The International Falls School Board is expected to select an elementary principal at its regular meeting Monday.
The meeting is scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. at the Falls High School cafeteria. An agenda is considered tentative until the government body begins the meeting and makes additions or deletions to the proposed agenda.
The vacancy of the elementary principal position comes as Falls Elementary and West End Elementary School principal Jerry Hilfer is set to retire June 30.
The board’s interview committee conducted a second round of interviews for three final candidates Friday, after the approval to hire any of the candidates failed at a special meeting earlier this week because of split votes.
An interview committee recommended the board hire Kristine Lamb for the position. Lamb is a K-12 music teacher at Cromwell-Wright Public Schools in Carlton County. The board’s split votes were a result of three board members in favor of the committee’s recommendation of Lamb, and three in favor of hiring applicants within the school district.
The applicants for the elementary principal position who now work for the district are Kevin Grover, Falls dean of students and math teacher, and Andy Fougner, Falls Response to Intervention coordinator and special education teacher.
The elementary principal selection committee is made up of Stuart Nordquist, school board chair; Garner Wiley, parent; Tim Everson, Falls High School principal; Ardel Hendrickson, district-wide testing coordinator and special education teacher; and Paul Hjelle, elementary teacher.
The committee is expected to make a recommendation to the board at Monday’s meeting. The board is expected to vote on the candidate or make a motion to nominate another candidate.
Other hires
In other business Monday, the board is expected to approve a two-year contract with Nordy Nelson as the new superintendent effective July 1. Nelson will replace Superintendent Jeff Peura, who is resigning from the district to take a superintendent and elementary principal position at Lake of the Woods School District in Baudette.
The board agreed to offer a contract to Nelson at a special meeting earlier this week.
Nelson is a self-employed consultant for School Financial Assistance. He has served as superintendent of various school districts, including the St. James Public Schools for six years. Prior to that, he was superintendent of the Melrose Area Public Schools in Stearns County for nine years.
The board is also expected to announce the hire of a new secondary art teacher for the 2012-13 school year. Interviews took place Thursday.
Other personnel items on the agenda include increasing elementary teacher Heather Sundsvold from a 0.66 full-time equivalency position to a 1.0 position. The board will vote on a retired teacher’s contract with Darrell Schmidt, Falls High School English teacher. Schmidt’s contract was not renewed earlier this year in a round of layoffs due to budget cuts.
The board is scheduled to increase the hours per day that the health aide works, and accept a resignation from cafeteria helper Vicky Lucca. Several hires or renewals of sports coaches and extracurricular activity advisors are expected to be approved in routine school board business.
Review items
In policy items, the board is expected to take action on the bully prohibition policy; student activity policy; and health and safety policy. Revisions of the Falls High School activity handbook will be up for board action. The board is expected to receive a revised policy for field trips for action in July.
The board is scheduled to vote on whether to participate in the “P” card program, or procurement card, for the 2012-13 school year. District business manager Stacy Frederickson said the program is essentially a credit card payment program that offers rebates to school districts. The purpose of the program is to reduce the cost of high numbers of transactions to vendors that have a low dollar amount per transaction. For example, instead of writing more than 200 checks to a vendor for school maintenance, with an average check amount of $42, the card will allow the district to make one payment per month for payments to all vendors.
“Because we are reducing staff, it’s really important to look at streamlining the day-to-day transactions but still using district policies,” she said. “When you look at how much time we spend processing transactions, we needed to look at a faster way to process these transactions.”
Frederickson will present details to the board and added that the program is backed by the Minnesota School Board Association and the Minnesota Association of School Administrators. Under the program, the district could qualify to receive thousands of dollars in rebates, and the school board would still authorize all transactions. Departments using the card would go through the same approval process.
“I’m excited about it,” Frederickson said. “Especially when I realized the depth the program could bring us.”
The board is scheduled to approve the final fiscal year 2011 expenditure and revenue budgets, and the fiscal year 2012 budgets. Budgets were presented to the board in May for review.
Hilfer and Falls High School Principal Tim Everson are expected to give a review of the 2011-12 school year. Everson is also scheduled to give an update on class schedules for the coming school year. Peura is expected to update the board on summer projects.
The board is scheduled to meet in closed session to discuss negotiation strategies on contracts with the teachers’ union Education Minnesota International Falls Local 331 and the Local 510 union of district secretaries, custodians and food service staff. Last year, the 510 union agreed to take a one-year contract instead of the typical two years, to allow the district time to plan its budget. The teachers’ contract expired June 30 last year and the district and the union have yet to reach agreement.
