SPRINGFIELD – January has been a busy month for the Springfield School District. Along with doing the legwork to apply for the Student Success Act funding, the district is also working to keep major changes from happening to the Preschool Promise Program (PPP).
During the Jan. 13 school board meeting, Superintendent Todd Hamilton brought up that in a movement to expand the PPP the proposal includes a reset, which would impact Lane County.
The PPP has been active in Springfield and other Lane County school for three years. With this proposed change, Lane County would be identified as the provider responsible for awarding grants, under the administration of the Early Learning Division section of the Oregon Department of Education.
”It would be a completely new experience for them,” Hamilton said.
The district would also have to re-apply to keep the program, and compete for funds with other Oregon school districts. Hamilton said that Springfield has the capacity to do that; however, he learned that for other districts, they don’t have the capacity to re-apply alone.
”We’re going to figure this out,” Hamilton said. ”We have the right people in the room sharing how the impact will unfold in Lane County.”
The goal is to convince Salem not reset the program and allow the district to continue with what is already in place. The district has until Jan. 30 until the bill is amended.
The board also approved an allocation of contingency funds for a boiler replacement at Springfield High after the gym’s primary boiler failed in December. There are three boilers that provide heat and hot water for the facility and they date back to the 1960s and are deemed unrepairable.
It was determined it was in the district’s best interest to replace all boilers in the gym with two of higher efficiency; however, the 2019-20 budgeted adoption for the project was unknown and it became necessary to allocate contingency resources of $110,000. The district has $1 million set aside for contingency resources.
Tony Scurto with the Lane Education Service District presented the changes for the second year of the two year local service plan. These changes include the addition of a security systems administrate to help districts prevent and respond to cyber threats and systems security, and an addition of librarian services. Although the district already has librarian services, the security systems administrator would be of potential value to the district.
Lastly the board heard a recommendation from Assistant Superintendent David Collins on inter-district student transfers that would allow the district to accept all new transfer requests that don’t exceed building capacity and release all students wishing to leave the district.
The next meetings are Jan. 27 for mid-year planning and Feb. 10 for the regular business meeting. The public is encouraged to attend.
