The Harlan Community School Board of Education has approved an amendment to the 2013-2014 budget. In a regular board meeting Monday, the board made the motion after discussing the amendment at length at the public hearing held on Tuesday, May 27th. The amendment was in regards to PPEL funding and the Merrill Field Project. In other business, the school board approved milk bids with Anderson Dairy, bread bids with Bee Bo bakery, fuel bids with Agriland FS for $170,176.40 and a new Thomas Bus for $84,069. Primary School Principal Scott Frolich reported to the board, the school district submitted an elementary school wide title 1 application to the state for flexibility in using reading resources for all students in the elementary school district. Superintendent Justin Wagner said those dollars will help students who struggle in reading.

“It’s a federally funded program from the federal government. And basically it helps kids who struggle in reading. Well our reading rate at the elementary building has typically hovered around the 40 percent rate. Now that it has increased over 40 percent, we were able to put in our application to really use our Title 1 funds, resources and staff for all students instead of certain students.”

The application was approved by the school board. Mr. Frolich also mentioned the primary building has 55 students taking summer school, 35 in the intermediate and 16 more in the high school. In the discussion items, Wagner spoke about the blue zones initiative in the Harlan Community. The school district must meet the Wellmark Blue Zone criteria in order for Harlan to become a blue zone designated community.

Wagner spoke for quite sometime on the recommendations Wellmark handed out to the school district. The school district is focusing solely on the elementary building first before trying to install the new proposals in the other school buildings. Some of the recommendations included not using physical activity as a punishment, no unhealthy foods to be used for fundraisers and not using foods at class celebrations. The school needs to hit 54 points in order to pass for a blue zone designation. Wagner says some are controversial.

“Things like out at recess, if a student misbehaves you would send them to a timeout. They go stand by a wall and we do other things. In the blue zone initiative, they say that takes away physical activity during recess. It makes sense. I understand the physical side of it. The flip side, what do we do to students who aren’t following direction or bullying other students? There has to be some kind of consequence.”

Wagner said the school district is in negotiations with Wellmark and more details will follow at a later school board meeting.

(Joel McCall/KNOD)

The Trevor Frederickson Memorial Fund has announced their sponsorship of the “Scary Guy,” who will be sharing his message with Atlantic, CAM and Griswold Schools in August 2014. Scary will be working with over 2,400 students, faculty and community members during his 10 day stay in Cass County.

The Cass County Child Abuse Prevention Council is declaring 2014-2015 the year of Violence Prevention in Cass County Schools. Prevention begins with our youth and teaching them the skills they need to eliminate hate.

For further information or if you would like to donate please contact Kristen Templeton at 243-8006

The Atlantic Board of Education had no problem approving the 2014-2015 District Supervisors’ contracts during their meeting Monday night, but they were less than enthusiastic about approving Administrator contracts, and opted to continue discussions on that topic instead of approving the increase. Superintendent Dr. Mike Amstein recommended the Board approve a four-percent increase in compensation for district administrators, at a cost to the district of $21,980, and a 3.8-percent increase for the District Supervisors, which amounts to $14,182.

When it came time for discussion on those recommendations, School Board Member Dennis Davis asked Amstein if all the goals set for the 2013-2014 school year were accomplished. “No, we didn’t meet all of our goals 100-percent, but our district certainly made progress in regards to student achievement on those goals,” noted Amstein. “For instance in reading, math and science, our district showed an increase in proficiency in every one of those areas.”

Board Member Rod Hartwig said he thought “Our principals…deserve the four-percent [raise]…I am not sure everyone else on the list does.” Amstein said the increases fall in-line with what other administrators and supervisors in Hawkeye 10 Conference schools are making. Amstein said “Basically the goals that the building administrators took at look at this year was 85-percent of their students would be proficient in reading, science and math.” He says they made good progress. The other was to reduce the special education deficit by 10-percent. Amstein says the majority of the school district did just that.

Amstein said “Based on that information, I believe our principals were deserving of that raise along with our Supervisors.” After the Board approved the Supervisors’ increase as a separate motion, they discussed at length, but did not act on approving an increase for the Administrators because they want to see more progress in the attaining Board established goals for those administrators.

Another survey released today (Tuesday) is showing a lot of companies in the state have plans to add employees. The Manpower Employment Outlook Survey shows 22-percent of the companies surveyed expect to increase staff levels over the third quarter of the year. Another 72-percent plan to maintain staffing levels, while four-percent anticipate layoffs. That’s good for a Net Employment Outlook of 18-percent. Manpower spokesperson Karen Miller says the results, while positive, show weaker optimism about hiring expectations compared to recent surveys.

“The Net Employment Outlook is 18-percent, as compared to last quarter when it was 21-percent and last year at this time when it was also 21-percent,” Miller said. The Des Moines metro area remains one of the top performing markets in the country, according to the Manpower survey. For the third quarter, Des Moines posted a Net Employment Outlook of 24-percent. “Iowa, in general, has always performed very strongly, but Des Moines has been a very strong pocket for the state,” Miller said.

Nationally, the Net Employment Outlook for the third quarter is 14-percent. That’s up from 13-percent three months ago. More than 18,000 employers across the U.S. take part in the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey.

(Radio Iowa)