OFFICIAL MINUTES FROM THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES MEETING OF THE
The Board of Trustees for the Arkansas School for the Blind met for their monthly meeting on January 20, 2009
Present: Pam Hyneman, Chairperson; Beth Gray, Vice-Chairperson; Andrew Tolbert, Secretary; Dr. Doug Watson, Board Member; Henrietta Williams, Board Member; Johnny McGehee, A.S.B. Parent Representative; Jim Hill, A.S.B. Superintendent; Dr. Marcella Dalla Rosa, A.S.D. Superintendent; Katie Becker, Zania Musteen, Interpreters; Members of the Deaf Community; Members of the Blind Community; Amy Ford, Office of the Attorney General
Absent: Janice
Vaughn
09-B-001 Motion to Approve Consent Items
Mrs. Hyneman asked for a motion to approve the Consent
Items. Mr. Tolbert made the motion and Dr. Watson seconded the motion. The
motion passed unanimously.
Action Items
None
Discussion Items
None
Superintendent’s Report
Personnel Issue
Mr. Hill: The personnel issue that I made each of you aware with my communication is a nonissue. There have been no repercussions, which I didn’t expect there would be. We were very careful to dot all of the i’s, cross all of the t’s and take the proper action. So, it’s unfortunate, but it had to be done.
Ms. Gray: Can you remind me what that was pertaining to?
Mr. Hill: It was pertaining to the dismissal of an employee.
Ms. Gray: Oh, Okay.
Wrestling Conference
Mr. Hill: We have, we’re going to a regional wrestling conference in Kansas City. Our region is made up, called the North Central Regional Association and North Central, is made of about how many states, 10 left?
Sharon Berry: There are 11.
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January 20, 2009
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Mr. Hill: There are 11 states from North Dakota, South Dakota, down to Arkansas over to Tennessee and Oklahoma. All of those states in that boundary and we think we have a pretty good chance of coming out in real good shape. We did go to go to a wrestling tournament in Cabot and we only, since it was a long weekend, we didn’t have the whole wrestling team. We had three wrestlers, but one of them came out #1 in his weight class; the other one came out #2 and I think he would have come out #1, but he jammed his thumb in the second match that he had and boy that slows you down; then the third one he just couldn’t quite get it together. We were represented real well with the Cabot tournament. And, I might say, Andrew, since you’re on AAA, that’s working out real good.
Mr. Tolbert: Is it?
Mr. Hill: I think there is really generating some interest. There were about 7, 8 or 9 teams there and they almost had a full gym.
Mr. Tolbert: Good.
Special Ed Visit
Mr. Hill: We’re having the visitation and evaluation of special ed. and we, too, were pleased that their process had changed. We had filed an issue with, actually we’re going to file it with the Board of Education, and they talked to us about it, but we felt, as I’m sure Marcella did, that it was punitive and it really did not serve the purpose of helping schools. I think probably some of you who were here remember me mentioning that, that it really wasn’t designed to help schools do better. It was designed to say I got you. So, we’re very pleased with that change as well.
Semester Tests
Mr. Hill: We just got through with our semester tests and we are very hopeful that the grades will come out okay. We did revise our schedule so they had extra time to take the semester tests.
Homecoming
Mr. Hill: Homecoming will be here at the, have they talked to you about using your gym yet at homecoming?
Dr. Dalla Rosa: No.
Mr. Hill: Well, they should have. I apologize. We are going to have homecoming. It will be in her gym or our gym.
Dr. Dalla Rosa: When is that?
Mr. Hill: January 31 and we’re going to have our annual parade. Well, if there is a problem we can probably work around it. We’re going to have our homecoming parade as we usually do. Whose going to be the …
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January 20, 2009
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Sharon Berry: Mike Francis
Mr. Hill: Mike Francis is going to be a parade honoree and we will go down Lee Street to Beechwood, Beechwood to Kavanaugh and Kavanaugh back to the campus, and with a police escort and everything. We going to have the trolley car and we put some of our elementary kids on the trolley car. They just love to ride that thing. We’re looking forward to that.
State Pay Plan
Mr. Hill: The state pay plan, I’m sure most of you read in the paper, the state pay plan that has had a lot of work put into it by OPM, Office of Personnel Administration and DFA, and legislative representatives, researchers of one type or another and they did come down, and I think we’ve probably explained to you, they came down with a new pay plan that was supposed to up the lower levels of each position so we had higher entry level rates, and then that’s what they did. However, with the revenue prospects being what it is, they’re kind of backing up a little bit and getting cold feet. You know there’s several different ideas of how it should proceed. The general consensus I get is they’re not going to drop it, but it just depends on how much revenue they have as to how much of it they’re going to put into place. The increase in salary varies from, based on how much, how many years you have with the state. It can go up to 5% for 36 years and be as little as 1% for 2 years service. And so, we still don’t know how it’s going to come out or what is going to be passed, but it’s kind of up in the air right now. The only thing that I can sense from talking to people is that it’s going to take place. Just how and how much is probably the question.
Program Changes
Mr. Hill: We were very pleased that the Department of Correction is trying to make some changes in their program. They have been trying to make some changes in their program. They’ve been trying to establish that educational program out there for some time and have had several set backs. Um, but they were trying to review some programs and some graduation policies and I was happy to say that Ken James sent them to us and we were very pleased that he thought our program was good enough to send someone out to look at it. And they did come, and they were very pleased with what they found and they think maybe they have found something that will benefit them as well.
General Improvement Projects
Mr. Hill: When we get to the general improvement projects, one of them was to, our baby program is just growing by leaps and bounds, and one of them was to refurbish some classrooms in the east wing, which is that wing of the school on this side. And we
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January 20, 2009
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had a cooperative agreement with Division of Services for the Blind that they could use it for their technology training program and so, in order to get ready for the possibility of refurbishing those classrooms, we asked the director of DSB if they could move back to their original place. So they are going to be leaving March 9, I believe it is, and we’ll
have those rooms empty. We will start by abatement of some asbestos to begin with and then we will start trying to work on those rooms and get them ready for refurbishing. We hope to be able to someday be able to move that whole program down there, and that way, it would be the Birth-3 Program all to itself, maybe with kindergarten and pre-school because that happens to be the biggest department we have in terms of number of students and we’re really excited about the promise in the future because there’s a lot of interest on the part of parents in these programs.
Mr. Tolbert: Jim, while you’re on that, I’ll ask you the same question I asked Marcella. Are these projects, you have 12, a total of $4.9 million on general improvement projects, are they listed in order of priority, or just by project number?
Mr. Hill: Yes, that’s basically the order we want to go in, with 12 being the least, the lower priority. Not necessarily not a priority, but the lower priority, and #1 being the higher priority. For example, in drainage we have, I can pass these around and you can look at them if you're interested, but in drainage we have places where the water has eroded the soil and so many years of erosion that the kids are having to walk through mud to get past the classroom. We scoop it off but it comes right back. Drainage is a big issue for our campus and renovation of building and classroom space because of our growth, that’s issue #2 and, yes, they are progressive.
Mr. Tolbert: The reason I was asking is because it has renovation of administration. Do you have classes in the building or you just talking about offices?
Mr. Hill: No, these, we call the east wing and west wing administration building. It is not administration space. It is actually space, and that probably needs to be, I need to use another term.
Mr. Tolbert: Yes, because I would think security and safety would come before renovation of the administration. It’s not administration as such is what I meant.
Mr. Hill: Absolutely. And I may go back before I present it to the committee and change that too because that could confuse them.
Mr. Tolbert: Yes.
Mr. Hill: And then waterproofing of the buildings. We have done some waterproofing in the worst places, but there are some places where we just did it where we can see apparent damage from the lack of waterproofing and now we need to go back and finish the rest of it before it shows damage. Air conditioning, you can see the air conditioners that I have listed on the second page, after the amount, how old they are. We have replaced some, but most of the air conditioners that we have are in the 60’s and 70’s and we have some air conditioners that we are spending more money in maintenance that it would cost to buy new ones really. We have two or three where every several days you have to refurbish them with gas because they can’t find the leak.
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Mr. Tolbert: You don’t have to deal with the facilities department at all, do you?
Dr. Dalla Rosa: No.
Mr. Hill: As a matter of fact, they recommended that we not even involve them because it would confuse the issue. But that’s basically what we have in mind. Are there any questions?
Dr. Watson: Don’t you have a name for the administration building?
Mr. Hill: It’s Keller Administration and it’s named after Helen Keller and Administration East Wing and Administration West Wing.
Dr. Watson: You want a wording that would focus on the academic (inaudible).
Mr. Hill: I think I’m going to be a little innovative like Andrew said and maybe name it Birth-3 Wing.
Mr. Tolbert: The only reason I asked the question because with facilities they won’t provide funds for anything but instructional facilities, administration, gym, athletics, just strictly academics. I know you come under a different umbrella. That’s why I asked that question about (inaudible).
Mr. Hill: No, but that’s the same way. If we use a word aesthetic, it gets them all nervous, you know.
Mr. Tolbert: I understand.
Dr. Watson: Is that your main classroom areas, the main (inaudible).
Mr. Hill: But that particular area I’m talking about is the east wing, which is not
Dr. Watson: The East Wing Academic Building or classroom?
Mr. Hill: Yes. At this point it’s not because we don’t have anything down there because of DSB, but it will be. We will turn that in to a, hopefully, a Birth-3 Wing.
New Playground
Mr. Hill: We are beginning to cut down trees and remove walks for our new playground equipment. I think I told you earlier that we got $50,000 from the state and national Lions Clubs in order to put in new playground equipment and we are excited about that and so are the kids, although I don’t know how much time we’ll have to use it once it’s installed. It’s really going to be an improvement over the older playground, which has already been removed and trees are being cut to make more room and sidewalks rerouted to make more room, and we really are excited about that. That’s all I have unless you have some questions for me.
Dr. Watson: It’s 1939 plumbing?
Mr. Hill: That’s what’s in our main administration building. That’s exactly right.
Dr. Watson: It’s very good plumbing.
Dr. Dalla Rosa: Not always!
Laughter
Mr. Hill: Now I want to tell you, that is old but now every line that has an outlet that goes to facilities where the water is taken into the body has filters on it. Because as old as those lines are, you've got to have filters.
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09-B-002 Motion to Adjourn
Mrs. Hyneman: Okay. Anything else? Anyone? Okay, would someone make a motion to adjourn?
Mr. Tolbert: So moved.
Ms. Gray: Second
Mrs. Hyneman: Okay all in favor signify by saying aye.
The motion passed unanimously and the meeting adjourned at 4:45 p.m.
___________________________________
Pam Hyneman, Chairperson
____________________________________
Andrew
Tolbert, Secretary
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