GC school board hears reports, approves co-curricular, coaching hires for 2018-19

GLENWOOD CITY — The Glenwood City board of education heard reports from its administrative team and approved several co-curricular and coaching hires for the upcoming academic year at its Monday, June 25 meeting.

During the consent agenda, the board official filled nearly a dozen vacant coaching and co-curricular positions within the district.

Six new coaches were approved during Monday’s regular board session to fill open positions in several sports.

Carrie Blanchard and Matthew Schutz were selected as the new head coaches for track and field and softball respectively. Blanchard served as an assistant coach this past season and will take over for Rick Tiberg who retired. Schutz, who served as the interim head coach for the Toppers softball team this year and was the program’s head coach a few years ago, will again take the reigns.

Amy Dopkins, who coached the C-team, moved to assistant and junior varsity girls’ basketball coach and Tristan Kittilson was chosen as the C-team football coach.

Matt Lamb was tabbed to coach the middle school boys’ basketball team while Carly Kittilson will assume the role of girls’ middle school basketball coach.

Even with those positions filled, the district still has vacancies for middle school football, volleyball and track and a C-team track coach.

Five open co-curricular positions were also filled at the meeting.

Jessica Erickson was approved as the high school student council advisor and Holly Olson as the elementary student council advisor. Jena Kaiser will serve as advisor for the elementary yearbook, Kim Unser was chosen as the junior class advisor and Randy Ketola will become the new STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Coordinator.

Nicole Brite, Director of Athletics, Pupil Services and Special Education, presented the board with the annual Seclusion and Restraint Report, the elementary summer school report and the spring sports wrap up.

Brite informed the board that there had been six situations during the past school year that required restraint of a child. That mirrors the previous year when there were also six incidents of restraint. Brite noted that there were no seclusions during the 2017-18 year.

The first two-week session of elementary summer school concluded last Friday, June 22 and had 95 students participate in 14 different classes according to Brite. She also stated that a sports skills session was also offered giving attendees the opportunity to participate in softball, volleyball, basketball and football. Brite told board members that the second summer school session called STARS, which focused on academic improvement and enhancement, will begin August 6.

Elementary principal Betsy Haltinner updated the board on the district’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan. Haltinner said that she had collaborated with Brite and district Title 1 and reading specialist Paige Pax to complete the plan which had been reviewed internally and by CESA #11 and was ready to submitted prior to the June 30 deadline.

High school/middle school principal Patrick Gretzlock reported on his building’s summer school program. Gretzlock said that he had sent communications to 17 families with students that needed academic remediation.

Gretzlock said that while participation in summer school was voluntarily, participates had to have a 90 percent attendance record in order to be successful.

He noted that currently 10 students were taking advantage of the summer school session and had earned back eight class credits.

Gretzlock also gave an update on the School-wide Learning Objective (SLO). He had set a goal to reduce the number of semester failures by 40 percent, noting that these are the type of failures that keep students from graduating on time and also looked to minimize multiple failures by single students.

Tracking failures by semesters, Gretzlock noted that the amount of failures tend to increase from the first semester of a school year to the second.

During the first semester of the 2016-17 year, seven students had a failure with two having multiple failures. In the second semester that same year, seven students had multiple failures.

This academic year, there were only two students with failing semester grades during the first semester but both suffered multiple course failures. That featured, however, jumped to seven students with multiple failures in the second semester.

“I didn’t meet the goal,” stated Gretzlock, “But we are moving students in the right direction.”

Gretzlock said that he is working to improve communication and collaboration between parents and classroom teachers to help facilitate a reduction in student failures.

During his report to the board, Superintendent Tim Johnson stated that there would be some changes to the district’s contracted preventive services. Johnson said that the maintenance of the building roof top environmental units would now be handled by NAMI instead of Siemens and security and fire equipment would be serviced by Polk-Burnett Security Services.

Johnson also had some good financial news for the board. The superintendent reported that the district could have nearly three-quarters of a million dollars available after July 1, 2019 to upgrade facilities and/or programming.

Johnson said the funds would come from Fund 46 which currently holds $250,000 and anticipated sparsity aid.