NORTH CRAWFORD - At their August 18 meeting, the North Crawford School Board discussed bus replacement plans and school safety in the event of a situation where students need to be evacuated from the building.

Soldiers Grove Fire Chief Jeannette McCormick spoke in the public input portion of the agenda, and initiated a dialogue about various safety issues, including holding a mock crash event, and partnering with the Crawford County Rescue Taskforce on finalizing the schools plan.

“I am working very closely with Crawford County Sheriff's Department on the Rescue Taskforce,” McCormick told the board. “I had a meeting with them last week to go over some final touches for North Crawford, and they will be setting up a meeting. We'll go over the plan with the administrators, and then we'll have to have a meeting with Curby for the transportation side of things.”

North Crawford Superintendent Scott Uppena reported he had met with Gays Mills Village President Harry Heisz the week before to discuss the plan, and reunification sites in Gays Mills.

“We didn’t get deep into the initial response, but focused more on reunification sites,” Uppena shared. “Those are both things that are on my list, and towards the top that I want to make sure are getting attention. You need to make sure that you are preparing your kids, your staff, your parents, and all the constituents here, in the hopes that you never ever have to use the plan. But in today's world, you have to be prepared for it.”

McCormick also urged the board and district to approve conducting a mock accident event at the school, hopefully before Homecoming. She pointed out that it has been many years since one has been held at North Crawford.

“We would like to do a mock accident for homecoming,” McCormick said. “We would include Gays Mill Fire, Soldiers Grove Fire, Ocooch Mountain Rescue, and North Crawford Rescue, which all provide service to North Crawford. Personally, I think it is very important for the kids.”

McCormick said that one of her biggest goals since becoming fire chief four years ago is increasing her department’s interaction with the community, and especially with kids. She said she envisions holding a mock accident event every two years, which she said is what a lot of districts do.

North Crawford Middle School/High School principal Dr. Rob Sailer told her that Homecoming will take place on Saturday, Oct. 3. He proposed tentatively scheduling the event for Friday, October 2.

School buses

Uppena told the board that the district ended the school year with an approximately $122,000 budget surplus, and that $110,000 had been transferred to Fund 46, used for funding capital projects, including transportation acquisitions.

“Transportation has been one of those things that has kind of been put off, and to nobody's fault,” Uppena observed. “The electric buses kind of fell through, and so it's time to revisit the topic. For this reason, I have begun to schedule meetings of the transportation committee, to start looking at short and long-term plans and what that could or could not look like.”

Uppena pointed the board to the report written by transportation director Curby Heister, where he provided an assessment of all the buses currently in the district’s fleet, and what the state report said about each of them.

“We are still solid in the buses that we have, but one of the buses that we were going to be using this year, at least in our plan, was bus eight. He started doing some of the work the repairs that that the state report had called for coming out of the state inspection,” Uppena shared. “As he was doing some of that repair work, he uncovered some other things that brought him to reconsider whether bus eight should be something that we continue to use. He then brought in former transportation director Stan Turben, who took a closer look at it. His recommendation was don't use the bus.”

Board member Cody Brockway shared some concerns and considerations with Uppena and the Board.

“One thing that came to light for me is that we went down an avenue of potentially getting a couple electric buses, and we had a pretty substantial grant,” Brockway observed. “But, I think the one piece that we skipped that I would love the transportation committee to look into in depth is if we would have gotten those two buses, would it have handcuffed us a little bit because we would have had a diesel fleet that was older, a propane fleet that was a little bit newer, and then two electric busses that were brand new. However, the propane and the electric busses had limited ability to travel further.”

Uppena said that this is not an easy topic, but that the district needs to have a plan, and to allocate the funds to work toward having sufficient funds available to address the situation.

“We had a plan before, but then when the electric buses came out, it kind of changed everything,” board member Judy Powell said. “Now, it's a matter of committing again to a set amount of dollars every year to accomplish this.”

In other business

In other business, the North Crawford School Board:

• heard from foodservice director Jen Kapinus about two recognitions the district had received – first place in the JTM Crave competition for innovative foodservice menu items, and an award for the whole district – the district has been named ‘One of America’s Healthiest Schools’ by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation
• heard from North Crawford Elementary Principal Amanda Killeen that the theme for this school year is ‘90s Arthur,’ to centralize the work they’re doing on belonging, relationships, and a positive environment
• heard Killeen express thanks to the Soldiers Grove Lions for holding a ‘Stuff the Bus’ event, to help ensure every student has the supplies they need, and to avoid teachers addressing the issue out of their own pockets
• heard from Dr. Rob Sailer about his pride at what data shows the district does to prepare students for life after graduation, whether that involves joining the workforce, or pursuing higher education at a college or technical college
• heard that other teams in the school’s Eight-Man Football Conference don’t want to play North Crawford or DeSoto because they do not have the same quality of programs
• heard from student services director Amanda Wagner that her department is now fully staffed, except for the school psychologist position, and that she is being innovative in expanding the search for how to fill that position
• heard from Uppena that the insurance company had approved repairs of equipment and systems damaged in the lightning strike incident earlier in the summer, but that there would be a slight delay in repair of the circuit boards from the transfer power to the generators until the equipment becomes available
• approved all the fall coaching staff, renewed the contract for the athletic trainer, and approved the advisor contracts, with the positions not yet filled to be approved in September
• accepted the district Seclusion and Restraint Report
• approved the propane contract with Premier
• approved the policy needed for the district to be in compliance with Wisconsin Act 89 by the September 1 deadline, with a second reading to be held at the September meeting.