By Margaret Hopper

The Silver School Board meeting was held at the high school theater on Thursday, September 18, 2014. All board members were present, along with the school's attorney, Ramon Vigil of Albuquerque. The usual 5 p.m. work session actually began about 5:10.

The first report of the workshop was by Mary Stoecker of Grant County Fitness and Nutrition Community. Stoecker gave the past history of the group's Body Mass Index work for the past nine years, noting the changes from the original plan to its present state.

She said they believed there was evidence that children entering school now showed some improved weight conditions from the work they were doing. When her report and slide show ended a little after 5:25, the board adjourned for a break before the official public meeting began at 6 p.m.

At the 6 o'clock meeting, board president Trent Petty asked the board to approve minutes from the meetings of August 21 and a special meeting on September 4. Petty said there had been a meeting with LULAC representatives Fred Baca and Frances Vasquez on Monday, September 15, but it had not been an official meeting; he and Arnold Torres had attended that limited meeting.

The place for public comments was scheduled immediately after the openings. Speaker Gabrielle Begay told of the differences between board meetings of the past that she could remember, and the present. Carl Leyba said he had requested that the bullying topic be placed on the agenda as of September 8, but it was not there. He insisted that it be addressed on the October agenda and would hold Petty responsible for it. Petty countered that the request did not have valid contact information and without that, requests would not be honored. Leyba said that was his private phone number and would supply it to the board in writing, which he did at that time.

Sharon Bookwalter brought up the backpack food program and asked why the usual $10,000 donation from the school was not available this year. She said it was needed to continue the work. When Petty attempted to go to the next person, Bookwalter demanded an answer. Petty said he could not answer the issue at this time. (Later in the meeting, Candy Milam addressed the issue in her budget report, saying some of Bookwalter's information was not correct; they needed to discuss this.)

Former Silver superintendent Dick Pool went over a number of points in the present budget saying there was a serious matter of overspending and that the reserves were down. One figure in particular was $109,000 that was facing the district this year. Streib had talked about being conservative but the district was broke, according to Pool. He estimated that over a three-year period, it was down about $800,000, and it could get larger. He said Milam knew there was a sound budget on Lon Streib's entry, but not now.

With the end of public input, Milam, financial director for the district, began her report on the operational budget. She defined the State Equalization Guarantee (SEG) that Pool had talked about, as the major funding source, and broke it into its parts of membership
(student numbers) program units: bilingual, fine arts, special education; undersized schools, and similar adjustments; the at-risk-index; and ancillary units: social workers, occupational and physical therapies, special education staff, etc.

Milam added in the adjustments required for retiring teachers, saying in the past six years there had been a number of those to consider; there were unit valuations and other categories, too. Then she went on to budget sources beyond the state funding. Local taxes might add $150,000 a year. Copper and Federal Forest Reserve incomes were also quite variable. Some she had not included in the budget, as they were difficult to predict, and she had designed this budget as a worst-case-scenario plan, because incomes were down.

Improvements would be seen later as more financial information came in. Her present final budget showed $23,911,798. Even the state would adjust its SEG figures and make changes to Silver's income later, so she had given low figures. Staff salaries would account for nearly 90 percent of the whole operational budget. Some of the rumors that about 32 students had transferred to Aldo, creating financial problems at Silver, were not true, she said. Milam covered the rest of the factors that determined her budgeting.

The bottom line: out of the $23,911,798 budget, $109,962 would remain as reserve fund. In the past, it was nearly a million. A four percent reserve would require $956,373; a five
percent would require $1,195,590 with this year's figures.

Bookwalter asked for a comparison of administrative staff salaries to teaching staff; Milam said that had not been broken down, but it could be. Petty asked that the figures be available for the October board meeting.

Ben Potts, network administrator, outlined the work he and his staff had undertaken to improve the computer department since he was hired on June 3, 2013. He spoke of the equipment and the necessity of upgrading to meet state mandates for the Common Core testing that was just months away, and which the old equipment could not begin to do.
This had created a crisis for the district and was still being resolved.

Major security risks had been addressed and most of the district's eleven-year old computers had been dumped. The windfall donations of computers and other equipment from Sandia Labs this June had replaced much of it. Another 32 newer units from the county's District Attorney's office were also important donations.

The 60 laptops at La Plata, the most at-risk testing situation, couldn't use wireless; half of them had to be direct-wired. After huge amounts of work and innovation, Potts said they could now meet the state's mandated minimum standards, but they were not yet up to recommended requirements. That would take longer.

Potts mentioned the expenses involved in meeting state mandates—bandwidth and server upgrades, repairs on the computers that could be salvaged, numbers of computers needed, backup, archives, and more. He showed expense figures in detail on the big screen, and the kinds and types of computers brought in and where they went, by departments.

In the section called action items, Milam asked for approval of $1,762,802.32 in checks written for August. There were three budget adjustments: $1013 for Sixth Street breakfast expenses, $127,874 final cash adjustment from Public Education Department, and a zero-balance cleanup for the Cliff Schools budget. The board approved them, along with Gus Benakis' request for approval of the per capitas on feeder routes, reimbursements for parents driving children to the nearest bus pickup point.

A separate vote was required for changing the board meeting date from third Thursdays to third Tuesdays. Petty mentioned the Region VIII meeting on Sept. 30. He said that Justin Ping, new principal of Opportunity High School, would address the board on the new meeting date, Tuesday, October 21 at the regular meeting.

The board adjourned at 7:12 to go into closed session. Petty said at this session, they would be allowed to hear the grievances the union spoke of, under the topic of limited personnel.