Loyal board moves forward with strategic plan coordinator, tweaks Title IX motion, hears budget update

By Valorie Brecht The Loyal School District is looking to set goals and create a document that will guide decision-making for the district in the future. To that end, the district has agreed to complete a strategic plan. At the last school board meetingAug. 28, school board member Derek Weyer filled the board in on progress made on the district’s strategic planning process. The district will work with a consulting company known as Nexus, which helped the Marshfield School District create a strategic plan, as well as several other schools. Nexus is currently working with the Spencer School District, with around 50 community members on Spencer’s strategic plan task force.

Loyal administrators and board members recently did a video call with Nexus, in which Nexus gave an overview of how they do strategic planning.

“One big piece is community involvement,” said Weyer. “There are multiple task force committees. So you take the entire group and divide it into multiple tables. Each table has people in different professions, who have different goals. They create their own strategic plans, and then they’re compiled into one document. The board is not as involved; it’s more the community. I thought their presentation was really well done and extremely thorough.”

“I think it will help to get the teachers, staff and community more in unison,” added board member Kirk Haslow.

The strategic planning committee made the recommendation to go with Nexus as the district’s facilitator, with a cost of $2,740. The other company the school district had looked at was going to charge around $10,000. Spencer had received another quote for around $10,000 as well. The board did not take an official vote on the topic, but did not express any opposition to moving forward with Nexus. District Administrator Chris Lindner will be discussing a timeline with them.

Title IX policy Another item on the agenda for August was approving the minutes of the July board meeting. Board member Holly Lindner asked that the school board amend its motion regarding the Title IX policy. At its July meeting, the board made a motion that “the Loyal School Board will abide by the federal Title IX law, but not the unlawful regulations currently being contested in courts throughout the U.S., and at the time the litigation is resolved, will amend its policies accordingly.” Lindner made a motion to strike the part from “but not the unlawful regulations” through the end of the sentence, and change it to “and to suspend all considerations and implementation of the new Title IX rules until the litigation is final.” Board member Derek Weyer seconded that motion, and all voted aye. They then voted unanimously to approve the minutes as amended.

The new Title IX regulations proposed by the Biden administration expand the definition of “sex” to include “sexual orientation and gender identity,” and were supposed to go into effect Aug. 1. Twenty-six states plus hundreds of schools filed injunctions to stop the implementation of the new regulations. On Aug. 16, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the Biden administration’s request to allow most of its Title IX rule to take effect in places where courts have issued preliminary injunctions temporarily blocking the rule, giving the rationale that “the new definition of sex discrimination is intertwined with and affects other provisions of the rule.”

The block is temporary, as the Biden administration is appealing decisions in the lower courts.

Budget update Chris Lindner gave an update on the school budget. He said the school district wasstillwaitingonTitleIrevenues,equalization aid and finalized property values. He said it was estimated there would be a 10.7% increase in property value. The district will have its third Friday in September pupil count, which will help determine the enrollment number the district is aided upon.

“By Oct. 1, we will know more. Right now, it looks like we’ll be a little bit in the red for next year,” he said.

Policy approvals The board also approved the first reading of Neola policies in the categories of 0000 (bylaws), 1000 (administration), 2000 (program) and 9000 (relations with community), as part of its systematic review of all school district policies. The policies committee looked through all of these earlier in the month.

“It’s a little more full circle in certain areas, as far as compliance officers and how things will be handled,” said Haslow.

“It appears, reading through them, that some we are deleting entirely because they don’t apply anymore, some are being updated so they are more similar to other districts, and there’s also language in there about patient protection and the Affordable Care Act, which we didn’t have before,” said board member Tom Odeen.

The updated policies will be brought back to the board for a second reading before they are enacted and go live on the district website.

The board also approved a change for Policy KMD — Relations with Churches.

“The lone change is, previously we had ‘middle school students may participate in non-mandated supervised activities after school on Wednesdays until 5 p.m.’ We do have some that co-op and it’s a struggle to get them back here by 5 p.m., otherwise they don’t practice. So, talking to the policy committee, we are looking to change that from 5 to 5:30.

“I did check with our local religious classes. I know CCD for middle school is now online; they do not go to church or school anymore. But 6:15 they’ll still have Mass. But it shouldn’t interfere with anything; everything usually started at 6:15 or later,” said Chris Lindner.

The motion to approve passed unanimously.

Principal, administrator reports Principal Angie Kollmansberger gave a report. She said the staff had completed its Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) training. The staff also completed in-service trainings in August. She said the elementary open house had “great” attendance; but in the middle and high school, they were still working on increasing attendance. Incoming sixth graders also had orientation, which was well attended.

The district held its “kickoff to the school year” Aug. 27, 28 and 29. Kollmansberger said there was a high rate of attendance on the elementary end, but not so much on the middle/high school end because attendance was not mandatory.

There will be a couple of new clubs this year. Financial literacy teacher Jessica Zarnke is leading a middle school investing club, and middle/high school English teacher Leah Jacoboski and middle school social studies teacher Seth Schilling will be leading Forensics, which they’re bringing back after the district not having it for several years.

Kollmansberger said schedules were being finalized and the district was still looking to hire a paraprofessional in the elementary school. Loyal Enrichment Group afterschool homework time for middle school students will be starting soon, as well as Lil’ Dawgs afterschool child care.

Chris Lindner reported that registration had gone well, with only a handful of families that didn’t make it. He said all the school’s positions had been filled, which was a big deal. He said open enrollment numbers were a little worse this year than last year, with 79 open-enrolling out of the district and only 56 or 57 open-enrolling in. Last year, he said it was close to the same amount in and out, with around 60 in and 59 out.

“Any idea why so many are going out?” asked board member Dennis Roehl.

“I do not right off the bat. That’s something I’ll investigate,” said Chris Lindner.

“It looks like RVA(Rural VirtualAcademy) might be part of it,” said Kollmansberger.

Also, Chris Lindner said that he and Greenwood District Administrator Joe Green had discussed letting staff from either school in for free at athletic contests. Right now, staff from both schools get in for free at Loyal-Greenwood football games. But he wanted to know if the board would like to approve staff getting in for free for any sport, not just football — for example, if a Loyal teacher went to a Greenwood volleyball game. He said the board could think about it and let him know.

He said the school year was off to a good start.

“The staff had a great week this last week. They’re very excited,” said Chris Lindner. “They’re ready to rock next week Tuesday.”

Public comment There was one public comment, which middle school math teacher Mark Rueth had submitted prior to the meeting and Chris Lindner read at the meeting. Rueth said that at the previous board meeting, the staff handbook had been approved with some changes. Each staff member receives five paid time off (PTO) days and seven sick days per year. At the end of the school year, staff members are reimbursed $200 per day for each unused PTO day and $40 per day for each sick day, or they can bank their sick days.

“What I didn’t understand was how we can use these days if necessary. It was stated that before we can use our banked days, we would have to use the 12 days given to us at the start of the year. That means if I had to miss school for, let’s say, 15 days because of a surgery, I would have to use my seven sick days and my five PTO days before I could use any of my 110 banked days,” wrote Rueth. “If this is true, then I would not have any PTO days left… and would not be able to go to, let’s say a college graduation in May, as I would only have sick days left. Or I would be forced to lie.”

He felt that staff should be able to go into their banked sick days before using up their PTO days.

“I believe when PTO was first started here at the school, it was proposed by the administration as a way of producing more transparency and keeping teachers in the classroom. I’m not sure that this will happen under this proposal. I also feel that teachers like me who have missed very little work time and have many days banked, saving this district many thousands of dollars by not using days, are now being punished by not being allowed to use their banked days as they wish,” Rueth continued.

He asked the board to revisit its PTO policy.