School board swears in re-elected members

The December 18 board meeting opened with Superintendent Suellen White swearing in Joe Schlomer, Heather Valverde and Travis Wagner upon their re-election to the school board of directors in November.

The board then re-organized, with Marcus Horak elected chairman, Ed Deife vice chairman and Joe Schlomer WIAA representative. Wagner and Deife remain on the facilities committee. Valverde and Wagner will be on the negotiating committee and Horak remains on the curriculum committee.

The board accepted the resignation of Jackie Allington who will retire at the end of this school year and the resignation at the conclusion of this year’s school musical of Ellen Holman as co-director.

Reader board

White told the board many efforts have been made to fix the school’s reader board sign on First Avenue. Even Odessa Office Equipment owner Marlon Schafer has looked at the sign and believes it is not repairable due to corrosion and a failed motherboard. White recommended the school district make plans to replace the sign as soon as possible. Contact with several reputable sign companies has thus far yielded only one reply estimating replacement of the sign will cost between $10,000 and $20,000. This ballpark estimate was given without seeing the current sign or knowing exactly what its specifications are. The board agreed to proceed with development of a proposal for resolving the issue.

Gift accepted

The board approved a gift from the Edmund and Darlene Braune Family Foundation in the amount of $2,500. A note attached to the gift stated, “Darlene (Miller) Braune grew up on a farm not far from Odessa. Her parents were Solly and Louise (Bahr) Miller. Louise graduated from Odessa High in 1929.” The request asked that the funds be used on an educational activity not currently supported by fundraising activities.

White told the board she requested proposals from the staff on how to use the funds and then had the staff vote on them. The winning proposal was to institute a 6th-grade outdoor educational camp. White said she had contacted the Lind-Ritzville district, which is currently participating in this type of camp. They sent information about the camp held at Camp Wooten in the Blue Mountains every fall and invited Odessa to join the established camp pending approval by all of the districts currently participating.

Principal’s report

Principal Ken Schutz told the board the Pre-K-through-6th-grade Christmas music program was excellent, with a large crowd in attendance.

Schutz and the teachers who will be receiving the new TPEP comprehensive evaluation will travel to Spokane several times in the new year to learn about how student growth should be factored into the teacher evaluation.

Facilities

White presented the facilities report for Justin Parr. There were several plumbing problems in the past few weeks, including stopped up toilets (due to kids filling them with paper towels) and a broken valve in the heating system that was fixed with the help of the town public works crew, who froze the pipe to allow Parr to fix it without having to turn off and drain the heating system pipes. There was some minor freezing of pipes on the west wall in the cafeteria kitchen when it got very cold. White suggested formulating a plan for a permanent fix for this problem when winter is over.

Board members Travis Wagner requested the big gray multi-purpose room entrance doors be evaluated for air leakage and Joe Schlomer suggested having a professional tree service come and prune the trees on the south side of the school to keep the tree canopies in line with the available space to prevent root growth into the foundation and sidewalk.

Marcus Horak reported on the excellent sessions he attended at the WSSDA Conference in late November. After attending a session dealing with superintendent evaluations, he discussed with White the idea of rolling the superintendent evaluation in with plans for this position when she retires the end of the next school year.

Meetings

The Odessa board will meet with the Harrington School Board in the semi-annual co-op meeting on January 15 in Odessa. The regular school board meeting of the month will be held January 22. Both dates are Wednesdays, and the meetings begin at 7 p.m. in the high school library.