Menomonie High School Special Meeting, Annual Meeting, and Budget Hearing

On August 27 the Menomonie School Board held its normal monthly special meeting, followed by the Annual Meeting and Budget Hearing. The annual meeting is an opportunity for school district residents to express concerns and to learn about plans for the upcoming year. We videotaped the meetings. The agendas and the annual budget summary are attached.

The two meetings were held at Memorial High School, 1715 5TH STREET W, MENOMONIE, WISCONSIN. 

Special Meeting:

In the special meeting, the policy for transportation of students has been brought into question in this and the last board meetings. Some parents in the district are concerned about the safety of their students going to their bus stop and waiting at the bus. The board contends that their responsiibilty for the students' safety starts once they are on the bus. The issue of safety in going to the bus has been a point of contention almost every year. At the moment the board is not contemplating any change in policy 751, Student Transportation Services, or 751.1, Bus Routing and Transportation. DIscussion centered around the possible difference between the board policy and what the expectations are from the city's insurance and what could happen if one of the students was injured. The board will be doing further research into both insurance issues and the policies in other similar districts.

There are plans to start a pilot program for school-based mental heath services. At the moment there will be a pilot of a single program that will be supervised by staff at UW-Stout.

The board discussed their new strategic plan and the plans for moving forward in development of the plan ad the use of focus groups. There will be focus groups open to the public to gather input on the new Strategic Plan. These will occur in the middle to the end of October. 

Annual Meeting:

Please see the attached annual report document which will cover most of the points brought forward by the board.

An initial introduction was done on the achievements of last year, and major initiatives for 2018-2019. Much fo this will revolve around the new goals approved by the school board, and the new strategic plan. 

The budget was presented. Details of the budget are in the attached Annual Report and the budget document.

Per pupil aid has increased to $654 per pupil this year.

The general budget and other presentations will be available in the videos of the two meetings, which should become available at some time on Tuesday. Note that the recording may be interesting - there is torrential rain falling at the moment and is making quite a ruckus on the roof. After some excitement over the weather and the weather siren going off (due to a severe storm warning) the meeting continued.