School board June 11 agenda update

The attachments were posted to the School Board's June 11 agenda today, and there's no mention of the "capacity" or "efficiency" study.

The superintendent has a time slot for a report, but no details are provided.

However, according to a member of the Parent Advisory Committee, at that committee's meeting on June 3 the superintendent said he would be revising his "Capacity Utilization Study" request and bringing that back to the school board on June 11, with a start date for the task force sometime in the fall (versus August). Applications for the task force will probably be due sometime this summer, but a date cannot be set until the school board approves the study.

Also, according to the school board minutes from the May 28 regular meeting, this is how they view the superintendent's report on the capacity study:

Capacity Study

Superintendent Kenneth Vedra addressed the Board about the need to name a task force to make a comparative, descriptive study of all K–12 schools in the district. The study would look at school/instructional site capacity, school/instructional site utilization, current and historical enrollment demographics, attendance areas and feeder patterns, future enrollment projections, site operational costs, and instructional and non-instructional space assignments.

The task force will make a written recommendation to the superintendent concerning capacity and use of existing instructional facilities and any recommendation related to future cost savings based on their study.

Dr. Vedra recommends the task force be comprised of forty voting members,including parents; students; patrons; certificated, classified, and itinerant staff; school administrators and central office representatives. In addition, four non-voting members will be part of the task force. He proposed a final written report would be made to the superintendent in
December 2009.

Director Rhode asked for clarification of the research model and who would provide the data. According to Dr. Vedra, there is state and national data available for the task force to review as well as district data on enrollment. Ron Cowan, assistant superitnendent of Business and Operations, indicated that every six years, the Capital Facility Plan is required by law to be updated. It was last done in 2004 so the Board will be asked to approve a new Capital Facility Plan in July for the next six years. This data will also be used for the Capacity Study.

The Board asked for clarification on the number of years the district is able to collect impact fees before they are required to use them. Mr. Cowan will verify this information.