Summer school and annual business were the focus of the recent Fredonia Central School Board of Education meeting.
A fee schedule was approved for rental of school facilities. DiFonzo said the school doesn't make a lot of money on rentals, but that it is helpful to the district. The auditorium rate was set at $40 an hour for district residents, and $60 an hour for non-residents. Any of the libraries, gyms and cafeterias cost $35 an hour for residents, and $55 for non residents. Pool rental is based on the number of persons and ranges from $55-70 an hour for residents. A fee schedule was also set for personnel such as custodial and cafeteria staff.
Business Administrator John Forbes told the board the district nurse told him two of the AED machines (defibrillators) were inoperable and needed to be replaced at a cost of around $1,100 each. Forbes explained these had not been included in the budget. Board member Edith Byrnes questioned how long the machines had been inoperable.
"It seems like something like that would need to be replaced immediately," Byrnes noted. Forbes explained the nurse had recently tested the devices. Forbes said the failing units were about seven or eight years old and had problems with internal batteries.
In other annual business, bids were approved for obtaining art supplies for the 2012-2013 school year, totaling around $14,000 and the trash removal bid was awarded to Bestway Container Service for around $11,000. Summer school transportation for special education services were also approved, along with bids for diesel and regular gasoline for vehicles other than the school buses.
Personnel appointments were addressed at the meeting. Union contracts and approved and other personnel were re-appointed effective July 1 through June 30, 2015. Substitutes and cleaners for the summer program and 2012-2013 school year were also appointed.
Library Media Specialist Brenda Rollins gave a report on the media library. She told the board over 26,000 items had been circulated in the 2011-2012 school year. Rollins said her budget of $19,930 would be used primarily to maintain the collection of books and to pay for subscriptions to online information resources.
Rollins shared her "wish list" of assets she could have if money was not an issue. She said when she first started at the school, she had an additional library media specialist and another teaching assistant. "Now, I'm doing all of the tasks, but I'm spending less time on them," Rollins said of her workload.
Grants Management and Professional Development Director Joseph Reyda gave the technology report to the board. Reyda said the inventory of 805 computers in the district included 450 using the Windows XP operating system, which he said Microsoft will no longer support in 2013. Reyda said he needs to develop an annual replacement schedule for computers, but that his current budget of $40,000 for hardware and software doesn't support the level of replacement and upgrading required.
Reyda said students could bring in their own computers and use the school network if they set up a guest login program, which he said would cost about $80,000 to implement. Reyda said to do that, infrastructure upgrades would be needed for the main computer network hardware. The cost of the needed overhaul is roughly $450,000. Reyda said he's concerned about the budgetary difficulties related to the infrastructure upgrades.
"I worked it out over a five-year payment plan, and at that rate, I wouldn't be able to replace a single computer for five years. There is just no way I could do that," Reyda said.
The next Board of Education meeting will be the annual Re-Organizational Meeting, to be held Thursday at 6 p.m. in the High School Library. The next Audit Committee meeting will be held on July 27 at 4:40 p.m. in Room 600; the next Policy Committee meeting on Wednesday at 5 p.m. in Room 600.
