(Spirit Lake)– The Spirit Lake school board Monday evening voted to tap into the district’s Local Option Sales Tax money to fund a 31,361-dollar project to bury electric lines from 28th Street to just west of the baseball diamond across the parking lot to the softball field.
They voted to spend an additional 20-thousand dollars from the same fund for architect’s fees for designing an environmentally friendly student parking lot on the east side of the high school. It will leave nearly 14-thousand dollars in the fund. The district received an 18-thousand dollar grant from the DNR to assist with the project which has a total estimated cost of 254-thousand dollars. It will include the construction of bio-retention cells to hold run-off water on-site.
The board is unsure yet as to who to hire for legal counsel. The district’s attorney, Jim Ladegaard, will be retiring May 1st. The board Monday evening directed Superintendent Tim Grieves to put together a list of lawyers that would be interested and report back to the board at their April meeting.
There was also discussion over how to replace the district’s Transportation Director. Gary Kuhlman is retiring from the position at the end of June. The board directed Grieves to look into a couple of options. They include contacting the city and/or county to see if they might be interested or to hire it out privately.
The board discussed the possibility of doing away with an incentive for perfect attendance. The current policy allows a high school student with perfect attendance in a certain class to skip that class’s final exam. The policy has come under fire recently from some parents who say it isn’t fair. They say students who went to the state wrestling tournament weren’t granted excused absences, meaning those with perfect attendance would no longer be able to skip the exam. Meanwhile, those students who attended the state girls basketball game WERE excused because there was no school that day. The board took no action, referring the matter to administration instead.
A second reading was held on a policy revision increasing the number of credits needed for graduation. It will come back to the board one more time before being adopted. Some high school faculty members say they want more time to review it.
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