001[Music] a [Music] w [Music] a [Music] oh [Music] a [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] yeah [Music] w [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] he [Music] w [Music] a [Music] yeah there you are okay okay we'll call the meeting to order we'll start with roll call Jeremy Weller here Dave walberer here Becky Engel here Brian Jones here Jan weich here and Christina shark is here and Morgan Brown is absent um next we'll move to adoption and agenda and Declaration of Quorum motion to adopt second we have a motion and a second are there any other discussions if not those in those an approval please raise your right hand opposed same sign motion passes um next is Citizens speak I do not have any green cards is there anybody present
002that would like to speak to the board tonight not we'll move on from that next is consent agenda I move to approve the consent agenda second we have a motion and a second any other discussion if not all those in favor raise your right hand oppose same sign motion passes um next we have board priority to be the best we will create a positive learning and working culture for stakeholders and embrace our Community Partners through communication and transparency we have a couple of action items here the first one is the dhma Edition naming thanks Christina uh we have a committee coming forward uh that's going to uh give the board their recommendation of what we should name uh our new addition on the campus of the Dalma campus um we had a great uh committee
003put for forward and I appreciate Steve Zimmerman's leadership on this and Becky's also was a board member that was on the committee as well and so I'll turn it over to Steve we'll start with some introductions uh Sarah deth Steve zurman principle of Liberty Elementary Sarah Miller all right um dear members of the atoma community school board as the appointing leader of the naming committee task with choosing a name for the district's new bill building our community stro to find a name that resonates with atom's Rich history emphasizing educational excellence and instills a sense of community Pride the process leading to this decision has been thorough inclusive and deeply rooted in the values we hold dear from the onset on from the onset we were uh committed to inclusively ensuring representation from each grade level
004we had representation from dma Liberty parents and students and Community as well the the journey began in October marking by brainstorming sessions a local historian's Insight and a community survey designated to capture the essence of AA this collaborative effort allowed us to consider diverse perspective ensuring the name would reflect our community Spirit after narrowing down numerous suggestions we arrived at Farney Elementary this this choice is not arbitrary it is rooted in the legacy of Helen and Charles Farney who dedicated their lives to our community and were committed to ensuring children could achieve their future dreams Helen Farney was a 1904 graduate of at high school and Charles Farney a 198 1895 at graduate they left an inable mark on our community despite having no direct descendants their commitment to ATA is unparalleled Helen established a
005trust fund in 1980 providing over $6.5 million in scholarships to more than 1100 students predominantly from atuma the fares family in pack extends Beyond education they donated generously to the ym pool atama Regional and the local Boy Scouts of America their annual contributions beautify atama with trees flowers and shrubs the Farney Legacy reaches into the Realms of art with Helen's collection enriching local institutions given these extensive contributions the naming committee strongly believes that Farney Elementary is is an appropriate name for the new building project it en encapsulates at's history educational aspiration and Community Pride this name will serve as a daily reminder to our students of the impactful Legacy they are now a part of and the responsibility to carry that forward in conclusion we urge the atoma community school board to endorse the Farney
006Elementary as a name that honors our past shapes our future in doing so we are embracing the legacy of giving learning and community building that will inspire future Generations thank you for your time for this consideration any questions for the committee what did the fary do I mean through their lifetime do we know what's that what did they far what did the faries do in their lifetime I mean as far as professions yeah sure and Steve jump in too the the research I have on it um is that uh his main things were he was involved in Oklahoma and oil uh was one of his main um uh I think also was it electrical yeah so when he they were here in ATA they served he served on the uh Steam and electrical committee or
007or the town of ATA and then um they moved to Oklahoma and that company was dissolved and then at that point he started investing in oil that's my understanding yeah I guess I would just say as as a parent of a of uh three kids that have received this um at least one year and one two years um I think it's a good choice that for what they've done in this community so good job on deciding that um and I think it's it's a very good scholarship for kids so thank you okay if there are no other comments this is an action item I make a motion that we approve the addition naming to Farney Elementary second we have a first and a second is there any other discussion if not all those in favor
008raise your right hand those oppose same sign motion passes thank you thank you thank you thank again the committee and one thing we'll also make sure we do is uh so kids learn about their history as we'll have a lot of information about the family uh in the building as well so okay up next is the first reading of a board policy any questions about the this policy I'd make a motion we approve board policy as presented second any other discussion if not those in favor raise your right hand those oppos same sign motion passes and then we also have um seven policies here presented for the second reading if there's no questions or comments I'd make a motion that we approve uh items one through S policy update second reading second we have a
009first and a second is there any other discussion if not those in favor raise your right hand those oos oose same sign motion passes um next is an informational topic on Senate file 496 Library legislation review and this is Landon to do this presentation and Mike all right thank you uh Senate file 496 encompassed the a lot of legislation but there's been a lot of talk around the library portion of this uh the legislation says we need to be in compliance by January 1st uh essentially what it it tasks us to do was the second paragraph there uh to Define um age appropriate as excluding material uh with descriptions or visual depictions of a sex a as as defined in that Iowa Code um so this is Snippets from the legislation and so we took
010that into consideration one thing I thought the board might find interesting is that the uh guidance around the Iowa open records law does not require that school districts um create records that we do not already have meaning we are not required to track every book that was removed but what we but what we knew was a record was our current inventory and catalog of library books so the last thing we wanted was um for that to become a public record that shows through a process of weeding books we remove hundreds of books every year and those weren't all Direct ly um um you know removed because of the Senate file so one thing to look at is we get a lot of questions around what happens uh if a book is is you know meets
011this criteria that was found essentially as it says here a first violation is a written warning to the board of education or to the employee and a subsequent violation um could result in a hearing by the board of educational examiners so here's kind of a little bit about our data I want to kind of give a shout out to our um District Librarians I've met with them and just feel really confident in the work that they already do on an annual basis uh I did not know this going into this but uh the Librarians follow what's called a musty protocol what does musty stand for it stands for the following misleading ugly superseded trivial irrelevant and maybe obtained elsewhere so when you kind of break that down I spent way too much time looking into
012this musty protocol but a couple of the Snippets here you I kind of defer look at the very last bullet here that says to weed books that reflect racial and gender bias this is something our district Librarians have been doing for long before a senate file told us to do that and therefore many many books that we're seeing school districts remove across the state are not books that were in our libraries and so I again give a lot of credit to our Librarians for doing that I'm just going to kind of jump right to it across the 61,000 books we have in our library we've identified 30 books that would meet this criteria in Senate F 496 and we have uh removed those books just kind of as a comparison here again I mentioned that
013districts are not required um to provide the list but many districts are um you can see that uh our average of 30 is pretty in line the average amongst the 38 School District across the state that have reported the average is 32 one thing to note here is that you don't really see too many large school districts in here uh many of them are like us and they have not reported this number um and probably many of them happening tonight at the at their board meetings so uh information about like De Moine public or Cedar Rapids is is not in there I expect their numbers to be probably more in line with Iowa City at 66 books so I really think that state averages is going to increase and then one of the things we
014really wanted to make sure that we weren't necessarily spending a ton of time on is again we already had the musty protocol but we also already have the reconsideration committee um in these board policies which uh Mike steam can speak to yeah this Remains the Same as it always was that if there is a book that uh is concerning there is a process through board policy for people to make challenges um when there's a challenge is received then we uh pull together the reconsideration committee which includes community members teachers Librarians Administration and students um and then we read the book and go through a protocol to evaluate whether the book violates this process or not and make our decision and present that decision to the superintendent short and sweet any questions thank you thank you
015Landon and Mike okay up next board priority through the board's Financial stewardship we will provide operations Technical and curricular resources to staff teachers and administrator so that all students have consistent and sustained achievement um there's a few action items here the first one is an sbrc application John okay thank you um every year uh we have the option to uh submit to the sprc which is a school budget Review Committee at the State uh request for more spending Authority uh we're not getting any more monies from them uh but they have a mechanism to allow us additional spending authority to to spend funds if needs be they're in three categories uh one is for increasing enrollment so when we do our accounts uh if we have an increase in enrollment those funds are a year
016behind so the kids are already here we're providing services uh but we don't get the money for a year so they allow us to request authority to spend that money this year uh our number is 353,000 there's another category for open and rolled out students that are not on the district's count in the prior year so this means if we have an open and rolled out student on the list this year that wasn't in count last year there's been no money received by us for that student so they allow us to request Authority for that our number this year is $282,500 and the final one is for uh English language learner students that are being served Beyond 5 years uh the waiting that the state gives us for those uh elll students only applies for
0175 years but sometimes Services need to be provided for longer than that and we're allowed to request additional authority to serve those students this is one where we uh are requesting zero even though we have a number and that is due to the fact that we've had a carryover of elll funds that we've been spending down so we don't need that additional Authority so we don't request it um so in total we're uh requesting two 3535 and 282,000 of additional spending Authority and this is a statutory requirement like I said we just request authority to spend those monies we may or may not uh but anytime they allow us the ability to do that uh we make the request so if there's any questions I'd be happy to answer joh John so this is money
018that's coming to us we're just actually asking to spend it early is that with that fair yes and no uh there's no money attached to this so uh it will eventually I should preface it yeah like the the new students on the enrollment count will get that money eventually but uh we'll have to spend it this year because they're here in our buildings uh so this gives us the authority to spend basically out of out of our reserves uh to service those students so y i' make a motion to approve second we have a motion in a second any other discussion if not those in favor please raise your right hand all right motion carries next one is tennis court lighting with Dave yes ma'am uh we've worked with musco directly on our uh must
019our lighting for our tennis courts we uh went out and we received two bids and quotes from uh different companies musco gave us quite a considerable discount of about $50,000 for the lighting so in order to lock the equipment in before the end of the year so it's here in the spring uh we're requesting the board to approve the must go lighting purchase at $120,000 I make a motion to approve second we have a motion and a second any other discussion if not those in favor please raise your right hand motion passes next is tennis court construction contract yes our our contract we had our Turner review our contract with the PCC Sports for the construction of the tennis courts and uh they G gave us the green light uh the company has reviewed the
020contract also and uh has signed it so we're requesting the board to approve the contract so we can begin construction this will start in the spring correct Dave I would imagine they won't be able to do anything this year will we have a pre a pre-construction meeting tomorrow at 10: um you know if they wouldn't mind start moving dirt yet this winter uh if the ground stays uh at a point where we can move dirt but most likely spring yes sir okay make a motion to approve the tennis court construction contract second we have a motion and a second any other discussion if not those in favor please raise your right hand motion pass passes and then last on this list is resolution setting public hearing for bid letting for Schaefer parking lot project we've
021worked with French rener uh for the paving project of Schaefer uh parking lot uh this will allow us to send out bids bids will be due on January 16th at 2 o'cl and then we would bring those bids back to the board on January 22nd uh the estimated between 77 and $10 per square foot and this is about a 57,000 ft uh parking lot make a motion to approve that's the resolution for the public hearing I guess second we have a motion and a second is there any other discussion if not those in favor please raise your right hand motion passes next is superintendent report thanks Christina um really I I don't have a lot of updates for the board we uh um talked about a lot of the updates uh Friday but uh gu
022I just wanted to wish everybody the holiday season uh happy holidays and I hope um you have a wonderful holiday season as well so uh I really don't have anything Christina happy holidays to you thank you um any board member topics I have a couple things um I just so I just wanted to first of all start by thanking everybody that was involved with our uh Thanksgiving lunch that we had it was done through the high school this year um it was uh we got out about 3,400 Mills this year um the cooks that was that was part of this up there um as you guys will see some there's some pictures up there that i' had sent to Jeremy that's be putting up um the cooks that uh prepared these meals along with uh
023Becky and our some of our cooking staff in the back um they said that they've never had it so easy um that they got done very quickly um that that the things in our kitchen was very useful to them and they were so happy to use it uh there'll be a few other Kinks to work out as far as getting out and and uh getting the meals out and stuff like that but the kitchen was was a blessing and I thank all the kitchen staff and everybody that participated in that uh Brad I seen you there Mike thanks for all the help um I want to thank the basketball team Joe and carmel's been there for several years now theyve bring the girls down and they do a great job U we had football players
024there and and forgive me if I forget anybody uh Indian Hills basketball team uh came down and they actually come down in two different shifts and went through the lanes to prepare prepare meals and usually that's usually the thing that takes the longest is getting those meals to get them packed up and and get them out um but it went it went very well um we had in indoor seating this year which we haven't had uh since Co so it was nice to have that and um so look forward to to continue that and it's just a huge uh huge growing thing that's a huge need in this community so I thank all the people that was involved in that and uh you one of the pictures you seen was was one of our janitors
025from the high school who got called in to unlock the bathrooms and actually end up putting him to work so uh he he enjoyed uh enjoyed doing it and uh um was amazed about about how the thing process was went through um and then the other thing was I think as everybody knows that there was there was a substantial fire in with kids in our neighborhood and so I just want to thank we had some staff that stepped up um Mike and Christie and Aaron and other people was there first thing um as a responder uh my wife and I are First Responders for the for the uh um Red Cross um this was a a very uh hard thing to deal with um but our our school district was was first in line there
026to help these people um so I just want to thank the people that was involved in that and were continuing to help the people and and uh there's not much uh something harder to deal with at this time of year especially around Christmas and then something like that so again thank to everybody thanks to everybody involved in in helping these uh these families with this um and then our hearts and prayers go out to the family that was in the auto accident too all I have thanks Brian anything else all right if there's nothing else I'll accept the motion to adjourn so move second there's a first and a second any other discussion if not those in favor please raise your right hand motion passes we are adjourned