By Jolene Farley
At Monday's Hills-Beaver Creek School Board meeting, Superintendent Dave Deragisch reported the school's intercom system is updated, after four years of operating with a defunct communication system.
"The staff is very excited," he said. "They haven't had a way to communicate without yelling or walking from their classrooms for a long time."
Cunningham Communications, Pipestone, installed the new system.
"For health and safety reasons we need an intercom in our school," said Deragisch at the Jan. 14 School Board meeting.
"If we had an emergency it would be nice to contact all the rooms at one time," said Chairman Alan Harnack at the same meeting.
Daily announcements are made over the newly installed speakerphones.
The old wall-mount speakers remain in the classrooms, but the new system may be too powerful to hook up to the older, outdated speakers, so the school will continue to test the speakerphone option.
Deragisch and board member Ann Boeve said they were pleased with the service provided by Cunningham.
"We are definitely going to have service with this guy," said Boeve. "If we have a problem he will be down here."
The district could be reimbursed for the cost of the system through a health and safety program but likely would not receive reimbursement until the 2003-04 school year.
In other board business:
Little Patriots Academy reported it has 36 children signed up for classes in the fall. Elementary Principal Jil Vaughn recommended to the board an afternoon session be added.
Vaughn is writing a grant to start an after-school care program in the district for children in kindergarten through sixth grades. If the district receives funding, the program would tentatively run from 3 to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday.
"It's a very successful program in other towns," said Deragisch.
Deragisch warned that if more students didnÕt sign up for baseball, the sport could be dropped next year.
"It's really looking like the numbers could be in trouble next year," said Deragisch.
The board instructed Deragisch to come up with an exact count of interested students, including Ellsworth students and open enrollment students.
They discussed offering a seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade team if the district couldn't offer a full high school team.