School board delays action for town road

The Wahkiakum School District Board of Directors last week tabled action on a request for a temporary construction road easement for the Town of Cathlamet.

The town opened bids for its new wastewater treatment plant on Friday. The plant will be built on land purchased from the district, and town officials have asked for an easement to build a temporary road for construction at the edge of the school's Farm Forest.

The district has already granted an easement for a permanent access road to the plant site, but that road will run uphill, and engineers say it would be better to start from the top of the hill, build the plant, and work on the road down hill.

Wording in the proposed easement puzzled the directors and Superintendent Bob Garrett. The language said, "Grantee (the town) shall have the right at all times to enter describer in Exhibit A (the plant site) hereto attached for the purpose of inspecting, maintaining, improving, repairing, constructing, reconstructing, locating or relocating the temporary construction access road within the easement."

"I don't know why they would want to relocate the road," Garrett said. He added that the easement is only 20 feet wide.

The directors present, Michelle Budd, Tina Schubert and Lee Tischer, agreed that the terminology was unclear and wanted to have it cleared before approving the easement.

Tischer also suggested the district should ask that the contractor construct a walking path in areas where students might be along the temporary access road so that they aren't endangered by construction traffic.

The district has been awarded a $100,000 Urgent Repair Grant, said Superintendent Bob Garrett.

District maintenance workers will use the money to replace ceiling tile in the high school building. The tile contains asbestos, Garrett said. Overall, the project will cost around $200,000, and work is scheduled for the summer of 2012.

The district finished the 2010-11 school year with a cash reserve of $805,000, Garrett said, a slight increase from the previous year.

"This is probably the last year for an increase for a while," he said. "We're in good financial shape for the moment."

Enrollment in the first month of the school year was 436.5 full-time student equivalents (FTEs), Garrett said. He based the school year budget on 432 student FETs.

Broken down, enrollment was, Grades 1-3, 104.2 FTEs; Grade 4, 23.8; Grades 5 and 6, 72.2; Grades 7 and 8, 65.8, and Grades 9-12, 158.6. Kindergarten has 11.9 FTEs; each kindergarten student counts as .5 FTE, so there were 24 students in the kindergarten.

High School Principal Dan Casler reported that staff members serving on the Drug Impairment Team have been busy as the school year started. The team consists of staff members who are trained to recognize signs of drug or alcohol impairment on the part of students.

"In the first week of school, we used our drug assessment team," Casler said.

The team will meet for refresher training, he said, and they're going to refer the process they use when students are referred to them.

Casler added that the schools are also working with the Wahkiakum County Sheriff's Office and have brought the drug specialist officer, Deputy Sheriff Gary Howell, and drug smelling dog, Dakota, into the high school for a walk through the halls.

Casler also said that he and elementary/middle school Principal Theresa Libby will finish the update of the School Improvement Plan and post it on the district's website in October.

"This working document shares the annual goals and specific interventions for which our district is supporting and working," he said in his report. "This doucument results from the data presented tonight (scores from annual testing of students) and continual reflection on strengths and weaknesses in our academic programs."