submitted by
a Meeting Attendee

October 7th CCSD Monthly BOE Meeting

The Custer County C-1 School Board met Tuesday evening, in the school library. All remaining board members were present, although president Reggie Foster attended remotely and was visible on a giant screen broadcasting from Colorado State University due to a work conference.
As reported last week, the Board declared the vacancy of Director
Jennifer Kriegh. Board member John Tillotson agreed to take over her position as secretary/treasurer of the board, stipulating that board members cannot participate fully while trying to take minutes, so the board agreed to hire someone to take minutes.
The board will replace Kriegh through the appropriate process. The deadline for applying for the board vacancy is November 19th. Interviews of eligible candidates will be December 2nd at 5:30 p.m. in the school library. (See school announcement on page 11 of this issue.)
The school plans to go all out for Veteran’s Day this year due to the efforts led by Social Studies/English/HS Careers faculty member Kirsten Schubert. The students will assemble in the east gym, where ten or more veterans have agreed to attend to tell their stories. The students will be encouraged to dress in red, white and blue clothing. The Kids’ Choir will perform and the students will raise money for veterans programs in the county.
Following on from the September meeting, the board mused about the future of the school’s geothermal heating system. The board appropriated the money for Trane Co. to repair the control system. This may or may not fix the problem, but unless the controls are fixed, there is no way to further diagnose and repair the system.
As Future Farmers of America rep, Foster reminded the board that the annual fruit sale is upon us. FFA members will have order sheets by the end of October to order fruit for the giving season. The FFA’s most important fundraiser of the year is the annual Rocky Mountain Oyster Fry. This year the dinner will be Saturday, November 15th at 5 p.m. in the west gym of the school. Tickets are sold at the door.
Acting school superintendent Kyle Hebberd presented a letter from
Commissioner Epp and Barry Keene from the workforce housing committee. Keene reached out to the Superintendent because he wanted to mention in their letter for the Request for Proposal (RFP) that the school has vacant lots in Silver Cliff that could
possibly be developed. The board confirmed more than once that they were making no commitment of any kind to the housing committee, potential investors, or developers. As the information is public record, the board took no real issue with the lots being
mentioned in the RFP letter.
In his staff report, Superintendent Hebberd talked about the continued need to hire a third grade teacher, paras and custodial staff. He is looking for guidelines for coaches administering over the counter drugs such as Tylenol to students. There will be a Healthy Kids Survey in November. Permission slips will go home with students.
The Colorado Ballet will perform at the school. Fun for Halloween, on October 30th, is a chili cookoff in the multi-purpose gym at 6:30 and a carnival at 7:30 p.m.
When it came to “Actions Items” they lived up to their name. They were listed on the agenda as A – N, but “I” had eight items to vote on, “J” had seven, “K” had 23 items up for votes, “L” had eleven action items, “M” three. “N” stood alone.
“A” through “H” were regular housekeeping items, such as acting on the copier lease, the door lock proposal and the Johnson Control Fire Alarm, but when they got to the CASB items,
following along became trickier. CASB stands for Colorado
Association of School Boards. One purpose of the organization is to offer policy development assistance to help boards create effective educational policies. In the evening’s lineup, there were motions to authorize the adoption of CASB Model Policies with no local amendments, first and second readings, and CASB Model Policies WITH local amendments with first and second readings.
This part of the meeting went quite quickly, with 100% unanimous votes. The board is approaching the end of the 18 months long process of updating and properly formatting nearly 400 policies.
A very interesting observation about the school board meeting was that there were no parents or other concerned citizens at the meeting, and this is apparently how it is very often.
The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Custer County C-1 School Board will be Tuesday, November 11 at 4:30 p.m. in the school library. There are no special meetings or workshops on the schedule at this time.