DARLINGTON—The Darlington Community School board of education unanimously approved the $74,000 expense of resurfacing the school’s athletic track.
The building and grounds committee recommended the board approve the resurfacing of the track because it is potentially a liability issue. Board member Bob Hermanson said the first two lanes are down to the blacktop, making the track dangerous for users.
District administrator Denise Wellnitz said $10,000 was allocated for the track repairs approximately 10 years ago. The committee also recommended using money from the sale of outlying buildings to cover the cost of the replacement.
Wellnitz said the committee also looked at options to patch the track at a cost of approximately $10,000. Hermanson said he felt the school would be wasting money by patching the track because they would have to patch more every few years.
Hermanson said the resurfacing will take approximately a week to complete and should be done sometime this summer. He said the process to resurface the track is to remove a fraction of an inch of the rubber and then replace it. He said the track was replaced 10 years ago. The new surface should last approximately 20 years.
The board also took action on the transportation contract for the 2012-13 school year and hired Al’s Trucking. The transportation committee discussed reducing the contract to eight buses from the nine the district currently requires. The reduction would result in some cost-saving, but board member Duane Jorgenson said the savings wouldn’t be great enough to justify some children riding the bus longer than an hour. Elementary-Middle School principal Michelle Savatski said some days there are issues with overloaded buses, especially on early release days.
The board unanimously approved the purchase of 65 computers at a cost of $56,489.55. The purchase is part of a five-year rotation of all of the school’s computers. The computers that will be replaced will be the teachers’ stations as well as the student computers in the computer lab. Approximately $36,489 will be taken from the 2011-12 budget and an additional $20,000 will be used from the school’s referendum money.
The board unanimously approved the building and grounds committee proposal of $43,645 in projects and repairs. Hermanson said the expense is significantly down from previous years, but they also factored in the expense of the track resurfacing which brings the total closer to the normal $80,000-100,000. Some of the projects that were proposed include repairing the timing issue with the DEMS clocks, replace carpet in the DEMS principal’s office, replace some sidewalks, replace drywall with an impermeable surface in the elementary bathrooms, replace carpet with tile in the high school weight room, update air conditioning, epoxy floors, update shop class equipment and provide supplies for landscaping, crack sealing and painting.
The board also accepted the retirements of two teachers: Anna Marie Bilsie with 38 years of service and Martha Peterson with 22 years of service.