Greenwood School Board approves school counselor sharing; discusses free lunch

By Cheyenne Thomas The Greenwood School Board discussed and approved several items that will affect students in the 2024-25 school year during its regular meeting on June 26. These items ranged from new teacher hires to progress updates on improvements and repairs to the school buildings, as well as discussion on the school lunch program, which will be further discussed at the July board meeting.

After the board approved the hiring of a new fourth grade teacher and elementary music teacher, and accepted three resignations from coaching positions, the board looked at a pair of 66.03 shared teacher agreements with the Loyal School District. The first was for a part-time guidance counselor while the second was for a physical education teacher.

District Administrator Joe Green spoke to the board about the need for an additional guidance counselor, one who would be at Greenwood Elementary School one day a week. Last year, he said the district had one school counselor in Madelin Nikolai, but there was such a need for her in the high school that she wasn’t able to provide elementary students with as many guidance lessons as the district would like.

“We currently have Maddi, but more often than not, her services are needed elsewhere,” he said. “It’s frustrating for both the kids and the teachers because they’re not getting any guidance time.”

At the Loyal School District, Green said fourth grade teacher Kaila Fitzl has been serving as a part-time counselor. If the board agreed, he said the school could purchase 20% of her contract with Loyal to have her serve as a guidance counselor to the Greenwood elementary students one day a week. Although he didn’t have the numbers at the meeting, Green said he estimates that amount would be about $10,000.

“If Kaila can come and we share our resources, then we will have consistent guidance sessions for our elementary students,” he said. The board approved the motion to pay for 20% of Fitzl’s contract for the 2024-25 school year. Green also mentioned a shared teacher agreement for a physical education teacher with Loyal, but asked that the board table the matter to next month’s meeting, as there are some concerns with scheduling that may interfere with the teacher’s ability to move between the two districts.

“There are some things on the other side that may get in the way of sharing a phy. ed. teacher at this point,” he said. “I don’t want to approve it and not have it work out with Loyal’s schedule this next year.”

Green also gave the board an update on some of the work being done on the school buildings and asked the board to approve a deductible payment for damage done to the school fire alarm system. At the elementary school, he said the new air handlers have been installed on the roof as of June 24 and are now operating, with a few minor tweaks to be made as the system is adjusted to the building. A recent storm caused $32,000 in damage to the school’s fire alarm system as well, and the board approved the $10,000 deductible on the insurance to cover the repair cost. Green said the fire alarms should be completely repaired by the time school starts in the fall.

The board also discussed whether or not it should continue to participate in the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) program, a program that allows schools to provide meals at no cost to students, in the coming school year. Green said that last year, while there were far more students who ate breakfast and lunch at the district than when they had to pay for meals, the program ended up costing the district $45,000 and he asked the board whether they felt it would be fiscally responsible to spend that amount on the program again in the 2024-25 school year.

“I’d love if we could offer free breakfast and lunch to everyone,” said Green. “Last year we saw a lot more kids eating. We went from 30 to 40 kids per day to over 100 kids eating lunch this year. That’s quite an increase. But I don’t know if it’s fiscally responsible for us to continue the CEP program without knowing where we can come up with that $40,000.”

While Green said more kids eating food was good, he said the Greenwood School District sits in a weird position with regards to poverty. The CEP program was made to benefit school districts with high levels of poverty, he said, and the more students that qualify for free and reduced lunch means the program is more affordable for a poor district. Greenwood doesn’t quite reach that mark.

“In order for the program to be of real benefit, we need to have a population where 60 percent of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch,” he said. “Right now, we sit at 40 percent… that’s the hard part for our district. There are a number of families that are on the border of qualifying for free and reduced lunch, but they barely miss out. That is who this hits the hardest. They’re the closest to qualifying for free and reduced lunch, but they have to be the ones to fork over lunch money.”

The timing of the discussion makes it difficult to decide the direction the district should take, said Green. Since the district had signed up for the program previously, he said they will be asked for the next four years in June if the district wants to continue the program into the next year. But the district doesn’t have all of its financial information from its fiscal year until the end of June, so they don’t know where the district sits financially until after the deadline to make a decision on the CEP program has passed.

“The CEP program asks us to let us know if we will participate by June 30,” he said. “If we say no, there is a chance that they come back in July to double-check our decision to make sure it’s final, but I can’t guarantee that they will if we say no now. But we’re still wondering where the budget will be, where all of our money is going to go for programs. We need to see where it will land.”

The board asked what would happen to students if the district were to discontinue the CEP program next year. Green said that any student who still normally qualifies for free and reduced lunch would still be able to get breakfast and lunch at those rates, but the other students would have to pay for their lunches like they did before the district tried the CEP program. This would also mean that the district would have to look at school lunch pricing to figure out what families could be paying next year.

“Lunches would have to change their prices,” he said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have much control over what we can change with those prices. The federal government supplies the lunches, so we have to go by whatever rates they set. We can play a little bit with that amount, but it won’t be much.”

The board decided that it would be better for now to vote to discontinue the CEP program, and either revisit the program if they were asked again in July or look at school lunch prices at their next meeting. That meeting has been moved to July 31 to better work for the board members’ schedules.

In other action taken at the June 26 meeting, the board listened to public comments made by 2024 Greenwood graduate Brittney Walde on her concerns with the district’s administration in the 2023-24 school year and her request that some changes be made to the way they operate so there was better communication and treatment of the students in the coming years. They also received an update from 6-12 grade principal/CTE coordinator Noah Werner on the addition of some collegelevel classes to the course offerings in the 2024-25 school year.