ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
The USD 480 school board had a full yet easy agenda at its most recent meeting Monday evening.
After a public hearing for exceeding the Revenue Neutral Rate (during which no one from the community spoke), the board then moved on to its regular meeting.
After administrator reports from Superintendent Stephen Linkous, Director of Operations Chad Mease and Director of Business Services Nila Newton, the board then moved on to the agenda’s new business, beginning with discussion of an audiology contract with Southwest Kansas Area Cooperative (SKACD).
“Per the agenda information, SKACD would like to contract with USD 480 in order to utilize our audiology personnel to serve student needs within their cooperative,” Newton said. “This agreement represents that partnership. The agreement is for four days at a rate of $340 a day. This is no cost to the district, and High Plains Educational Cooperative will agree to pay USD 480 for services. This contract was reviewed by legal. Staff from SKACD would travel to USD 480 to provide these services.”
After some more brief discussion, the board ultimately unanimously voted to approve the Agreement for Sharing of USD 480 audiology personnel with SKACD.
Up next for the board was discussion of a walkthrough support package.
“We are looking to partner with a company called Bullseye, LLC, and the reason we’re looking to do that is because ... this is a platform so all walkthroughs that get done, whether it’s by the superintendent or assistant superintendent or any other district leadership, will all be in one platform,” Linkous said. “The beauty of this is we at the Central Office can visit the buildings and look at trends and use that data to drive our professional development and the goals we want to reach in that regard. The buildings’ teachers will also be able to use that data for their goals, and we’re very excited to have all of this in one platform since we’ve never had that before, and it’ll be very handy having all of that information at our fingertips. And we’ll be able to also bring that data to the board if needed for a certain topic or another.”
Bright Start Early Learning Center Principal Jamie Downs also praised the idea of the platform.
“When this was explained to me by Dr. [Maria] Gomez-Rocque, it sounded like it would be an excellent tool, especially in my building since we don’t fit the typical mold the rest of the buildings are in,” Downs said. “This tool will allow us to drill down and take small pieces at a time for teachers to work on skills instead of a big, overwhelming form that might or might not apply to them. We’re excited to be able to have a tool that will allow us to give the teachers targeted areas for improvement and also brag on what they’re doing that’s already working really well. We’re excited about having something we can use that will give us some prompts to help the teachers, and that will show if there are improvements or still some tweaks/readjustments to be made. It’s really hard to find something that fits Pre-K through 12th grade, so this tool will be much more specific to our needs, which is great.”
After some more brief discussion, the board ultimately voted to approve the quote from Bullseye LLC in the amount of $16,000.
Technology was also on the agenda, with the board hearing some information regarding the renewal of Aruba support for wireless controllers and access points throughout USD 480 and then moving on to discussion of renewal of VMWare support for the district’s VM (virtual machine) servers.
“The previous company was purchased by Broadcom late last year, and we knew a price increase would be coming,” Director of Technology Rusty Tuman said. “Up until last week, our plan was to go with a one-year renewal, which is $31,206.40 (compared to the $17,874.61 we paid last year), but as of Sept. 1, that one-year renewal is no longer an option. Broadcom has introduced a new change in their quoting structure regarding term lengths. The option for a one-year vSphere Standard, vSphere Foundation, and vSphere Cloud Foundation will no longer be available. A three-year minimum commitment is the new requirement and honestly, it doesn’t really seem like this company cares whether you’re a customer or not. Which sucks, but if this wasn’t the best software option for this, I probably wouldn’t have even brought this to the board. This is basically the gold standard for software for virtualization. 97 percent of all of our servers are virtualized and use this software, and this is THE best software to do this virtualization with on the scale we need.”
“I understand that, but I have a really hard time paying this $93,619.20 that’s quoted in the agenda,” Board President Alan Brown said.
“Actually, the plan is for $31,206.40 to be paid for year one, and then the remaining money would be paid during year two for years two and three,” Tuman said. “And I could go back and ask if we could pay an equal amount each of the three years and see if that could be negotiated.”
“I would be a lot more comfortable with that because again, I just can’t see paying $93,619.20 like that,” Brown said. “You said this company was just bought. Well, the purchasing company could be bought out by someone else before the contract is over. And aren’t we still by state statute bound to pay for only one-year contracts? With the way our budget is, isn’t it set up to where we can only be tied down one year at a time? I’m just not comfortable putting that amount of money down that way.”
After some more discussion, the board ultimately unanimously voted to approve the quote from ISG in the amount of $93,619.20 for the VMware renewal to be paid in three annual installments of $31,206.40.
Construction projects at Liberal High School were also discussed, with the board unanimously voting to approve a quote from Convergint Technologies in the amount of $24,213.72 for Salto locking hardware to be installed with the replacement interior doors at LHS in the gym, Maskus Auditorium and band hallway as well as a bid from Southwest Glass in the amount of $283,625 to furnish and install 20 doors/door pairs at LHS in the Big House, Maskus Auditorium and the auditorium hallways. The board also unanimously approved Change Order 1 in the amount of $24,300.65 for renovations to the LHS library and a payment application in the amount of $298,493.85 for the Maskus Auditorium rain screen project.
To conclude the meeting’s new business, the board unanimously approve payment of two invoices from Earles Engineering totaling $41,967 for project inspection services for the LHS Parking lot replacement project.
