Numa Elementary staff, Principal Shawn Purell, and School Counselor Noreen Swenson presented information on the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) program process they have been working on at the school to improve student outcomes.
“We are happy with our growth over the past two years,” said Purell. Since 2012 Numa has used the TRIBES program and folded that into the PBIS process. “This is something we review all the time with students, things like attentive listening, appreciation, and mutual respect,” he said.
Student representatives provided input and insightful information to the PBIS team, Swenson explained. The team decided that surveying students would provide the most useful information this year, given that the environment is so different. When the student survey was completed, the data was analyzed and Swenson met with the students to discuss the results, “and tell us what they see.” The things that the 10- and 11-year-olds rated the highest for both online and in person learning were “the school wants me to do well, and my teachers treat me with respect, and our school has clear expectations for behavior.”
The low areas were similar for online and in-person students, one being that not as many kids can say they always do well at school. Students felt like it has been a hard year because they have to do so much work online, they don’t get to be at school all day, they don’t get to be with our friends, they don’t get to hang out and have recess and do fun things. “We are behind because we didn’t go to school last year,” said one fourth grader.
“We had great discussion about that,” Swenson said, “and we felt like that was really good for the students to talk about and they went back and shared the results with their classes as well and we talked about what we needed to work on and then we shared that with our staff. We felt like that was a valuable thing to do with our kids.”
The school uses a matrix based on the idea of SOAR – Safe School, Outstanding Character, Academic Achievement, and Respect for self and others. Each of those characteristics are applied to the classroom, hallway, cafeteria, playground, and the bathroom. The PBIS team works with student representatives to determine rewards and incentives including verbal recognition, golden tickets, tribe points, duck bucks, and SOAR awards.
Swenson explained that at Numa they push their students to develop leadership. A former Numa student who is now at the high school came and worked with the student council to develop a video featuring the school and the SOAR skills. The video can be seen at https:// youtu.be/UVVhedR9TdA.
In other news, Churchill County High School principal Scott Winters has resigned, effective June 30 to join his family in California where they have been for the past year. Superintendent Summer Stephens said the district has opened the search for a new principal and hopefully will conduct interviews by mid-April.
Revisions to the Capital Improvement Plan were made after a presentation by Kevin Lords and Kenny Mitchell. The opening fund balance in the Capital Projects Fund is $2,002,296 with a total projected available resource of $3,950,633. The Fallon Post will do a more in-depth story regarding this topic next week.
Trustees also discussed the budget policy and received training on the base budget. Stephens reviewed the budget development policy and timeline for the budget process and presented a preliminary Revenue Projection for the 2021-22 fiscal year. She said, “Just a reminder, the strategic plan, the strategic themes, and the school performance plan goals are what will drive the budget process. I want to reference us back to that one more time.”
The base budget will remain the same with no reductions or enhancements, maintaining current operations, including contractual increases. Stephens said tough budget decisions will be made with a focus on the strategic plan and be learner-centered, based on the best interest of students, not adult stakeholders. The challenge for Churchill County, she said, has been the recurring revenues and expenditures.
The schedule for the budgeting process will be the training held at this meeting, a review by the board at the March 24 meeting of the base budget with revenues and expenditures, along with a review of the superintendent’s initial priorities. At that time direction will be given to the advisory committee which will meet to discuss the priorities and possible solutions. A Stakeholder Survey will then be administered, related to the priorities to gain additional feedback. A tentative budget will be presented to the board during the April 14 meeting.
Again, the Advisory Committee will meet to review input from stakeholders, any legislative and fiscal impacts, additional board input, and provide any further input prior to the final budget recommendation by the Superintendent. Final recommendations will be made to the board at the May 2 meeting, and the final budget will be sent to the state by June 8.
According to the preliminary revenue projection document presented at the meeting, the total revenue shortages this year are projected to be a $656,865 decrease from 2021. Christi Fielding, Comptroller said the Distributive School Account tentative budget amount is $14,556,213.
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