Members of the STC School board opened the meeting with the pledge of allegiance while gazing at a flag shown on the projector. PHOTO BY JONATHAN MEYER

After nearly a month since the last meeting, the STC School Board met for the first time in the 2024-2025 school year. With the month since the last session, the board had many items on the agenda and an abundance of discussion to be had. All of the action caused the meeting to stretch to an impressive three and a half hours.

Under a newly established agenda structure, the meeting opened with the pledge of allegiance and the district mission statement being read. The board thanked Scharnweber’s for a donation of a thousand dollars towards the new sound system in the high school gymnasium.

Data and presentations were up next with information being presented on attendance, office referrals, and activity participation at the middle and high school levels. The STC school district has slightly better than state average attendance rates with the 2023 state average being 92.7 percent attendance rate and STC bettering that with 93.4 percent attendance rate.

In the activity presentation Chelsea Ahrens informed the board that participation was down across the board and listed some reasons for the issue, citing working students and low morale.

Moving into discussion items next, an update was given on open positions in the district. Superintendent John Cain informed the board that the industrial tech position would not be filled after the departure of Jeff Niedermann at the end of last school year. No candidates were identified and sharing agreements with other districts seemed out of reach. Cain hoped that connections with community members could meet the needs that industrial tech classes previously filled. Remaining openings were largely present at the high school including science, English, special education, and family and consumer science, all at the high school.

Former teacher and current community volunteer Denise Fletcher has been working with Superintendent Cain to arrange sustainable and beautiful landscaping and appropriate plants around the new middle school campus. Her ideas were organized on various charts and planned with a budget in mind, with materials being sourced locally.

Cain updated the board, saying this would potentially turn into a community service project, and donations would be a way to offset the cost, stating the project would most likely happen in September. Later in the meeting, the board would approve the recommended plant bid from Norton’s Greenhouse that Fletcher had recommended to the board.

Cain talked about the decision to postpone further talks of a PPEL vote until after the middle school project is completed, and the tone in the room was very somber when the topic came up.

Action items came next and filled the majority of the meeting with the previous items taking up over an hour. Handbook’s were reviewed and this became the most debated item of the evening.

Board member Jackie Ellenbecker brought up her opinion on a provision in the Classified Handbook. Under a section about transportation of students, the door was left open for staff to transport students for a school function in a personal vehicle. Cain explained this was sometimes used by staff for convenience if a student needed to be picked up or transported to a different building.

Board secretary and business manager Katie Mathern added that these trips were not insured and were a liability, that thought and concern was echoed by other board members. As result of the discussion the handbook item was changed to “Transportation of students is in a motor vehicle owned by the school district and driven by a school bus driver or an authorized school employee. Students are prohibited from being transported in private vehicles for school purposes.”

Next up in the handbook review, board member Rick Hopper brought up a barrage of items to review starting with mentioning the Union school district’s recent phone ban in class. Hopper stated he agrees with the ban and wants STC to move in that direction. After some discussion and different pros and cons weighed, Superintendent Cain pivoted the conversation and suggested the item might be too cumbersome to address in the next school year.

Hopper still had many grievances and topics to discuss: he touched on junior open campus lunch and his disagreement with the rule, weighted grades, increasing K9 visits to the school and a crackdown on drugs in the school building, bullying, and being tougher on collecting fines. Several of the topics drew negative feedback from the other board members and occasionally district technology director and host of the online form of the meeting, Mary Mixdorf, chimed in to clarify on certain topics that pertained to her expertise. The room was fairly tense during the discussion, and the board had their fair share of disagreements on various topics.

With a short bathroom and snack break the board returned to business. In another item that seemed to surprise board members Jackie Ellenbecker and Megan Thiessen, Cain sought approval for an operational sharing agreement with the Grinnell School District, looking to share STC’s newly hired Curriculum Director Janelle Pirkl.

The agreement sees Pirkl shared one day a week with Grinnell and offers $46,000 of savings to STC. Ellenbecker and Thiessen expressed their disappointment with the agreement and alluded to displeasure with the many operational sharing agreements being put into place. Cain, who now only works three days a week at South Tama while spending two days a week serving North Tama, noted that Grinnell was Pirkl’s home district and the agreement’s benefits outweigh the downside of only having 80% of a full time curriculum director. The board agreed earlier in the year to split Sam Peska’s position into two separate jobs (Director of Curriculum and Director of Student Services) after recent legislation changed AEAs and their function in the state.

The discussion on sharing Pirkl had ended a few months prior, and with a new superintendent hired in Grinnell, discussion between Cain and Grinnell’s superintendent picked up again. Plans were shared in June with board members but never talked about in person before the meeting. Although Thiessen and Ellenbecker were visibly and vocally upset and displeased with the way things were handled, they approved the sharing agreement, and the tone in the room was tense through the whole encounter.

After some basic policy approval the board adjourned at 8:28 p.m., concluding the marathon meeting. A rollercoaster of emotions over the course of three and a half hours. The next board meeting will be held on Aug. 12.