ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
There were many items vying for the USD 480 school board’s approval during the board’s most recent meeting Monday evening.
After quickly approving the republishing of the 2023-24 budget, the board also set its July 8 meeting as its organizational meeting for the 2024-25 school year.
The board moved quickly through the next few items on its agenda by approving a motion to delete Policy CGA concerning the Administrative Index and modification of GAAAA and approving the increase of the board health benefit from $6,600 to $7,200 per year, which is aligned with the increase to the board health benefit that had been proposed in the negotiated agreement.
After tackling the first reading of Policy JGG regarding some transportation policies, the board then moved on to discussion of the purchase of Lightspeed Redcats.
“Lightspeed Technologies is the company that provides USD 480 with our Redcat Systems for classroom audio,” Director of Special Education Dane Parcel said. “These sound fields will benefit all students, but especially for students who come to USD 480 with hearing disabilities. Our previous director had made a goal to have these in every USD 480 classroom, and this donation will allow for 40 more classrooms to benefit from the sound field functionality, which is pretty considerable and will get us closer to that goal. This would cover Cottonwood Elementary School as well as some classrooms at Prairie View Elementary School. The funding will come from a donation made to the district.”
Ultimately, the board voted to approve the purchase of 40 Redcats with Flexmikes from Lightspeed Technologies in the amount of $49,680.
Up next for the board was discussion of an eLuma Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) service contract.
“eLuma is one of the companies we used this school year for our Speech Language Pathologist position. Due to the lack of qualified applicants and the fact we cannot use interim instructors, there is still a need to contract with eLuma Therapy for 2024-2025 to service approximately 40 students who need speech related assistance,” Parcel said. “This contract will help students in the district who have speech on their IEPs while also keeping the caseload numbers of our current staff manageable for the coming year. Services provided by eLuma staff are comparable to staff employed by USD 480.”
Ultimately, the board to approve the service agreement with eLuma Therapy in the amount of $82,840 to cover the costs for one Speech Language Pathologist position for the upcoming 2024-25 school year.
The Special Education Department stayed the star of the meeting with its next request for a service agreement with Motor Mouth Therapy Services.
“This is a different company. We lost another speech pathologist, and we need to fill that position at Meadowlark Elementary School and Sunflower Elementary School,” Parcel said. “I’d like us to contract with Motor Mouth Therapy Services to cover both of those schools. Having these two part-time therapists will benefit USD 480 because it will allow each part time staff to take on one of the elementary schools that will need speech services covered. Both elementary schools would total between 60 to 70 students depending on enrollment. Motor Mouth Therapy provides services to students at an hourly rate of $80/hour. A projected amount for servicing 60 to 70 students during the year is $115,200. This contract will help service students in the district with speech on their IEPs, but will also keep caseload numbers of our current staff manageable for the coming year.”
After some more brief discussion, the board ultimately voted to approve the service agreement with Motor Mouth Therapy Services at an hourly rate of $80 for the 2024-25 school year. After that, the board also quickly voted to approve an additional Speech Language Para to help support students receiving speech /language services throughout the district. Other positions approved by the board Monday evening included a sign language interpreter, a virtual/itinerant special education case manager, and a full-time social worker for Bright Start Early Learning Center.
The board also discussed the district’s use of Cultivate Education.
“Cultivate Education recently helped us with the reorganization of tiered behavior supports during three separate professional development days during the 2023-24 school year,” Parcel said. “What we want to do now is continue to support the district in the development and sustainability of a behavior team and make sure all of that doesn’t disappear. Cultivate Education is looking at providing up to 20 days of on-site implementation support for the Liberal USD 480 Behavior Teams over the course of the 2024-25 school year. This support would be in the form of professional development, technical assistance, and coaching support to the members of the team in order to sustain the work we’ve been doing as far as behavior interventions and supports for all students, staff, and families in the district.”
After some questioning about costs and some of the more logistical details, the board voted 5-1 to approve the service agreement with Cultivate Education to provide Behavior Team support for the upcoming 2024-25 school year, with Board President Alan Brown voting no.
The board also voted to approve an agreement with SCCC to contract out Braille services for a student enrolled at Seward County Community College for the 2024-2025 school year and a quote from Pur-O-Zone in the amount of $10,816.27 for the purchase of a floor scrubber for Sunflower Elementary School.
The board also briefly discussed the district’s property and casualty insurance for the 2024-25 fiscal year.
“This year, I did some pricing, and our insurer is currently still really well priced,” Director of Business Services Nila Newton said. “In the future, if we need to make certain changes or if certain circumstances happen, we’ll have to give them notice and then we’ll lose a $30,000 rebate because they’ll pull us out of that pool, so that’s why I didn’t want to leave that out. EMS is who we had last time, and they’ve consistently been increasing, and the districts are up around $800,000 or around that amount for our size. This year, our increase is only about 3 percent to $679,880. I wanted to also let you know in 2020, when we changed to EMS, we were at $899,000, and the renewal was at $918,000, so we’re still well below where we were back in 2020. I don’t see any indication of local providers being able to match what we’re doing right now with this cooperative. Some other notes, we changed our wind/hail deductible from $100,000 to $50,000, and we’ve got a really good claims history with only 11 claims in the past three years, which comes to an aggregate loss of $114,422.”
Ultimately, the board voted to approve the district's Property and Casualty Insurance for the 24-25 fiscal year through Conrade Insurance Group for $679,880.
After some quick discussion, the board also voted to approve the purchase of five new Sharp digital copiers for $62,900 from Southern Office Supply as well as the renewal of the annual software and service licenses in the amount of $257,178.58. To conclude the meeting’s new business, the board voted to approve a bid from ByteSpeed in the amount of $19,147.50 for the purchase of 50 Chromeboxes for Sunflower Elementary School and MacArthur Elementary School.
