After conducting regular business, the Freedom School Board entered into an executive session to discuss the following list of teachers to possibly be rehired for the next school year:

Penny Brewer, career teacher; Darci Immel, career teacher; Teresa Kennedy, temporary teacher; Bretta Matthews, career teacher; Shelly Province, temporary teacher; Michael Schnatz, temporary teacher; Charlotte Selfridge, temporary teacher; Marlo Smith, career teacher; Katie Strehl, career teacher; Grace Tepe, career teacher; Elizabeth Tyree, temporary teacher; Dawn Watson, career teacher; Bryant Weber, career teacher; and Cindy Wilson, temporary teacher.

They returned from executive session and took no vote because there was no action item on the agenda. Superintendent James Miller said teachers are being notified this week that they will be provided them with “reasonable assurance” letters. The letter asks teachers to check “yes” or “no” if they hope to teach in Freedom next school year. He said, “So far, I've not had any notification of any teacher planning to leave.”

Miller said he talked to teachers last week about the potential pay raise bills and their impact on the Freedom district. He cautioned that with the unknown changes in legislation, it could negatively impact the district because Freedom School is “off the state formula.” If $5,000 pay raises are given to each teacher, which seems to be a state-wide target, the money will have to be derived from the local budget.

The board passed an Advocacy Day resolution that will permit teachers to go to the capitol and advocate for the school if they wish and not lose any pay.

End-of-month fund balances are listed as follows: General fund – $1,057,133.73, Building fund – $188,732.61, Child Nutrition Fund – ($4,122.86), Sinking Fund – $2,060.09. The total of all funds is $1,243,803.57. Miller said the revenue is coming in as projected and the expenses are where they should be, although he had hoped for a surprise of a bit more revenue.

In his report, Miller said he was traveling to the state capitol on Tuesday to meet with legislators. He said all the legislative committees have turned in all bills that are going to be considered. He said the big unknown is what the legislators are going to do about teacher pay raises and district funding.

Miller mentioned the district has received an OARB grant that will provide the school with a weather station. The weather information will be available to the public online.

The superintendent said Bretta Mathews received a training grant of $135 that can be used for classroom materials. She has also been accepted to a summer program where she will be provided with considerably more classroom information.

A Freedom school bus collided with a deer. The district has come to an agreement with the insurance company and the repair shop is awaiting parts.

Shelite said a half-dozen Freedom students did well showing at the stock show in Oklahoma City. She also mentioned track and golf season is starting. Pre-enrollment has started for students who want to attend Northwest Technology Center next fall. She said she has six application for Northwestern Oklahoma State University, one for OSU IT, and two for Career Tech.

State testing will begin on April 3 and will continue throughout most of the month.

Three bids were reviewed for information technology contract services. In the past, faculty member Bryant Weber has handled that and he resigned from that position in December. A Kansas firm, K-12itc, Inc, bid $13,988.73 per year with a five-year contract and a setup fee of $2,100; Banc Central estimated $11,000 that will be billed hourly and will be based on actual equipment costs; SPI of Alva bid $10,408.94 on an hourly fee multi-year contract. The superintendent recommended the BancCentral offer because the other two wanted to replace all the IT equipment in the school with their own. BancCentral will make use of what is there. Also, Miller believes they can control their costs better with the BancCentral offer. Also, the BancCentral hourly rate was only $65 per hour. In the past, the district has paid almost twice that.

The board did a bit of housekeeping by approving the Universal E-Rate contract service. One fundraiser was approved for the fine arts department that will include a bake sale, desert sale and spaghetti dinner.

The board also agreed to join up with Oklahoma Public School Resource Center for professional development training. It will cost a fee of $1,500, but they will come and train staff free of charge. The main reason for the service is better monitoring of testing of students. Principal Shelite believes this service will replace three other services the district has.