At their last meeting, the Churchill County School District Board of Trustees approved a verbal bid proposal from Myles Getto for a lease of the agriculture property owned by the district on Rio Vista Road in the amount of $9,250 per year.
The district received no written bids and at the meeting called for oral bids. Getto has worked with the district in the past, leasing the property, and has been in discussion for the past several months about the improvements that need to be made to the property to make it more efficient and productive. He is willing to apply for grants through Natural Resources and Conservation Service to make the improvements and he is willing to work with the agriculture teacher at the high school and the students in the program to get the students in the program geared up to eventually take over management of the property.
Attorney for the school district, Sharla Hales will work with the ag teacher to create a contract between the district and Getto. Hales has been concerned over the issue of liability, but in her research learned that the project and the students are covered under POOL Pact, the Nevada Public Agency Insurance Pool. The contract would also require the lessee to maintain a liability policy.
“Time is of the essence,” said Hales, agreeing with Getto regarding the time of year and the need to get the property ready for production. “I just want to recognize that Mr. Getto has come up with several good ideas. This is a project that calls for creative solutions and someone willing to help out high school students and he has gone above and beyond.”
Trustee Amber Getto abstained from the vote due to a conflict of interest, Myles Getto is her son.
In other actions, the board approved the tentative budget presented by Comptroller Christi Fielding who reported that the Pupil Centered Funding at the state level has not yet been approved by the legislature and there are no assurances that any increases in that funding would be sustained after this biennium. She said several districts are choosing to budget conservatively, using numbers that are more in line with the prior year’s per pupil amount.
Fielding also reported that the tentative budget includes step increases for all employees, there has been a 3.75% increase in PERS (the Public Employee Retirement System) and a 7.5% increase in health insurance. “With 85 to 90% of the budget going to salaries, this is a substantial number based on current payroll,” she said. “With $17,205,505 that equals $650,000 for PERS, utilities have substantially increased, leaving a 4% ending fund balance.”
She also said she removed all the budgeted positions for the 2022/23 fiscal year that are still vacant, as well as all contingency, and by not including the 2023/24 priorities, the budget can meet the statutory requirement for the 4% ending fund balance. “The teaching and assistant superintendent positions could be added back in depending on the decisions made in the legislature,” she said. “All overtime has been removed and I will work to get that back in.”
Fielding also said that the ending fund balance continues to decline every year. The 2022/23 tentative budget began with a 12% EFB and this budget will end with 4%. “That is not sustainable.”
Additionally, the board addressed an issue raised by Trustees Joe McFadden and Julie Guerrero-Goetsch when they were onboarding their new positions. A First Reading was submitted to the board which reviewed revisions to P6149, the Internet and Public Network Acceptable Use Policy, and requested Hales to come back to the board with more information.
Hales reported that “With fresh eyes, they were concerned with signing the policy giving permission for the district to review all emails sent over district email.”
Goetsch said that she had concerns with the open-endedness of the policy that may give blanket access to board emails by the superintendent.
Trustee Matt Hyde said he was concerned that the superintendent could “just look whenever without cause? This boils down to trust and shows a lack of trust in this policy, no one should have that much power to just willy-nilly look at someone’s emails, this is a terrible way to build trust.” Both Hyde and Goetsch said that they have received texts and emails that this is happening.
“A number of staff brought this up before I ran,” said Goetsch, “the way this is written makes people uneasy.”
After much discussion about the current process for reviewing staff email and a request from trustees that Hales research with Oasis Online what the process is, Board President Tricia Strasdin said, “We poked into what we thought was a scab but is clearly an open wound. Access is way different than monitoring.”
The matter will be brought back to the board for a second reading and hearing.
The school board next meets on May 5 to continue the interview process for the hiring of a new superintendent and will meet on May 24 to consider the final budget.
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