001All right, I'll go ahead and call the meeting to order. And we do have quorum. So, can I get a moment or a motion to approve the agenda, please? >> So, moved. >> Second. >> Any discussion? Uh moved by the board, seconded by Shields Cook. All in favor say I. >> I. I. >> Oppose. name. >> All right, that passes 4 Z. I can count. And next are our celebrations and recognitions. We will start with Ames High softball or start and finish with AS High softball. >> Good evening. If I can have um our members that are here representing softball come forward. And coach is stuck in traffic. >> Oh no. So, >> oh no, >> she might be flying in at the last minute. Just so you know, she is on her way. She
002just messaged me. So, >> come on over here if you don't mind. >> So, anybody who's watching from home can see your fantastic faces >> and we buy a little extra time for coach. >> Yeah, you're good. The Ames Little Cyclone softball team delivered a resounding performance in the summer of 2025, closing the season with an impressive overall record of 30 and 11, including a strong 14-2 mark in conference play, securing a tie for first place in the Iowa Alliance Iowa Alliance Conference North. This season's talent and teamwork were recognized across the league and in the classroom. Just a few of their accolades include a team GPA of 3.785, including four students with a 4.0 cumulative GPA. They led 5A teams in stolen bases with 124 in the season. They had the highest end of
003season ranking in program history at number nine. 30 wins this season, a new record for the program. The team had 10 allconerence selections with six as first team, three second team, and one third team. In addition, they had two all district players and three all-state players. Beyond impressive records and stats, the Little Cyclones showcased depth, resilience, and balanced excellence, highlighting both seasoned leadership and remarkable contributions from underclassmen. Ames High softball is led by head coach Megan von Baron, assistant coaches Tom Lynch, Laura Welter, Amanda Abachar, Katie Reelman, Ireland Bus, Ellie Lynch, and volunteer coach Scott Uthy. If we can give them a round of applause for a great season. [Applause] >> Thank you. >> Oh my gosh. Avoid staying in that picture. Great. Thank you. Congratulations. >> Congratulations. [Applause] >> All right. Next item uh
004is our public forum. So I will read our statement. Residents of the district, students attending the district, parents or guardians of students attending the district, and district staff members may address the board about any topic relevant to the district, whether on the current agenda or not. Those who wish to speak must sign up at the beginning of the meeting. Speaker participation is limited to three minutes once per item. The views and opinions of citizens addressing the board did not necessarily reflect those of the board, district administration, or staff. Speakers are to remember that Iowa law prohibits the board from discussing specific employees, students, or their performance. Student speakers will state their name in school. Others will state their name and address. And I have one person signed up, Jared Beckham. >> Uh you can go
005up to that microphone if you wouldn't mind. Well, I'm not sure how to follow up that uh celebration there, but uh I'll try not to kill the wife too much here. Um good evening. Uh my name is Jared Beckham. I live at 1228 Roosevelt Avenue. Um I'd like to speak to you briefly this evening about a situation that my wife and I have been struggling with since this new school year began. Uh for some background, my wife currently works at Mer Elementary Elementary as a level three special education associate. Um she's worked there for over four years now and she volunteers a lot of her time and energy to support MER and she loves what she does and especially the children and the people she works with. This year our oldest son began sixth grade
006at Ames Middle School. At the end of last school year, my wife informed the principal and the behavior inter interventionist who does the scheduling that she intended to go to part-time status this school year um so that she could drop off our son at middle school, which doesn't start until 8:40. One week before the beginning of this school year, she was informed she could not reduce her hours and switch to part-time because her full-time status last year makes her eligible for employee benefits, uh which are not allowed for part-time educators due to budget constraints. She was given only a few options. Number one was stay late every day to make up her late start time and maintain her full-time status of at least 30 hours per week. She's currently doing this, but it's not sustainable
007for her in the long term. Two would be to transfer over to the middle school where the later start time would allow her to maintain full-time status, but for us it's not feasible because we have a younger son who's also in fourth grade at Miker and they dismiss at 2:45. So she would have the same problem only in the afternoon instead of the beginning of the day. And the third option, which is really the only viable option that was given to us, was have her quit, wait 26 weeks for her employment status to reset so that she can be rehired as a new employee and be restarted over at entry level with entry- level pay despite having over four years experience and being trained as student in student intervention and being a member of the
008MEA response team. One possible, but not very attractive solution to avoid having to quit and be rehired would be to take unpaid leave for the required 26- week period. However, a recent update to the Ames uh community school district support staff handbook only permits unpaid leave in cases of emergencies and extenduating circumstances and only after approval. So, taking 26 weeks weeks of unpaid leave is not an option. None of these options seem reasonable. It was brought to my attention that others have also been affected by this decision not to accommodate the transition from full-time to part-time status. In these cases, these educators quit and did not return to part-time employment. It is likely given these options, my wife may do the same. Children with special needs depend on the support from educators like my wife
009for stability and routine. Our school district must do a better job of acknowledging EA's contributions and listening to their needs. It would seem logical that if an educator has a passion to work with children, then that should be encouraged by the school district and better efforts should be made to retain these people. Instead, it feels like educators are being punished for having changes in their lives and no effort given to accommodate their needs. Simply being able to receive a response to an email for information from district staff has been a struggle. To me, this demonstrates a lack of care and concern when the crisis in this country for educators is so great. It would seem the major hurdle for allowing transition from full-time to part-time is the legality of offering employee benefits due to the
010Affordable Care Act. According to the school district benefits manager, benefits are offered based on the average of hours worked by an educator over the course of the last year. If the average is more than 30 hours a week or 130 hours in a month, then benefits must be offered regardless of whether the educator signs up for them or not. If the school district would continue to offer benefits to an educator for one year after the transition to part-time status, then the following year, according to my understanding, benefits would no longer need to be offered to them. This would help our school district retain these incredibly important individuals whom our children rely on. I hope that you can add my concern to a future board agenda for discussion. Thank you. >> Thank you, Jared. All right.
011Um, next up is our consent agenda. >> Can I get a motion board to approve the consent agenda as presented? >> Second. Move by seconded by Shields Cook. Um, all in favor of approval of the consent agenda say I. I. I. >> Oppose. Nay. Passes 4 Z. Next up, uh, our reports and we'll start with the superintendent and facilities. >> Yeah, I just wanted to since we had a break over the summer, kind of just update on summer progress as well as enrollment. People always want to know enrollment between school years. Uh, facilitywise, uh, the high school track um is coming to completion. We should, we will be ready for our first game uh, this Friday. Uh we did have a as you can see we did have deer wander across our track uh mid
012pour of uh the completion of the track. So we will be looking at uh working through that. Uh so stadium should be ready. Um we have all of our um playgrounds are finished and I think we have one more ribbon cutting and then uh the um the facil the northwest and 13th project. Uh we will be coming to some kind of phasing aspects of that breaking down in smaller chunks but we will be looking at demoing uh the old Lutheran office complex as well as the garage this fall. uh we're going to separate that out. That's about a cost of about $150 to $175,000. Um that will be part of it, but while we're still looking on it, we want to at least demo those facilities. I think that right alone will probably be a
013a nice visual upgrade for the uh community around there as we continue to work through the process of phasing that project in. But we have uh good work, good conversations around that. but wanted the board to know that we will be looking at demoing those two facility pieces even prior to uh coming out with a full plan. We are working with Tenfold where will be a phased in plan that we brought to the board at the next board meeting for more discussion. Any questions on the facilities? >> All right. uh the enrollment documents uh shows the elementary and secondary enrollment kind of where we were last year at the end of the year and then where we are sitting currently. Uh if you look at the class size averages for the elementary uh they are
014um very nice class size averages for what the board goals are as well as we have our homeschool assistance program. I put that enrollment bottom at the number at 205. Our partner preschools, uh we have that number in there at the bottom. We'll keep track of that. There's 32 uh students at our partner schools. I know there's a question around uh the save fund or the um vouchers and private schools. We're going to wait a little longer before putting that number together. We feel like with all our enrollment, it'll be a stronger number once we passed our um certified enrollment date. Uh with those numbers, if you look at the uh overall numbers between um we're going to look at a probably a negative uh number of uh students will be declining our students overall.
015I do not have a firm number on that but okay any questions comments. >> All right we'll acknowledge that director bear bomb has joined us and next item. Oh any board member announcements? I do not have anything. All right. Um, new business. Uh, 409.1. >> I move the board to approve 409.1 support staff holidays, vacations, personal leave as presented. >> Second. Uh, any discussion? Right. All in move toward second by Shields Cook. All in favor say I. I. >> Oppose. Today passes 5-0 high school track and bleacher improvement project change order. >> I move the board approve the change order as presented. >> Second. >> Any discussion? Moved by Shields Cooks, seconded by Rodriguez. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Oppose. Nay. >> Passes 5. And then the play playground project change order.
016>> I move the board to approve the change order as presented. >> Second. Any discussion? Right. Moved by Deward, seconded by Shields Cook. All in favor say I. I. >> Oppose. Nay. Passes. 5 Z. Um I don't have any notes for request for superintendent. Our board planning calendar. Our next regular meeting will be September 22nd and that will be one of our longer meetings with no work session. And we will go ahead and move into our board work session. to review uh our district goals. And it's just loading for me, but uh I think we have pizza. Do we have pizza? So, we can take like a like a three to five minute get pizza and then we'll regroup over at the tables over here. Pizza. Pizza. Anybody have pizza?