General Comments:  This time of the year is always a time of hope and renewal for the new school year. I am feeling very good about our staff and especially pleased with our new folks Jeffery Higgins, Josh and Carissa Abbott and Ruann. Everyone appears to be motivated and even excited for the start. We have a few unexpected students enroll in GF and we are now at seven students at SPE. With another enrolled student yesterday, we are at 90 counting our preschool. We are still working some construction projects around the district. The old school house is not finished and there is some organizing of the SPE library building by the SPE staff that needs to be completed but our traditional classrooms are ready.

Teachers/Students: Our first week of teacher training and support schedules are attached FYI. Rina/Rob/John/Jeff/Misc. presenters and I conducted training Monday-Wednesday.

Our first after school PLC meeting will begin August 21^st-22.

Our first two in-service days are September 14 “Lego” training and October 19^th Code.org training. These curriculum approaches are fully supported by the staff and are research-proven for a Science Technology Engineer Math (STEM) project/lab learning environment. It is great initiative by the staff. Rob and company will present on some aspects of this at the board meeting.

Our Art department has been relocated to the cafeteria and old school house in Dyer. This has been quite a bit of work and challenge, but we are getting there.

Tina and Josh held their first 8^th grade fundraising activity during GF days. Special thanks to Jeffrey, Jasmine, Manny, Monahan and Neil for volunteering supplies and time.

District Facilities Update. I can’t say enough about our summer youth workforce. They really stepped in and provide the labor we needed.  Thankfully we were able to get RG Gillam’s and Melendrez family to step up. We also have a very effective and hard-working maintenance crew in Doug, Manny, Monahan and Brian. Doug had his hands full this summer.

SPE Phase one (sorting, discarding, painting and landscape cleanup) is complete. Painting is always on our list. Phase two (fencing, gutter and maintenance of building and equipment) is partially completed. We have put the library and storage buildings back in to use. We still have a major project in getting water and bathroom up to standard in the library building. They have been cleaned out and painted inside. The storage building still needs new doors and skirting.

Goldfield Phase one is complete which consisted of removing all material from the maintenance building onto the playground and appropriately hosing the inside then sorting and disposing. The kitchen was also painted. Dilworth’s class needs a smart board and it is on order. Phase two is partially complete and we will continue to address fencing and all the maintenance and painting issues associated with the housing. I am putting a replacement floor for the gym on our list.

Dyer Phase one has been a continuous summer project. The Dyer staff volunteered off duty time to clean out the obsolete expendable items in the old school house. 😊 Brian Sanderson started in July and has been repairing/installing equipment and then construction in the teacher housing and classrooms. We are creating a STEM lab and some office space for ART/Music in the old school house. Like SPE, getting water to the bathroom was a big project. We have created classroom space in the Pre-school building for Literacy and SPED students. Kudos to Brian for constructing walls doors and windows in that building. Phase two is fencing and somewhat separate from the actual Dyer facilities is the Athletic Field project. Doug and Bill have better handle on that because it is mostly volunteer labor and equipment. The current issues are that of elevation (Cut and Fill), drainage (it suffered from the flash flooding last month) and fencing. Bill Kirby and Doug met with a construction rep in Dyer last week to discuss some potential help with the field and fencing.

Safe and Orderly school environment.  Divine fencing has put us off again until the end of September. Budget Fence out of Vegas just completed the GF fence project.

Ace Fire:  According to Mike, “All the conduit and wire are installed. The final steps are trimming out the horn strobes, installing the panel at each school and putting up the smoke detectors……….(to) line up the days for all our team to go up to do the panels and programing, the electrical guys for the remaining conduit in the library and the alarm guys for the smoke detectors…….It is quiet nonintrusive work so won’t impact school classes or schedules. Guys might be in a classroom for 10 minutes to put up a strobe and smoke. Any time-consuming work would be at the panel and programming.”

I approved change orders that included the library building (SPE) and the old school house (Dyer). They were not on the original bid because we were not using those buildings at the time.

Reliable communication in a crisis is an important part of our safety plan. With that said we are transitioning from Frontier to Valley Electric with our phone system. With the alignment to their internet it is logical and is about $600 cheaper a month. The system will offer greater capacity for internal communication and we are insuring the wireless phones in each classroom has a better range for staff on the playground and elsewhere. We expect VE to respond to phone issues within 24 hours per their service agreement. We are also upgrading our hand held radios.

Technology. We have transitioned to Valley Electric for internet services. Some initial adjustment issues in Dyer are causing some frustration but Goldfield appears to be working much better. Dan and crew are working with the Dyer staff to clear up issues that the transition has caused. We received additional Chrome books for our students. Individual passwords will be issued to staff for internet use. SPE microwave shot is not quite complete. We need to construct a tower there. We have much better internet access in GF and hopefully this month for SPE.

Policy Updates: We are skipping a month of board policy approval. We are still on track to have all our policies reviewed by October. Since January we have completed the review of Safety, Personnel, Instruction, Student, Facilities, Administration and now Finance. We have two more to review and then approve. We will start all over in January. Thanks once again to Trish and Bill for participating in this process.

Personnel. We are fully and appropriately staffed. As you know Shelby resigned from her para position. I am asking Ruann, who is one of our regular subs in GF, to temp that position for the first semester.

Jeff Higgins, Josh and Carissa Abbott appear to be motivated and glad to be on board. We are very glad to have them.

Superintendent: I am attaching my report of the AASA Legislative Superintendent conference I attended in DC.

I also attended the NASS meeting last week in Humboldt County and I am attaching the minutes if you are interested.

We have received donations of money and school supplies from Albemarle and Valley Electric and I will send letters to them. As we finish the Athletic Field my hope is to do the same for all the local community members who are assisting us with that project. Thanks.