Spencer board listens to project updates; plans to revisit most in July
The Spencer School Board decided to postpone approval for several items until its July meeting after holding discussion during its regular meeting June 21. The board was given updates on the school’s fitness center, infant care center and on Safe Route to School plan, which will all be revisited at a later date.
Spencer School District Superintendent Mike Endreas told the board about some requests he had received from members of the community on the ages of students allowed to come to the Spencer Fitness Center and the times the center is allowed to be open. Currently, he said a student 15 years old and younger has to be accompanied by a parent or guardian, but his recommendation was to lower the age to 13.
“We want to make the age lower,” he said. “We have had to shut off fobs (keys to access the center) with some parents that abused their use. There was a middle school student and a few elementary students that we found in there unsupervised. It was a little concerning watching them do that. But there has to be a balance. I think that a kid 13 years old or under should be acceptable to attend with a parent. We want to keep this as simple as possible.”
The board decided to table discussion on the age of students allowed in the fitness center without a parent until the July meeting. The board also briefly discussed the hours of operation of the center and decided to change the opening time from 5 a.m. to 4 a.m. The Spencer Fitness Center will still close at 10:30 p.m. to allow janitors to clean the space.
Endreas also reported that the bids for the Infant Care Center project came back higher than the $1.2 million estimate. Bids place the project cost at $1,366,484, and he said he would be meeting with some project representatives July 11 to look at options to try to reduce the total cost of the project. The results of that meeting will be brought to the board at its regular meeting in July either for approval or further discussion.
The board also received a report from Endreas on the street route parents use to pick up and/or drop off their child at school. The task force for Safe Route to School went out to the site at the end of May to see firsthand the signage in the area and other physical concerns such as sidewalks and curbing. With construction planned for Highway 13 on the north end of Spencer in 2024, Endreas said the school should try to reach out to the people in charge of the highway construction project to make sure they are all on the same page with regards to the details of the project.
“We can’t do anything more than what we already have in place (for Safe Route to School) until after 2024 when the road construction is complete,” he said. “It all depends on if they decide to do any extended curbing and sidewalks on the project.”
In other action taken by the board at the meeting, the board looked over the elementary and middle/high school student handbooks for the coming school year and decided to table approval for the new handbooks until July to allow the wording of the anti-discrimination policy to be researched and, if necessary, updated.
Endreas give a report on incidents of seclusion and physical restraint and bullying. In the 2022-23 school year, there were zero incidents of seclusion at the Spencer School District and three incidents of physical restraint. There were also three incidents of bullying at the middle/ high school level and zero incidents of bullying in the elementary. Endreas defined bullying as the continual refusal by a student to stop harassing or otherwise causing harm to another student after measures had been taken.
The board also approved spending $27,400 to re-sod the practice football field. The current practice field had been found to contain gravel in the sod, which posed a safety hazard to the players. Re-sodding the field would allow the field to be ready to use for football practice starting in August.
