School Board considers bonds, soccer at the Tuesday meeting

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[The Harrisburg School Board is planning to sell about $2 million in bonds to repair the roofs at East Side and West Side schools.

At the regular meeting Tuesday night, board embers agreed to add the $1.985 million bond to the school's existing Health, Life and Safety debt. These bonds will pay for replacing both roofs, which have become vexing problems, and a new elevator at Harrisburg High School.

HLS bonds are not part of a school district's regular operating expenses -- they are used exclusively for building and property maintenance projects.

The district has $8.5 million in debt capacity left based upon its finances, according to Tim King of Bank of Montreal and Ontario. the school's bonding agent for this bond issue.

Board members still have work to do before the bonds are issued. King told board members they probably need to make amendments to the current 10-year HLS survey by January to get in position for a February issue.

Scheduling

Work is continuing on moving the high school back to a traditional schedule from the block schedule in place since the late 1990s.

The district seems to be on track for switching back in 2009. Tuesday night the board looked at sample schedules and possible class plans for incoming freshmen.

The schedule being worked on now would include eight 48-minute class periods.

Superintendent Dennis Smith suggested the schedule underlines a problem plaguing the school district -- the high dropout rate. Classes shrink substantially as they pass through the high school, Smith said. Smith believes in the past transfers to other districts were overestimated while dropouts were underestimated. The schedule seems weighted toward the college-bound and not students who will be looking for a job or vocational education after they graduate.

"It appears to me we have a system set up that drives those students out," Smith said.

He suspects many dropouts fall so far behind in math or science that they don't see any way of ever completing their course work. It might be time to think about how to address the needs of those students with some class offerings geared toward them, Smith said.

HHS no longer offers traditional industrial arts -- no wood shop, auto shop or computer-aided drafting -- in part because it is hard to find teachers and partly because the state's emphasis is elsewhere.

"And with the high-stakes testing the state doesn't care about those kids. They care about passing tests in math and science," Smith said.

And, retiring teachers weren't replaced.

Besides countless vocations, industrial arts gives students good groundwork for professions like architecture, drafting and civil engineering.

Soccer

Quite a few parents and students filled the board meeting asking the board to consider funding high school girls' and boys' soccer. Dawn Horn, who spoke on behalf of parents, said the program has a lot to offer. Both teams have been self-funding since they were set up a few years ago.

"Since the program has begun we have seen a huge increase in interest," Horn said.

Literally hundreds of kids play youth soccer and there are at least 44 girls interested in trying out this spring, she said.

Soccer has several fund-raisers like a haunted house, spaghetti dinner and fish fries to name a few, Horn said. But the girls' program particularly is beginning to fall behind in funding. The girls' program owes the district $2,109 for the 2007-2008 season. Some of the funds from an upcoming haunted house display will go toward defraying that debt, Horn said.

The annual cost estimate provided by the parents and volunteer coaches for both programs was $17,000 to $23,000, depending upon how many assistant coaches are hired.

Some discussion centered around the status of coaches, who are now volunteers -- if they are paid, then Harrisburg Education Association members would be entitled to bid on the jobs. While no decision was reached, additional discussion suggested the board might not fund the coaching positions and allow them to stay volunteer. The cost estimate for the two head coaches was $8,000, or $4,000 each.

Judy Cape said she would prefer the board wait until next month to take action to allow other people to give their opinions on the matter.

Laura Fleming said if she had a child playing soccer, she would be at the meeting right along with the parents. But it disappoints her that people don't get as fired up about academics as they do sports, Fleming said.

Central office basement

An offensive odor is still emanating from the Central Office basement. School Architect Ed Kerkhover has had a look at the basement and a better analysis of the odor has been obtained. It looks as if the smell is a combination of fecal matter and a heavy fuel like diesel, Smith said.

"They think they are combining to make their own scent," Smith said.

The basement is not usable right now. Smith is not sure it is even a good idea to have people anywhere in the building over the long haul if the problem can't be contained and the air quality stays bad.

Kerkhover believes the March rains probably activated the smell -- somehow the ground water dislodged something that seeped toward the Central Office. Audience members recalled gasoline stations were in the area at one time.

Cindy Black, director of media and technology and the school's JULIE representative, said someone did core samples recently in one of the streets around the Central Office because she got a JULIE call from the sampling crew.

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency will probably have to be informed, Smith said.

Transportation contract

Board members approved a new contract for bus transportation with Robinson Transport. The contract includes a $74,243 increase for the 18 regular bus routes; a $1 per-hour increase for transportation to extracurricular activities; and a five-cents mileage increase for extracurricular activities.

Joyce Robinson agreed to place video cameras on buses, which was a never-enforced clause in the previous contract.

Closed session

After a closed session that stretched two hours and 45 minutes, the board made several personnel moves.

Several resignations were accepted, including Dawn Horn as a West Side kindergarten aide; Liz Pilcher as head cheerleading sponsor for basketball; Julia Carian as a middle school alternative education teacher; Richelle Jones as an aide; and Cortney Bebout as HHS assistant cheerleading sponsor for basketball.

The retirement of Alan Stachowiak was accepted effective at the end of the 2011 school year. Stachowiak is a vocational teacher at HMS.

Megan Porter was employed as an 80 percent time exploratory teacher at HMS; Hillary Ford was hired as cheerleading sponsor for basketball; Mary Shackelford was hired as a lunchroom aide at West Side; and Dana Rice was named a full-time aide.

Machelle Owen was granted a health leave request through Dec. 1.

Several items on the agenda for possible discussion in closed session were not acted upon. An item concerning an administrative retirement incentive received no action and a memorandum of understanding concerning involuntary teacher transfers was tabled.

Two HEA grievances were listed on the agenda, but no action was taken in open session. The agenda also indicated the board planned to discuss two families who may not be district residents but have children attending Harrisburg schools.

During the meeting:

-- The board announced Tom DeNeal was named a "master school board member" by the Illinois Association of School Boards.

"Which just means I've been doing it a long time," DeNeal said.

-- Deborah McGowan and Jennifer Irvin gave a presentation on some of the ways technology is being integrated into language arts classes at HMS. Pupils used iMovie to illustrate poems and essays, which were presented to the board.

-- Doug Cottom agreed to continue funding bowling for two more school years.

-- A full-time, temporary position in Title I was created due to a $140,000 surplus in Title I funds this year. In addition to the new position, some of the money will be used to extend full benefits to Title I teachers.