The Greene County School Board met Wednesday night in regular session.
The Board approved a new athletic and academic sharing agreement with the Paton-Churdan School District. The new two year agreement has P-C paying close to $600 per student per sport, while also continuing to share cross country, football, wrestling, golf, soccer, baseball and softball. The agreement also stipulates that once a sports program is shared it remains shared. As for academics, P-C will increase its funding from 90 to 95-percent of Iowa’s per pupil funding with also paying 100-percent for Career and Technical Education (CTE) and upper level math and science classes.
The Board also approved three voluntary early retirement applications for Tim Buenz, Ann Ostendorf and Lori Danner; a bid of $154,600 from Lansing Brothers to demolish the former Grand Junction school building; one early graduation request; three fundraising requests; $411,000 spending authority request for at-risk and dropout prevention modified supplemental funds for special education; and the administration costs for Grandwood and Woodward Academy Dayschool for special education as presented. Additionally, the Board approved two 2019 fiscal year budget amendments. One was for the spending authority for $7 million for the bond referendum and the other was for $35,000 in reimbursements from the Bringing Optimism and Opportunities to Students and Teachers (BOOST).
The Board also discussed and decided to have a committee establish a list of guidelines to be presented at a future meeting for exceptions for students to obtain driving permits that live within one mile of the high school. The Board agreed to not allow names to be placed on buildings, but rather to have a recognition area established with plaques for donors or contributors instead. Following a lengthy discussion, the Board decided to have the activities director and superintendent figure out the funding to pay for head and assistant coaches for the soccer program.
Under reports, Superintendent Tim Christensen shared that bids for the over $35 million project would go out on January 17th and by February all bids will be received. Several FFA students reported on their national convention trip from October. Crawford Petterson also gave a presentation on his project and experience of attending the Global World Food Prize.