Boards Begin Talk On What Should Co-op

With a little “creative scheduling,” the soon-to-be-separate Clearwater and Orchard schools will likely keep their students cooperating in activities as much as possible.

During Monday’s Joint Advisory Board meeting with Clearwater and Orchard, a majority of the time was spent discussing what sports and activities the schools will co-op in the next year. As of the end of the year, each community will have a separate PK-12 facility.

The discussion moved on to the NSAA activities that were proposed to keep consolidated, which included sports, band and drama. They discussed not co-oping non-NSAA sanctioned activities.

There have been disputes on band and choir splitting due to both activities being graded classes and the difficulty of scheduling a combined band and choir respectively from both schools.

Superintendent Dale Martin commented on the issue of time conflicts between the schools for band and choir.

“It takes creative scheduling to do some of these things even beyond the band and choir,” Martin said.

Secretary DeAnna Clifton also expressed her thoughts on the issue, pertaining specifically to the students.

“I think the kids should stay together for Band/Choir, the more we can keep the kids together, the better,” Clifton said.

Clearwater Principal Mike Sanne discussed the implementation of the Marzano Program as a long-term goal for the staff and teachers.

“We’re looking at ways to improve instruction through a more common use of terminology for the evaluators as well as for the teachers. It is an instructional model, and the goal is to improve instruction by improving the qualities of the teachers, what the teachers are asking and looking for, and what the administrators are looking for,” Sanne said.

Later in the meeting, Regina Krebs gave a presentation on the current costs per student each year, the possibility of implementing a three-district school system while contrasting the costs to the current system, and other related logistics based around maximizing total savings on the payment of the bond through the combination of districts.

This three-school system was a hypothetical situation. No specific schools were identified in the discussion.

“According to the feasibility study and according to the budget I looked up, our budgeted per student cost for our 2016-2017 school year was $21,100 per student, and that’s for the entire unified district,” Krebs said.

The presentation detailed a plan that would save 86 million dollars (minus the 44 million to pay the remainder of the bond) over the 20-year period.

“At the end of the 20-year bond life, you could be looking at six million dollars a year in savings.” Krebs said.

Krebs also suggested the possibility of moving to a career-based curriculum, which would give students a more specialized education.

The meeting was then opened up to public questioning where concerns were held for both the unification of a three-district school system and the possible consideration for Orchard looking into the three-district plan if it was implemented.

Preceding the meeting was an Orchard School board meeting where information was presented about a possible multipurpose room being built in Orchard’s school.

There were two rough contract estimates given to the board - one for the multipurpose room and the other for the weight room (which would be used in the future for wrestling practice).

The board is only discussing the possibility at this time and is both researching the projects and seeking input from the community.

The videos below are the first and second part of the board meeting.
​
​Part 1:

​Part 2: