The Worth County School Board, at its regular meeting Wednesday, accepted the resignation of Tiffany Bliley as high school science teacher, head softball coach, and head girls basketball coach. Bliley managed the softball team in its 8-8 tie with Northeast Nodaway during the summer portion of its schedule as usual. However, shortly afterwards, she abruptly turned in her resignation to accept a science teaching position at Jefferson, where she was originally from. The move left the school scrambling to find new coaches for the girls basketball and softball teams and a teacher for the high school science class for the upcoming year.
In other personnel actions, the board hired two paraprofessionals and named Dominique Badell the junior high cheer sponsor.
With the school moving its fences in to 200 feet and purchasing new fencing as a result of the voter approved bond issue, the board declared the current fence, approximately 415 feet of 4’ chain link fence and posts, as surplus property. The school will take bids for its sale. The buyer must remove the fence during the month of July 2024.
The board voted to approve $500 reimbursements for teachers Brittany Schlapia, Patty Lischer, Allie Rush, Leena Hightshoe, and Keely Sherer for completing a volume of LETRS training. The state will reimburse the school for these payments.
High School Principal Josh Smith reported that the freshmen won the 2023-24 classroom attendance challenge with a 96.99 attendance rate.
Elementary Principal Chuck Borey reported that there were 67 students enrolled in summer school this year.
The board voted to reimburse itself for expenditures for bond projects up to $500,000.
The board voted to continue the $500 reimbursement rate for employees who use the district provider. Insurance rates went up 3.8% for the upcoming school year.
The school received two bids for speech language pathologist services at the school for the 2024-25 school year. Renae Luke bid $75/hour plus mileage of $75/day for a total estimate of $24,300 a year. Innovative Therapy Solutions, being run by Valerie Gray and Braxton Baker (when needed) bid $65/hour for a total estimate of $21,060 for the year. The board approved Innovative Therapy Solutions.
The board received three proposals from Superior Fence for the new fence at the ball diamond. The first proposal was for the school to do the labor for $7,942.81. The other two involved Superior Fence doing the labor. The first involved a 6’ nine gauge galvanized fence for a cost of $8,810. The second involved a 6’ nine gauge black coated fence for $10,640. The board voted to accept the bid from Superior Fence for materials and installation of the black fence for $10,640.
The board voted to finish the gym floor again. The school replaced their gym floor in the summer of 2016. They are currently having issues with the finishing bubbling and peeling up. There are spots on the floor that are currently down to bare wood. The best option for repairing and maintaining it is to sand it down to bare wood, paint, and finish it again. Ideally, this is done every 10-12 years, but the school says the problem spots will only get worse if they don’t refinish the whole floor. They tried to go a little deeper before refinishing it last summer, but it didn’t solve the problem.
The school received five bids for the project. Luebbert Hardwood Floors bid $32,215 for the project. They would fix the floor in Fall 2024 during school. They did a site visit in April. Northwest is a reference. Lankford Enterprises, which did the original project, bid $28,470. Phillips Commercial bid $42,830. SVB Wood Floors bid $42,054. Egan Supply Company bid $32,491. They listed Nebraska University and Iowa State as references.
The board voted to award the bid to Luebbert Hardware floors. They, along with three of the other contractors, use water-based sealers. Lankford uses an oil-based sealer.
The board voted to increase teacher pay by an average increase of 5.4% for all teachers. This year, the legislature passed Senate Bill 727, which will increase the state teacher minimum pay grant from $38,000 to $40,000. This grant will impact 15 out of Worth County’s 33 teachers. Without the state grant, the schedule will revert back to the salary schedule ending in 2021-22. District expenses will increase by #35,000 for the year.
Effective 2025-26, Senate Bill 727 will raise the minimum salary for teachers to $40,000 and $46,000 for teachers with a masters degree and 10 years of experience. If there is no compression to the salary schedule, it will result in a $250,000 increase to the budget.
The board voted to increase non-certified staff by anywhere from 5% to 14% depending on how far away they were from the $38,000 base salary. The positions that are farther away from $38,000 received a larger increase. The average increase for non-certified pay is 12.4%, and the estimated cost will be $42,600.
The board voted to increase extra duty pay by 12.9% compared to the previous school year. This will add $9,650 to the budget. Salaries were calculated using a percentage of $38,000 for the calculations.
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