By Tracy Ouellette
Editor
Monday night’s meeting of the East Troy Community School District Board of Education had the board back to the regular business of leading education in the community.
There was discussion by the board after some corrections were made to the minutes from the Dec. 2 special working referendum meeting, requested by board member Dawn Buchholtz, that the board should discuss having microphones at the meeting and possibly recording the meetings.
Buchholtz said she was disappointed in the quality of the minutes and that a lot of what was said by community members didn’t make it in.
District Business Manager Kathy Zwirgzdas said that when she or Amy Foszpanczyk are recording the minutes they tend to paraphrase more than Julie Loeffler did. She told the board it would be possible to have Loeffler back to do the minutes if they wanted to pay her for it, she also said recording the meeting was a possibility too.
“That’s an option that was bought up at the last meeting,” School Board President Ted Zess said. “That it was hard to hear, so that might be something we have to look at.”
High School Principal Rick Penniston said he would make sure there were microphones available at the next working referendum session on Tuesday.
District Administrator Chris Hibner gave a brief presentation, via video uplink as he was out of town at a conference, about the requirements and duties of a School Board member. There is one School Board seat up for election in April, it is held by incumbent Martha Bresler.
“I think everybody should be encouraged to be on one seat, whether it be village board, school board or whatever,” Hibner said.
He spoke on what it takes to lead the district and how having vision is a must for any candidate. He said any prospective candidate had to be willing to bring their viewpoints to the table and be willing to listen to others and work with them. He detailed the work of the board and how it forms and maintains policy and works with administration to implement those policies and procedures.
He said it was important for the board to establish a standard of performance and for members to have a strong commitment to education and a good working relationship with the superintendent.
Hibner described how the board sets and approves curriculum with the help of the director of curriculum and teachers, how they determine employment on recommendations from administration and have a responsibility to the community to show them the accomplishments and challenges with in the district. But above all else, anyone wanting to be a School Board member had to be an advocate for children and learning.
He also said that today’s board member had to have a lot of courage.
“Well, they always did, but today’s challenges take a lot of moral courage,” Hibner said.
Deferred maintenance projects
Hibner and Building and Grounds Supervisor Bob Ellis gave the board members a large spreadsheet with all the districts deferred maintenance projects listed in alphabetical order Monday night.
Hibner told the board these were the districts needs and there were very few wants on the list.
“Quite obviously the older buildings have the bigger lists,” Ellis said.
Hibner said if a facility needs referendum could not be brought forth quickly, the district was going to have to start looking at how to accomplish these tasks. He said the next step for the board was going to the prioritizing the list so Ellis and his department could start to plan for the projects.
“Many of these aren’t being addressed because we simply don’t have the funds,” Ellis said. “I have the same $125,000 as when I got here, but it doesn’t go as far as it did 20 years ago. Some of it we knock off every year as we can, but the ability to do that gets harder and harder each year.”
Safety and security issue are always at the top of the “to do” list, Ellis said, but even then, they can’t always repair what they need to.
“Some of our concrete is 40, 50, 60 years old and it needs to be replaced,” he said after a discussion about how some of the projects that aren’t being done are affecting the schools insurance rates, especially when it comes to slips, trips and falls.
Operation Click
Adam Rhode with East Troy’s Operation Click informed the board of a new addition to the program. This year, East Troy High will hold a mock crash around prom time in conjunction with local emergency responders and Froedtert Hospital.
Forever Changed plays out a real crash scenario involving two cars and using actual crashed vehicles. The crash is caused by a driver under the influence and another using a cell phone. Students act as crash victims, complete with injuries and one of them dies.
