Glenwood City school board discusses live streaming of events, fills several openings
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GLENWOOD CITY — The Board of Education for the School District of Glenwood City discussed several matters during its committee and regular meeting sessions on Monday, July 12 including live streaming of events, dual sports athletes, possible changes to its policy pertaining to Wednesday and Sunday school-sponsored activities, ways to improve communication with parents and district residents, and the waving of student activities fees for this upcoming school year.
The board also approved several new hires to fill open positions within the district.
Nicole Brite, the district’s director of pupil services and special education, also tendered her resignation following the July regular meeting. Brite has accepted the pre-kindergarten through 12th grade principal’s position in the Clayton School District.
District superintendent Tim Johnson told the Tribune Press Reporter in an email dated July 27 that Brite gave her official written notice of resignation on Monday, July 19 and the timing of it has not allowed the board to receive or act upon it. Johnson said a special meeting may be arranged to deal with Brite’s resignation and other personnel matters prior to the August 16 annual meeting and budget hearing.
During the committee meeting portion of the July 12 agenda, Superintendent Johnson began the discussion about live streaming of school athletic and extra-curricular events by asking the board what it would like to see in a live-streaming service by the district.
He noted that last school year, by necessity with COVID, the district implemented various ranges of live streaming be it an athletic event, a concert, school play or graduation.
Johnson continued by telling the board that high school/middle school principal Patrick Gretzlock had been investigating a few different live-stream options throughout the past year and there were a couple of opportunities to purchase cameras that were “more automatic”. He said the one that was most advantageous was part of the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) network called Pixellot Cameras.
As Johnson explained, the biggest advantage is this camera system would automate much of the process and that cameras could be mounted in both gymnasiums or even the football field to cover home athlete events, concerts, and other extra-curricular events.
Johnson said another advantage is the cost of the Pixellot system, the cameras and their installation would be free for the district.
The cameras would be placed in both gymnasium and would broadcast only home athletic contests and extra-curricular events such as concerts.
The one caveat said Johnson was in order for the company to earn a return on its investment of cameras and the installation, there would be a charge to subscribe to the channel with an annual fee of around $70 or about $10 per month on a month-to-month basis.
Johnson told the Board that he was not excited about having a parent or grandparent having to pay for a membership to watch their student participate in events.
He said that he asked the company if there was a flat rate that the district could pay that would make it free to view, that option would cost the district about $4,000 per year based on a four-year contract.
“I don’t know that for what we currently offer for live streaming, that’s a great investment,” stated Johnson.
The superintendent indicated that the offer of three cameras with installation through Pixellot expired July 25.
Johnson noted that the district used stationary ipads to live stream extra-curricular events last school year.
Gretzlock did go into more detail on the Pixellot system and what other districts are using for live streaming events from ipads to paid production and announcing crews.
Gretzlock told the Board that the district could go as expensive as it would want or low budget. But his concern is if the district does decide to do a more involved live-streaming product that it would have to be managed and the district already has trouble finding individuals to run a clock and keep score books at games.
“I don’t know how you’re going to find people to do a broadcast of the games and play-by-play and keep track of the back-and-forth,” stated Gretzlock.
He continued by saying that the Pixellot system does almost everything excluding announcing contests.
Gretzlock added that the Pixellot system would allow for greater automation of live-streamed events but it comes with some valid concerns.
“The self intuitive part (of the Pixellot system) is really attractive but like Tim said, it is cost prohibitive,” said Gretzlock. “They give you the cameras, which honestly are probably $15,000, and they are going to give them to us free and install it for free but the catch is they are going to make everybody buy every game they want to watch.”
Gretzlock did note that viewership numbers for live streamed events this past year were low.
Board member Chuck Draxler wasn’t sold on the idea of residents, fans and parents having to pay to watch games saying, “Personally, from my point of view, I don’t think its a good idea to have a service that somebody has to subscribe to. I don’t think that’s something that we should be doing. ‘Hey, we got live stream but you have to pay $70 for an annual pass’. I am sure it is better than watching a security-camera feed but I would probably rather watch a security feed for free and get some updates via text than pay 70 bucks.”
After much more discussion, the board thought staying with the use of a stationary ipad to live stream events was the most feasible and cost-effective option at this time.
During the committee meeting, the board also discussed dual sport athletes and instituting a educator/staff member of the year award, both of which came up during a brain-storming session at the board’s recent retreat.
It is also looking into adding a description of board officer positions into the board policy and discussed policy 434 which oversees Wednesday and Sunday school-sponsored activities.
Once the regular board session got underway, the board approved personnel moves that included the hiring of Kraig Konder as a substitute bus driver, Rosemarie Spanel as long-term substitute in kindergarten and Amanda Sandor as the new Spanish teacher (which was approved following a closed-session discussion).
Jake Score was approved by the board to become the district’s athletic director and Carrie Blanchard was approved to be the athletic coordinator. Blanchard’s request to step down as the head coach of the boys’ and girls’ high school track program was also green lighted.
A $3,000 “Ag in the Classroom” grant from Compeer Financial was also accepted by the board.
Later in the meeting, the board also approved changes and updates to both the elementary and middle school/high school student handbooks which included the striking of all current athletic fees.
During his monthly report to board members, Superintendent Johnson said that following the last board meeting he had sent out a survey to all parents that asked some basic questions pertaining to the overall effectiveness of district communications.
He said the survey asked recipients for their preferred method of communications, frequency of communications, and general comments. He then shared the results with the board and told them he would also share them with those that responded to the survey.
The results for the district’s overall satisfaction of communication, based on a one to five scale with one being unsatisfactory and five being excellent, showed that 21 percent of respondents rated it a one, 18 percent rated it a two, 26 percent gave it a three, 25 percent a four and only ten percent rated the district’s communications efficacy a five.
“So, obviously there’s a need to have an increased level of effective communication,” Johnson said.
He said that he was surprised that the vast majority of respondents’ preferred method of communication was email from the choices that were presented in the survey which also included voice mail, Facebook, the Tribune Press Reporter, and the school newsletter.
Johnson said the district could take better advantage of email to inform residents.
As for frequency of communications, Johnson said most would like monthly updates, while 26 percent said weekly updates were preferred and ten percent answered quarterly notifications would be fine.
Asked who they want to receive the information from, the largest portion or 62 percent said it depended on the information while the next two biggest categorical responses were from the board of education and the superintendent.
“The biggest takeaways were that we need to have better overall communication, and probably the number one concern expressed was the number of staff that are leaving the industry, what we can do or how that can be resolved or how that can be shared,” said Johnson.
He added that he would begin doing an overview of the actions taken at each board meeting and sharing it in an email message to residents. The first of which went out on July 14 and stated that beginning with the last board meeting in August, each board meeting will be live streamed.
Gretzlock told board members during his report that the district’s tech ed position may be difficult to fill as there were currently 46 such positions open within the state.
“The reality and the opportunity for us to fill that position within the next month is daunting,” said Gretzlock, who added that he is updating the online job offering daily to keep it at the top of the list.
The board also approved the request of elementary principal Betsy Haltinner, who also serves as the district’s technology coordinator, for the purchase of 50 new Chromebooks for staff members at a cost of $13,042 as well as an additional $1,900 for Google management software.
Also approved was the purchase of a new floor rider scrubber for $13,600 from Oak Ridge Chemical.
On Tuesday morning, August 3, the Tribune Press Reporter was notified via email that the board will be holding a brief special meeting on Monday, August 9 at 6:30 p.m. Superintendent Johnson wrote in the email that while the agenda had not yet been finalized it would include some consent agenda items and an executive session to deal with hiring actions.
Finally, the annual meeting and budget hearing are set for Monday, August 16.
