wasn't successful. So the board administration had to find another way to fill those needs. So now I thank you. I do appreciate I do not as well and also going back to that field house the and I don't
099know how the community feels about the guns but when I when I look at the field house you guys were asking hey we need this are you willing are you willing to spend the money to do it? You were told no, but because you felt that that need was there, you went and you did it anyway also. So, I'm looking at it from that aspect as well. Once again, I'm not sure how the rest of the community feels about. I'm not saying I'm not saying that they don't provide a benefit to the kids or the community. I I fully believe you when you say that. Um, but like I said, that being said, I I have the problem when it comes to we're just going to throw money at this because, you know, we feel
100like because we feel like it's going to be a benefit, not fully understanding what the full cost of going to be, especially with the economic times we're in right now. And I understand that that you guys won the lawsuit against the Long Department of Education. From my understanding, that's being appealed. So that's not still 100% guaranteed yet. So may I interrupt you? Absolutely true. So what do you want us to do? Do you want us to take the domes down? Nope. I'm I'm simply I I I don't understand the question. Well, let me explain it to you. We'll get there. Well, you you've had a chance and haven't done it yet. Well, we'll get there. I promise. Well, let's get there soon. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, I I appreciate your respect. Thank you. Uh so,
101my thing is is of course what like what how did we look at this when we decided to put the guns up from a financial perspective. You said that we can talk about that. The other aspect of this is is you guys were told no on the fieldhouse. We went around anyway. Yes, sir. If I'm right, I can't speak for the whole community. I I I can't. Right. Right. But I can tell you, do do you know who would have bore a a very good chunk of that fieldhouse as far as a tax base? A lot of your a lot of your energy and things has left you in a county. Right. Right. So who that that would fall to? It's property tax, which would be your land owners. That's me. That's broadband company. That's
102anybody who owns property more than just their home, right? And bottom line, there's no way we could have afforded it, right? And so it's not that we were saying no to the kids. That's absolutely not what we were saying. What we were saying is, is there a is there a better, more economical option to to provide this for the kids? And what the school district did, exactly what Mr. Thomas said, is we said we can do it ourselves. As a school district, we can and we can afford to do it ourselves. And so that's the route that we took. I'm not disagreeing that that the community wouldn't wouldn't have liked to maybe have helped out, but to that to that extent, we we couldn't. I mean, like you said, the economic place we're in right
103now, it's just it was just too much. It was more than But the community never I don't think the community ever said we don't want to help our kids. Chairman Peterson, if I may also add that it's important to note that none of the financing of the dome was done in secret. It was all public. We had meeting after meeting after meeting. We talked about the life expectancy. We talked what's going to happen in 10 years. Discussed it all over and over. There was discuss about we had we had a hearing on the domes and how we were going to spend the money. We had a hearing on the ESSER funds and how those monies were going to be spent. We had to get those approved through the state. And if you've ever tried to
104get anything approved for the state, the red tape there is huge. We didn't hide any of this. We made it very clear there is a need and we're going to do our best. If you look at the timing of this, we were probably bad timing in terms of going out to to bond for a fieldhouse right after CO, but the timing was perfect for us to be have funds available, one-time funds that we could meet the needs and demands that we had. Never in the history of this district have we had those kind of funds in the past. one time and those esra funds are now gone. The bulk of those esra funds went to our employees, but we were able to save enough money. Wise stewards, I believe, to pay for the domes. In
10510 years, that's my goal that they last 10 years. We either do something else. Either we put new bubbles up or we put a hard surface over the top of that concrete. That concrete will be there for 40 years. So, we have options. the board, the community will have options in 10 years, but for 10 years, how many kids are going to benefit from those two domes and the solution that you guys came up with? Well, and I think the point is is this was a need. It wasn't a want. Just because the community wasn't willing to, you know, pay the bond amount and pay extra on their taxes for whatever reason that might be, the need was still there. We had to have a place to put our kids because of our inclement weather.
106I mean, our soccer team, I had kids, I don't have any more in the school district anymore. Um, but all of them played soccer and we were the last school district to be able to practice on a grass field because it took forever for the snow to melt. We had to have it. And regardless of whatever we came up with, the domes seemed to be the best possible solution to that. But it wasn't a want, it was a need, and we found a way to fulfill that. And it's like Mr. O'Neal said, it you can't put a price on it. Back to you, Caleb, to your point, I was against the bond, but I was absolutely for the domes. Well, that's that's what I was going to say. I can't speak for the community, but
107as far as a lot of the agriculture community, they think they think the domes are absolutely in fact I I can tell you specifically when we were waiting on oil funds, you know, can we stand the domes and my dad literally said, well, it'd be pointless not to stand them now. You've got them here. Let's put them up. Let's spend the money and put them up and get some kids in them. And so, like I said, I can't speak for the whole community, but along with what Brian's saying, the bond was just going to be too taxing on the community. It's not that we didn't want to help the kids. And so when the opportunity when the opportunity came and we we saw what the school district was going to do, I think your community
108would be proud of what we've done. I was going to say all along, I think this group voiced that 22 million was probably too much. But if you remember, it was the football field. It was a separate soccer complex and then it was a fieldhouse for indoor. So it actually took the size of the fieldhouse and shrunk it down because we were going to have a soccer complex next to it. We thought out of the box. Now the football field and the soccer complex is the same. Um, and we solved the indoors issue. It's it's not the greatest solution, but it's one we could afford. And that's an argument that we could have over and over again. So, I just want to tell you, we are really good stewards of the money. We are right.
109John Williams is we are in part very conservative. The funds that we use to build the dome is money that we have saved for years. How many years have we been saving money? 2009. 2009. We have been putting that money away for for for something like this. Then with the discussion came before the board, are we going to go borrow the money for it or are we going to pay for it internally? So, we paid for it. So, we didn't have to pay interest. we're paying ourselves back on that the money for it. So, it's it's it's we are conservative, but there is a need. And as as uh Miss Welling said, there was a year our soccer kids did not get on a field until they went to regionals. So, I've got one question
110and a statement, and that statement is going to encompass the reason. So, the next question is is what is What's the difference between the league when you put the domes up versus 20 years before that? Is there still a league 20 years before that? I can tell you in 2004, 2003 was when we started soccer. We haven't had a place for our soccer kids since 2003. I was the principal at the time at the high school. We put them on medals. We put them on EMS. We tried well and there were teams that wouldn't come play us if they had to play on the EMS field because it wasn't regulation. We had the state hospital um again it was always been an issue even though not having a field or having a field it is
111truly that kids didn't have access to the grass typically until May. Um that has existed forever. Our indoor track team since they started even our outdoor track team many times couldn't practice inside. our football teams, our basketball teams, our wrestling teams do not have a place called an auxiliary gym. All that was encomp encompassed in the need for the dome. Um, and that's that's in terms of how it was funded. I wish our community understood that better. I really did because I think they would say hats off to the district for how it was funded because we didn't take out of any classroom supplies. We didn't take out a major maintenance. We maintained our major maintenance budgets in time when we received $2 million cuts. That's why we sued the state again back into that.
112But our maintenance budgets remained high. Our major maintenance can only be used for major maintenance. It can't be used for anything else. So those funds were not included in this. But I think publicly it is important that every time there was a cost that went over what we originally budgeted, it came before the board. Every time Jiren said it's going to cost a little bit more, we talked about it in open board meeting. So none of this was hidden. Um the public should have been aware of these domes for 2 years before they went up because that's how long we talked about them. Right. Once again, to answer uh Mr.'s 's question. Um, the the intent of my line of questioning is just to get an understanding on where you guys were with it and
113to get a little bit more detail on it so that I could fully understand when it comes to talking about the maintenance cost and life expectancy of the building just to understand if that was considered. And if there was and it was still you guys still felt like that it was the best option, I I I can respect that. Uh my my statement is though is and I I I think I brought this up last time when I spoke uh I'm going to ask questions. I I' I'm a voter. I'm a citizen. I've served my country and I pay taxes. If you don't like that, that is tough. Now, I every time I've come up here and I've spoken to you guys, I I I can't imagine I've been disrespected. Nope. To anybody. And hopefully
114we haven't either. Well, today questionable. So, I'm just going to leave by stating I expect that same courtesy to me. No matter what I'm up here saying, thank you. I'll give you an opportunity to come and visit. I'll give you a tour. All righty. Any more discussion? There's public comments. There's not a microphone there where there's a microphone and I hate it. This one time that I want to use one. There's not one there. No. Um, chairman Peterson, members of the board, um, I just want to take this opportunity. I got two things. One, um, Horizon High School was recognized. Um, was that yesterday um by the um state superintendent of public instruction. Janice was there. She may address that during the round table. But I just wanted to say what an incredible opportunity that
115was for uh the WBE and the the leader of that organization to see Horizon and see the great things that they're doing there, particularly around their community connections and the cool things that they are doing to connect those students back to our community. whether it's the the senior center um they've done some amazing things. I encourage you to talk to uh to Brent to find out exactly what they're doing because it is some really amazing stuff and they were one of seven or they were there were seven schools that were recognized for this tour of excellence and Horizon is one of them. So really cool opportunity. The second thing is to publicly recognize Ryan. Um, I want to make sure that he gets credit for the bravery that that he exhibited when he encouraged us
116to join the lawsuit and and that was a big chance and my friends have like different sayings for when you take those kind of chances and none of them were appropriate. Um, but that was that was a big risk and uh Mr. around and asked about, you know, how much did that cost over the 3 or 4 years, it was less than $75,000 for us to be a part of that lawsuit. Ryan, not only if he wasn't the first, he was one of the first to get the their district to join with that lawsuit and he encouraged and got others to join as well. And the return on that investment, right? Yep. It may be appealed, but here's what we know is that the legislature as soon as that ruling came down, they added another
117four 4.5% or 4% to the the ECA, which for us was about $800,000, right? So, the return on our investment of $75,000 was $800,000 and will continue to be more as the legislature is forced to fulfill those judges orders. So, I don't think our community really understands the bravery and and the leadership that we have in in Ryan. And I wanted to to make that public and and take that opportunity to thank him for what he did, not only for our kids here in Evston. But every district, whether they enjoy the lawsuit or not, is going to get more money. They got at least 4% more money in the ECA because of of what he did and what the WBA did. So, thank you. Thank you. Good job, Mr. Thomas. Yep. Hey, and Mr. Williams.
118Right. Yes, sir. On all counts. Right. Right. [Music] All right. Any more public comments? Nope. We can now move on to our action items. So, we'll move on to the action items. I need a motion to approve the resignations and contracts as discussed in executive session. I have a motion. I need a second. Second. I have a motion. I have a second. Any discussions? All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Eyes have it. Resignations and contracts have been approved. I need a motion to approve the technology expenditures for 2526. Mr. Mr. Chairman, I move that we approve the technology expenses expenses for 2526 school year. Second. I have a motion. I have a second. Any discussions? All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Eyes have it. Motion carries. That's the end of our
119action items. We will now move on to the board round table. Okay. I have a couple. Um, first of all, I want to thank Doug for bringing that up and we are very appreciative of what all of you have done to to get us where we're at. And also, I wanted to recognize Mr. Wheeler. I don't know how many of you know, but he was given an award um through the city of the above and beyond um award. And that's because Dan serves in so many different capacities and he jumps in full board and just gives it all that he has. And so I want to tell you how much I appreciate you as a board member and what you do for not only our district but the community. Thank you very much. Somebody told
120me the other day there was a board that he did not sit on. I would like to go back to uh the Horizon High School. It was phenomenal what happened that day. And um I did talk to the secretary of education and she was very very impressed with what Horizon had done and uh I just think going out of the box and doing something like this which will help the kids in their future life. I think it was life skills is what they're doing with this group of kids. And I just want to say that yesterday it was great. Great. Super. That's great. I have a business association with a student from Horizon High School and he has nothing but good to say about what they've done for him. I I have two things. Uh,
121one is, uh, I'd like to thank, uh, uh, Principal Kohler who, uh, a couple of weeks ago, uh, I met with him and we met with Mr. Colin Wilson, uh, at the high school and, uh, he is constructing a, uh, website for Hall of Fame and, uh, he was, uh, extremely extremely happy to do it and help and Scott, I really appreciate that. And uh we'll continue to to forge on with that. Uh the other thing I have is that uh I serve on uh Boseis 5 and uh I I kind of want to read something here. Uh Boseis 5 was uh is established a method for Wyoming school districts or collaboratively provide educational services. The purpose of this collaboration is to maximize the use of resource, increase efficiency, benefit from cost sharing and provide
122collaborative opportunities to best serve the educational needs of the students throughout the state. And uh we as a board decided uh not to fund both 5 and there have been a couple other districts who have made that same decision. uh but they um encouraged me to stay and be part of the board uh and to help them in any way we can. And so uh I just want to report back that uh uh you know we still are in favor of what these five can do for us uh and the job they do and uh I uh I will uh report back to the board. Thank you. Okay. No, I think I I don't think we have anything against Bosey's 5. I think the the the issue that came up was when they came back
123for the the mill and the where the direction of that monies was going to go, I think is what kind of Yeah. And kind of left us a little bit sour. Yeah. And they suffer from where they're at. they're in Wilson. So, uh everything is much much more more expensive uh to to to get faculty to get things done. Uh at one time there was a brief discussion that let's sell the property that it's on uh and take those proceeds and go somewhere else. Well, that that property was gifted and if you don't uh continue to use the the Boseies Ranch, then it goes back to whoever gave it to him. So, uh, that's where it will be and and we continue. I think we we I don't know if at the present we have
124one student. I thought we I thought we had one say anyway. Yeah. But I don't know. We do use it. Yes, we do use it. Y Mr. Chairman, I move we adjourn. Oh, wait. Did you Yeah, I just had one thing. I I would That's all right. I I would recommend that in the uh the Dunning scholarship that we uh that the uh Horizon students be considered as well. That would be my recommendation. Yeah, that would be great. Oh, sounds good. What are you going to do now? Did you listen to his movement? I need a motion to adjourn. I did. Motion to adjurnn. Second. There we go. Second. Any discussion? None. All in favor? I. Any opposed? I have it. We are 10 minutes early. It's not nearly my near my best. Yeah, it
125is.