The Eagle Grove School Board met Monday, August 8th for the group’s final regular meeting before the school year begins.
The school principals, Jared Carder (Elementary), Josh Schild (Middle), and Heidi Vasquez (High School), kicked off the meeting with their Communications and Celebrations, mostly focused on praise for office and custodial staff for all their work to get the 2022/23 school year off to a good start.
The three also attended the School Administrators of Iowa (SAI) conference last week. They learned new strategies focused on neuroscience of behavior, and were excited to bring new ideas, also including a unified instructional framework for peer coaching self-reflection, to the rest of the staff.
The school year will start with eight bus routes, plus a “zero route” that runs between the middle school and high school.
The board appointed Middle School Principal Josh Schild as the district Equity and Affirmative Action Coordinator for Programs, and Multicultural and Nonsexist Education Coordinator for 2022-2023 School Year.
A change order was approved for the administrative building elevator project, with a cost $1800 to bring flooring back to the outside of the elevator. At the last update the project was two weeks behind schedule, but a workaround temporarily relocating classes to the high school building is in place.
The group also approved one early graduation request, and anticipated more requests to come as the school year gets started. Superintendent Jess Toliver recommended all such are approved as long as they follow their academic plans.
A motion to approve a Registered Apprenticeship Grant MOU with Western Governors University and Iowa Central Community College also passed with all ayes.
The board approved a sharing agreement with West Hancock CSD to allow an Eagle Grove CSD staff member, Nicole Verbrugge, the ability to assist West Hancock’s district office due to a staff shortage. This is in exchange for paying a portion of Verbrugge’s salary equal to the portion of her time she will be assisting the West Hancock school district.
In his report, Superintendent Toliver shared that although recruitment and hiring of teachers has been difficult, the district is staffed and all classes are covered. The Homecoming football game will be on Thursday, September 29 this year because of a shortage of officials. The dance and coronation days have not been decided yet.
