Bond issue to rebuild school coming up
The Orcas Island School District (OISD) board met with Superintendent/High School Principal Barbara Kline on Tuesday, Sept. 9, to discuss the goals for this year, including a review of the two-year-old Strategic Plan and planning for a bond issue in the coming year.
Kline prepared a list of seven goals that were discussed and revised with the board. They were:
1) Work with staff to improve student learning at elementary, middle, high schools and Waldron and K-12 OASIS. Some of the steps toward that goal were defined as: making use of grants to send staff to conferences; continuing the use of technology – including the Skyward system which gives students and families access into the online student information system – and training teachers on technology. The board intends to make use of the Technology Committee to assist in these steps;
2) Enhance communications between school and parents and enhance the community’s view of the school, again using the Skyward and the Digital Learning Commons resources, as well as re-creating the Marketing committee to promote the school’s image, updating the website and attending community meetings to provide information about OISD;
3) Run the OISD in a financially sound and prudent manner, meeting state and federal requirements, to provide the best education for students. Details of this goal include changing the purchase order system and monitoring accounts payable and receivable to accuracy and timeliness, meeting with Ben Thomas, District Business Manager and the Budget Advisory Committee regularly; submitting all grants and renewals in a timely manner. Board member Tony Ghazel emphasized the need to maintain a healthy reserve fund, which the board concurred was essential to “financially sound and prudent” district business;
4) Improve stewardship of public buildings, by setting up systems to report maintenance needs and implement repairs, under the direction of Tom Gobeske, Maintenance Supervisor and Elementary Principal;
5) Update policies and procedures to comply with regulatory agencies. Kline announced that as part of the OASIS policies, ballots were mailed out Sept. 10 for selection of an OASIS Site Committee. This year, OASIS will occupy a classroom in the elementary school building. The board agreed that updating policies and procedures is the board’s responsibility, and acknowledged that to a great extent, Kline would be providing them the information needed;
6) Raise the OISD profile in the state as an aid to financial stability;
7) Update and reevaluate the Strategic Plan, formulated in 2006.
OISD member Scott Lancaster said that in order to conform with policy, the board needs to come up with their own goals and evaluate their goals. The board agreed that it would be helpful to do so at a workshop in the near future.
Lancaster also said that an update of the strategic plan is needed to evaluate it and see if it’s still meeting the school’s needs with its priorities and strategies. Kline said that a strategic goal review process would be “healthy for us to talk about evaluating the plan, especially since the community was so involved [in preparing the plan].”
The board agreed that review of the strategic plan would be helpful to formulating a vision for the district’s future and promotion of a bond, when the current bond expires at the end of 2009.
Lancaster said that the district needs to finish the remaining business of the last bond, and build a Career and Technical Education building. “We still owe the community the CTE building.” Ghazel said that the $400,000 set aside was not enough, and Board member Keith Whitaker said, “We need clear and specific plans with real numbers for a bond.”
As the board discussed their vision of what a future bond could provide, they referenced Carlos Sierra’s concept drawings, developed in 2007, to revamp the OISD campus. OISD President Janet Brownell noted that if the bond paid for educational buildings that could also be used as community buildings, for adult education and public meetings among other uses, and if the building plans included elements of low-impact development, it had greater likelihood of being supported in a bond.
Ghazel brought out that construction costs are escalating, and Lancaster said that a bond assessment increase from 48 to 62 cents per $1,000 property valuation for 20 years would net $23 million. He said that public school bond assessments in districts such as Darrington and Concrete are about $2 per $1,000 property valuation.
The board agreed to invite Sierra to present his design to the board at a meeting this fall, and also to have a bond expert speak to them, either at the same meeting or in a separate one.
The next OISD meeting will be Thursday, Sept. 25 at 5 p.m. in the school library.
