Meets jointly with the seven-person Building Committee
Three members of the Mountain Lake Public Elementary School’s (MLES) Student Council and its Playground Committee attended the Thursday evening, March 5 special meeting of the Mountain Lake Public School Board and turned over to board members a check for a $20,000 Remick Foundation grant to be used for elementary playground improvements.
At the meeting to do the honors were President Carly Osland and Sixth-Grade Class Representatives Eryn Friesen and and Daniel Gardiner, both of Annette Kunkel’s classroom. With the students was the Elementary Student Council Co-Advisor Annette Kunkel (Amy Hartzler, school social worker, is the other co-advisor). Unable to attend were Fifth-Grade Class Representatives and Playground Committee members, Sam Stade of Cheri Strom’s classroom and Caden Swoboda of Joshua Thompson’s classroom.
The $20,000 grant builds the Elementary Playground Fund to $37,000. The Elementary Student Council had earlier accrued $17,000 from previous fundraising projects, including Butterbraid sales, Box Top clipping monies and funds from recycling ink cartridges.
The Elementary Student Council’s Playground Committee, taking the initiative for the project upon themselves, has been working with Mountain Lake Public High School ag instructor and a FFA advisor, Lindsay Brown, and the FFA Ag Communications CDE (Career Development Event) team of students Carly Fast, Alexa Heffele, Alexis Jellema-Baerg, Taylor Kass and Chuntana Sayavong to promote and plan the playground improvements. The playground priorities include a new tar surface, play pieces and a basketball court..
Board, Building Committee review building RFPs
Board members met jointly with the seven-person Building Committee (school district residents Bryan Bargen, Vern Peterson, Tom Appel, Jerry Haberman, Shawn Naas, Bruce Swanson and Cheri Hanson) to review the five received building Request for Proposals (RFPs).
Four of those firms are architectural firms – MLA Architects and Educational Planners, Wendel architectural planning interior design, WOLD Architects and Engineers and ARY – Architects Rego + Youngquist – with one a program planner – Honeywell.
Together the two groups discussed the five RFPs received. The consensus was that it was equally important to hire a firm that featured an education planner – as well as an architect and a construction manager.
After reviewing the five proposals, the school board decided to interview four of the firms, including the following (in no particular order) – WOLD Architects and Engineers, MLA Architects and Educational Planners, Wendel architecture planning interior design and ARY – Architects Rego + Youngquist.
The plan is to conduct one-hour interviews with each firm. The order of interviews will be created in the next few days. The exact date of the interviews will be scheduled after input from Board Members, Building Committee Members and architectural firms.
The interview schedule will be as follows –
* Interview #1: 8 a.m. to 9 .m.
* Interview #2: 9:15 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.
* Interview #3: 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
* Interview #4: 11:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.
In attendance during the interviews will be the seven School Board Members, the seven Building Committee Members, the architectural firms – and members of the public – as the interviews will be an open meeting.
In other business
* Learned that Mike Peters, custodian, has requested and will receive up to 12 weeks of Family Medical Leave.
* Approved the hiring of Kim Naas as Junior High Softball Coach with a salary of $2,450.
* Accepted the resignation of Kevin Rogers, custodian.
* Approved the 2015-2016 contract with the Southwest/West Central Service Cooperative for state-mandated employee services at a cost of $305,000. The State of Minnesota will pick up 68% of the cost, with the school district obligated to pick up the remaining cost percentage.