The charter school will likely bring more money and students into the district

By Lauren Brown
Burns Times-Herald

The Harney County District No. 3 School Board approved the Silvies River Web Academy at the Oct. 14 meeting.

Tim King gave a presentation on the proposed charter school. He explained how his non-profit company will set up the academy to operate within the district.

Benefits to the district include increased revenue and free software and computers provided by King’s organization. King said that the charter school shouldn’t cost the district anything. In fact, the district will receive additional funds from the average daily membership (ADM) that it receives per student from the state. Normally, the district receives about $6,000 per student, but most of that money will go to the charter school and the district will receive about 12 percent, or $700 per student enrolled in the charter school.

The Web academy will cater mostly to home schooled students. For every student the charter school recruits from within the district, it can recruit another student from outside the district.

After talking with a number of home schooled students within the district, King said he was confident there would be plenty of students to make the charter school a go. He estimated that the school would eventually have an enrollment of 200 students.

King’s organization has founded nine charter schools to date, and he is the director of six of those schools.

As part of the charter school set-up, King’s organization supplies the district with a new computer lab and supplies individual charter school students with laptop computers. Teachers for the Silvies Web Academy will be hired locally.

With the board’s approval of the charter school, King said the district would be eligible for a state incentive grant in the amount of $500,000.

In other business:

• Food Services Director Channon Rebeiro stated that the district’s experiment with serving Burns High School students hot lunches seems to be going well. In looking at the figures from September, there are enough students eating the one hot lunch entree the district provides to continue with the program. She said the students participating in the program are mostly freshman and sophomores and while they don’t like having only one lunch option, at least it is something. “It’s better than nothing, and we’re not losing money on it,” she said;

• Bond Project Manager Bill Renwick said he has been working on coming up with a solution for the Hines Middle School gym roof, which has two broken trusses caused by poor design. He said while it looks as though the district can repair the trusses without having to tear up the roof, the project could still cost roughly $100,000. “It’s going to be very time-consuming,” Renwick said;

• Business Manager Petrina White stated that because the district has overpaid its PERS payment for the last five to seven years, the district now has an extra $93,000 that can go into the general fund;

• the board approved a motion to put the high school biology teaching position out for advertisement, rather than hire Connie Robbins as recommended by the administration. Board members expressed concern about Robbins’ science background and experience.

Hines Middle School science teacher Roxanne Bailey was in the audience and agreed that the district needed to base its decision to hire someone on a solid background in science.

Superintendent Courtney said that even if someone doesn’t have a teaching license, if they have a degree in science, they can obtain an emergency teaching license, as long as they obtain a regular teaching license within the next three years. “What I hear the board saying is there is concern about the science experience of the person recommended,” Courtney said.

The position will be re-opened;

• the board approved the hiring of Joshua Kleeberger as a science teacher at Hines Middle School and Blair Irelan as a Friday school supervisor at Burns High School.

• the district will now post its unapproved minutes on the district Web site;

• the board moved the date of its next board meeting from Nov. 11 (Veteran’s Day) to Nov. 18;

• the board approved the purchase of a new yellow bus;

• the board tabled agenda items regarding board member Steve Bull’s budget suggestions and discussion of the Chalkboard report until the Nov. 18 meeting.

The next Harney County District. No. 3 Board meeting will be at 7 p.m. Nov. 18 at the Lincoln building.