Scott Stanley is more than ready for school to begin.
“We need a break,” the director of operations of USD 257 told board members at their meeting Monday night.
The department’s summer punch list was long, including making restrooms in the elementary schools handicap-accessible, installing a basketball court at Iola Middle School, rerouting a sewer line from the cafeteria, servicing heating and cooling units atop every district building, overseeing renovation to the track, extensive repairs to the stadium locker rooms in Riverside Park, and, just to add spice, wrangling with skunks.
“I worked my guys to death,” Stanley said. “We’re ready for school to start so things can mellow a bit.”
Still to work out is the district’s “problem child,” the football field.
Though it looks considerably better, “it still has problems,” Stanley said, including fungus and worms.
“Last year they were Army worms. This year they’re smaller,” he said, adding that he is confident a solution lies just around the corner.
Still to come will be the paving of all school parking lots at a cost of about $18,000 for a total of 10,000 square feet — “ballpark figure,” said Stanley.
ENROLLMENT at the career tech center for a construction trades class was 17. Of those, nine will be bused to the center outside of LaHarpe. The others live close enough to the center they can provide their own transportation.
Jack Koehn, superintendent of schools, said he devised a rule that if the students live closer to the tech center than they do the high school, then their transportation is up to them.
Tentative enrollment numbers show an increase of students from the previous two years by about 1 percent.
Currently there are 396 at Iola High School; 27 in the Crossroads virtual program; 221 in seventh and eighth grades; 183 in fifth and sixth grades; 507 in kindergarten through fourth grade, and 61 in the district’s two pre-schools, for a total of 1,356 students.
The graduating senior class has 82 students enrolled. The biggest class is eighth grade, with 119 enrolled.
So far only 187 of 404 middle school students have paid the $15 technology fee that enables the students to take home a Chromebook, the tablet on which their lessons will be conducted.
Of the high-schoolers, about half have paid the $25 tech fee for the same privilege.
“Once we hand them out, more kids will come forward,” predicted Stacey Fager, high school principal.
ABSENT ANY discussion from the public, board members passed a $12 million budget for the 2016-17 school year, as was discussed in the Aug. 9 Register.
Board members also approved 2.5 percent raises for all non-teaching staff and administrators.
New hires include Ryan Latta, assistant baseball coach; Addie Haar, assistant high school volleyball coach, and Anthony Herrick, assistant football coach for seventh and eighth grades.
