BROKEN BOW – The Broken Bow School Board held its June meeting on Monday at 6 p.m.; all members were present.
Front and center were Superintendent Darren Tobey’s administrative comments, the focus of which was an unpacking of the school district’s 4 facilities meetings and last month’s tour.
The consensus reached through feedback, Tobey and several board members agreed, was that at the minimum, more community facility tours would be necessary, as the first seemed to open the eyes of many Broken Bow residents to the struggles of the high school.
The board also seemed to find that the feedback was overwhelmingly in favor of improving the school’s academic infrastructure, including career and technical education areas, however, Superintendent Tobey said that nobody believed it would be that simple.
“There were a lot of comments about tackling academic facilities first, and on the flip side we heard, ‘If we don’t do it all at once, we’ll never get it done.’”
As far as finding that piece of the puzzle, the board batted around a few ideas, all of which would come down to a taxpayer vote.
The current frontrunner, a brainchild of board member Pam Holcomb and J.B. Atkins, would avoid running multiple bonds, and be a way for the district’s residents to prioritize the changes they believe to be most important: a baseline academic renovation, with performing arts and the gym as two separate add-ons.
A vote on the issue, by Treasurer J.B. Atkins’ estimate, however, would be highly unlikely before November at the earliest.
“Regardless of how we do it, I don’t think we’re ready to run a bond. We got a lot of questions to answer between now and August.”
Several of those questions will be put to a newly established building committee, consisting of Board President Tom Osmond, Tim Chancellor, and Pam Holcomb.
The board also reviewed the district’s spring MAPS scores; from last year, all but 3 grades improved in reading, all but 2 improved in math, and every single grade improved its scores in science. The growth trend for the elementary school has remained consistent.
The board also approved the purchase of $82,000 of new kitchen equipment to meet health code standards; the money, if not taken from the Lunch Fund, could come from COVID relief money.
In keeping with keeping its nutritional house in order, the board also reviewed the pricing of its meal program for the coming year; Tobey said that a recommended 20-cent increase for students would be more than he could stomach.
“I wouldn’t care if adult lunch went up, but I would keep our kids’ lunch at a 10-cent increase, max.”
The board agreed, approving the dime jump unanimously.
A representative from Flatwater Bank presented CD rates to the board as it considers investing $1 million from its general fund for short-term growth, though no decision was made. The meeting adjourned at 7:23 p.m., with the next set for July 26 at 6 p.m.
