The Greene County Board School met Wednesday night in regular session.
The meeting started with acknowledgement of five early retirements, including Teresa Brown, Heather Berglund, Kelly Olson, Deb Marquardt, and Ann Hicks that total 135 years of service in the district. Then the Board held a public hearing on the 2024-25 school year calendar. Superintendent Brett Abbotts said due to when the middle school dismissed early on Mondays, there will be supervision provided at the school for those students that participate in in-season activities so they don’t have to travel back for practices, games, or competitions. The Board then approved the school calendar as presented.
The Board also approved the second reading of a board policy with language that would allow the school district to be reimbursed the funds that were funded through the governor’s School Safety Grant.
Abbotts then went over energy information regarding electricity and natural gas use at all of the buildings. He said that in the 2020-21 school year, the district paid over $367,000 and this school year, the district was on pace to pay close to $600,000. Abbotts then shared some research about implementing solar panels as a cost-saving measure. No action was taken by the Board.
Then, the Board approved eight school driving permits, three fundraising requests, and an optimization contract for the high school to find energy efficiencies to help reduce the overall energy costs. The Board approved Optimized Systems of Iowa for an initial price of $60,415 with the item of fixing what is wrong as a price to be determined later, with the funds to come from Physical Plant and Equipment Levy (PPEL).
Additionally, the Board approved to join the Iowa Local Government Risk Pool that over 100 school districts in Iowa are members of, at a cost of $124,865. This is to potentially reduce the cost of natural gas usage among the members of the organization. The Board also approved some e-rate projects for an initial total of $67,955 to replace some network switches and other equipment to a newer program, and after the rebate, the cost will only be $20,368 to be paid with PPEL funds.
The Board also approved four equipment purchases for the buildings and grounds department. Those items included a truck, dump trailer, snow plow blade and a skid loader for a total of $105,560 from the PPEL fund. They also approved to dock elementary physical education teacher Sean Thompson’s pay to the daily substitute’s rate because he has exhausted personal leave and is officiating state wrestling this week. Finally, there was no change to the March meeting date for the regular board meeting to remain on March 13th, during spring break.